Ok, come srping it will be time to upgrade suspension. I WANT coilvers, but i don't do any HPDE or Autox (yet).

Is it worth getting coilovers if they are mostly going to be driven on the street? Would i ever see the advantages?

This is really a debate between what i WANT and what i realy NEED.

Thanks,
Jonathan

 

Depends why you wanna get them. Is your goal to get ultimate handling performance or are you looking at coilovers for the ability to adjust and raise/lower the car?

You'll certainly see the advantage if it's because you want to lower the car....no spring offers the ride height that coilovers can achieve. If you're not big into HPDE or Autoxing....the cheaper coilovers like megan, BC, or ksport could be rigth up your alley cause they are a bit more street oriented.

Would you notice the handling charateristics? You could probably get a lot more change for your money by going with a rear swaybar...the coilovers will help...but nothing compares to the bang for the buck of the rear sway. If you already have one of those, you will probably notice a little difference with the coils...but not a vast difference if it's just street driving.

 

thanks. that is exactly what i was looking for.

another question.

with koni yellow and a 19mm rsb TSW or Dinan Springs?

-jonathan

 

I hear good things about the TSW springs. Thats the exact combo I want. TSW coils, yellows and a bar. Ah, Spring won't get here soon enough, will it?

 

I'm in the same boat. These cars seem to have fairly limited wheel travel, so I'm pretty reluctant to go with standard lowering springs/shocks which use up more of what little travel is there to begin with. Coilovers seem like the way to get the ride height and spring rate that I want without sacrificing (much) wheel travel.

I do HPDE's fairly regularly, but am new to the MINI world. I don't have the cake to pop for PSS9's but need something that is robust enough for light to moderate track use. Ride quality is secondary. The car is mostly used around town where I can put up with a choppy ride.

I welcome any and all feedback.

 

OK, forgive me if you think this is a dumb question.

If one put on coilovers and got an alignment (setting the camber toe in etc.), would playing with the coilover settings (ride height and spring rates) mess up the recent alignment? Or should it be play with the coilover settings until you get what you like, get an alignment, and don't mess with it anymore?

 

Its not a stupid question. Come to my work if you wanna hear stupid. But yes, find a setting you like because camber and toe will change along with caster as ride height changes. Find what suits you best and leave it.

 

I don't think that's a dumb question at all. I had never really thought about it. When I put TSW springs on my car, the rear camber went crazy (almost -3 degrees)... wouldn't the same thing happen if you setup your coilovers at stock height and then dropped 'em for a track day?

I'm looking forward to the answer!

 

That's what I was also thinking. Could you have the best of both worlds, setup for daily driver, change it for a track day, then back to daily driver? Probably asking too much.

 

Generally no you can't. If you're looking for absolute track performance, you would want to go back and get the alingment whenever you play with it. Raising and lowering obviously changes the rear camber, but some have noted that it throws the toe out of wack up front. Though....if you bought coilovers for track performance, you probably got them so that you could corner-weight it. After that is done, you leave it be. This is something that can't be done with springs obviously...

It's the same for camber plates....you can't put in -2 degrees up front for the track and then put it back to 0 degrees to drive home and avoid uneven wear. Changing the camber plates changes the toe as well. So again, you set it and leave it generally.

Now, if you're not looking for the absolute best track alignment....it's not much of a deal to raise and lower coilovers. I raise and lower mine constantly and it's never enough to change the alignment to a point that i notice any changes....but I'm sure it might be off by a very slight percentage.

 

Coilovers for the street? Their main purpose is to allow you to cornerweight the car, not just to lower the ride height. And most people don't cornerweight their cars, in my experience.

Messing with the ride height/camber/castor/toe without scaling/aligning the car is a great way to get yourself an evil-handling car that will feel different in right and left-hand turns, and may be unstable in hard braking.

If you do want coilovers, then do it right and set up the suspension on scales. Camber can only be really dialed in on a skidpad with a tire pyrometer and some careful measurements. On the scales, make sure your crossweight is +/- 5 pounds.

Use the dampers to dial out understeer (assuming you already have a big rear ARB (we use the solid 22mm bar on the stiffest setting). Soften the rear rebound rate to get the car to rotate better.

If you are going to keep the Cooper on the street, why not save a boatload of cash and keep the stock suspension? The stock springs are pretty good on their front/rear rates, if they are in good condition.

Stephen

 

Sorry, I just noticed that your list of mods were in your post....you don't have the rear anti-roll bar yet, correct? That's the very first thing you should get. It will transform the car and is the very best bang for the US peso you'll find.

 

If you are looking for an agressive daily driver and an occasional track day car, I've had wonderful results with some stiffer linear springs (TSW), a beefy rear swaybar (any of the 19mm bars will do nicely), lower rear control arms and front camber plates. After installing the springs, control arms and front camber plates, I let it settle for a few hundred miles and got a good alignment that completely transformed the feel of the MINI. It's a lot more responsive, feels better and really grips in the turns.

Were I going for a full-on track or Auto-X setup, I'd think about coil-overs and I might go that direction in the future, but for now, the stock dampers are plenty for me.

 

Messing with the ride height and spring rates will both affect corner weights... Messing with ride height will also alter alignment settings...

Basically, you set your ride height where you want it to be, cornerweight the car, get a good alignment and leave it be for a street car... You further dial it in with the swaybars and dampening/rebound adjustments on the coilovers. If you track the car, tire pressures are also important...

Of course, this assumes that the vendor has matched the coilovers' valving with the spring rates - and there are plenty of other variables, too (e.g. rear swaybar, alignment settings, etc.). Anytime you play with anything from your baseline setup, you may have to go back to the drawing board... Once the coilovers are installed and properly setup, you need to make changes one at a time from your baseline to really dial the car in well, see what works and what doesn't for you.

For a racecar, well, some people change ride height and everything else from track-to-track, but most have several baselined setups to choose from and then fine tune from there. Still, most teams make single changes at a time, check lap times and confer with the driver, look at the datalogs, and then continue tweaking until everyone's happy.

And now, for a bit of a tough love:

There are a LOT of people out there that install coilovers and don't cornerweight the car, continually play with ride height, don't get a proper alignment, etc. and then wonder why their car handles like crud. Or, they may actually think their car handles better (mostly because there's less body roll and/or a lower CG). There are also probably a lot of people that simply cannot tell their car's setup is wack! (yo!)

IMHO, buying and installing coilovers without going in for a proper cornerweighting, followed by a good alignment, is really throwing money away if you want performance. If someone doesn't really want to take the time and spend the money to do coilovers the right way (unless they just don't care, which is possible), they're usually much better served by a good set of sport struts and springs...

Coilovers should be considered a MAJOR investment - both in money and time to get it right. And, getting it right = lots and lots more fun in the curves.

 

Amen....

 

txwerks pretty much summed it up.


Here's the thing with coilovers, you can dump it to the ground and have pretty much any look you want. After you are tired of it being dumped to the ground, then you can raise it to a more performance oriented height and go from there. Point is, without coilovers, you don't have these options. If you just buy springs, you don't have the option of playing with the height unless you cut the springs you just bought.

Coilovers just give you a hell of a lot of options and in my opinion are always worth the money.