^ Agreed. It's still pretty darn stable with 0 toe. But I don't have a 32mm solid swaybar on full stiff like many people. :lol:
I do have the competition H-sport on full stiff.....lol ...you can also run a touch of rear toe in to help it track straight on the long bits or highway..
I wasn't aware you could adjust rear toe. I thought the only stock adjustment was a very minor camber adjustment with those elongated cam bolts. How do you adjust rear toe?
Sheeesh.... I guess I should read the whole thread..... Sorry Still learned something new today........
I have a 19mm rear sway bar, and zero toe front and back works well for me. If I toe'd in the rear, the car would never rotate.
After replacing lower control arm bushings, lower ball joints, left front wheel hub bearing assembly, and installing Ireland Engineering fixed front camber plates, I took the 04 r53 in for a much needed alignment. Here are my settings: caster left +3.60/right +3.45; camber left -1.93/right -1.87. Was told the camber needs to come up 1.50 degrees and that there is no camber adjustment except toe. Have a new set of tires from Tire Rack and want to avoid excessive wear. The shop did not know who made Mini and their computer didn't list Mini. After searching through a booklet, specs were found. I decided against proceeding with an alignment attempt and left without any adjustments being made. Had tried the local Firestone dealer recently and their longtime alignment person had quit the previous day. Not sure if I want to try their new guy who was pulled from tire installation to the alignment machine. There are several alignment shops recommended by Mini owners in Dallas but I am concerned the 3 hour drive will really wear the tires. Advice?
I'm confused.... When they said "camber needs to come up 1.5 degrees" what do you think they meant? That you needed more or less camber? That's what the IE plates do - add about 1.5 degrees of camber. Technically that makes your car about 1.5 degrees OVER "standard spec". That's GOOD. They're not adjustable by design. Whatever you get is what you get. It's OK that left and right are a little different. Find a GOOD performance suspension shop that does custom alignments for track cars. They'll know what they're doing with a non-standard suspension setup. Everyone else is just going by the book - which no longer applies to your car. It's worth a three hour drive. Which shouldn't destroy your tires.
Adding IE camber plates is a good move. Be aware that they also add front toe in. Get an alignment so the toe can be corected.
What Chuck said.... My toe changed quite a bit with the IE fixed camber plates. Too much toe will really wear down the tire tread fast, more so than the camber being off. Get the tow fixed and I wouldn't worry about a 2 hour drive to an alignment shop that knows MINI's. And I'd stay away from any place that can't even figure out who makes MINI's....
Keep in mind that MINI has a pretty wide range of "in spec" on alignments... Front can be anywhere between -.5 to -1.0 and of course not match right to left.. If you know what specs you want it set at "most" any good alignment guy can do it.. They may charge alittle more for doing a "custom" alignment though.. I go where minimark suggested here locally to a Mock Tire Store and their guy is great..Will even let you set in the car while he is doing it so the specs are with your weight in it.. and less then $75 each time I've had it done.. At that price I don't mind playing around with my specs from time to time..
"In spec" sucks. :lol: You could just tell the shop to zero your toe and not worry about camber (since it's where it should be with the IE plates). - andrew
Great discussion on alignments, also wanted throw in/add the importance of adding weight during the alignments. I just had a shop that I had used before, automatically open all the doors and started adding sand for additional weight. I then remembered a discussion from an earlier post on MA...so thank you!
Since I have a R56 which has the oblong holes in the strut towers, Chad at DT was able to "normalize" my settings and balance out the camber practically the same on both struts when he did my alignment (one side was -1.86 the other side -1.85). It depends on the alignment shop, but most "National" shops won't adjust outside factory specifications (I guess for liability reasons). I'm super happy with my custom settings......
Keep in mind when on the road alignment settings become dynamic. Small static discrepancies between sides like <.05 degree toe and <.3 degree negative camber will have little to no affect on handling. Placing driver's weight equivalent in the driving seat is an OK (but unnecessary) starting point during wheel alignment on stock struts. Weighting all seats during alignment when the MINI is seldom fully loaded is unrealistic. However close the setting accounts for high dynamic G forces on one side by static max occupancy weighting initially, it places the real world unweighted side in a high G corner way out of spec. Weight transfer will be different between left and right turns unless vehicle weight is balanced at the same time, which is not possible with OEM struts. Even after corner weighting with adjustable struts, ballast, and average full fill, dynamic alignment perfection is seldom achieved.
