Hi again everyone.

An unfortunate encounter with a recalitrant bit of roadway ruined two of my tires (OEM Goodyear Eagle runflats). I swapped out all four for BF Goodrich g-force Sports rather than just replacing the two.

What a difference! Quieter, better ride, better handling. Unequivocally better than the runflats in every regard that matters to me.

I'm sticking with my OEM wheels - white S Lites. Yes they're heavy but I love the look and have to have the sturdiness. The roads I drive on just aren't lightweight-wheel friendly.

I am, however, going to add a 22mm rear sway bar (though this will be delayed a bit as the budget recovers from the unplanned tire expenditure). I'm also considering the H-Sport springs all around, but based on what I've read I'm wondering if I should do both H-Sports and a larger rear sway bar. Thoughts?

I don't have any plans to put the car on the track other than perhaps once a year as part of a MINI club outing. I want great handling on the street and highway but am willing to put up with only a minimal compromise in day to day ride.

If I'm heading in the wrong direction please feel free to slap me upside the head.

/gary

 

"...slap me upside the head..." WHAP!

You said you were optimizing for use on public roads.

Forget the springs, shocks and camber plates - they are for track or autocross on smooth parking lots - the car is already stiff enough. The ideal suspension setting is the softest that never bottoms out the suspension, and you need compliance to soak up road bumps without losing traction. You do not want the car to become like a Camaro with 2" of suspension travel, and there is little enough ground clearance on an MCS as it is. Lowering the car is remarkably ineffective for improving handling. It's the last thing you should consider.

1) Lightweight wheels and tires. Consider 15x7". Light weight wheels and tires are the biggest single improvement you can make to all aspects of the car's performance.

2) Rear sway bar. 22mm is good on an `05, but for street and hilly twisties, use the softest setting unless you have had some track training and experience. This is definitely the second biggest effect on all aspects of handling and suspension control, but don't go crazy with it, as exiting the road backwards is Not Fun.

3) Get a CG-Lock for $40, to hold you firmly in your seat. The CG-Lock allows you to snug up the lap belt portion of the seat belt, and it will stay tight. You won't believe how much more control you have over steering and braking when you are firmly attached to the car. This device is about half as effective for car control as a full racing seat and harness, without any of the inconvenience. www.cglock.com

4) If the budget stretches another hundred bucks, stiffen up the lower rear motor mounts - the two on a removable aluminum brace under the passenger's left foot can be stiffened up with very little impact on NVR, and I'm quite noise sensitive. Why? To remove much of the 'lurch' that happens when you go from full-on the gas to lift-off and vice versa. The non-linear motion caused by the motor rolling fore and aft up front can seriously disturb your wa during corner entry and exit. The stiffer mount will also make clutch takeup more linear, and shifting more precise.

My $.02 worth, from experience with my own `05 MCS.

 

[QUOTE=OldRick4) If the budget stretches another hundred bucks, stiffen up the lower rear motor mounts - the two on a removable aluminum brace under the passenger's left foot can be stiffened up with very little impact on NVR, and I'm quite noise sensitive. [/QUOTE]
Where did you get these replacement motor mounts?

 

I got them from Mini Madness http://www.mini-madness.com as a set of two mounts for this specific use, but they are the same Powerflex urethane mounts sold elsewhere as a full set or as separate pieces from www.powerflex.co.uk You need two yellow gap-filler pieces for the big mount, and a two-part spool to replace the smaller one.

 

Agree for the most part, but mostly it depends on the effect you're after. I spend more time on German autobahns at speeds on average of 120 MPH than I do chewing up backroads (which we have a lot of here too). For fast driving, lowering the car even slightly has great stability effects, which is a safety plus. I agree that lowering the car more than an inch doesn't seem to make sense for real world driving, even for Germany. I'll be putting more thought into this as I plan to source some parts over the winter in preparation for Spring, where I'll be headed to Monaco again for the F1 race. My thoughts are leaning toward Alta springs and Koni FSD shocks. I may go with an Alta 19mm rear sway bar just to neutralize the handling. The best part of all this is since I sold my Ducati last April (after 8 glorious years), I now have more cash to pour into the MINI. You think performance parts for MINIs are expensive, try owning a Duc.

Cheers!

 

i know this may be a bit of a reach, but...if $$$$ is not a problem, i say jcw suspension. i just went from h-sport springs to jcw, and i'm greatly pleased with my ride now.

i kept the 15x6 minilites with 205/55 s03's and rdr rear swaybar on middle setting.

my biggest c/o before the switch was too low for street, especially with potholes, speedbumps in parking lots and angled entrances. a few speedbumps, i'd actually bottom out after my front wheels dip back down, even at ssslllooowww speeds. other c/o was stiffness/harshness over any bumps or irregularities in the road surface.

jcw suspension fixed most all my c/o, except i still do scratch the front lip occasionally, but definitely no bottoming out. of course, i have a smaller diameter wheel which brings me a bit lower than stock. plus add in the 1/4" or so of drop with the jcw. lower than stock but much better ride...firmer, yet somehow not at all harsh. and even in the high speed turns on freeway exits or on-ramps, the cornering/turning is so much more confidence-inspiring somehow.

and last observation with jcw suspension...shifting especially when shifting hard from a dead-stop, the lurching is minimized greatly somehow. it's just overall, a much more refined, yet still hi-performance, ride.

 

I've got the JCW suspension upgrade myself, and I have the exact same opinion of it.

I've got the RDR rear bar, too... strange. But I'm running mine on the soft setting instead of the middle setting - along with the standard Cooper sports suspension front swaybar, which is softer than the sports suspension plus front swaybar.

The JCW suspension upgrade works well on the track, too.

 

This is a first ... someone switched from aftermarket to JCW? Wow ... Refined? I thought that was a dirty word?

(just kidding, you got to read the CRAP thread)

 

1) DE
2) DE intermediate
3) DE advanced

You'll be faster than all your mods combined, and, your experience will not depreciate, like your car.

 

High speed turns? That's funny. A high speed turn in Hawaii is about 60 mph. I know, I use to live there. Jesting aside, the MINI S is made for Hawaii...perfect to blast through traffic. When I lived there all I had was a '96 Miata M-edition, '94 Kawi ZX-9R, and '97 Ducati 748. One twist of the grip on the Kawi and I was on the other end of the island. Cheers, brah!

 

Resurrecting this thread, as it serves my purposes. Read every post and in the end...I think the camber plates and control arms are the "hot" mod for suspension without (before?) going to coil-overs and weight balancing. Having gone the rear sway bar (thanks to Randy Webb) and lowering springs (again, HSports thanks to Randy), I was left with -2deg camber in the rear and -.6 (stock) camber in the front. Apart from looking *weird*, it handled weird!
Cut to the chase: Camber plates for the front = -1.9 deg camber and a little toe out. Both control arms in the rear and -1.3deg camber in the rear and a little toe in.
(PS: after seeing the alignment process with both control arms in the rear - this is serious stuff and any suspension system that uses 3 points requires both patience and compromise!) Oh, and btw, I have an '05 with "adjustable rear camber" --- yeh, right! Don't even fool yourself that those little eccentric bolts on the '05/'06 can give you any control over the alignment.
More *aggressive* alignment for the MINI seems to make it really stick. Of course I didn't do a controlled experiment, but maybe if I could, I'd leave the springs and shocks stock and just do the sway bar and front camber plates...

cheers,

 

True.
They also take longer to warm up and you really need to bed them in right to get your moneys worth.