Or look right here:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ness-pair.html

 

And the best handling mod...even better than the RSB - ok, some won't agree, but these are well worth it, even for the beginner and relatively easy to install:
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...er-plates.html

 

Nice find. I looked for that on their web page and couldn't find it. Thanks for the post. Wilwood (for those with their BBK) also posts their pad's coef of friction vs temp for both their street and track pads.

You are very right about ask 100 people about brake pads and get 100 answers. But like you, I am just interested in helping the beginners to stay out of trouble. In my mind there is only one mod that needs to be done to a car going out on the track; that is brake pads (brake fluid isn't a "mod"). I cooked a set of HPS pads my second day out. The best change I made was going to a set of Carbotech XP10s.

As for the AX6, maybe for the first or second time out. But because of their very high friction they can overheat quickly. Carbotech states "The AX6™ is specifically engineered for Autocross applications." and that "AX6™ is NOT recommended as a race compound in most applications." This is quoted off their web page and the caps on "NOT" is theirs. And I know this is not a "race" but it is not far off and even a beginner will get some pretty high brake temps. A better choice would be the XP8. Carbotech makes a fantastic pad, but as you noted one needs to use the right pad for the job, beginner or advanced, and I take away from Carbotech's statement that the AX6 is not the right pad for the track...for anyone.

 

Tempting. But wrong color and I just ordered their Quick Fit Pro for the driver's side. Not cheap but I like the idea of the added safety. (I miss read the blurb on Schroth's website and they've had their Quick Fit harnesses available for the 1st gen cars for quite some time. Apparently, they've recently completed testing for the 2nd gen cars.

 

Now my only problem is that I've ordered and received my numbers from iZoom Graphics, but the light silver is really much closer to the dark silver of my car and they don't stand out like they're supposed to. And iZoom is on vacation for a week.


Does anyone know of another number vendor. I'd be looking for the reusable vinyl, likely in white.


And if anyone needs them, I've got a set of unused medium metallic silver numbers available. The style is Imola and the numbers are 909 which give you the following number possibilities:


0, 6, 9, 00, 06, 09, 60, 90, 66, 69, 96, 99, 066, 069, 096, 099, 606, 909, 609, 906, 660, 690, 960, 990.

 

Since autoX is about 45-90 seconds of driving, and 10-30 minutes of cool-off, I'd tend to agree with you.

 

Ok, I did get a bit of chuckle out of this as I have one black and one red set so I can see the difference between the driver side and the passenger side when I am setting up the car.

Now what are you going to do when you have an instructor in the car with you? Around here we have to have equal seating and belts/harness for the instructors, hence the 2 sets I have.

 

No instructors. Not really needed in this case, though I'm sure at some point I could likely pick up some pointers. Though I've not actually done a track day in my Mini before, I've got many, many years of driving quick and fast and in both cars and motorcycles. And I'm mature enough to not do anything stupid. I also have worked many race tracks as medical support and as part of that, I've put in many laps in other street vehicle at very brisk paces. One of my friends who will be at the track day with me (many track days under his belt) knows me and my driving skills very well and he has said I'll definitely be faster than him around the track. In any case, I'm going to have fun, not set any records.

 

Were those on the street, or at the track? I find that most people are quite shocked at how different driving on the track is from "quick and fast" on the street.

I sure as heck was!!

 

Of course, there's a lot I'm not putting down, but here's what I wrote to netma1000 after he kindly wrote me and asked how my track day went:


Thanks for asking. It was fantastic and I had a great time. What a hoot! Over the course of the 3 days, I got 4 hours of actual on-track time. The guys I went with are people I work with and other friends. The organization sponsoring the track day was the Northern California Shelby Club so there were a lot of Shelby Mustangs, both old 350's and a few 500's as well as a lot of modern Shelby Mustangs including a lot of supercharged versions as well as more than a few original Cobras, continuation Cobras and Cobra replicas. Of course, there were other cars as well but I was the only Mini. And one of my best friends was in a Miata.


How I did: Well, in my humble opinion I did pretty darn well. It took a session or two to learn the track with a 3 or four visits with the outside exit rumblestrips. No off track excursions which was good. I did get one blackflag for resting my arm on the door sill. I'd been passing a bunch of guys and came up on a slower freight train and my pace slowed so I took a more casual pose. My bad. The most fun was finding that for the most part, I was right near the very top of the yellow group as far as lap times were concerned. For instance, one morning session on Saturday found me 1st in line on the grid. I looked in my rear view mirror and saw 7 or 8 latemodel supercharged Shelby Mustangs lined up behind me and I figured,"Well, I'm going to be giving some point-by's". We got the green and headed out. At turn two, I looked in the rear view mirror and couldn't see anyone. At turn three I looked in the rear view mirror and still no one. Down through the carousel (turn 6) I fully expected someone to have caught up with me because this is the first passing zone (between 6 and 7), and yet again, no one in view. I continued motoring and by the second lap I was coming up to the back of the field and apassing zones came up, I started picking off cars one and two at a time and by the time the session ended, I had picked off probably half of the field of approximately 35 cars. Great fun!


The brakes I used (stock JCW calipers, SS lines, StopTech 660 fluid, Hawk HP+ front, Hawk HPS rear, Centric Powerslot rotors, and an aftermarket bushing kit for the rear caliper pins) worked fabulously. I found I could carry a lot of speed into corners, just lightly tap the brakes, and I'd slow pretty darn fiercely. No fade and the pads looked new at the end of the weekend. I was also glad I bought and installed the Schroth Quick Fit Pro. What a difference that made! The only problem I had for the weekend was at the end of the day on Sunday I noticed that my left front tire had some small tread separation and chunking at the very outside tread blocks. I've heard some talk about the Michelin Super Sports having some problems and I'm going to look into that. Granted, though, I was driving them really hard and by mid day Saturday, was at their adhesion limits and sliding them a bit through most of the corners. FYI, I ended up running them 36 hot, though after one session, I measured 35 hot. Of course, I had to balance cornering traction with acceleration traction exiting many of the corners like 2, 3a, 7, 10, and 11 as just a little throttle would spin up the wheels. I had to carefullyfeed in throttle as I exited the corner. I was also glad I had an LSD.


I almost forgot to mention, on Friday we ran the NASCAR course configuration which was great fun as well. It's very rarely run for other than NASCAR events. And while Friday was supposed to be a short day because the drag racing was scheduled to start at 3, they decided to delay the drag racing for an hour and we all got a full four sessions that day for a reduced price.


Saturday was a banquet at the Hyatt and the guests of honor at a Q&A session were Pete Brock and 7 other original members of the original GT350 design team. It was great hearing their stories and watching film and slide shows of the early days back in the mid 60's. Other than that, we hung out in the garages, told tall tales and usually went to bed by 10 or so. I had my tent set up behind my car across from the garage my friends had rented.


Al lin all, a fantastic weekend. The Shelby Club has two more track days scheduled this year. A weekend in October at Thunder Hill and a one day event at Laguna Seca the day after Thanksgiving. And the Seca event is a 105 dB day which is remarkable considering the politics in that area surrounding the track. I just may go to that one as I'd love to drive Seca after spending so many years there working as medical response in the corners for motorcycle racing.

 

Glad you had such a great time...

You now understand why the MINI is such a great learning car for the track. The high Hp cars can get you into trouble really fast and people tend to be afraid of them when they are starting out. You really need to understand those cars really well before you can extract any kind of meaningful performance out of them. The MINI, on the other hand, can easily be run to its limits and then it will tell you when you are there...It will talk to you in a bit of whining tone (tire squeal) that the limits are close.

You have also found one of the major drawbacks of pushing a MINI hard...It needs more camber. It will destroy tires really fast without it. And, as you start to push it in the corners, the understeer will raise its ugly head higher and higher. Now that you are hooked (track crack ) get a set of IE fixed camber plates. These are great on the street and a good improvement for the track. They won't totally fix the tire issue but they will greatly improve the turn-in and overall front end grip.

Lastly, try a higher hot tire pressure. I run my street tires at 38 - 39 psi in the front and a pound lower in the rear. This will also help with the tire wear, turn in and general overall performance of the car. My experience is that you don't want to go over 39 psi as the tires will start to loose traction.

 

Thanks for that. Your advice echos both what I learned this weekend and what BR Racing told me this afternoon. I was definitely too low with my front pressure. Rears look pretty good, though, with just the right amount of wear. And Bruce at BR racing told me that for track use, I really do need more camber. So, besides getting two new front tires ASAP, I may consider adjusting the camber and other suspension settings. BR Racing has lots of experience with Minis, both street and race setups, and I trust their recommendations. I don't want a full track setup on my car as it's mostly still a daily driver, but I'll likely move more in the direction of a track setup even if I don't go all the way. And your pressure recommendations sure make sense given what happened to my left front. I may try to post some pix of it. Kinda ugly, really.

 

I know that various manufacturers make adjustable camber plates but is there anyone that makes a camber plate where you can easily switch between two settings without needing an alignment machine? I'm thinking of something where you'd loosen some lock bolts and with the turn of some screws, you could dial in to a track setting and then back again for the street after the track day. I'm thinking such a thing doesn't exist but perhaps I could design one. Hmmmm......


(I have lots of CAD experience and would work with someone like BR Racing.)

 

The steering rack is behind the wheels and you will have to do a toe-in adjustment every time you change camber. When you go more negative, the toe-in increases. For the track you want the toe-in to decrease.

The IE camber plates will give you about -1.5 deg camber and you don't need to change the adjustment between the track and the street. The most that you can go with stock springs is ~2.0 deg before they will hit the strut tower sides. It is hardly worth the effort to go through all of the adjustment issues for ~0.5 deg. The other advantage of the IE fixed plate is that they are made with BMW Z3 parts and have some sound isolation and will withstand the riggers of street use (dirt, snow, rain, dust and other crap).

 

Glad to hear you had such a great time!

You absolutely need more camber, it totally transforms the car. Vorshlag (www.vorshlag.com) makes awesome adjustable camber plates for the R53 and R56, no need to engineer your own. There are several manufacturers of adjustable rear control arms for setting the rear camber. I find the adjustability nice in theory but as a practical matter it is set it and forget it.

I put on a set of Vorshlag plates with my Ohlins and Helix rear control arms. BR Racing set me up at -2 degrees all around, it made an amazing difference. I have been daily driving that set up for the last year with no adverse effects on tire wear, and at the track the added camber plus Michelin PSS tires helped me make a substantial reduction in my lap times.

 

"Aggressive" camber won't destroy your tires; toe is the biggest wear on tires.

Instead of having 2 settings for your alignment; it would be cheaper and far more useful to run a set of track wheels/tires and a set of street wheels/tires - then you can ditch the Michelin Pilot Super Sport, a Max Performance category tire, in favor of an EHP class tire which will destroy the Pilot Super Sport by probably 3-5 seconds/lap.

As far as tire wear is concern; on the mini cooper with the ugly weight distribution and FWD layout; there's nothing you can do but destroy front tires. You are asking the front axle, which carries most of the load, to also manage braking, acceleration and cornering...sometimes at the same time when you left foot brake. It's a lot to ask of an axle.

Your best bet to combat tire wear is to use a symmetrical directional tire, i.e. Hankook RS3 and rotate/flip the tires to mitigate wear.

As far as optimizing grip the first thing to do is manage the tire temperature. The first goal is to get the temperature across the tire as even as possible. Then keeping the tire from overheating and keeping it in its happy zone with tire pressure is the next goal.

If you want to make the biggest strides in track I wouldn't bother gluing more parts to the car. I would drive it until you have reached the absolutely limit of lap times then keep the lap times as consistent as possible.

BTW, use harry's lap timer or something similar and post up videos and then let everyone **** and critique as much as possible. grow some thick skin; but you will get faster.

Then before track days; make sure you study the tracks; the turns; the gears shifts; the track positioning. All of this stuff should be memorized and visualized mentally.

Keep a track notebook of things that you change and feel so you can refer to it; it might not help now; but as you gather data it will be invaluable.

 

Thanks much for all the feedback. I've initiated a conversation with BR Racing regarding front camber and toe and the best way to go about it. We'll see where it goes.


Just for the heck of it, I'm going to try to post a couple pix of my tires. One of the left front which got all the abuse and one of the right front that looks pretty good. (I think; you tell me.) I noticed the damage to left front at the end of the day on Sunday. I believe it happened late in the day Sunday as I was checking the tires all weekend. Total track time on the tires is 4 solid hours. (Twelve 20 minute sessions.)


Cheers!

 

Wow that left tire is toast.

You are rolling over onto the sidewall. Look for the sidewall marker on the right side tire and compare that to the left side tire where the marker are probably worn off. One fix for that is to raise tire pressure. The other is to increase camber. My ZIIs have gone 3 seasons for probably 15 days and they don't look like that. This is just another reason for going to an extreme performance tire.

 

Yea, I definitely didn't run enough pressure in there. And combine that with the hard right turns at Searspoint in 2, 3a, 4, 7, and 11 and it's not surprising I toasted the tire. Oh well. That's the only damage I did and I've got two new front tires on order. And I'll likely be getting my front camber and toe in changed before my next track outing. Ya live and learn.


Here's a question for y'all....


Does anyone know of a ready built roll bar for the R52 convertible? ? I'd want tonot do any permanent changes or cutting to the interior though temporaryremoval of the rear seat is certainly an option. Perhaps something thatbolts to the two outside seatbelt mounts in the front and also to the twooutside seat belt mounts in the rear. I'd also want to maintain fullconvertible top functionality while the bar is in place.

 

Forgot you had a convertible...

But, no...it is hard enough to find roll bars for the hardtop, permanent or removable. Most track events around here prefer to not have convertibles at them and won't allow convertibles w/o a roll bar. The MINI Convertible is heavier than a hardtop, so most don't bother to do that sort of thing with them. Check with your local SCCA and see if any of them know someone who builds rollbars. Maybe they will do a custom one for you.

 

The arm on the windowsill! I got nailed with that less than 20 seconds into my first lap on the first track day! Glad you got the Schroth, they are awesome. Yep, I second the suggestion of race day wheels/tires along with a bit more camber.

I drive mine on the street all the time without that camber adjustment but it really would help on the track even with race slicks. Really noticed the wear on the track, like you did, on street tires - toasted them, took 20k miles off the life of the BFG's.
Now I use Toyo Proxes R1R street, and Toyo Proxes 888 on the track in the same sizes, 15x7 205/50

 

20k off the life of the tire?! That says you normally get even more mileage out of your tires. I wish I was so lucky. The most I've ever gotten is 14,000 miles, and that's with rotating them. (Hankook Ventus V12's.)

 

Yea, for a few years the Shelby Club wouldn't let me run because they thought the bar was a bit low. Then (perhaps there was a change in the tech/safety crew) they let a second gen convertible run with the pop up bar and the president of the club said if the pop up version can run, why not me?


I really would prefer to have a real roll bar and there are a couple places I can have one fabbed. I'll be looking into it.

 

Well, that was theoretical max mileage based on the tire manufacturers statements. I personally have not had my Mini long enough to get that kind of mileage, and have three sets of tires/wheels for it right now, so they get swapped around a lot. My 16" BFG Sport Comp 2's really got roasted in the Arizona summer sun on track day, they were not worth riding on anymore for the track, but I could limp along some more on the street I suppose - lots of the edges gone with big hero-globs hanging off. Now they are kinda burnt and slick shiney looking - feel really hard too. Not wasted like OP's, but if I dared to take them on the track again I am sure they would be! So, I got about 9,000 miles approximately out of them, rotating once just before trackday.

 

Well, I'm finally getting around to posting a pix from my track day at Sears (turn 10). The Miata behind me is driven by a good friend. Just a split second after the photo was taken, my friend lifted too much and his rear end broke loose and he had to make a few quick corrections as it wagged back and forth. Definitely woke him up.