Street & Autocross alignment spec's needed
 

I'd like at least three autocrossers to chime in here and give their alignment settings. No camber plates, must be 100% legal for G Stock, SCCA racing. Car is an '05 MCS with LSD.

I"m aware there's limited movement of the front camber. Below is my guesstimate on the settings.

FRONT: whatever the max. neg. camber is, match that in the rear. 1\16" toe out each side.

REAR: see above for camber. Toe in, 1\16" each side.

Lets hear where I'm wrong ... or close to ideal setting..

im not an auto-xer, but if i was to start, I would lessen neg camber on
the rear than the front since i'd want more rotation on the rear. probably
do something like -2.2 camber front, -0.8 on the rear. probably puts
me in another class though...

-0.02 toe on the front (degrees) each side, 0.12 toe on the rear each
side.

tire pressure 38psi up front 32psi rear and play around with the pressure
a little bit until I can get the rear to swing around but not too much that
it's not predictable.

but i donno, just a starting point if I was to get into that stuff. :smile:

Go for it.
 

Stock settings for alignment are basically for good street handling and with safety in mind for car control. Also tire wear is good.

Autocross settings you can ask for:
Front camber- this is NOT designed to be adjustable and likely to be from -0.1 to -0.5 degrees. You got what you got. If you can get your mechanic to fudge a bit more negative that would be a plus.

Front toe- 1/16" out is a good place to start. 1/8" out is the most to go but it might feel twitchy on the street and wear your tires quicker (so rotate them regularly)

Rear camber- For the 05 MCS you can adjust it a little. The stock range is about -1.0 to -2.0 degrees. About -1.2 to -1.5 degrees is fine. I'd suggest about -1.5 is OK. Each MINI is a little different. Sometimes it is different from right to left. You can adjust to get them even (minimal cross camber difference).

Rear toe- The stock setting is toe in. Normally for autocross we use zero toe.

I'm sure that most people that do autocross in stock class don't bother doing alignment. It is to your advantage to do an alignment to help you in autocross and not be too severe to make street driving negatively affected.

Otherwise you can use tire pressure adjustments to help you in autocross.

(Sorry I had to edit my original post!:sad: :cry: :wink: :grin: :thumbsup: )

Uh, actually for SCCA Stock class you can run any alignment setting that makes you happy, as long as you don't modify the car in any way (outside of any service practices documented in the manufacturer's service manual). Since we don't have an official service practice allowing crash bolts, they may not be used on a MINI in stock classes.

For all Mini's your basically stuck in front for camber. Get the shop to loosen things and shove as much negative camber in as possible before retightening the bolts, but it will still be close to 0. As for toe, your settings are a decent place to start, but some of it comes down to driver preference. As you probably know, toe in will increase stability (good at higher speeds than autocrosses get to), and toe out will make the car less stable (allowing quicker turn-in and car rotation). It is definitely possible to go too far though.

Try 1/16 out in front, and zero in the rear. If it feels twitchy, you can go to toe-in in the rear, or go to zero in the front. If it feels better and you want to go a little further, try 1/10 out or go to a slight toe-out setting in the rear. There is no magic setting that works for everyone.

Be aware that going to increasing amounts of toe (out or in) will really accelerate tire wear when driving on the street. Toe plays a bigger role in wear than camber does.

Hope that helps.
Scott
90SM

Another way of interpreting the SCCA stock rules is that adjustment can be anything that the factory authorized method of mechanical adjustment will allow. It can be different from the stock factory specifications.

Another thing to think about with toe settings: if the static toe setting you choose causes either toe-out (or in) at higher speeds, not only will tire wear occur, but your acceleration and fuel economy will be reduced by tire drag. A factory (not MINI) suspension engineer who was also a racer in SCCA showroom stock did some tests back in the 1990s and found that a toe setting that gave significant (like more than 1/16") dynamic toe at 60+ mph would result in measurably reduced lap times. Of course this was on a road course, not autocross. In autocross, more extreme toe settings probably do pay off, because most of the time the car is turning.

I have in the past set my front toe to near-zero static for street driving, and when at the autocross site, I would do a quick 1-rotation change at one front tie rod to get approx. 1/8" toe out. Then I would switch back one turn after my runs. Takes only a few minutes if you keep the appropriate wrenches with your autocross gear.

Dave