My Mini's great but the ride is starting to become the biggest hindrance to me enjoying it. I feel every little bump in the road and at 100kph a big one practically throws you out of the seat. It's also hurting the handling since any bump in a corner and you can feel it move around as the car bounces off the road. It's very obvious, and I've owned plenty of modified sports cars with stiff suspension in the past so I'm not just a wimp!

Mine is a 1999 40th Anniversary Rover with 13" wheels, new rubber cones on the front, but the rears and shocks are probably 70,000km. I think the best solution unless people disagree will be to go to coilovers, and these seem to come in 'soft', performance street and race versions. What do people recommend? I want a decent ride as it's terrible now, but I think maybe I'll regret the soft as they are too wallowy and the ride height will be too high. On the other hand I'd hate to buy the sports road versions and then end up with a ride that's still too stiff and thus the whole things was a waste of time. Keep in mind I've got 13s so that also stiffens things up a bit already against what some people are used to. What's the ride height like on those versions?

Also, what's involved in installing them aside from the obvious? Is this easily done in the garage, including removing the old rubber suspension? Any links to an install guide?

Buy a smootharide kit instead - coil overs bolt onto the front but they're still fairly harsh and the backs would need cutting and welding work.
Also consider smaller wheels.

I was considering coil overs... but was told by members of this forum the conversion would need to be engineered, that was the deal breaker for me.

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Jenk.

What I did with my van was GAZ adjustable shocks, Fast road coil springs and budget hilo kit. Rides great, easy to do (apart from getting the old cones out) and none of the hassles of doing the full coilover conversion. Also there is town ride springs available and if you dont like one, it's easy enough to swap over at a later date. The links include a photo showing the different ride heights.

http://minisport.com.au/gaz-adjustable- ... get-hi-los
http://minisport.com.au/mini-coil-sprin ... rings-78mm
http://minisport.com.au/mini-coil-sprin ... rings-86mm

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2015 Ducati 899 Panigale

The problem with coil overs is the shock mounts are not designed to take the weight of the car, so you need to reinforce the mounts and you need engineer approval too.

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I didn't realize coilovers required welding, that's not so appealing. So do people think I'll see much of an improvement with the setup replacing the rubber cones with springs?

That still leaves me in the same boat of not quite knowing which to go for, the 'fast road' or 'town ride' set. Those ride height dimensions also don't help as measuring the wheel to the guard is probably not meaningful given my car has 13" wheels and factory flares.

I don't suppose anyone in Melbourne has any of these I can come have a ride in?

Couple of recent posts here
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=91339&hilit=Spring
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=91341&hilit=Spring

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Hi Richie,

I used to have a Mini 40 when i was over in the Netherlands. I think you are experiencing two separate problems. THe bump steer you are getting in corners is more than likely because the rubber mounts for the front subframe are allowing the subframe to steer the car. THis was very noticible on mine until i replaced the front and rear subframe mounts with solid and the tower mounts with polyurethane. If you still want to maintain the factory vibration isolation you should replace all of the front subframe mounts with rubber ones. Then double check that there is enough clearance between the top arm and the bump stop - even though you have new cones in there, you may still have limited travel till it hit the bump stop because some new cones are not the best quality. If all that is OK, as someone else suggested, try a set of smootharide before changing to coil springs as it is more likely to give a good result IMO.

The ride with the 13" wheels was always much harsher than the 10" ones because of the very small sidewall on the tyres. I much prefer the ride you get on 10"wheels and would never have anything else on a road car. A race car would be a completely different prospect.

Would love to see some pictures of your Mini 40.

cheers
michael

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the world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page
66 Mini Minor sponsored by http://www.lifeonthehedge.com.au/ The Dog Harness Specialists
It was a pleasure ausmini. I'll miss all you misfits and reprobates

I've spoken to Rich about his situation and I'm in pretty much exactly the same boat he's in. Having talked to him (and since mine does the same thing) I think maybe you misunderstood the problems he's having in corners, what he described to me is the same problem I have (sorry to be speaking for you hear Rich!)

It's not traditional bump steer where as the suspension compresses it pulls on the suspension arm or moves the subframe which alters the geometry at the front, which is what to me 'real' bump steer is. Instead in my case and I think Rich's the suspension is so stiff that if you hit a bump there is so little give that rather than the wheel/suspension absorb the bump as it should, instead the corner of the car is shot up and the load on the tyre is significantly reduced, which hurts grip.

I also want to improve this aspect of the car so I have to do something... either smoothride cones or springs in place of the cones... not sure which people think is the better compromise. Is body roll a lot worse with the smoothride setup? Rich, I think I'm probably going to end up being your guinea pig

Rich: one thing to try that has made a (small) difference on mine is drop the tyre pressure a little. The compliance sticker says 36 psi all round, however if you look closely that's for 12" wheels, and in fact that's still too high even for those.... the Japanese owners manual says 29psi for 12" wheels, and for 13's like ours the Japanese owner's manual says 27psi front and 25.5psi rear.

Regards,

Ben
J-Spec Imports
www.j-spec.com.au

Something to add to the discussion, when I was making my decision about replace cones vs new springs, I read on other forums that the cones only seemed to last about 10,000kms before they deteriorated (not completely but enough to warrant replacing) whereas springs last much longer. Could some of the people with more experience confirm/correct this?

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2015 Ducati 899 Panigale

Hi Paddy,

Any chance you could post a side profile pic of your van so we can get an idea of how high/low it sits? How low can you adjust the ride height before the coils dislodge??

cheers

Jenk

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Jenk.

I have set the van height to the same (roughly) as in the link image for default setup, (ie 65mm rear, 50mm front) and it looks pretty much the same as that photo.

I haven't tried lowering as I like plenty of ground clearance and full use of the suspension.

just for anyone who doesnt know about adjusting the coils - I would caution against lowering the car below the recommended settings by too much , if lowered too far the springs can come loose when going over bumps. It happens on the rebound, after a bump, when the suspension fully extends and if set too low the spring will come loose. If you want to set it to the lowest possible then the safest way is to jack up the car fully (ie no tyres on the ground) and tighten the HiLo's until they have sufficient pressure to retain the springs, use this as the minimum adjustment and only go up from there when you put the car back on its wheels to even up each corner. The mistake people make is adjusting (lowering) when the car is sitting on its tyres and this allows you to make it lower than it should be.

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2015 Ducati 899 Panigale

I think we are in violent agreement about what bump steer is normally.



My point about the rubber mounted front subframes that are in the later Minis (UK built 1976 onwards) is that when the rubber deteriorates, you get quite violent steering by the subframe. Sometimes the mounts can be so bad or even broken, that when the subframe moves it comes to a violent stop within the confines of the body and you feel that as the lurch it seems you are getting.

If you and Richie have not at least replaced the rubber mounts on the front subframe with new ones, then even a replacement cone, smootharide or coil spring will make no difference to this aspect.

When i replaced the front subframe front and rear mounts with solid and the tower mounts (under the big bolts) with polyurethane, it transformed the car into something drivable. I did not really realise how bad it was before until i had done this.

Have you and Richie at least checked or replaced the front subframe mounts?



The second point i made about the amount of travel you have between the upper arm and the bump stop can also feel like this. The cones are actually pretty forgiving, but if the car leans over reducing the bump stop clearance and the upper arm suddenly travels up in bump, it can hit the bump stop which can really be felt in the car, and yes lose grip like you say. If there is very little travel, you can even get this with no body roll in a straight line, for example if hi-los have been lowered way too far.

Have you and Richie checked the clearance to the bump stops at normal ride height?



cheers
michael

ps I still want to see the pics of the Mini40!

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the world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page
66 Mini Minor sponsored by http://www.lifeonthehedge.com.au/ The Dog Harness Specialists
It was a pleasure ausmini. I'll miss all you misfits and reprobates

Hi Richie,

Sounds like a similar problem I had with my car. The old rubber cones had collapsed over time and the upper control arms were constantly hitting the bump stops. As you said it makes the ride very harsh and the cars darts around everywhere in corners.
I was tossing up between Smootharide and Minitastic springs. In the end I decided on the Minitastic fast road kit with their height adjusters and GAZ adjustable shockers. http://minitastic.co.uk/suspension.htm
The ride is great and body roll doesn't seem to be too much of a problem, but they are a bit less progressive than cones turning into corners.
Overall I am very impressed but I would still like to compare them to a Smootharide set up.
If you google Minitastic there are a lot of guys in the UK with Sportspack cars that swear by them.
My car has 10" wheels so the ride would be different to 13"s.

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1970 MK II Cooper 'S' Supercharged 1310 with Megajolt.
1970 MK II Cooper 'S' Original resto project (SOLD)
1962 850 Original. (Under restoration)
1973 Leyland S (My first car. Now rebuilt, so my kids can learn how to drive a real car).
VMCI # 215.

Hi Paddy,
Just doing some thread crawling on suspension options and came across this. How are you finding the suspension setup after a couple of years? Still good? Also, did you use lowered height shocks as the website says for FastRoad springs you should use lowered shocks?

Cheers
Simon