Rallycross/TSD in my MINI

[MiniDave]

I've done several, and I agree the Valeo kit is the way to go......it drives as smoothly and light as a Honda clutch - you'll love it!

Half the cost of OEM dual mass too.....and no more Chewbacca nosie!

[Mudhen]

Mine was starting to get hard to shift, especially in the morning when it was cold...and that last rallycross I did it smelled horrible at the end of each of my runs.  But I never had noise and the only time I realized it was hard to push the clutch in was just after I got out of my wife's '09.

Question - I read others say the same about the cost - but the Valeo kit is $450 and the stock MINI clutch kit is $288 - assume that's because it doesn't come with the flywheel?  Wondering if I could just get mine cleaned up...or would I even want to...

Thanks MD!

[jeff10049]

No you don't want to.
Get rid of the dual mass it will become a problem they are of no benefit in almost any car they were ever put in.
I have no idea why they use them. I understand the theory behind the dmf but in real world conditions I have never had a customer say they liked a dmf better for any reason.
I wouldn't be a bit surprised to find that going to a single mass clutch set improves your times slightly as well.

Jeff

[MiniDave]

I don't know about the times, but I can say that going to a solid flywheel does absolutely nothing to increase NVH in a MINI, I just drove a car I put one in two years ago and it's still smooth and vibration free as ever. The owner loves it, and calls it a "Honda" clutch because it's so much easier to operate, and the take up is smooth, linear and easy to modulate.

And yes, the OEM kit does not include a flywheel.

[Mudhen]

I made that tranny my bitch!



Oh, geez...that didn't sound right.   :-X

Being under the car so much I'm horrified by how it looks under there.  So far I know I'm going to be doing the oil cooler/heat exchanger? - oil everywhere around that.  The water pipe that runs to it?  Totally rusted out, surprised it hasn't burst.  Both the shift cables are rusted badly as well (plus I have a short shifter to go in so 'may as well' do those now, too).  Both inner balljoints since the subframe is out.  Clutch slave cylinder is weeping.  A lot of the bolts even had so much rust scale on them I had to chip it off before putting a wrench on them.   :(

Other than the throw out bearing I'm not sure of the list of stuff I'm going to need that's related to the actual project.   :-[

Any magic and/or special tools to get the flywheel off?  I hope Mod Mini has done a video for it...

[MiniDave]

Naw, it just unbolts....if you get the Valeo kit it comes with new flywheel and clutch cover bolts.

Interesting jack you have holding the engine up - looks strong enough to hold the whole garage up! Since the input shaft doesn't engage the flywheel like on most cars, it will go back in easily as long as you get the disc centered. I just eyeball them and never have any trouble....

Most people recommend replacing the release bearing guide sleeve too, they've been known to break, I'd probably look at putting a new crank seal and input shaft seal in while you have it all open and easy to work on.

I almost wonder at this point if it would be easier to remove the engine, especially for the oil cooler/heat exchanger repairs. Not much left holding it in the car now.....

[ADRay]

I made that tranny my bitch!.

holy shit man, the laugh of the day.

You actually found room in your garage to crack that thing open?

[Mudhen]

I made that tranny my bitch!.

holy shit man, the laugh of the day.

You actually found room in your garage to crack that thing open?

Barely.   ::)

Then I had to move 50 things to wheel the subframe outside to clean it up...wanna buy a Porsche?  Things got like, 0 miles on it! [since I had it towed home].

[Jims5543]

You better hurry!! The snow is coming.

My hat is off to you, that is a hell of a project.

Good luck, we are all counting on you.

[Mudhen]

Merry Christmas to me.  Picked up a pair of these on sale from a place in Ireland:



Will have to wait until after the new year to order the frames, though.  And then figure something out for the shoulder harnesses to mount to since I don't have a cage yet...

[Mudhen]

2016 is off!  Had our first event last weekend - ugh, still 2-3 seconds/run away from that Golf.  SUCKS.

But I'm psyched that the clutch seems ok, and the LSD helps a ton.  Next thing I'm doing is disconnecting my swaybars.  I'd already disconnected the rear...but from what I've read about FWD rallycars, the biggest gains are removing the front so that the wheels have as much drop as possible for maximum traction.  The only thing I worry about is do I then rip a shock apart?  I disconnected the lower balljoint - with the wheel hanging in the air the control arm can drop an additional 1.5" - will the weight of the wheel pull the shock out?  Do I need to get a strap on??   8.gif  (easy there, Jim...this is a family show remember!)

Think I'm going to try it without and see what happens.   ::)

Finished 3rd in ModFront class out of 7 behind the 2 drivers in the red Golf.  Had my first off course  50.gif ...they changed the course just before one of our runs and I was clearly not looking up enough.  Thankfully I was far enough ahead of the 4th place car that I maintained position even with the 16 second penalty.  It's tricky in rallycross because once everyone in your run group has gone, they can change the course without you having the benefit of seeing what they've done - you have to always be on your toes. 

[94touring]

You said strap on.

[MiniDave]

You won't hurt the shocks, go for it.....

[Mudhen]

You won't hurt the shocks, go for it.....

4.gif

THANKS MD!

[MiniDave]

I think the one part of your car that might be vulnerable to this kind of driving are the upper shock mounts and strut bearings. The towers tend to mushroom up under repeated poundings (like Midwestern potholes) and the upper bearing mounts can tear. There are aftermarket solutions for both problems - use the under mount stiffeners not the ones that go on top of the towers, and I think Ireland Engineering makes a replacement (and adjustable) bearing mount that doesn't use a rubber insert.

[Jims5543]

Mudhen, I am going to give you a tip that will save you a ton of money in mods to the car.

If rally cross is anything like Autocross, the best thing to mod on your car is the driver. Find a Rally driving school ( I saw a you tube video of one up your way where they use E30's) and sing up, stop modding your car and do a one day school at the very least.


When I was a rabid autocrosser, I was chasing a cat in the C5 corvette.  He was always about 0.5 second faster than me and he was the big wig for a sports car club that ran an event nearby in Orlando so he was always racing.

I signed up for a couple of AX schools during the off season, I think I took 3 different stages from the same school. I got good, like really good at reading a course and driving them fast. How good?

Next Autocross, I creamed that Corvette by over a second!! Over a second!! I gained 1.5 seconds on him!!  He saw what happened that day and asked me what I changed on my car. I was an idiot, I told him the truth, nothing, I worked on the driver. He signed up for the school then we went back to swapping out wins.

I took a few more classes and started to score top time of the day both raw time and pax time.  I started to make a name for myself in Florida, the class my RX7 was in was B-Prepared (it is now X-prepared) back then there was another faster class A-Prepared, it had the Factory five cobras in it. I would get bumped up to A-prepared a lot due to no one in my class and they started complaining that I was messing up their points haul.  So I got swapped into X-Class. (expert class with the driving instructors)

Point is, take a rally driving school, it will trump all the mods you can do to your car from here on out.

Do it!

Oh and you said strap on. LOL!!!   ;D

Edit, here is the rally school.

https://teamoneil.com/

[Mudhen]

NICE!

I would LOVE to take a class up at Team O'Neil.  And I agree - that may be what it takes to get me over the hump (not that placing 5th overall out of 50 cars including STIs and EVOs is all that bad - but I want MORE, always MORE  ;D).  But I think there are some obvious things to do to the car to get it where it needs to be as well (such as the LSD...and as I'm learning - removing the front swaybar).  Removing the front swaybar is free after all...the Team O'Neil 1-day class is $1495.  Ouch.

Back in the 90s when I was autocrossing a bunch I remember when I swapped from a GTI (123hp) to Corrado (176hp) I thought the world was ending.  All that power (  22.gif ) and I really had no clue what the heck I was doing.  It just magnified my poor driving skills a thousand times.  So I took a couple classes (autox and solo1) and what a difference!  After that I swapped to a VR6 GTI and always won my class - from Maine to CT.  I also took (and won) the Viggen Flight Academy at Road Atlanta - basically just the Panoz Advanced Handling school but with Saab's.  Around 2000/2001 I was invited to do an 8 hour go-kart endurance race at New Hampshire International Speedway - in qualifying I put our kart in 3rd place, right behind Will Turner and some other Turner dude.  I took the second place guy out after a few laps and was working on first place when we got into it and they red flagged the whole race.  LOL.  F'kin Turner Motorsports pussies.   :D

I did just stumble on a thread on NAM about swaybar removal - some dude said, 'you can't do it with factory springs because they'll break - you "NEED" at least 450lb springs'.  WHAT?!?!

[MiniDave]

You gotta watch those guys on NAM, the sway bar has nothing to do with spring rates.

[94touring]

I always thought sway bars effected body roll?  Extra stiff for drifting along with extra stiff springs/shocks.  I know the 3rd gen rx7 guys say run a stock rear sway bar and a heavier duty front.  Gives the right proportion of roll to aid in wheel grip. 

[MiniDave]

Yes, but in off road rallycross you want the maximum amount of wheel travel to keep the wheels in contact with the dirt, how much roll the body does isn't that important. The anti-roll bar connects the left and right wheels together, if the right wheel encounters a bump while the left wheel goes over a hole, the left wheel will be held up in the air by the anti-roll bar. No contact, no drive.

When you're driving on smooth roads the opposite is more true, you want to keep body roll to a minimum to maximize the contact patch with the road

[Mudhen]

Eggsactly.  Isn't that how the swaybars essentially interact with the spring rate?  I was thinking...the guys in the Golf that were talking about having their front swaybar disconnected also have fancy coilovers.  So they're able to disconnect the swaybar for the additional wheel travel but still stop the weight transfer of the body with their fancy springs.

My only rudimentary adjustment is swaybars...and tire pressures I guess but at the last event I kept them at 40psi because I was really worried about breaking a bead on the frozen dirt.  In the regular gravel when I'm using the stiff sidewall rally tires I play with it some, though.  Messing with the alignment is outside my ability at this time - are there any cool tools that allow at home/track adjustments of alignment?  My dad had some strange rods that he bought for doing the MGs...the one time I tried using them was a disaster.   ::)

[Jims5543]

Cool stories Mudhen, love the Karting story with Turner.  Many years ago, when I was first getting into AX, I went to the Mazda Rev it up competition where they were giving away the new Mazda 6 one year and Mazda 3 the next. You raced an AX course against "pros" for indexed time, the top time from each city got to go to Laguna Seca where you raced the winners from each city for the car.

I was 3 years into AX and raced the Miami event the first year for the Mazda 6, I was first when I left Saturday afternoon and ended up 3rd b the end of the competition, out of 15K people trying, I ended up on the local news and attributed all my speed to the AX driving school I had used.  The second year I went to 2 cities for the Mazda 3 in Miami I took 6th and in Tampa I took 9th. I could not fin the Mazda 3's limits like I could the 6 and that cost me.

I did an Evolution driving school that was called a challenge school, you raced against national champs in your car with them as your co driver. It was an amazing experience because you spent the day with a champ giving you pointers pushing your car and you to boundaries you did not know existed. There were many times when I said "I did not know I could do that with my car!!" throughout the day.

At the end of the day you raced for a better time against your pro. I ended up beating my pro, the owner of the school told me I NEED to be in Topeka for the run offs that year with my car, they were positive I could win. I never went, it meant leaving my family for days, spending tons of money on travel, fresh tires, etc... all for what? a Nicer $5 trophy? I passed.  I kind of regret it now.


Back to car setup.

You can align pretty decent with a string line run along the side of the car and measuring to the tires for toe in and out.  You can use a level to get a decent idea on camber too.  I have a camber gauge.

Or you could get this too for caster/camber:

http://www.amazon.com/Longacre-Magnetic-Caster-camber-Gauge/dp/B003750D7U

Then if the string thing freaks your out this for toe:

http://www.amazon.com/Longacre-Toe-Plates-Set-Tapes/dp/B000VAOHB2/ref=sr_1_1?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1453771794&sr=1-1&keywords=toe+alignment+tool

I used to do this with my RX7, one time we took it to a laser alignment rack after setting it ourselves and were pleased we were pretty damn close for string, tape measures and eyeballs.

You can always experiment, take off the front and see how she behaves, maybe even try attaching the rear with the front off, just to see if it feels better for you.

Road cars vs. Rally are two different animals, what will work for a RWD road car vs. a RWD rear cars is insanely different, throw in some dirt and potholes and everything goes out the window.



Good luck, we are all counting on you.

[94touring]

I do my own alignments on the minis with a tape measure. 

[MiniDave]

I use frickin lazers!   ;D

[jeff10049]