Hey Ben,

I didn't think your car pulled to the side that badly.. it ws alright.. then again you might not have shown me its full potential.

I havent put the foot down in my one yet but wiggles around a bit. but every time I drive it.. I am getting used to it so its no biggie.

Time for an update:

The clutch is all sorted.. I made up a thinner spacer for the clutch master and she is all good now

Brakes: put in the rebuild kit on the brake master and finally sorted out the broken nipple on the brake caliper... may I say it was a f***ing b@tch to sort out!.. a lot fo cursing and sweat ( adelaide is not a pretty place to be in terms of weather )
Eventually tapped a bolt, fixed that one with a copper washer and then threaded on a nipple onto that.. she seems to hold ok

now I have to get the drivers side sill sorted out and wheel alignment.

I have 2 questions:

1) what have people with 4efte engines been settings their wheels etc? ( camber, caster, toe in/out?).. ever since putting metro hubs in.. alignment is a bit shot

2) When I took off the mini brake master cylinder, i noticed its a crap load heavier than the starlet one(minus the servo diaphgram).. I checked the inner bores and the starlet one has a bigger bore, which means less mechanical advantage.. if I do manage to fit this in... would it have a major impact on my braking peformance? ( as in I wouldnt be able to put enough force on the pedal to lock the wheels?)


Cheers guys..

I can't remember my settings but the most important part will be the castor angle. If i remeber correctly it has to be positive (i think mine was about 1 to 1.5) this sorts out the dreaded torque steer issues.

I have metro hubs with 12inch rims and to obtain the correct castor i had to cut the front of my guards to stop the tyres rubbing, in fact to be able to turn my wheels.

Don't go to any tyre place to have your car setup - spend the extra dollars and find someone who really knows what they are doing because the end result will be well worth it.

My wheel alingment settings are ment to be but I don't think it was set properly (minimetoy is right need someone good) are
1mm toe in
caster standard is 3 degree but I have alittle more about 5 does make the steering heavy but helps keep it centralized
0.5 degree negative camber

_________________
4efte powered Clubman
supercharged 998 race car

My setup will be as follows Pubs,

Camber - 1.5 degrees negative to increase contact patch during cornering and aid cornering stability

Castor - 0.5 degrees negative (std)

Toe - 0.5 degrees postitve to aid high speed stability

_________________
"Not Speeding Officer..........Qualifying"

Thanks for the info guys.. you have confused me a lot now!

The figures quoted differ by quite a bit..

The camber I will set at 0.5 since I doubt I will taking sharp corners at 100 km/h like Tricky! !
in my earlier set-up I had them set to 1 degree negative which was alright

For caster, figures vary from 0.5 to 3 degrees!.. whats the deal with this? what is impact of having too much too little caster?
I think I will set it up to 1 degree and see how she goes

toe in/ toe out... I was under the impression that front wheel drive cars would need some toe out to counteract the wheels caving in under acceleration. I'll be sticking with 0.5 toe out and see how she goes...

Anyone is welcome to correct me/ give me better figures..

Ben.. who did you use in SA?? the bridgestone buys near my place did it last time.. seems like they did a decent job..

Cheers

http://www.ozebiz.com.au/racetech/theory/align.html

Are you sure you don't mean 5 deg castor? 0.5 deg will make your steering super twitchy, especially at high speed.

Pubs, basically the more castor you have (the greater the "lean back" of the line between the upper arm and lower arm) the stronger the self centering effect of the steering.
Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, it also makes the steering heavier.
I'd say that with the torque steer these monsters have, you probably want as much castor as possible. (actually castor probably wont help with torque steer that much )

_________________
-James.

Toyota 4EFTE Powered Minivan.
102 Kw @ The Front Wheels....Oh What a Feeling!

I just used a local tyre place but as I said I don't think the alignment is what I wanted Have since been suggested to use Stable suspension in Pooraka
Standard caster is 3 degrees ! as 77 clubby said if you go to say 0.5 it will make it twichy and very light and nervous at speed

_________________
4efte powered Clubman
supercharged 998 race car

That's quite nice that link there.

Basically, for what most Mini's would want would be slight toe-in at the front, so that under acceleration, and braking as the front tyres pulls outwards (due to having a rear mounted steering rack) it would line up to be striaght-ish. And the rear would be toe out, as the link says to counter act the heavy understeer. For a road car probably 0 toe on the back would be fine.

For rego, though, standard suspension.

_________________
1964 Morris 850, 1330 Supercharged - 81.8hp atws.
1975 Leyland Mini S 1100S powered - Nice and reliable.
1977 Leyland Mini LS - Project LS-T

My rego's going to be troublesome then...

Goodluck mate!

I'm sure everything will be ok, but to skip a lot lot a crap I'll be going through rego with stock suspension (and stock power), basically what the engineers will allow. Still haven't spoken to the engineers yet though, still too much work to do!

_________________
1964 Morris 850, 1330 Supercharged - 81.8hp atws.
1975 Leyland Mini S 1100S powered - Nice and reliable.
1977 Leyland Mini LS - Project LS-T

That sounds a bit arse about. A Mini will try to pull toe-in under power and toe-out under braking. The forces are opposite unlike a RWD car.
In reality on the track you will probably find that toe-out is a handy thing to play with (both front and rear) it really effects the way the car turns-in.

I believe it does not matter whether you are brakeing or acceleration. I used to think it did, but recently I had some things explained to me and did some thinking and drawing out of my own.

Ok, I'll admit now, I am not good at relaying these explainations without being able to actively draw it all out for you as I speak it.

But here goes,
The reason both accelerating and decelerating behave in the same manner will be explained

Consider a front wheel as it sits in a stable state. The weight of the car is balanced by the upward force of the suspension. If we set no toe at that point both wheels face directly forward. If the car accelerates hard the tyre moves down (hence the car body moves upwards). If toe were to stay the same the steering arms would need to self-lengthen, but obviously they don't as they are solid. So if we say the distance from steering rack to the ball joint (where the arms/rods that protrude from the rack it self with the rubber boot on them can move) is "r". This is the radius of an arc in which the balljoint will travel since "r" is constant. In order to keep "r" constant the wheel must turn in order to move up and down. Whether up and down the same effect is achieved, the rear of the wheel (since the rack is rear mounted) will turn towards the car.

Now consider decelerating - in which the tyres moves upwards. If we decelerate as 'hard' as we accelerated earlier the same toe out should occur.



In the pic (which is dodgy, sorry, I only got paint!) the blue point, is the point in which the steering rod/arm can rotate around. This is where the rubber boot on the steering rack exists. The green bar is the steering rod/arm/whatever you call it, which joins the steering arm at the balljoint which is black. The ball joint, towards the wheel is solid.

Anyway it should be seen that the same effect occurs either direction of wheel travel - up or down.

The red line is the arc in which the ball joint will travel. Also, the travel of the wheel is along a designated path, up and down. If the wheel can only travel directly up and down, and the steering rod travels in an arc due to having a fixed point at the steering rack end, it should be seen that something must give. This something that 'gives' is the toe angle of the wheel. The rear of the swivel hub moving inwards as the wheel goes up (the further up the more angle) and as the wheel goes down (as above).

So if you intend to have you wheel at any extreme often, either up or down, toe in to the required amount is what you would want to ensure the straightest possible alignment of the front wheels under acceleration.

Ok, I am not good at explaining things, but I had a go! Yay.

BTW, I've noticed people too often just think of FWD cars being opposite to RWD cars, people need to think of a Mini, which happens to be FWD, study the Mini's suspension geometry as a seperate entity using knowledge that is applicable to all types of cars. - Take the question on it's own merits! It also helps to draw out some points and some lines, then think of various circumstances in which the object you are considering behaves.

Cheers, Tim.

_________________
1964 Morris 850, 1330 Supercharged - 81.8hp atws.
1975 Leyland Mini S 1100S powered - Nice and reliable.
1977 Leyland Mini LS - Project LS-T

I too was under the impression that front wheel drive cars should have a bit of toe out since the wheels cave in under acceleration, thus negating the toe out condition.

Took the car for a spin today.. all good .. but then another IC hose popped off! Looks like I will have to tighten every since joint now!

I'm going to the desert for 2 weeks.. so no more mini play for me .. but then I get 2 weeks off then its time to get her rego'd!

cheers

Pubs

This is looking side on, no?

Side-on as in if you were looking at the back of the car, forwards to the wheel...

EDIT: So when you accelerate, the steering arm effectively pulls the one side of the hub inwards resulting in toe out?

Just making sure I'm on the right track.. suspension's not my thing