My first track car was a 1999 BMW M Coupe. The current track car is a 2008 427R Roush TrackPack mustang. This weekend I attended the BMWCCA racing school and I decided to take the mini. I have always wanted to track the mini. My wife and sister have but I never have tracked it. As sacrilegious as it sounds, being a racing school with 36 students and 18 racing coaches on track, things were designed to get close. If something happened, I would rather have it happen to the mini and not my other cars.

I was thoroughly impressed with the Mini’s performance. The car is fun to toss around. It’s very responsive and predictable. Front wheel drive is a very different skill set but it was very easy to adapt to. I only had two complaints. I missed the additional 300 horsepower I am used to. I could compromise though. I would think that 225 hp would make this car a rocket ship and still be pretty reliable. Anyway, on to the real issue. My brakes were not great. I am used to 6 piston calipers with track pads. Going to single piston brakes with Hawk HPS pads was a real disappointment. I never realized how poor they were as I never have had to attempt threshold breaking in this car. It was almost scary at some points. Fluid was new but I should have replaced the original brake lines with some stainless steel lines. This was a large oversight on my part and I will be ordering some shortly. Hopefully this will improve pedal feel otherwise I will start looking for other culprits.

Good news is that all went really well. All body panels are just as straight as they were as they arrived. Many others came up asking what mods I have done to the car as they thought it was pretty fast. They were surprised to know I was on street tires and absolutely no performance mods, suspension or otherwise, except for a 15% pulley.

 

Yep, not just a cute little car.

Upgrading to the r56 calipers is big help and if you add the 294mm rotor they go even further in the stopping power while handling the heat better. A stiffer rear sway bar will eliminate a lot of the understeer as well. I have a thread up in the Tires, Wheels and Brakes on going with a Wilwood caliper that will provide 36% more clamping force than the r56 (the Gen1 JCW uses this caliper) but the pad is 25% smaller.

And if you are looking for other mod options, there are over 30,000 Gen1 Mod threads here.

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...e-options.html

 

Just to clear things up for anyone thinking about this brake upgrade, although the calipers are the same for for the R56 and R56S, the carriers are different on the S to fit the 294mm rotors. If you are going with the bigger rotors, it's best to start with S calipers as it can be expensive to buy the proper carriers to retrofit the non-S calipers for 294mm rotors.

 

Good point.

 

I like the suggestions but I think this was probably a one time thing. If it’s not, I’ll just enjoy the car for what it is. I will be replacing the lines with stainless steel ones as these rubber bits are 14 years old and I don’t like waiting for stuff to break. As much as I’d like to mod the snot out of this car, I only have so much money and I have way too many cars.

The point of this thread was only to say that this car really impressed me and I had a ton of fun in it.

 

if you buy the rebuild calipers with brackets from autozone it's under 150 $ for the front, very cheap and a nice upgrade

rotors are 36 $ on rockauto, only other thing you'll need is the r56 S front stainless lines. Honestly these r56 S fronts are as good as anything else I've tried, only drawback is pad cost is stupidly high. Plenty of torque to threshold or abs even with 225 hoosier R7

if you are doing the stainless lines, that's almost half the cost!

 

Wertles, Were you at watkins glen last weekend? with Genesee valley bmwcca?
I couldn't make it but my brother went. What group did you drive with?

 

Never mind, i see that you went the racing school route. My brother's friend was in the nissan maxima at the school i believe.

I've tried track pads for the stock calipers and it made a huge difference, and i've since upgraded to wilwood bbk. I think you'll be happy going with a BBK. 220 HP with light rims will help but you're still at a huge disadvantage at watkins.

 

I’m usually in the A Solo run group but am also doing the instructor training school. They cancelled the solo group this school so that they could fit in the racing school so I went that route this time for something new. I saw the Maxima a lot. We were in the back lol.

I never thought of getting reman calipers. My best friend is the regional manager at Mavis Tire and can get me stuff at stupid cheap prices. So all I need to tell him is that I need calipers, pads and rotors from let’s say, a 2008 cooper S, get myself some new brake lines, and I’m going to be all set on a brake upgrade? Is there anything else I might need?

 

you need the calipers + brackets + pads + stainless front lines for the front of a 2007-2013? r56 S.

Rotors for a 2006 R53 JCW

 

I use my Mini for HPDE weekends. I took the usual route, R56 S calipers, and carriers, decent set of discs, stainless steel lines, good quality fluid and the biggie - Carbotech XP 8 or 10 pads. This should give you all the braking you'll ever need. 30 min session, no fade at all, even in 100°F air temps.

 

So you guys convinced me. My buddy needs get me parts for cheap so I have rotors from a 2006 I’ve cooper, pads and calipers from a 2008 cooper s and I’m going to order stainless steel brake lines from Way. My question is, has anyone done the R56 rear caliper/rotor swap and is it any good? I only ask because Way offers a brake line conversion for that swap as well and since I can get parts pretty cheap, I already need rear pads and rotors anyway, adding on calipers seems pretty easy. I probably need to rebuild the rear calipers now so it just saves me in the long run.

 

I have one in the garage but I've not committed to installing it yet

 

So I had all my parts gathered last week and started the new brake upgrade. I had new stainless steel lines from Way, new R56 front calipers, new rear calipers, 2006 JCW front rotors and regular rear calipers. I bought some red caliper paint, taped stuff off and went to town. The job is super easy unless someone else besides you screws up. The passenger rear caliper piston would not retract all the way back. It was as if who ever assembled it put a longer piston in and there was no where near enough room to get the pads around the rotor. So back that one went and they gave me one that was correct. Unfortunately, that required painting this one and letting it dry before installing it so there went another day. Yesterday everything went back together properly in a matter of moments. I bled the system out and went for a ride. I never made it out of the driveway. I still have no pedal feel. I came back in and re bled the brakes with little improvement. I have a very spongy pedal and only get brakes in the last 15% of the pedal travel. This is exactly what I was getting before the brake upgrade. I called a buddy of mine with the identical car to mine and asked him how his pedal was. He responded in a way not appropriate for Internet forums, but assured me it was “firm.” So guess what? The master cylinder is failing. Getting a new one today or tomorrow and will report back at how awesome these new brakes will be! Right now they are a little unimpressive.

 

reverse bleed with pressure from the bottom up, these things like to get an air bubble in the top and it might be from the clutch side it's shared

you may also have to cycle the abs with inpa or ista+ it can get air in it too, when I open the lines I keep them capped so I do not get extra air in there, and I keep the master full all the time when a line is unhooked

 

Not directly related to the brakes, I have noticed that I have a loud belt squeal on start up. Figuring the tensioner was original and probably shot, I ordered a new one when I ordered the brake lines. While looking under the hood to see what was going to be involved in the install, I noticed the motor mount leaking so off to order an upper and lower motor mount. This makes sense as I was noticing a few more engine related vibrations in the last couple of months. Yesterday seemed like a good day to do the work. Off came the lower mount, then the upper mount. When I pulled the bottom bolt out, a huge hush of oil ran out all over me and the floor. Yup. It was done. Finally the tensioner comes out. As you can imagine, it was shot. The damper wasn’t dampening, the pulley was grinding. Everything went back together quickly. I even found a random bolt stuck in my power steering fan which completely explains that noise. I have no idea where I picked that up. Anyway, the ride is much better. The jerking between on and off throttle is all but gone. So far it seems quieter as well. As I put it through it’s paces, I will find out more if it gets rid of the AC vibration at idle or not.

I think the only thing I have mechanically to do on the car is the BOV. I have a pretty bad surge under partial throttle. It’s not there under easy or full throttle acceleration. I will have to test it out before ordering one.