I'm having my adjustable camber plates installed tomorrow and have been thinking about alignment specs.

First some info about how I use the car:
I do a good number of track days a year but also have to keep the car tolerable for regular road driving. I've got the JCW Suspension.

Here's what I'm thinking:
-2.5 front camber
neutral front toe
-1.5 rear camber
stock toe in rear

Thoughts?

 

i think with those camber settings you'll wear the inside of your tires quicker on the street.

I believe the OEM setting for rear camber is -1.0 which I think is very good, but maybe once you have the front camber up higher the back end will get livilier and you may want to increase it, but I'd try leaving it at OEM level first.

For street driving front camber around -1.5 would reduce tire wear, still help with understeer and corner grip, but not affect straight line grip or tire wear very noticeably.

-2.5 sounds good for autocross/track. After monitoring tire temps on the inside and outside you may find a little lower to be ideal for track days, and it might vary slightly from track to track. I've read of MINI drivers increasing it even higher for autocross to get max overall cornering grip, but that seems really high to me.

I think of toe as something to tweak to correct an issue rather than improve performance. If the front end reacts a bit slowly to steering input, 1/16 or slightly more of toe out may solve it. If the back end is coming out too much even with camber optimized, 1/16 or slighly more of toe in will help keep the rear end a bit more stable. Adjusting toe in any direction from zero will increase tire wear. In most cases I think the benefits are minimal. I am currently running +1/16 in the front and -1/16 in the rear and will probably go back to zero at my next alignment when/if I get camber plates installed.

 

The OEM setting for rear camber is -1.75° (which is way too much with only the stock -0.5° up front) - the car is set up for a lot of understeer to be safer for the noob drivers. Your -2.5 front/-1.5 rear sounds OK for autocross, but I agree with Fugitive: -2.5 may be a bit much, especially on the street. You will get more tramlining and reduced braking and acceleration effectiveness. I have -0.9° up front and -1.2 in the rear (no camber plates) and the car feels very neutral with a 20mm sway bar upgrade.

My car came with 1/4" toe-in on both the front and rear which was also terrible for handling (it doesn't want to turn). Lowering the toe values will make a huge difference! You will find Fugitive's toe settings much livelier than stock and I have mine set to similar values (I actually use zero toe on the front as I do a lot of highway driving and found it tends to wander a bit with any toe out). Be carefull when you first change it - I almost drove into the curb it turned in so fast!

 

Thanks for the input. Keep it coming!

One other thing I need to mention... I just finished a set of Toyo T1Rs with the stock camber and toe and they were completely toast on the outside with very little wear on the inside.

Part of the reason I'm thinking the -2.5 is to flatten the tire on the front to get more grip and to even the wear of the track tires. I drive about 7000 miles a year so I'm not overly concerned about my street tires.

 

-2 front, -1 rear, 0 toe all around. My tire life more than doubled with living in hills and an occational track days. AutoX may benefit from a bit more, but if you do a lot of street driving, I think you'll get inside wear issues. But all these things are very driving style dependant. I've spoken with some who do a lot of freeway driving that get too much inside wear at -2 front.

Matt

 

Got my car back from the shop. Ended up with -2.5 camber and 0 toe in the front.

The rear toe is still stock but the camber was -4.8 on the right and -5 on the left. My guy told me that the camber was so extreme because of the lowering the JCW suspension does (plus the settling of the springs) and that the camber couldn't be taken out without throwing the toe out of whack.

Looks like I'm looking into Rear control ams so I can adjust the rear camber.

So far, I like the Alta V2 Adjustable Control Arms.

Thoughts?

 

the front mount of the rear trailing arm is slotted.

Matt

 

Matt, Can you go into some detail? Are you saying that the camber can be adjusted then the toe can be corrected?

 

Your current rear camber numbers sound really crazy. at first I thought to myself "could the decimal be in the wrong place?"

I know it can be adjusted without adjustable control arms because the alignment shop did correct the extra camber induced when I had the JCW suspension installed. But it increased by maybe half a degree since the JCW springs lower the car very little. That is why I'm a little surprised by your results. I'm not sure how much available range there is with stock parts though. I like the Alta option too. Red is sexy! Adam claims they do not add any noise and I know they are far more rigid then the paper thin OEM control arms which will keep them from flexing during hard cornering.

 

If you take a look at where the rear trailing arm attches to the body shell, it's held on by three bolts. There is some play here to change the toe settings on the car, and I'm guessing that not all alignement shops are really aware of it. Depending on the year of the car, you have some camber adjustment in the rear control arms as well (don't the 07+ have an eccentric for just this purpose?) I may be wrong on this.

As lowering gets more extreme, you may find that the stock adjustments can't get you where you want to go and you have to go aftermarket parts.

FWIW, I'm lowered about 3/4" in the rear, with only lower adjustable control arms, my shop had no problem putting me at -1 camber 0 toe.

Matt

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts...81&hg=33&fg=30 Check out part number 6. This is the rear trailing arm bushing carrier. You can see the slots on it. FWIW, this is for my vintage of 02 MCS others are similar.

 

Thanks for the input. Do you think there could be any issue with my car that's allowing the camber to get so whack? Failing control arms or something?

 

The way the rear suspension is set up, the lower you go the higher the rear camber. Just the nature of the beast....

Matt

 

Optimal setup, for track and road.
For example setup on MINI Challenge R56
Front -4
Rear -2

 

I was over at the MINI Dealership yesterday in my wife's MINI and talked to one of the techs about the rear camber issue. They think they would be able to adjust the rear back to -1.5 degree with 0 toe no problem (without rear control arms). I think I like that option.

 

Whoa! Something is very wrong with this picture.


JCW Sport Suspension kit wheel alignment numbers come with the installation instructions included in the JCW box and include:

Front Camber: 0.12' +/- 0.10'

Rear Camber : 2.05' +/- 0.20'


Everybody has some "magic" numbers that have worked "wonders" at some AutoX. Sure !

Problem is those numbers can not be measured twice with the same values on two different alignment machines by two different operators.

Don't believe me? Align something at shop A, drive down the street to shop B and measure the values again.

I have won $100 bets this way and never lost one. Unfortunately for me most people back out on the prospect of losing the bet and having to pay for the second alignment on top of that.

And before you let some "AutoX king" talk you into more front toe out consider that your car will be twitchy when trying to steer a straight line at 75 mph. Add some rain and you have your work cut out for you.

 

I've settled on the settings. I'm just deciding on how best to accomplish it.

If I can get it adjusted without buying new parts, that's the way I'd like to go since I'm short $$$.

Finally, and I'll preface this with, I'm not quite sure what I'm talking about, I'm learning. The techs also think there's a possibiliity that the control arms are reversed or that the springs aren't rotated correctly... so, I think I'll go that route first.

 

STLMINI, What are your final camber settings you decided on?

Most control arms can be reversed w/o problems. You should be able to change rear camber easily with great adjustability with those rear control arms.

Do you have both the upper and lower rear adjustable control arms? If you do, then the upper arm has to be exactly the same length as the top OEM arm.

 

-2.5, nuetral toe in the fronts
-1.5, stock toe in the rear

I have the JCW Suspension so I have whatever that included.

 

STLMINI,

OK, so the control arms are OEM. There are not a lot of adjustments in the JCW suspension. You could be right about the install problem. That is good that you put in adjustable camber plates in the front.

I noticed you track the car. I am after the same thing, a trackable car that is also a daily driver.

I just installed the IE adjustable camber and 22 MM hollow sway bar (19 mm equivalent) on mine and had a track day at LRP a couple of days ago. These are my settings:

Front camber -1.4
Rear camber -1.8
Toe front and back (factory)
IE 22 MM Sway adjustment mid - aggressive 2.875 " from open end (it is fully adjustable with a slider instead of three holes)
Stock sport suspension shocks, stock springs. Not lowered.
36 psi cold front tires, 37 psi in the back.

The car moved more to more neutral handling with some oversteer. Much better initial turn in bite but the backend can step out into oversteer. Still looking to tune it a little more. Any track info you can share is greatly appreciated.

Thanks to Dustin for all his help. If it were not for his outstanding after sales service, I would have still been installing instead of tracking.

 

I just did 2 days at the track this weekend. With the settings I have now I experienced significantly faster speed through the turns. In the oval at Gateway I was exiting around 98-100mph when before the adjustable camber plates I was only getting 85-86mpg.

It shoud only get better once I resolve the rear settings.

 

What cold tire pressures are you running?

 

With the JCW suspension and the stock adjustable rear lower control arms you should be able to get to about -1.5 camber at the rear.

 

That is a phenomenal increase in speed. Were you running the infield as well or just the Oval.

 

It's the roval and I start all around 38lbs and then go from there. Usually I don't have to adjust the front too much and I don't usually end up adjusting the rear at all.

Also, I had my rear-end aligned at the dealer and according to them I was at -2.5 in the rear and just slightly outside stock in the front. They adjusted the rear in to -1.5. Also, the fronts weren't quite what the first guy said. They are now at -2.0.

I'll report back next time I'm at the track.

 

that front camber plates are the most under-ratted mod for Minis.... While you can get neutral with rear bar only, it's not maximizing the contact patch in the front in turns. This means that the ultimate limits are really reduced compared to what they can be, and your increase in turn speed is an excellent example of that.

Matt