Would greatly appreciate an explanation of camber settings, i.e., negative and positive, and what both degrees of camber and toe in and toe out mean.

I'm getting close to putting Cross Coilovers on and, if I do, I'll lower my Mini only about an inch. What camber settings and toein or toe out would you suggest I get?

 

16th total toe out is very streetable.

This will make the car more darty in the front, the reason is that the front tires look like this, (TOP OF THE CAR VIEW) \\ //. This means both tires want to move outwards and any turning motion given to the wheel will be more direct and is prefer . Toe in, (TOP OF THE CAR VIEW) // \\, is less darty and the car will drive straight when there is side loads like wind. Most highway cars and street cars are setup with toe at zero or toe.

The toe in the rear should start at zero, if you have toe out in the rear the car will rotate more. This will have a better effect then a rear swaybar since the wheels are less ridgity connected to each other and will allow for better dropp on the inside rear. Toe out can be very difficult to drive if you are just starting out, similar with a large rear sway or a stiff rear shock or spring setting in the rear.

I would try to get -1 to -2 front and zero rear camber.

From the front of the car: / \ negative camber...... \ / positive camber.

Camber is use to keep the contact patch on the ground in the turns. When a car turns into the curve is loads up the ouside front tire and unload the inside rear. Stiffer shocks slow this transition. This transition and side load on the tire will cause it to roll to the ouside edge (this is why you mark you tires on the track), as the contact patch is conected to the ground and the rest of the car continues to push sideways on it sliding it away from the contact area. The more negative camber you have the more sidewall can take the added side load and the better your contact pressure will be, but the trade off is less flat tire for braking and accerating (FWD) which can cause corner exit understeer. Most R compounds like -2 or more camber, where steets can live with zero to -2.

MINI and most other cars today do not have wishbone suspensions that allow to dynamic camber gain (insert HONDA fan boy plug here). Cars that gain dynamic camber can have -2 static while going straing and gain more cambers on the outside tire and loose camber on the inside tire which is ideal.

There are lots of good basic books available to get started on suspension tuning. for the advanced/engineer who wants to know it all MILIKEN/MILIKEN Race Car Vehicle Dynamics is the bible. A better book is Ground Vehicle Dynamics from SAE. Tune to Win is probably the best starting point, and is written by vertern race tech Carlo Smith.

 

hey bob,
my bc's are going on this week end. i have the new helix rear control arms and tsw endlinds (front and rear). i also plan on an inch drop....not looking to slam her at all. i do 1-2 autox and a track day per year....would like to do more...but my life won't let me right now. i drive the mini pretty hard, i corner hard, and think about hitting the perfect apex on turns/wannabe racer. my plan: f camber -2.25, rear -1.5, f toe 0, rear toe 1/16" in. btw, i have a 19mm h-sport rear sway bar on full stiff, and an omp front stress bar w/ m7 front strut brace. let's get together and compare rides soon!

 

Hey, Tim:

What do you (any anyone else) think of these camber settings, which RMW suggested I use for spirited city street and country road driving (NO track or autoX) with Cross Coilovers (lowered only 1") that I'm considering getting:

Front: -2 degrees negative and 1/32nd toe out

Rear: -1.6 to -1.7 degrees negative and -0- toe.

One thing that makes the Cross Coilovers extra appealing to me is that, for my kind of driving, I may not have to modify or change anything else!!

 

bob...look at your sig...do you really think you won't change anything else?

those camber numbers seem fine. is eric doing your install? i'd trust him over anything one of us says. my rear control arms came with a rec. for 1/16" rear toe in. i'm toying with the idea of a little toe out in the front. motoring underground has some good threads regarding this issue also. anywho, when is your install? we should get together soon after!

 

I spoke with Eric about suspension mod's, last week, when he installed one of his short shifters in my Mini. He first suggested a much less costly alternative than coilovers but, ultimately, agreed that the Cross set was amongst the best.

He'd be my first choice to do the install, and probably has good advice about damper and camber settings, but said he doesn't have the equipment to do alignments. My next step will be to drive his R53 with Cross coilovers to see how it feels.

Who's installing your BC's, and where will you get your (laser) alignment?