1st Gen R53 Cooper S Most liked posts in thread: Rear Chassis Brace

What is it connecting? MINIs are very stiff from the factory and generally don't suffer from enough body flex to compromise handling. The limiting factor in a MINI's handling is almost always behind the wheel.

 

Rear bar does nothing as it doesn't even connect at the suspension points.

 

Ahhh.... It sounds like M7 is benefiting from your rear chassis brace

 

Pull it off and sell it on the sewing site.

 

I don't mean to hijack your thread, but does the front upper strut brace do anything? They seem to be prevalent in pic's of members engine bays.

 

Any suspension or body stiffener claimed to do improvement can not always be felt. The use of monitoring device such as a gauge like a Auto Meter D-Pic that can measure lateral and forward G-Forces is needed to see if any effective changes occurred. It is easy to do a before and after using such a devise. So I would not always rule out what you can not feel.


To be clear I was not insinuating that any particular part did in fact work or did not. Just an easy way to test it.

 

I feel that the strut tower brace does provide a significant benefit. I've not been able to explain it, but I noticed immediately that starting out from a stop light, I was able to start smoother and shift smoother. No changes in driving style, but my shifting from 1st to 2nd could be pretty hard sometimes. The STB seems to have smoothed that out almost completely.

Just my two cents on that one.

 

Front Strut Tower Brace AND Rear Frame Brace

FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH(probably nothing as it's just me and completely subjective) Margi has both front JCW strut tower brace and rear 'chassis brace.'With both of them installed I noticed a definite improvement in cornering. I have nothing to back this up and many knowledgable people say that this is merely excessive operator head space:crazy: but, mine are staying on the car. Jason

 

The front strut brace definitely made turn in crisper. The front end is a little bit more predictable over street bumps, too (though camber plates helped the most there).

 

If you ask the guys that have tested these you will find out that there is very little these will do to improve the handling (this from an ex-strut brace owner). But they sure do look good under the hood.

 

Oh yeah, wasn't there a big thread about that on the sewing site a while back? I think the conclusion was that the lower chassis braces had a bigger effect. But you can't forget about the annoying need to remove the upper strut brace whenever you have to change your oil or service the air filter. :idea:

 

Yep, the lower brace added quite a bit of performance. Not so much for the top one....lol

 

I have an R56 with a CAI so I don't have to remove the front strut tower brace to do either of these.:cornut: Jason

 

Not if you have one of these....






Mark

 

Very nice!
Hmmmmm...... I might have to make me one of those.:arf: