I bought a set of M7 Springs and had them installed at Steve’s Auto Clinic yesterday, along with a set of adjustable control arms. First of all, the ride is absolutely fantastic and HUGE improvement over the stock springs. But I am not too crazy about the camber (wheels leaning in) and would rather have them flat on the ground, similar to the stock setup. The reason for buying the control arms is that I wanted it to sit like a stock car so that I can get the maximum tire life. So the question is, can I align the wheels to sit flatter, or do I have to have the negative camber? I do not drive aggressively at all - no autocross, very little mountain driving, etc. The only reason for lowing the car is that I like the look and the camber takes away from the look for me.

 

Yea...you can change the camber of the rear wheels with the control arms you bought. Just go get them alinged and get the stock settings (i dont have them on hand right now)

The fronts really shouldnt be affected by the lowering camber-wise, but you would need camber plates to adjust the front camber

 

The increased rear camber will promote understeer unless you either (a) increase camber at the front, (b) increase stiffness at rear sway bar. The obvious solution is to readjust the rear camber back to stock position.

 

I don't use rear camber rods and i don't plan to. I just got stiffer swaybars and it rides fine for me...kind of an insurance to have extra neg camber on
the rear for the streets (never know when you'll need it when flying through
exit ramps, etc. My car's only setup for street).

The camber does not kill tire life unless you do a lot of hwy miles. toe does.
My tires are wearing flat.

 

Well, I'm pretty sure this is not true. Though not as drastic as the rear, you will get neg camber in the front by lowering the car. You may even get a bit of toe in also.
Being that you will now have about -.5 camber in the front, bring your rear to 0 will make the car handle like, ... kinda scary.
I'm not the expert on this for sure, but with lowering my car and ending up with -.5 in front, I run -1.3 in the rear. I think this is what would be recommended for best street handling.

 

I installed M7 springs on my '04 MCS as well. I have not had my car aligned since and have no adjustable control arms.

I am concerned with your statement since I plan to head to the track soon. Am I looking for trouble?

At this point, isn't just the front toe adjustable?

Someone mentioned more UNDERSTEER with a lowered car and no further adjustments? Will I help this situation balance by moving my rear H-Sport Sway Bar from the end position to the middle?

Help! Confused!

 

I also noticed the small change in toe-in after lowering. It lost a bit of the "edge" turn-in response.

 

a Brad, not sure about on the track, but I tested my MINI thru some long (track like) sweeping turns going down hill even and had no problem keeping the car balanced by working the throttle. This was on All season Good year RF's. All the neg. rear camber that kept the rear end in check.
Changing the rear camber changes the way the car feels thru turns more than I thought it would. I love it!
hope this helps

 

Alright. I agree that toe will be affected. I know mine was slightly changed when i lowered my car.

I really didnt know that camber would change that much. What springs/coilovers are you using? I have a cooper, so my car wasnt lowered as much as anyone with an MCS...but my camber change was nearly inexistent.

 

I am using H-Sport springs and the Alta upper and lower rear control arms

I don't have the front camber plates but they will come soon.
It talking with Randy Webb, he gave me some specs that would work best for aggressive street driving and some track days. This worked out just about perfect because the lowering of the car alone gave me the -5 front camber that was desired.

Toe is of course easily adjustable in the front with the tie rods. For aggressive street handling I set the front toe at 1/16" out. You will feel a bit more wander in uneven roads, but not so bad.
Being that I have both upper and lower rear control arms, I can setup rear toe. I set the rear to 1/32 toe in.

Car handles MUCH better then when I just lowered it and did not make adjustments.

Any good alignment shop can handle this with ease.

 

I have M7 and haven't aligned...and no plan for control arms. The car rides like a champ!

..and you think that your car cambers is off? Check out the red car....way off!

 

A little bit of toe-out in the front - all else neglected - will yield a bit more grip upon intial turn-in. As stated above, toe-out can cause high speed wandering; imagine the rotational forces generated by each wheel pointing out away from the car's center line. This is inherently unstable. The wheels grab at undualtions trying to pull the car left or right. Conversly, toe-in joins those rotational forces towards the car's centerline creating a stabilizing effect.

I may have used rotational forces incorrectly or incompletely here. Hopfully you get the idea.

 

There does not appear to be anything wrong with the red Mini??? A possible pass perhaps???

 

After driving the car for a few days, all I can say is that it is absolutely awesome! The M7 springs make the car feel very responsive and the ride is MUCH smoother, not to mention the rail-like cornering. I wouldn't change a thing at this point!

 

As I recall you got Steve to do an alignment to factory specs after the suspension upgrades. Just installing the springs likely increased negative camber for both front and rears. The front would be about -0.5 degrees and the rears about -2.0 to -2.4 degrees before adjusting using your lower rear control arms. If you set the rear camber to about -1.0 to -1.5 degrees you'd be fine and in the stock range. Good performance, not too rough, OK on tires.

You do not need to adjust front camber if you are driving on the street only. Even at autocross or on the track it isn't that big a deal unless you really want to corner at high speeds. You will wear tires more on the track if you lack enough negative camber as you will be using up the outer edge alot and overheating it.

You may choose to reduce the rear camber outside the stock settings. When I did my H-sport springs I set my rear camber to -0.7 degrees and got a very smooth ride, and it handled fine for street use. Tire wear was fine. I eventually changed it when I added front camber plates for autocrossing.

So stock rear setting for camber is about -1.0 to -2.0 degrees
Usable rear camber can range from about -0.7 to -2.4 degrees. Smoother riding on the minimal camber end and a little rougher on the more negative camber end. More negative camber doesn't help with straightline acceleration so too much of a good thing applies.

 

for some reason, the mini designers set us up with a car that get more rear negative camber by a degree or two when the suspension is compressed (or lowered), whereas the front struts keep camber relatively constant under compression. I actually took the time in the old days to assemble the car with no springs measuring camber change over the full suspension stroke. (toe as well, which very fortunately doen't change with compression, called bump steer). somewhere there is a post on this, probably on mini2;

found it:

http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthrea...ght=bump+steer

the reason you want more negative camber is that as the body leans in a turn and the outside springs compress, the chassis angle with respect to the ground changes, and the tire angle will follow, upsetting the ideal contact patch; negative camber is a built in compensation. If you limit body roll with stiffer anti-roll bars, you will need less negative camber.

 

totally off topic, but ...

BrabB - you have some awesome cars

 

damn! both my rear ledas are covered in oil; not even 5000 miles and minimal track abuse.

 

Funny you should mention the Leda's . I just got my car back this afternoon after having my Leda's rebuilt. I only had about 13k on them myself but they were mostly hard miles. My current camber settings as of this afternoon are -1 in the front and -2.3 in the rear. With regards to the springs we have actually had more clients have them installed with out any other suspension mods than those that add bars etc. You can certainly dial your car in more with additional suspension components but that is not a requirement for the amount of drop from the springs alone.

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

Why the bad luck??? Ball joints and now your dampers...only the rears?

 

about 75% of my driving is in NYC