Suspension Brakes Most liked posts in thread: Walking the line... street & HPDE car build

Fixed plates: Just say no, even for what you're doing. Get Vorschlag's and be done with it forever.

Bilstein's are much better than the Koni's, PSS9's or 10's.

I can run 15's on the street with GREAT care. It's not ideal for a lowered car on 15's though.
But my car is track first, street second. If you're not lowered, it's fine.

The Brakeman kit is what I run, and you're right, you don't need it until you get R-Comps.
I have the utmost respect for Todd (TCE), but the truth is a 15 inch Wilwood kit is really going to be a lateral move from the stock kit, unless you go with wider rotors. The Wilwood kits flex, and you're going to get pad taper. I'd start with stock, get some air to those with ducts, and take it from there. If you want one of the TCE kits, you're going to have to go to a bigger diameter rotor, and bigger diameter rim, for it to be significantly better than stock.
People crack me up on brakes, they'll put in stainless steel lines, a more aggressive pad, and a new BBK and swear they're stopping distances are dramatically different on street tires. They aren't, but initial bite and change in pedal feel makes it seem that way. Your braking is only as good as your tires. What these kits do is handle heat better. If you're just starting out, I'd go with new rotors, a decent track pad, get a few events in, then start thinking about brakes.

Once you go to R-comps, then it's time to think better brakes. The Brakeman kit is the only one that has held up and performed fantastic that I can fit under 15's running R-comps. It doesn't screw up brake bias, which some of the kits do, and I can go in deeper with no fade compared to the other kits I ran. The benefit of the 15's is just too good for me to go to a larger diameter rotor. They still need brake ducts.



It's all about compromises, and what's more important to you, and what your goals are. I'd start slow with the mods until you figure out how much you're going to do with this, and how fast you want to run. Some people are great with not much more than stock and have a blast with that. Other people want to pass M3's (not so hard on a short track, but quite a bit more challenging on a long track with lengthy straights without some serious mods), and that takes a bit more work. Me, I'm hyper-competitive, and every time I think I'm satisfied, I get passed by something that if I was just a little bit faster I could take, and then I'm off working on my driving, trying to get better, and modding some more. I didn't start out that way, in fact just the opposite, but I got hooked into it. That's why for things like camber plates, just do it right the first time, it'll be cheaper in the long run, and even if you don't go crazy with it, they're not that much more expensive than fixed plates, when you consider how much you're going to be spending on disposables like pads, tires, brake fluid and the general wearing out of part from track use.

Truth is it's what you want it to be. If you keep the MINI relatively stock and drive it well, you will earn much more respect than someone driving a Stingray poorly, even though they're passing you. But any mod you're going to do, do it right the first time, or stay stock until you're sure you want to take it up a notch, then do it right. Buy good stuff off the bat, it's more expensive up front, but it saves you a ton of money in the long run. I wish I could do it all over again, I could have saved a bunch of money, and had the car better quicker.

 

Between 1.0" and 1.5" lower than stock is the sweet spot for the suspension. Any lower and you induce understeer from having the front roll center too low.

The KW Variant 2's are the hot-ticket; their valving is among KW's best regardless of price. Do those along with some Powergrid drop-links, max out the factory front camber and minimize factory rear camber and you should be very close to optimum.

Oh, congrats on the car by the way. Enjoy! :biggrin5:

 

No. But my RPM's are set higher. There are some shorter tracks where I run only 3rd or 4th gear, Blackhawk being one of those, and I'm fairly quick there.

It really doesn't matter though--ideally you'd have different gear ratios for each track. There are places on some tracks where it's faster to hug the redline for a split second rather than upshift, only having to immediately downshift. There are other tracks where that never comes close to coming into play.

On a long straight, you're more likely going to upshift, I literally can't think of a single long straight anywhere where hugging the redline is an issue--keep in mind you don't want to go to redline in each gear, you want to shift where it makes sense from a torque standpoint.

Where it comes into play more is a short straight coming into a turn, and you have to figure out what works best--is it worth the upshift with a quick downshift (usually not), or is it faster to stop accelerating below the redline for a short time before the turn (which is usually faster for me). Now for those who are immortal drivers, it may be different, but for us mere mortals, it's usually smoother and faster not to make the shift.

 

Ride height depends somewhat on tire size and how much weight you've removed from the car. One good rule of thumb is to keep the front control arms parallel to the ground - no lower. After that you're pretty much just trying to keep weight on the front wheels. Aren't a lot of hard and fast guidelines for ride height on a MINI.

 

Much good advice here. /\

 

Coilovers and good springs are the answer. You can adjust from there. Lowering the MINI helps, but you don't want to go too low and bottom the suspension out, not to mention put a ton of strain on the CV joints. It's a bunch of variables--spring stiffness, ride height, and, if you're coilovers are adjustable, damper settings, camber, toe, etc. And what works best for one won't necessarily be the best for another, everyone drives differently.

It's better to start less aggressive, and change one thing at a time, than trying to hit a homerun and make multiple changes to the suspension components. If you try too much at once, it gets hard to figure out what is doing what--at least it was for me.

 

One point on brakes...

I like Wilwoods as they're common - it makes repairs and parts easy to find. If you're deciding between the street and track setups, piston choice makes a difference. It's no big deal to strip the calipers yearly and refresh the seals on a track car that spends a lot of time on jack stands, but it's a pain in the butt if it's mostly a driver.

No boots = yearly or biennial rebuilds.
Boots = rebuild after you fry the boots during a track day (not hard to do)

Otherwise, buy the biggest brakes you can find. It's stressful having to limp brakes around the track and worry whether or not you'll stop on a 120mph straightaway.

 

He's alive!!!! How is the Lotus?

If you want suspension advice, this is the guy. I'm using Ryephile's write up for the R56/R53 rear trailing arm swap this winter, as soon as it's warm enough to use the garage again.

 

Thanks for the compliments, and I'm glad the rear trailing arm swap write-up is still coming in handy! The Lotus is doing awesome. :devil:

As for the cast + R-compound comment, the most important facet is that you choose a wheel that's designed to JWL standards, and even better if it's tested by the VIA. After that, concern yourself with weight and aesthetics.

BThayer makes good points as always: it's better to have too much braking capability than not enough. IMO the Wilwood 11.75" kit lacks the torque and thermal capacity to handle a stock R56 on the track, driven seriously. The TSW BDM kit would be the minimum since it at least has some thermal capacity, assuming you're running cooling ducts and a serious pad like a Carbotech XP12 et al.

 

I had the BDM, I now have the brakeman kit--it uses a 12.19 diameter rotor, .81 wide, and fits a 15 inch wheel--it's the only 12.19 kit to my knowledge that will clear 15's. It's much lighter than the BDM was, and has held up condsiderably better with regard to rotor life, but it does need cooling big time, just like the BDM did. It out performs anything I've ran to date (but everything I've run was for fifteen inch wheels, I haven't run any of the 13 inch rotors), and pads are relatively cheap. I was a little concerned going back to a .81 rotor, but this kit really shines, and the brakes are phenomenal, with regard to pedal feel, consistency, and fade, and the calipers are light years stiffer than the Wilwoods and Outlaws I've had. The only downside is it ain't cheap.

The reason I got out of the BDM was Outlaw's lack of support, despite Way's best efforts after he took over the TSW brand. Maybe it's better now, but we're not exactly top priority with them.

 

You want ducts that go from the fog lights (some people have put ducts underneath the bumper, but those don't work for me), and direct air to the hubs, preferably with a backing plate--air goes from the center out to cool the rotors. Some people run a duct that blows toward the caliper, like Way's duct, and they help, but cooling directed toward the hub is optimal. Best of all are ducts like challenge ducts, that direct toward the caliper AND the hub. It's what I'd like to do, but I haven't figured out an easy way to do it yet, it would require some front bumper modification, but a few people have done that.

Way's ducts are ok, Sneeds are better, I want to get the RMW ducts on, they have the advantage of a backing plate, but I'm still working on getting bolts for them.

One of the disadvantages of 15's is cooling, everything is tight and subsequently insulated, tires/rims act like a shield and a heat sink, so you really have to work on getting adequate air back to the rotors.

Last year I used straight vein rotors, and could get 3 track days out of them (the rotors aren't that expensive, but swapping them is somewhat of a chore), and I'm ok with that; this year I'm going to try curved vein rotors and maybe hurricane rotors, see if I can get more out of them.

 

Oh yeah, 2nd Gen MINI we are talking about here.

The guys over at Sneed Speed Shop have a kit for you.

MINI Cooper S R56 Brake Cooler kit

 

Like I said, it's a compromise, you have to make a choice. There is nothing wrong with running a bigger diameter, especially when you're first starting.

The solution is easy though--15 inch for the track, 16 or 17 for the street……..

 

This isn't the only factor in how low to run the car, but when the lower control arm goes from flat to angling up at the tire end, the camber gain goes from camber gain to camber loss. The wheel looses camber as the suspension deflects in bump. I don't run any lower than having the lower control arms flat. Flat measured from the center of the ball joint pivot and the center of the inner pivot

 

I do not run that low and I am sure if I did mess up the ride height my alignment guy, which is a good guy, would have said something along the way of "Dave that may look cool but you are going to destroy your suspension".

I also have Helix adjustable camber plates in the front and adjustable control arms in the rear.

 

There is a big difference between 15x7 and 15x8, at least on 225/45's. I have never run 15x 7.5. I currently have 15x9 up front and it's heaven. I was worried about the stagger with 8's in back 9's in front, but that's what Jan was running, a number of people chimed in and felt it was much better, and they were right.

Get hub centric/wheel centric spacers from Jan, 18mm up front, and 5mm in the rear and you should clear anything.

 

GRM had an article last month about tire/wheel size that lines up with what cct1 said, generalized conclusion was that section (not tread) width approximately equal to wheel width was the fastest.

If you want to run a 225 i wouldn't go narrower than 8", if running a 205 then 7 or 7.5 would be fine. I would pick the tire you want to run first then the wheel to best mount that <- advice i got from a much better driver than me

I only ran 225s on the 8 so comparison to the 7" wheels where i ran 205 isn't super useful.