Mini is earning its (ambiguous gender) keep. It only get a day off and is back onto the track today bright and early.










i had no idea how light these racing slicks until picking one up; it must be around 8 pounds







this 1965 bug race car has to be the most photographed car of the day


just 2 R53 Minis - we were back to back for many laps in the first session until the bad Corvette broke us apart






today many sessions are for race car of different groups to do test and tune

this BMW racing team has pit crews ready to check the tire temperature as soon as the race car got off the track


the most photographed race car of the day; it spent its whole life as a race car right from the beginning


we the two R53 Minis pre-grid together









Mini managed to best last season's best time; so it said - I am tired and need a rest

 

I was a bit concern with the DIY alignment that I did yesterday morning may cause high speed shimmy or shakes. They did not happen. The Mini is straight as a flying arrow on the track before reaching terminal velocity when the straightaway ran out. All I did was loosen six bolts and adjusted the attitudes of the two front control arms. A few sanity checks as if I was building a buggy wagon and adjust the front control arms by eyeballing, and a short test drive on the street was all I did before today's HPDE.

It is nice to prove that alignment is not some black magic and you can do an acceptable job with basic things laying around at home. It helps a lot that I know the history of my Mini and always been perception anything that changed. I didn't mess with the tie rod ends as I knew they are not the cause.

 

There were just two R53.2 Minis today. We put up some entertainment as we were back to back for many laps. My Miniac friend is very fast, and she is handicapped with not as good tires. This video contains my best time of the day in the last lap of the video of 1:37:82. An improvement of merely 25/100 of a second.

1:37:82 today while my best time last season was 1:38:17. It is a very small step, though I made many changes on the lines and gear shift since this Friday.

It is a moral victory as I broke one minute and 38 seconds and into the 1:37s. I can certainly see that I left a lot on the table on that fast lap so a lot more work is needed to improve the consistency.

 

This is a clip taken with GoPro inside while Mini and I were enjoying the merry go round. I gave up on the external mic hanging off the rear bumper to pick up the exhaust. I realize now the volume is so low and muffled because the built in mic was picking up very high volume of wind noise driving both windows down. The AGC attenuated the wind noise and hence everything else. Next time I would use an external mic but put in forward in the cockpit and that should work better. Our track team need an A/V engineer.


We had an excellent day, with a great HPDE with very few cars. While on paper we had 3 sessions of 20 minutes. We done as much driving as 4 sessions of 20 minutes with other organization that are not as well ran. I would find out later that the Miata and the silver M3 are both instructors. So far this year I have been blessed with cool HPDE days.

 

I haven't purchase the Powerflex bushings for the R56 AL rear trailing arms yet. I was going to cheap out and just use the OE rubber one, but seeing how the front one deteriorated I will invest $100 for a set.





I have their Black racing ones for the front as I want the sharpest steering on track possible. However for the rear end, my thought is it is far less critical. Additionally because of the heavy front weight bias my intuition suggests that I should go with the regular purple, as going with the Black racing one might be a bit much for road use.

Any thoughts and inputs are appreciated.

 

Mini's got braces, like most teenagers. Except Mini's braces are not cosmetic in the mouth.

Mini is down to earth and hopefully these braces will keep it planted on the pavement. I installed the Cabriolet's front braces, and then a set of M7 strut tower brace. I was wise not to mess with the Cabriolet's front braces during winter when plastic parts and the wiring harness were hard and brittle. Doing them in warm temperature is so much easier.

I disconnected the battery so the ground strap can be disconnected without risking trigger ECU fault codes


some fasteners are hard to get to and torque to spec




as a part of the brace installation, the main engine harness connector is now slightly relocated


Next is to install the M7 strut towner brace. The extra long studs of the Ireland Engineering fixed camber plate and the M7 extra thick aluminium plates are marriage made in Mini heaven.

these strut plates double the mushrooming reinforcement in addition to that of the Ireland Engineering fixed camber plates


one down side is no more ferrous surface to put this magnetic parts tray




the installation is pretty straight forward and took very little time


As with most strut tower brace it interferes with the sound deadening mat on the underside of the bonnet. I wet it with water and carefully closed the bonnet to let the Chrono god do its job.

you can see the bulged bonnet


I am a born skeptic of not taking claims for granted. I waited this long to install these braces as I am now in better position to assess if they contribute anything perceptible driving on race track. I like these braces being in black for a Pepper White Mini named Desire.

Useful remarks:
the torque specs: front strut to tower studs = 25 ft-lb; all M7 strut brace fasteners = 35 ft-lb

 

I should have posted this in car video taken with the GoPro that is a companion to one with Harry's Laptimer. They cover the latter part of the first morning session. My best time of 1:37:82 was the last lap before the cooling lap at the end of the video. Our two Minis were very close in lap time, but I got faster towards the end of the session.

Our 2 R53.2 are very close in time. The other cars are 3 E46 M3, a Z06 Corvette, a Nissan Sentra RS, a gen 1 Miata, a yellow VW Golf GTI, the classic 1965 beetle race car (but he had many mechanical problems), a VW Corrado track car, some Honda Civic track car, and the red Porsche 968 are the cars I remember.

 

This is something I had not thought about as it is not discussed much on NAM. I put the purple in up front and I am very happy with them. I left the MINI stock bushings in the back, which seem fine and the car seems to track well, except up through the esses at WGI. At times the car develops a wiggle in those turns that I thought might be tire rubber pickup (which I tend to have quite a bit of in the rear) and/or cross-winds, which there is a lot of on that track. Now you have me wondering if I should have changed out those bushings too. Maybe putting in the purples in the rear would cut down on that wiggle?



I am very interested in how you make out with them. I am inclined to say match the front; go with the blacks. I have no real basis for this, except I tend to like to have the front and rear "equal".


Also interested in your thoughts of the front braces after you run the car a bit. I have the JCW strut tower brace. It seemed to cut down on the front end shakes over bumps, which I took as a good thing. Anything to make the car stronger. But not sure if it really changed the handling.

 

I love your key chain G meter that shows up in your GoPro vids.


Nice driving. Smooth, which is always good.

 

I get a kick out of that too. Simplest G meter and evokes some thoughts. If the Mini has zero lean, pulling 1 G the key should be perfectly at 135 degrees from 12 o'clock. But the truth is Mini is seldom levelheaded.

 

I have been checking in into Minitorque forum in the last few days. It first started with some disappearance of subforums, and more disappeared over time. I just check now and all are gone.

They have been working with IT for days now, and this does not look good. I hope it is not some nasty worm that out there to destroy. I really enjoy reading the Mini community over the pond.

 

I took a big risk in choosing the Black Race Powerflex and I am very glad I did. I agonized over the choice for days. I am trying to be as thoughtful as I can with the rear. I am leaning towards the Black now but it depends on what I see today as I inspect the design of the R56 trailing arm pivot bushings once I unbolt them. One thing that concerns me is with the "regular" purple the installation is quite easy as it does not require a press. Not so with the Black race one. It has a metal collar like the OE.

I am very glad that I took one small modification at a time to experience the incremental improvement and tradeoff. The personal journey has been very rewarding intellectually, to see the changes and the choices that I made. As to the power, I would rather have a reliable Mini than one that makes big power but break down all the time. I want to tread the increase power modification carefully.

I didn't feel that I was ready to discern the handling improvement from brakes, suspension, and chassis improvement before, but now I think I am.

 

I have the Black series for my R56 arms. Curious to see how they act.

 

Did you have access to a hydraulic press to press them in? Please share your impression with them.

 

I pressed the old rubber ones out with the metal collar and I used a C Clamp to squeeze the new ones in if I remember correctly. It's been a while. I still have them sitting in my room as I want to install ALL of the suspension at once. Some people say putting poly bushings there can cause suspension bind. I would like to go spherical but that would kick me out of DSP.

 

OK. I removed the AL R56 trailing arm from the pivot bracket and looked at the bushing design. The rubber bushing is not as flimsy as that of the front control arm that there isn't a thin web for easy riding. The OE one that I inspected is still have some life left but I decided to get a set of Powerflex.

I inspected carefully the piece parts difference between the purple and the black and they are different in just the stiffness of the polyurethane. Contrary what I thought initially that only the Black series has an outer metal collar. I found a set of the purple one for good price from a supporting vendor that don't sell the Black series. Since I have apprehension of the lighter rear that help settle the choice for me. I also am a bit concern the need for the bushing to bend a bit for increasing negative camber.




How I loaf wrench sets that has skipped sizes. Both of my metric set skipped 20mm which is precise what is need for this bolt. Fortunately this 25/32" box wrench saved the day. These vendors do this to make the set price point cheaper than the other crap competition. Why do I have to invest in Snap On to avoid this $h|t practice?






I ordered PFR5-1103 after countless checking. Please tell me I ordered the correct one.

Here is the installation instruction.

 

I want to get much better in my WWD (wrong wheel drive) driving. This Goodwood Historic Racing is so inspiring seeing how Nick Swift do magic with his cheeky mini dueling out with a more powerful Alfa GTA. I can watch this 50 times and not get bored.


I am starting to think setting my not so cheeky Mini to be more tail happy to help rotation.

I came across this excellent driving of a WWD Seat Leon chasing a M3 track car. Also in the video how they passed a couple of all decked out Porsches. Just because you have very expensive Porsche does not mean you know what to do with it.

 

On the tracks around here, oversteer put into a car to make it "turn-in" better has totaled a number of cars. In a MINI or a number of cars (BRZ, Lotus Elise, Vipers to name a few) this can cause the car to over rotate in a turn, which I have witnessed as being the cause for several being stuffed into a guardrail. Randy Pobst has a great article in the latest issue of the SCCA magazine SPORT CAR (July 2018) about trail braking and how it works, why you don't want a car with oversteer built in and how working with a car with slight understeer is actually faster. This is another article by him on the subject:

https://www.scca.com/articles/200106...t-on-understee

If you look at the setup on the LAP Motors MINI JCW race cars running in the IMSA race series, they run a very large front and rear sway bars. They have not built in a large amount of oversteer with this setup, and they have run very well over the years.

If you notice in my signature, I am running a 27mm front bar and 25mm hollow rear bar set at the minimum stiffness. This gives a front to rear stiffness ratio that is is close to the JCW optional suspension, but with a much higher total roll stiffness. One thing that it does is minimizes front end body roll and the resulting loss of front camber in a turn. As a result it is very neutral and works well with trail braking. This works far better than the Cooper S front bar and 20mm bar I had in my previous MINI. Out on a track day, I have been in too many situations created by others where I had to react by lifting off the throttle, even to jam on the brake, and because of the abrupt change to the car if I was in my previous Cooper it would not have survived. My opinion is that added oversteer is not worth it.


Sorry to be a bit preachy here. I know that what you are suggesting is what a lot of people state as being the right way to make a MINI handle well. I went down this path too with my previous MINI, but never liked the result, hence my current setup. What I am suggesting is a different option that is safer for a typical track day and, according to Randy is likely to be faster.

 

the LAP cars also run more weight up front, clearly visible rake and that increases front grip

I asked what the weight front/back is but never got an answer

 

Keep the comments coming. I welcome thoughtful posts of all points of view. Today is burrito day, which means I better not spend too much time here. Concentrate, concentrate - of that delicious bites as reward!

Just a short remark of my idea of making the Mini more tail happy. It will be done in small increments all just with what I have. My 22mm is set to full soft now but I will soon experiment that. Other things are removing just the rear seat back rests for events. Lighter battery is one later step. Seeing how Nick Swift drives give me so much inspiration of the weak link is the nut behind the wheel.

 

Forward rake and shock adjustments do well for fine tuning the handling. Sway bars (as we have them vs the infinitely adjustable from the cockpit ones) do more for large changes in balance.



The Minis in that first video have very little body roll, front or rear. I would guess large sway bars front and rear (large for the size of the car, that is...)

 

or stiffer springs, I prefer to use springs to adjust body roll over swaybar. I am not fond of how the stiff swaybars transfer torque across the car when going over FIA curbing

if you look at how the mini challenge cars came setup, they had very stiff springs

 

Today is burrito day. A Mexican sandwich is easy to bring to the track.

I couldn't believe that most drivers arrive and set up by the time Mini and I arrived


only one lonely Mini today; we are blessed with another cool overcloud day that never exceed 70F


this is as no-nonsense a spoiler gets


this is the smartest thing I observed today - a pipe for the coolant expansion tank aim at the windshield


a nice RS America


a highly modified gen 2 Miata with turbocharger






there are 2 TT and a S3 Audi today





this has to be the cleanest car I've ever encounter in my life; it has over 160k miles and it looks like it has only 5


engine bay of a Honda Civic type R





a burrito lunch - hence burrito day


today must be the last day of the Wilwood BP30 racing pads; they lasted 4 HPDE sessions; they are not too hard on the rotors


When I first installed the Wilwood front BBK I was concerned that the R53 rear brakes would be inadequate. I have 4 HPDE days now and the rear rotors and pads are hardly worn. I have been monitoring the rotor and pad tempareture and the rear brakes are just fine. The dust boots of the front Wilwood calipers has melted, and I managed to boil Motul 600 fluid during first HPDE this year. I now try to be a bit gentler on the brakes and so far no boiling Motul.

 

I was not too thrilled with my driving today. I have been consistently slower at turn 1 and 2, and turn 12, while I am faster at many other turns. Just as I resigned to go to bed disappointed, I checked the times of the late day session. Not all are lost. I beat the most recent best time of 1:37:82 with 1:37:78. A 4/100 second gain. Also for the first time I have two 1:37:xx in the same session. I tried to brake later but doing so upset the car at the turn-in point too much and I ending up rounding the curves at lower speeds.

I did pretty well against a few E46 M3 track only cars running very aggressive tyres, not to mention all stripped out interior. My friend's 1.8 litre Miata is very fast that he now has better dampers and just put one some good tyres. Only he spun his car today just before the treacherous turn 12.

 

I was very skeptical the strut tower brace and especially the cabriolet braces would make any perceptible improvements. I install both at the same time as I regarded the cabriolet braces must just be placebo .




Yesterday's track event was the first with these on the Mini. What's is most unexpected is the most pronounced chassis improvement was on the road to the track. Portand's road has become so crap in the last 10 years and the city has taken on anti-automobile stance. There is very little point in buying good tyres as they all ride just as crap with the big exposed aggregates on concrete roadways. The stretch on I5 from Portland to Vancouver, WA has always ride crappy in the Mini.

Yesterday morning to PIR, the difference in ride quality with these braces on is very pronounce. Mini just feel very tight and significantly less shakes and chassis vibration that are speed dependent on this stretch. It is hard to say if the improvement is mainly from the M7 tower brace, the cabrio braces, or both. I know it was not placebo as the braces wasn't in my mind on the road to the track. I was more preoccupied for driving defensively to get to the track with Mini in one piece.

On the track driving flat out, the difference is more subtle. I can only say it seems threshold braking at the straights from excess of 100 MPH now has less front end shake. As at times the shake can be cause of uneven brake pad material transfer to the rotors I need to spend more time with these to assess them more accurately.