That date was on my calendar, but I was asked to work that day…I will almost certainly be there on August 25th, though.
I agree with your assessment of Thompson; not worth it for me either.
I sold my JustaCooper this week, after 12 years and 123,000 miles so I am now using the 'track' MINI as a DD. I am having an alignment done tomorrow to dial out some of that negative camber I was running. What do you guys think of going with between -1.25 and -1.5 all the way around for mostly street use with occasional track days thrown in?

 

Should be good!

 

I ended up with -1.25 all the way around, and felt an immediate difference in turn-in on the drive home. I will have to recalibrate my entrance speeds on all of the turns when back on the track…

 

Well, today was an interesting day at LRP. It was pleasant enough when I left home to go there, but the weather soon turned to rain, which had been going on for about a day. LRP was cold, wet and rainy when I arrived. The nice thing about running in the Advanced group with SCDA is your first run is late in the morning. The rain had stopped by then and there had been 3 run groups out before that to help remove some of the water from the track. While it was mostly just damp, there was a river going across No Name that was interesting to take even with a new set of ZIIs on the car. Second session proved to be even more fun as I had a chance to match a Porsche Cayman for 4-5 laps until traffic caught us. The river was still there but the rest of the track was dry. It was fun to accelerate through the water in 4th and get the tires to spin and then have to hit the brakes for the uphill in wet tires. Never a dull moment at LRP.

Back to tires. The Dunlop ZIIs are quite respectable on the track. On my best lap (best lap of the day, that is - 1:09.45) was on these. I broke 0.95 g on most turns and broke 1.0 through the esses. They are, however, a little less responsive then the R888s and they tend to get a little greasy as they get hotter. My R888s have turned into grease *****. They were not able to match the grip of the ZIIs and I was only able to turn 1:09 laps in them (they should have been better than that). Also, there was no confidence that they would hold in the turns. I guess it is time to put the new gumballs on

 

Sorry I have not been on the forum for quite some time. How is the car driving as a dd qlwith only -1.25 front camber? I started around there for my dd but gradually ended up at -1.9.

 

Eddie, glad you are having fun at the track. No chance for me to get to the NE this year, so I will try next year. Am hoping to have a car then.

 

I will be at Lime Rock next Tuesday, July 29th with SCDA. I have adjusted to the camber adjustment on the highway, but I will be cautious the first session out on track as I am sure I will need to reduce my entrance speed on several corners, especially the downhill…

 

My prediction is that you will be adjusting your camber soon. I found that a -1.9 front camber did not influence my dd tire wear too much. Just go to the track often enough to even out the wear pattern.

Have lots of fun at lrp. If you see Ian say hi to him for me.

 

Slinger - Glad to hear from you

Veggivet - I wish you had said something about going. I knew you said you were thinking about it. We would have been pretty evenly matched. Right now I have not signed up and it is probably too late. Oh well.

 

I would try to see if there is room. Won't miss a ride with veggie.

 

Missed out... web page says sold out...

 

Time to call.

 

Well, I guess it wasn't fully closed out...Veggi, watch out, here comes Smokey

 

Well, last Tuesday was a really good day to be away from work and on the track at LRP
All of the MINIs did well and it was good to seek veggi and GKP there. There was even one full track MINI, but the driver seemed to be holding back a little. GKP had hardened Rcomps that were no fun but a quick change to the street tires improved things greatly. I was enjoying my new R888s but surprisingly they were not that much faster than my Dunlop ZIIs....GKP, you may want to think about a set of BF Goodrich Rivals. There was a GTR with them on and he was way fast in the corners and walked away from me with the Rcomps. They may be my next tires after the R888 wear or heat cycle out. For reference my data said I turned a 1:08.62 on my best lap.

 

[QUOTE=Eddie07S;3969521]Well, last Tuesday was a really good day to be away from work and on the track at LRP

It sure was. The weather was perfect and it was good to see you and VeggieVet. I'm not sure if my R-compounds were hardened or not, but I do know I now have two that are showing cord on the edges.

What I have to figure out is if I want to go to 17" wheels so I can have more options on tires. The Dunlop Direzzas and Toyo Proxes R1Rs are the only choices at 205/50/R16. I called Tire Rack and asked about going to 205/55/R16 — where there are more options — but they said there would likely be rubbing. I'll be back at LRP on August 25 running on something, but it may just end up being my everyday Potenza RE760s until I figure things out.

Slinger, are you there? How many track days did you typically get out of your R-compounds?

 

Unless your R-Comp's look like this - stop your whining! :-)

 

Y'know, on Tuesday Eddie07S told a story about you running R's down to the cord. I thought he was exaggerating! Now I'm thinking I have two more days on mine.

 

And that was the good tire

 

I am not sure why Tire rack would think that you would have rubbing with that size. This is what I know for sure:
Toyo R888s have about the widest tread width as compared to any other tire of the same size out there.
I have run 225-45x17 R888 on 7" rims with a 38mm ET and they will rub the on the inside of the rear wheel well plastic liner (I wore a hole in one) and it did rub on the metal.
I have run 215-45x17 Dunlop ZIIs on the same rims and they just touch the rear wheel well plastic liner on very hard bumps.
I am currently running 225-45x17 R888s on 7" wide rims with a 45mm ET rims and they just barely touch the rear wheel wheel plastic liner.

I would think that the 205-55x16 would clear everything given that they are not as wide as the R888s I have. But you are right. There is little in the way of options for 16" rims. You either have to go to 17" or 15" to get a good selection of tires. The price of most 16" tires is similar to the 17" and the weights are about the same too so there is little reason to stay with the 16". I don't know what brakes you are running, so I can't say if 15" rims will fit, but I think that will be my next setup; the 17" are too expensive. I may also go to the BF Goodrich Rivals to get a bit more tire life. They did really well on that GTR that was in our group. He was able to easily out corner my MINI with the R888s.

As for tire suggestions, I would look at these if you want something that can be driven to track:
Toyo R888s
Toyo R1Rs
BF Goodrich Rivals
Dunlop ZIIs

 

I don't think any 15" wheel fits the second-gen MINI. But I could be wrong. I have a pretty good idea of what I'll be doing wheel/tire wise, but I doubt I'll have it set up for August 25. Ran into a problem today with my other money-pit-on-wheels (not a MINI so I won't name it in this forum . On the 25th, I'll probably just beat up the Potenzas.

 

The ZII make pretty good track tires. I'd be happy running them.

I ran 205/55-16 RE-11 tires on 16x6.5" wheels on our 08 MCS, we had no problem with rubbing.

 

Unless you have a JustaCooper when they fit fine.

 

I ran 205/55-16 RE-11 tires on 16x6.5" wheels on our 08 MCS, we had no problem with rubbing.[/QUOTE]

Thank you. That's good to know. I agree on the ZIIs being outstanding tires. One thing not on the thread is that I am trying to avoid directional tires. The track I am at most often has 6 righthanders and 1 relatively slow lefthander. The ability to put any tire on any wheel will extend the life of the set considerably.

 

You don't have to worry about running directional tires in the "wrong" direction. The directionality is only for the wet. This is what I was told by the track tire dealer that I bought the R888s from. I have run the R888s "backwards" with no issues. However, one time I did have someone make a comment that I had them on the wrong side when I was putting them on.

A long time ago there was misconception that was put forward that radial tires would take a set and should be only run in one direction, but that is not true. There is nothing any more unique about a "directional" tire than a "non-directional" tire other than the tread pattern. So buy what ever you want and rotate them as you see fit to even out wear.

 

I ran one of these corded tires on a friends Miata at an autox once and it was quite fun!