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>>Thanks for the help. I am going to a race this weekend, and am going to be playing with an Apexi Rev/Speed Meter with added G-Force Meter. This should help me get a better idea of what the car is doing with diffrent setups. I'm also changing over to a UUC Rear Sway Bar. Will see how that fairs (I may have a madness one for sale soon for cheap.)
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I also have the madness rear sway bar and as was said earlier if you lift in the turns the rear rotates, some driving style changes are definately needed. We have just finished a 2 day event here (a test and tune on saturday and race on sunday) in our region we race on a military practice runway the surface is coarse concrete. I run the Kuhmo estica 700s, in 205/40/17s and im having trouble with the outside rolling over the sidewall. I have 2.5 negative in the front 0 toe I was running saturday afternoon with 45psi in front and rolled the rf over and broke the bead and lost the air in the tire, ruined the rim, at 55 psi sunday I was still rolling over onto the sidewall. BTW I have a 03 cooper s, JCW, k-mac front camber plates, madness 22mm (medium setting) Madness intake, & shark injector ecu retune. Any suggestions? I dont want to ruin another rim and 55 psi is getting a little high for tire pressure and still rolling over to the sidewall!

 

Tremec,

Those seem like very high pressures to be having rollover on the V700's. Are you marking the edges with shoe polish to see how far they are rolling over and it's going beyond the edge of the tread (pics?)?

I've never had a bead break on a tire before while I was racing, must have not been fun.

Your camber setting seems good.

Two thoughts come to mind: a bad tire (and the rollover you are getting now is OK), or maybe it's your driving style? Could you be taking the tire into excessive slip angles and/or turning in too abruptly?

Let us know what you find out!
Mark

 

Well I do have some pics not sure how to upload them though. We do have to do a 180 turnaround and come back on the other side of the airstrip but both tires up front are rolling over pretty good the v700s have the slightly raised edge at the end of thetread blocks marking the start of the sidewall, this edge is scrubbing off. With the addition of the rear swaybar I have been able to push harder especally in the sloloms I bumped the 7k rev limiter in 2nd gear (70 -72 mph) on a 6 cone slolom on the run before. it was very hot here saturday 90+ and the tires hit 160 in front 145 in the rear, sunday they averaged around 145 front and 125 rear so the high temps/coarse concrete may have been a large factor.

 

Ran SM today in NNJR SCCA. Did pretty well considering the competition. Placed 8th in a class of 15. I was happy.. The car is running great. Really need the LSD though.. I'd have been tp 5 if I'd had that I'm sure. was about 1.5 seconds off top SM car (M3 with Quaife and about 150 more HP then me)

Had many comments like "Your mini is Crazy fast" or "you are a nut when driving"

Not sure if that's good or not buy i'm breathing down those turbo AWD cars necks...

Looks like I'm getting there. Just need more traction with the quaife.

thanks
Dan
Pilo Racing

 

Slowly the numbers of MINIs are growing in my area.
This month we had 10 MINI drivers.

In my third outing I got 20th overall out of 88 but only 7th out of 9 in SM.
That means 7 of the top twenty were in SM. This month my time fell off a bit but still I managed 6th of 13 in SM. On the other hand that was mostly due to having less experienced drivers in SM this month.

One idea is to have one of the best drivers take you and your MINI out for a fun run at the end of the day and see what kind of time can be gotten. This gives some idea of what the potential of your MINI would be as set up. Some people guess that a middle modded MINI (SM class with track tires) can get a top 5 time consistently.

Lets say a time was turned in that was a full 5 seconds faster than your best of the day. Well that is 5 seconds of skill that you will need to learn how to do. Never mind the mods and upgrades. Subtract more time due to having two people in the car.

 

I took 3rd place for the year in SM at Beaverun with Steel Cities SCCA. I had a blast. I've learned a few things, as well.

1.) I really need to take the Evo schools.
2.) LSD would make me more competative.
3.) Turbo would be great if I find $5000 lying around.

 

Good job! I bet everything else of note was either RWD or AWD... Kudos to you, and the MINI :smile: . What mods are you running with?

 

Thanks Tony,

Madness 15% pulley
Rogue CAI
Helix shifter
Magnaflow exhaust
H-sport springs, comp sway bar, Camber plates and arms, strut tower brace
Kosei k-1 15x7" wheels with Kumho Victoracers

It's my 2nd year racing. Sad thing is some of the better drivers can beat my times by 1-3 seconds on 1 fun run in my car than I can get with 6 runs.
I really need the Evo school.

 

V cubed,

Curious to know if that 1-3 seconds (driver skill delta) would have made a difference re your placement. Please do share what other cars you competed against. Would love to know!

I'm certainly no pro either, and I know I could improve with some pointers. I live in a canyon, so the opportunites are many .

Tony

 

The second place was taken by a guy that drove a WRX that had $20k in mods and was dealer-sponsored for most of the year. The last few races he drove in a minimally-prepped car after a dealer tech totalled the other.

First place was a '90-ish honda with some kind of Acura motor, tons of suspension mods, lsd and stipped until it weighed about as much as a dry leaf. I drove this car, it was very quick.

Here's the link for standings. Alot of my success came from going to most of the races. I'm not one to look a gift trophy in the mouth, tho.

http://www.steelcities-scca.org/solo...standings.html

 

Hey, thanks for the link. Looks like you had another MINI in the field as well. Again, nice work! Let us know as you get additional mods, and of course the results of future events...

 

Didn't do too bad this year, despite being massively underprepared for SM.

Finished the season with four regional FTDs (raw time), plus four others where the only car that beat me was one of the Formula Ford CM drivers. Beat some of the other FF drivers at some events.
Averaged about 10th overall on PAX regionally, with individual events ranging from 2nd to 21st (not a good day!). This is running in two different regions.

Divisionally, the only event I made it to this year I finished 7th of 16 in SM, which is better than I expected since I've got a STX legal car with the exception of the pulley. Everyone that beat me there was on Hoosiers, as well as several that I finished ahead of. I ended up 4.5 seconds behind the class leader after two days. I finished first in class in all the regional events, with typical competitors being mostly WRXs, SRT-4s, turbo Civics, the occasional Mustang or Trans Am, and one insane guy in an SE-R (Hi Steve).

Finished in the top 10 in the Valvoline Cup, so yes there were regular competitors in SM locally. Classes size ranged from 3 to double digits, but half a dozen was typical. Regionally doesn't really prove much, though I was between 50 and 100hp down on most of the competition.

I installed a set of PSS9s for the last event, and that's what I'll be running next season. Happy so far, but I've got some tweaking to do on suspension settings. I'll also be going back to the stock diameter pulley, at least for a while, so the car will be in STX where it really belongs.

But the 19% is so much fun to drive this will only be temporary. Then it's back to SM or something like that. :smile:

Scott
90SM/STX/DSP?

 

You're obviously a much better driver than I am. I really should have taken 2nd in SM for the year. There's always next year!

 

Our season finally ended. It starts up again in April.

We have a run off for driver's champion in March and some fun runs.

In our area we had about 3 MINIs with pulley upgrades in SM. We started the season using street tires from runflats to Bridgestone Potenza S-03s to Yokohama AVS ES100. The first 6 outings we brought up the rear as we were all novices and in our first year of autocrossing essentially.

During the year I added:
Quaife differential with stock clutch and flywheel
RDR front camber plates and more aggressive autocross alignment
Kumho Victoracers 205/50-15 tires on 15x5.5" holey rims then
Kumho V710 205/50-15 tires on 15x7" Kosei K1 TS rims.
Mintex M1144 track brake pads/Zimmerman cross drilled rotors

The wheels make the most difference for me. I think the camber plates and alignment to increase front negative camber helped me use more of the tires and in cornering.

During the year I felt like I needed more seat time to get a better feel for how my MINI performs under autocross driving. In the last 5 events I did improve and logged two 4ths and two firsts in SM with about 9 to 11 drivers each month. Best overall raw time finish was 3rd out of 64 drivers and 6th overall in PAX.

A possible upgrade would be coil overs. I'm also looking at larger fuel injectors and GIAC ECU software.

I noticed microcracks in my front rotors so I replaced them with Powerslot cryo treated rotors and Ferrodo DS2500 pads front and rear.

 

You guys and your beautiful weather! My last race was October and I'm looking at April, earliest, to run again.

Hune, what did you think of the brake upgrade? I'm building cash in my wife-insulated slush fund and am considering brake upgrades. Other than the brakes our cars are remarkably similar. I have Kosei K-1's and rear camber arms, but that's about it.