Since I got my new tires, it is time to get alignment for my MINI after installing BC Racing coilovers, Alta 22mm rear sway & endlinks, and Hsport rear cont arms. I'm sure the coilovers settled after couple thousand miles street driving and couple track days ) The car is Cooper S, hatchback.

I'm using the soft setting of the rear sway bar, and I can easily do lift-off oversteer (especially at track). I want to keep this characteristic, but may lean towards a more balanced car.

I've searched NAM, and found pretty much all combinations one can think for camber and toe settings...

Since I've adjustable camber plates at front, I was thinking of having street & track setup (marked by the alignment shop). But I read in here that changing camber will also effect toe. Should I be worried about this?

Right now, this is what I'm thinking:

Front:
Camber: -3 degrees for Track, and -2 degrees for street (I need to stay relatively negative since my front tires have potential rubbing issues to the fenders).
Toe: 0

Rear:
Camber: -1.5 (don't want to change this between track and street).
Toe: 1/8 or 1/16 toe in

Should I also get corner balancing? I'm lowered about 1 inch. I'm entertaining the idea of shifting some weight to rears.

PS: I have adjustable dampers front and rear, so I can use those to effect under/over steer a bit as well. Right now, the fronts are at 5 clicks (out of 30, 0 being softest) and rears are at 0 clicks. It is pretty rough as is, but I'm planning on trying different settings this season.

 

I have -2 camber in the front and -1.5 in the rear, dampening on my BC coilovers set to 20 on my daily driver.

 

Yes on the corner weighting...

Kind regards,

Charlie

 

Here's some of my thoughts since I'm about to head down this path as well.

Corner balancing - Yes, you pay good money to have the adjustability so why not get the full potential out of them. Also FWD cars get set-up differently then RWD, I to thought that I would want to lower the rear more so weight gets shifted back, but in FWD that's a bad thing, you'll be taking weight off the driving wheels, reducing traction. I read anywhere around 60/40 is good from various websites.

Swaybar settings - I had my previous car set-up by some pros and they always put them on hardest up front then softest on rear. This would get really good bite on entry then some good lift-off throttle rotation with a tad of understeer as I got back onto the throttle. This set-up punished me if I went in to hot but if you were smooth and clean you could get onto the throttle a tad bit earlier and that finish off the rest of the turn and not steering wheel input.

Rebound and compression - I don't have that much experience with these settings but I think this is more of a personal choice. I'd start with a performance minded set-up then back out of it till I was ok with street driving.

Camber/toe/caster - I found that most people like 0 toe, max caster, and again camber being a personal preference (I would at least have -1 degree) around -1.5. The question is how long do you want your tires to last and how straight do you want it to track. Some people don't like having the car constantly moving side to side when trying to go straight down a freeway or something, so this would be a compromise as well.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, this is just from my personal experience.

side note: Evo's are FWD until they reach the limit of traction, so I was told the same rules apply to AWD and FWD. And doesn't it not matter how much power and what drivetrain you have at the apex (food for thought)?

Cheers