I'm looking for some one who has these that can give some feedback.

I don't race but I would like a little camber in the front for better handeling.

Longboard



From IRELAND:

New Product- Fixed camber plates for the Mini Cooper. These add approximately 1.25 degrees of negative camber to the front suspension. The stock Mini has very little front camber. This additional camber really improves handling without significantly affecting tire wear. These plates include new heavy duty upper strut bearings. They do not require drilling any holes and your strut brace will still fit. Priced per pair $180.00

 

They make the front end stick, and that seems like a better idea to achieve balance than going oversize in the rear swaybar dept. to make the back-end loose.

And there are additional pluses:
1.) The plates re-inforce the strut towers from the bottom to prevent "mushrooming".
2.) The strut bearing is mounted in urethane, so there is less noise/vibration transmitted into the cabin than the all-metal race units.
3.) They are not obvious from the top.

One suggestion: If you ask, Ireland will weld mounting studs in-place at no additional cost, and it's a lot easier to mount them than trying to get that inside bolt & nut in-place.

 

Thank you. I thought they were a great alternative for the price.

How were they to install?

Longboard

 

The fixed camber plates now come standard with affixed bolts.


A word of caution, not all builds allow more than -1 degree camber on the driver’s side. I wish I could give demarcation dates but there’s always an exception.

 

I didn't have any fit problems on my 2005, but I have read that the interfeering ridge (shown in k-huevo's picture) can be flattened a bit with a hammer to allow room if necessary. Otherwise, the install complexity is identical to changing springs.

 

If you can afford it, I would opt for the adjustable plates. Even with the fixed plates your toe will need to be re-aligned. Adding nedative camber increases toe in. So either with the fixed plates or the adjustables you are going to need an alignment. With the adjustables, you can get exactly -1.25 on both sides (or more if you like).

 

Increased - camber creates more toe out...

 

opps for some reason I thought it was in.
Anyway, it was off by 1/2"!!! before I had it re-aligned.
By the way, my toe is now 0 front (-2deg) & 0 rear (-1.5deg). The car feels great!

 

Adding negative camber actually increases toe-in on our cars, the steering rack is behind the steer axis- when you move the upper mounts inboard to add negative camber you effectively push the tie-rods out causing toe-in.

Stock I had about 1/8" toe-in, with 2 deg negative I had a full 1" toe-in before I did my alignment.

Jason

 

Thanks guys,

So, they will work great as long as I get an alignment?

 

Your right! Toe in ...

I'm such in the race building mode that I'm thinking that I'm lengthening the A arm to increase camber... DOH!

 

I'm going to purchase camber plates, too. From what I've read, since I'm going to be going to the track and want a more aggressive camber setting, I'm gonna get the adjustable ones. If you don't need that, then they look like a great way to go. Good luck, and let us know how it works out.

mb

 

where's the best place to buy these?

 

From Ireland Engineering of course.

 

Personally, I am using the fixed plates on my daily driver/track car and they are great. I have close to -2 degress with the fixed plates and kw variant 1 coilovers.

I think the key to making any suspension decision is first setting the goals of what you want to achieve: Good ride quality? Track Performance? Then pick components that will work together to achive that goal.

The fixed plates don't change the ride quality, provide a good amount of negative camber (especially if lowered on coilovers), and are inexpensive.

 

I am looking to buy fixed plates as well, has anyone looked at or know anything about the ones offered from Dinan

 

Just looked at my alignment sheet, I also had a full 1" toe-in before I did my alignment.

 

I got the Ireland fixed plates put on my 06' with no rubbing issues in the wheel well area. At the same time added H-Sport springs,Bilstein sport struts, and H-Sport lower rear end links. At alignment shop I had LF -1.4, RF -1.7 before align. At first I freaked when the alignment shop told me that difference in front camber drop was off by 0.03 deg, but they got it done and now the car handles much better than stock AND if I let go of the wheel at highway speeds it does not pull to either side Post-align spec sheet reads aforementioned camber, Caster LF 4.7 RF 4.4 LR&RR -1.6, Toe LF&RR -0.02, LR -0.03, RR +0.01. My only regret is not giving the FSD's a chance first, those Bilstein struts are bouncy in the rust belt.

 

What's the benefit of getting adjustable camber plates versus fixed one? Pardon the very newb question...

 

Not much.

In theory, you can adjust the adjustable plates easily so that you can dial in lots of negative camber for the track, and dial it back out for daily driving. In reality, you cannot easily do that because as you change the camber you also change the toe, and in a bad way.

The other bonus for the adjustable plates, which really is a bonus, is that you can even out the camber easily for each side. The MINI, stock, will have different camber from one side to the other. With adjustable plates, you can make both sides the same. I know that both of mine are set to -2.0°, but when you look at them they are abviously adjusted differently (to compensate for the fact that the stock car is not even).

 

***EDIT**** looks like Snid beat me to it......


The adjustability allows you to take a little more serious approach to tuning your camber - you can use a pyrometer to read your tire temps and optimize your setup. Unless you are getting real serious about racing your MINI you probably do not need this.

Another plus with the adjustables- they allow you to adjust for any side to side variances in your vehicle. With the production tolerances on your MINI you may not get exactly the same camber side to side with fixed plates. This isn't necessarily a huge issue for most people.

In addition, the adjustable plates allow you to easily go from a street setup to a track setup. A real agressive track setup will increase your tire wear on the street. Just remember that you must also adjust toe when you adjust camber.

For what it's worth, I'm currently running Ireland Street/Track Adjustable camber plates set at 2 deg negative camber. If I had to do it again, I'd go for adjustables from another manufacturer- Fit and finish on the Irelands gets two thumbs down from me.

Jason

 

So does having the adjustable plates remove any side to side variance, will it help with improved tire wear?

The main reason why I'm curious about this isn't due to tracking the car, but more for preventative maintenance after reading so much about mushrooming.

 

Adding neg camber will not really affect tire wear up to around 2 degrees neg. - I've got lots and lots of miles at this setting. Toe out will wear tires.

Just make sure you ask how much your camber plate of choice will raise the car. Some do not, some do. Adjustable coilover folks can dial this out, albeit at the expense of a tiny bit of travel. Others may find the front end sitting higher disconcerting.

 

I highly doubt that production tolerances give you enough variance in camber from side to side to cause any noticeable tire wear issues. If you aren't worried about the performance end of things and are only really worried about mushrooming I'd look into a set of those strut tower reinforcement plates. I don't have any experience with them-but they look like they'd do a good job and would be a 10 minute install job.

Jason

 

Raising the front was one of my concerns. Will the Ireland fixed camber plates raise the front ride height?