Hey Guys,

So a few months ago, my friend Tom was driving his r56 pretty fastly around a right hand curve and impacted his left driver's side wheel against the curb (rim facing the curb). Me and him them drove the car to the NTB to first and foremost get an allignment done because the steering wheel was definitely not leveled (you had to turn the wheel like you were making a hard right to drive straight). The allignment results were as follows:

Front Left (before):

Camber: .5 degrees
Caster: 2.6 degrees
Toe: -4.43 degrees
SAI: 11.0 degrees

Front Left (after allignment)

Camber: .3 degrees
Caster: 2.6 degrees
Toe: .14 degrees
SAI: 11.2 degrees

Front Right (before):

Camber: -.1 degrees
Caster: 3.4 degrees
Toe: .82 degrees
SAI: 11.8 degrees

Front Right (after allignment):

Camber: -.1 degrees
Caster: 3.4 degrees
Toe: .13 degrees
SAI: 11.7 degrees

The rear allignment was already pretty good, they just made a few minor adjustments. Obviously from looking at these results, the most out of whack numbers were that of the caster angle (as the specified range mini gives is 4.3-5.3 degrees). Since mini's don't have an adjustable front camber plate, it is obvious that something is bent out of shape. The car drove pretty much straight after these adjustments, but at high (and often low) speeds, you could still feel some tension in the steering wheel with a tendency to pull to the left. I test drove his ride the other day, and could definitely feel the pull still there, and it seemed like it was getting a little worse (this, after about 4 months of the initial allignment). I took the car over to the good old folks at Bavarian Hypersports to get a check up and allignment again (since my friend knows nothing about cars!), to see if the numbers had gotten worse since the last allignment. The results were pretty much the same, except for the fact that the toe angles had gone from .14 degrees on the front left to a -.32 degrees. On the front right, the toe angle had gone from a .13 degrees to a -.28 degrees. Other than the toe angles changing and the camber adjusting slightly, the major problem endured: the caster angles were still waay off. As the Bavarian Hypersports guys specialize in mini/bmw tuning and performance, I asked Joel (the owner) what he thought the problem might be. He said that one of many things can be bent out of shape. Here is the list he compiled:

-front lower control arm (driver's side)
-spindle
-tie rod end
-strut

He said that none of the items visually look bent (except the tie rod) and the only way to be 100% certain to fix the problem back to oem specs was to replace all four items. He also said that a slightly cheaper way of getting the caster angle close to perfect was to get adjustable camber/caster plates so that they could adjust the angle and reallign the car. My questions are:

-What are the drawback to getting adjustable camber/caster plates to fix this problem? (other than the obvious one that there are no adjustable camber/caster plates on the market for the r56 yet)

-From the description and specs I've given, is there anything else that it could be other than the four items Joel reccomended?

-Can I visually inspect for the bent items, and if so, how?

-And finally, does anyone know the price of the aforementioned four items and if they can be installed by an amateur?

 

You could put a straight edge or a level on some of them and get an idea... just take measurements and stuff and then you should be able to tell more. Camber plates are generally a bit louder/harsher than oem mounts because of the lack of rubber bushing or anything. I personally like it. As usual, your mileage may vary.

Happy motoring!
Josh

 

It's usually not hard to track down what part is bent. In my experience, it's gonna be ONE part, not a bunch of them. Like Josh said, take a good tape measure and a nice steel ruler, put the car on a lift or jack stands, and start measuring distances. Use the hub/knuckle assembly as your base point. Meaure between various bolt centers at the attachment points. By measuring both sides, you should be able to narrow down what is bent.

I did this on my own Evo recently. I had a bent knuckle that was a result of "driving too fastly" at the race track.

--Dan
Mach V
FastMINI.net