Well, my wife and I took delivery of our Pepper White MCS a week ago, and I couldn't be happier...with a caveat. We took delivery last Thursday night, which turned out to be perfect timing for our trip to Tahoe (from the Bay Area) for a wedding. Incredibly, the roads were very sparsely populated, particularly the last 60 miles up and over the summit, allowing for widely varied speed/RPM/load cycles for a thorough break in. My immediate impression was that the car flat goes, even in the thin air. Of course, my other car is a BMW 2002, and it hates thin air so much that my perspective is a bit skewed.

The directness of steering response and handling...in general...is confidence inspiring and one of the reasons I bought the MCS. My test drive in a non-LSD MCS felt exactly like I expected, with the normal front wheel drive problems, e.g., torque steer, minimized to a degree that they were barely noticeable.

So, imagine my surprise when our car literally leapt sideways in the lane (pushing; maybe two feet max, one foot min) upon the application of even very light throttle while taking the fast sweepers in the mountains. It was a bit disconcerting. Letting off the throttle produced a more or less corresponding jump back to the original line. In downhill corners where I had enough speed to simply cruise through off the throttle, the car felt terrific. Similarly, being on-throttle through an entire corner produced stable cornering. It was simply the on/off throttle transition behavior of the handling that was so disappointing -- the light throttle applications, particularly, should not have upset the chassis so much.

So, the behavior was observed in turns:
(1) with light or heavy throttle applications;
(2) under reasonable cornering forces (from past experience in cars with accelerometers, nothing beyond the ballpark of half a lateral g);
(3) in corners taken at low (~30 mph) and high speeds (no comment).

Here comes the potentially embarrassing part. The bulk of my previous FWD experience was in a Honda CRX HF, the really low-powered model. Torque steer was still noticeable, but barely so due to the low torque levels. Is what I'm experiencing simply a function of driving a more powerful front-driver?

Is the behavior related to the LSD? I did not notice this behavior in the only other MCS I have driven, which lacked an LSD. Admittedly, the test drive did not come close to replicating the conditions of the above-described drive.

In another car, I might simply attribute it to being a front driver, etc., etc., but it's a MINI.

Any input would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Jeff Anderson

 

Most of this behavior is usually attributible to incorrect tire pressures. What are you set at?

 

It doesn't sound like tire pressure to me. 2 feet max... heck even 1 foot does not sound like the tires... especially with everything else you discribed. Sorry, I don't have LSD - so I can't be of much help... other than say that it sounds like your barking up the right tree with your discription. Good luck... I'm curious to know more.

 

That doesn't sound normal to me. [My '05 MCS doesn't act like that.]
Check you tire pressures and set them according to the recommendations. Go out and drive it again. Be certain you have a reasonably firm grip on the steering wheel (firm and sure, not crushing). If the car still behaves this way, take it to your MINI Service Dept and give the SA a little demonstration.

 

try turning off the lsd and test drive. i hate the way mine behaves and am starting to think it was a waste of money.

 

Please tell us more! I am very surprised to hear this. So it can be turned off? Toggle switch? Does it stay switched off, or comes back when car is restarted (like DSC)? Sorry to ask so many questions, but us non-LSD-ers want to know.

Does yours act the same ANIASUV's way does?

 

The LSD is a mechanical device which cannot be "turned" off via a switch like DSC. Hope this works itself out for you

 

ROTF - turn it off - good one

 

Make sure DSC isnt on too, it can cause some interesting issues in cornering (I tried powersliding into a friends parking lot yesterday and it kicked in and straightened the car out for me! )

 

Obviously, something is not right. My '04 (w/o LSD) doesn't do that. However, I've owned at least one front wheel drive car at all times since 1984, so torque steer would have to be really bad for me to notice it.

Since the car is so new, I'd take it back to dealer and see what they come up with. Otherwise, there's a lot of experimenting and checking to do on your part.

 

I've experienced similar behavior in our 2005 JCW MCS w/LSD. One memorable instance was during hard 3rd gear accelleration on an Interstate, the car pulled hard left with no rhyme or reason. So much so that my wife noticed it from the passenger seat as I caught it. Also in certain cornering situations I have felt this "mind of its own" response from the steering and not been comfortable with it. However, what I seem to have found is that in all cases this only happened with the DSC switched on. My thought is that the electronics are mistakenly detecting some loss of traction and compensating for it by braking a wheel. Could the LSD then detect the difference and try to re-compensate to overcome the DSC? Making things really weird? Whatever the case, I have been switching off the DSC and in that mode have not experienced these quirks. YMMV.

A_Sr.

 

Driving a FWD with an LSD can be quite different from driving one with an open diff. I remember driving my friend's Quaife'd 250 whp Mirage and it felt like it was hopping a couple lanes over when the turbo spooled up. It had far less self-centering action than similarly powerful cars with an open diff. Sort of like a loaded weapon, a FWD/LSD should not be pointed at anything you don't intend to hit.

 

My friends bike does the same thing.

Hope you get it sorted out.

 

Thanks for all the replies so far. I will check tire pressures this evening, and over the next couple of days I will (1) perform a visual and manual inspection of the suspension and (2) determine whether the DSC causes or exacerbates the behavior. An even bigger problem, literally, is prying the car out my wife's hands to drive it at all.

Absorbine_Sr: I can only imagine that if I, too, had another 40hp, a sharp prod of the gas would have put me in the next lane. Probably a bit of hyperbole, but...

 

LF = 40 psi
RF = 40 psi
LR = 43 psi
RR = 40 psi

Seems a bit high, particularly on the rears, but I don't really see these pressures causing the behavior.

Any pressure recommendations for the stock 17" runflats?

 

Yes they are high - you'll get a mix of responses for pressures, but look on the doorsill sticker of your car for stock settings. Mine are set at 34 and they work great. These tires and cars are MUCH more sensative to pressure changes than normal rides. I could make a 4 psi difference on my other cars and barely feel it. a 2 psi in the mini is easily perceived.

 

Alex@Tirerack suggested 34 all around for GSD3's on my '05. Not runflats, but still a starting place.

 

waaay high, especially for street and on stock tires.

34-35 if above ambient ~65F is what I would use. And if you're
expecting a lot from your car, run higher performance tires.

Your comparison between open diff and LSD corner carving...
that has to do with the driver inputs too so can't really tell
from just your story if it's a mechanical issue or not.

 

I'd say it's got to be tire pressure. And if you are running the runflats, they are a bit on the hard side as well, lower them to 34.

 

Andy,

Correct me if I am wrong. But wouldn't a front wheel drive car, in a cornering situation, with LSD and agressive throttle application tend to pull around the corner in a more pronounced fashion than a car with an open diff.? The transfer of the torque to the outside wheel should pull the outside of the car around the corner in direct relationship to the angle of the front wheels.

This could easily be felt, or discribed, as the car "jumping" sideways. I had a test drive in an '05 MCSC w/LSD, granted this is very limited experience, but what I felt when I was tryin to induce wheel spin in cornering situations was the car being pulled strongly in the direction that the wheels were pointed rather than what is normally felt as various degrees of understeer.

What has been described may just be normal for a front wheel drive car with LSD.

ITHHO

AINASUV,
Those pressures sound high. Check and reset to factory specs. But I do not think that that is causing all of your problems. But it will definitely help with the quality of the ride and improve traction during day to day driving.

 

Cmon guys, that behaviour he described is very NORMAL for an LSD car. That is the whole point of getting LSD. Not just for straight lines.

I would not worry about it. If you feel it's a problem, get rid of the car and get a non LSD version.

 

I've had the quaife for well over a year, so I'm a bit jaded and my views are not fresh...but as I recall, you gotta hold the wheel tighter when you gas it coming out of a turn as the inside wheel can't slip and let the outer driving wheel get lazy. the result is you can use more power in the turn. In higher speed sweepers, you can keep the gas on harder entering, forcing the car into the line under power.

 

I just returned from a brief test drive though it was not one that was as rigorous as the recent trip. Interestingly, it appears that the behavior is to some degree exacerbated by the DSC. However, I can't yet say the behavior is caused by the DSC.

With the DCS off, the car felt much more as I expected, i.e., nice tracking that was not significantly affected by throttle -- well not as much as I noticed before. And though I was not carrying enough speed to get the rear end to step out all the way, the rear end seemed quite willing to step out. With the DSC on, the car seemed much more prone to understeer, with the rear end refusing to budge. The throttle-induced cornering effects were significantly more noticeable. I don't yet have the equipment to assess whether objectively higher limits were possible with the DSC on or off.

Camel Pilot: I'm fine with the behavior if it's normal -- I'll adjust. Heck, I waited several months to order once I read that the '05s would have an LSD as an option. I just thought I'd tap the vein of experience here to determine whether what I was experiencing was normal.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

Interesting comments about the DSC. But unless the "yellow light" comes on the tach (when DSC kicks in)... is the DSC doing anything (other than monitoring) when it's switched on?

You see what I'm asking... if the DSC is switched on, isn't it basically in a monitoring mode -- waiting for a condition for which it kicks in it's correction?

Or am I wrong on that?

 

You have to remember that the DSC will brake the wheels independently when it senses changes and wheelspin - if it brakes one of the front wheels while you're accelerating out of a corner with the LSD, the LSD is still engaged and may cause the car to track oddly when the power comes back on... IMHO, this could cause the car to behave as you described...

For spirited motoring on dry pavement, I'd definitely turn the DSC off... I've noticed in other LSD-equipped FWD cars that I have driven that the front end can wander a bit from launch, when they hit boost when exiting a corner, etc...