I was under the hood working and seen my front torsion bar would easy to upgrade right now. Any opinions on what bar would be best to upgrade to ? What is the OEM size ? What brand to buy ? Or, would it be best to just upgraded the bushings and use the factory bar ?

 

It sounds like you're just modding for only the purpose of modding. If you want a better handling car (without taking driver skill into account) do this:

• Tires
• Engine torque arm replacement or insert made of polyurethane
• Coilovers with camber plates, preferably Vorshlag
• Huge rear sway bar
• Adjustable rear lower control arms, like Hotchkis
• Adjustable front & rear sway bar end links to corner balance the car

Those items are the tried and true suspension upgrades that are proven to work in amazing ways. The strut bar is a waste of money if you haven't even touched upon the items above. Very minimal handling affect. Mostly a "bling" item in my opinion.

 

I assume that you mean sway bar when you are referring to the torsion bar. Most guys think that the MINI has too much understeer. Increasing the rear bar stiffness will decrease the understeer in the car. Replacing the front sway bar with a larger one (without changing the rear sway bar) will generally increase the understeer of the car.

If you feel that you would like the car to understeer more, than the front bar is an option, but I have read that it is a significant job (5 hours or so) to swap out.

Shane gave a good list of handling upgrades.

Have fun,
Mike

 

tires CHECK
torque arm inserts CHECK
since im doing this due to ease of access at this point....Adjustable front & rear sway bar end links to corner balance the car and polyurethane bushings... IT IS.
who has them ? I didn't realize these cars had such a balance issue. I do have a problem when trying to push the car really hard, the back end tries to kick out and its like it starts to drift. the tires are Dunlop's. they definitely get soft as hell once you get them hot. major improvement over the run flats and after I first installed them I noticed it immediately after they got hot. who makes a set of adjustable links or which would you recommend ? where can I get them ? and who or where can I get the bushings ? the money is burning a hole in my pocket
this stupid car should be pretty nice when I get it all done provided it runs without cel's

 

I would only corner balance the car if you plan on tracking the car. It's not critical, but equal cross-weight balance helps. If you don't plan on buying coilovers, don't even bother with end-links. To adjust corner balance, you need to be able to adjust height at all 4 corners and then you set the end-links for no-preload. Again, I would never do a corner balance for a street car. Get the corner heights where you want them and call it a day.

 

I did plan on coil overs. Just wanted to address some parts that are easy to access right now. Do you adjust the corner heights with coil overs ?