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Nice. It does sound as if you are more comfortable with the car with the current setup. Your 2nd to last paragraph suggests to me that it might be best to leave the RSB setting where it is and give it a few more track days to see how you work into the best aspects of new setup. You may find that you are able to get it to work in those corners where the car is pushing. If you further stiffen the RSB, you may find it causes too much understeer that will actually slow you down. Just a suggestion.
I run Hawk DTC 60 rear brake pads and I have at least 6 days on them and expect to get at least 4 more. They seem to be working out very well for me.
BTW - I finally got a chance to try out my big BBK at Watkins Glen, where I have had the most braking issues. The good news it that they worked really well. But I did see that concave wear pattern on the face of my rotors that you saw. Not sure what causes that condition.
I had my reservation of moving the RSB to the stiffest setting so fast, but I already done it while putting on the still serviceable worn OE pads. I had no idea how one of the locknut worked loose at the RSB link at the sway bar interface. I thought I can always the RSB setting at the track as it can be done easily. On Sunday I drifted out into the marble zone at turn 8 running CCW because of understeer and picked up tons of chewing gum on the rear tires that wouldn't rub off. Desire drove like crap as the wheel balance went to hell in a hand basket.
RSB at the stiffest setting now
From reading between the lines Hawk DTC60 is made by Raybestos and has very similar characteristic to one of the ST pads. Raybestos makes a lot of reputable racing pads for big brands.
So far I am extremely impressed with ST-45 and how it not destroying rotors. The cheap $35 Wilwood rotors still have not developed crazing. I can see white smoke off the front pads even after a cool down lap and yet they are holding up. ORP is very hard on brakes and everything due to the constant elevation changes. I now realize why most prefer running CW as CCW is harder on the drivetrain. CCW favors higher powered cars due to constant uphill straights after tight turns.
Very interesting that you are also observing the concave wear on the rotor faces.
BTW, I should mention that I also wonder if the Koni's mono twin tube design is suffering from fluid cavitation at ORP on hot days (85F and higher).
Could you stiffen the shocks more to see if it compensates for the higher temp? I know the rears are a PIA to adjust on a MINI and you probably don’t want to stiffen the front setting without doing a comparable stiffening of the rears. Also, if this did fix your hot weather issue, then you might need to soften them for the cooler weather.
Unfortunately, this is a slippery slope leading into massivef data taking and hours of setup for each track day. Maybe a bit more camber for hot days and a bit less for cold? And what about tire pressure for each of these other settings. A full spreadsheet of variables based on camber, shock settings, temperature, track, phase of the moon, altitude, and attitude ....
More seriously - Years ago I had a VW Microbus and when it was cold (like about 10 degF) its handling would noticeably improve. I attributed it to the oil in the shock getting thicker. Maybe you have the opposite of that? The fluid in the shock is getting enough thinner at higher temps and that is affecting your handling? I would guess that the shocks are getting pretty warm in a session out there.
I am also seeing much greater wear on the front right rotor and it is has worn to be more concave than the left front. I believe the added wear on the right front is from the EDLC (eLSD) kicking in. I have no good idea as to what is causing the concave wear, though.
I am considering increasing the rebound damping at the rear for the next club event. There is always a good lesson for these exercises. I set both the front and the rear rebound damping fairly strong when installing them. I went and looked up the setting when I first installed these Koni's back in 2017. The rear were set to 1/2 turn from full stiff, and the front 1 turn from full stiff. The front has about 2 1/2 turns of range as I documented. The rear has 1 3/4 turns if memory serves - shame on me not documenting that, but I think it is in my modification spreadsheet.
I resisted drilling access holes for the rear adjusters, so I have to drop the dampers to make the adjustment. A bit of PITA but not too bad. I should just do it while Desire is still on the QuickJack today.
I erred that the Koni is mono tube. They are twin tube and hence disadvantaged in the packaging department. You get smallish diameter damper cylinder. I have observed Koni's tend to ride crap in cold weather. It takes a bit of driving around and the ride becomes more compliant, which is no doubt the result of the fluid warming up from the road exercise. Hence it stands to reason that driving on a tough track like ORP the fluid temperature increase quite significantly. The biggest question is, if loosing damping is mainly due to reduction in fluid viscosity, or fluid aeration? I can adjust to compensation for viscosity change, but nothing I can do for aeration except to drive slower.
I agree that the uneven front tire wear you experienced is due to eLSD. It could be the CW or CCW orientation of the tracks you drive, but not likely due to inherent torque and tire load like a conventional longitudinal engine rear wheel drive.
I think the concave rotor surface wear is likely just the inside of the disc has more heat and expand more than outside. I am still amazed the cheap $32 rotors are still holding up after all these abuse.
Stiffening the rear shocks will add more oversteer on top of stiffening the sway bar. I would suggest doing one or the other. If having more dampening is desired, then I would just stiffen the rear shocks and leave the sway bar in the middle. You will then get both an increase in damping and removal of some of the understeer. One change at a time so you know what is affecting what.
Stiffening the rear shocks will add more oversteer on top of stiffening the sway bar. I would suggest doing one or the other. If having more dampening is desired, then I would just stiffen the rear shocks and leave the sway bar in the middle. You will then get both an increase in damping and removal of some of the understeer. One change at a time so you know what is affecting what.
The ailment now is when hot Desire rear end get squirrelly driven hard, not just at turns but also going over undulations. I reason that it losses damping - likely more on rebound since bump is quite mild and fixed. By restoring the reduced rebound the rear tire adhesion should improve overall, hence less prone to oversteer. I do concur that I should make one change at a time.
I just finished inspecting the front brakes and the rotors are still holding. The pads have nearly no sign of wedging though on one side more wear due to the track direction driven. I also believe that I finally gotten to the bottom of the low speed suspension clunk that has evaded fault isolation all this time.
This is the video from this past Saturday in a session that Desire played with the Red Baron and then was under a hot pursuit by a red E36 M3 track car. The M3 never came into the video as it never caught up to Desire. Desire built a good lead by the end of the video ending in the cool down lap. Red Baron's pilot said he wishes he get to see more of the duel but we long left him in the dust.
Desire smelled blood, and begun to think she was the hunter rather than the hunted. In this short session she gobbled up everything in sight like a Pacman. Unfortunately the GoPro suffered the usual failure to detect the external mic being used hence no sound.
So it is not a spreadsheet but a quick one-page setup sheet. This is it, but sadly I cannot give proper attribution due to the "decency" censor machine.
I had so many problems with my gopro microphone and random humming noise. I finally made one of the micro USB adapters with the resistor to cut off the internal microphone, had to have a small lot of boards printed but it was worth it.
Not srue if the newer units with usb-c are better; gopro really screwed up it's mic in setup it was so simple with the old ones and it just worked...
I like GoPro for its video performance. They, however screw up big time and had been very poor in follow on support and fixes. I have the Hero 5 Black wich requires an external active dongle for external power and analog mic signal processing to convert the signal into USB-C. It will not detect the dongle and mic if it is already plug in when you switch on the camera. This company simply has no clue what compatibility validation is all about, and this is with their own products. Why do I keep switching the camera off? Because the **** design overheats and freezes if you keep it on. When it freezes, you have to remove the camera from the mount, then remove the camera from the mounting housing, and then struggle to open the "watertight" door to pop the battery. All a serious major PITA.
My workaround for this is to remember each time I switch on the camera, to give it a couple of seconds, unplug and the n plug in the USB C dongle. That way it will detect the dongle and the external mic. It is something that I forgot to do many times. Something like this should be a firmware fix, just like PCs and their stupid BIOS.
I know all too well they are a struggling company because Chinese companies are eating their lunch. They had no chance with their pivot to consumer drones. GoPro is dying and the days are numbered long ago.
So it is not a spreadsheet but a quick one-page setup sheet. This is it, but sadly I cannot give proper attribution due to the "decency" censor machine.
Still could be helpful.
As far as GoPros go, they seem to do well when in the water or in cold climates. I have nothing to support this just a gut feeling, but it seems that their initial intention of the GoPro was to make 5 min shorter movie clips, 20 to 30 min of continuous footage was not their goal. It should be now but even my wife's 7 Black has odd issues that make it very difficult to use for more than 5 min.
As far as GoPros go, they seem to do well when in the water or in cold climates. I have nothing to support this just a gut feeling, but it seems that their initial intention of the GoPro was to make 5 min shorter movie clips, 20 to 30 min of continuous footage was not their goal. It should be now but even my wife's 7 Black has odd issues that make it very difficult to use for more than 5 min.
Sound like the 7 has the same overheating problem like the 5. I have not spent much time testing to minimizing the overheating. I think by setting the display to go off after awhile should help. The other thing that I should try is to use the built in mic by muffling the wind noise with a sock where the built in mic is.
I created a setup spreadsheet in Google Sheets. I saved it as .xls on my desktop but can't figure out how to attach it. Everything seems fine, but upload button does nothing.
It is possible that you can't attach an .xls file. A lot of site won't let you upload .xls or .doc due to the macro worms. I like to joke "Failure is not an option. It is bundled with all MS products."
So it is not a spreadsheet but a quick one-page setup sheet. This is it, but sadly I cannot give proper attribution due to the "decency" censor machine.
Our track team's procurement manager has been busy to ensure Desire's back to school supplies are well stocked. She is not getting any shiny new toys, but just some consumables. I have been driving her wheels off this past track event and the rear rotor is trashed. Our procurement manager is cost conscientious knowing the team is on a tight budget. Rockbottom Auto's no thrill plain rotor price is right and I can afford to abuse them.
here are just half of the school supplies; a lot more to come
the brand new SmartyCam HD has a out of the box defect so we sent it back to AiM for repair
these Ferodo DS2500 cannot withstand the rigors of the Little Brown Hell
metallic pad has a lot of bite; only a bit hard to modulate when you mean to just feather the brake a bit
Even the dust boot couldn't stay on but at least it has melted yet
While Desire is still resting from the exhaustion the Red Baron is gaining unfair advantage at ORP with HOD as I wrote this post. His pilot gets to drive free with them as he is an instructor.
Next club day event is just 2 weeks away and we would find out if Desire or Red Baron is the top hog.
On one that you’ll appreciate - I finally changed out the BP30 pads I was using. They still have some life in them and seemed to work OK for this track I drive that is moderately easy on brakes. But I replaced them as they were past halfway and wanted to try something different. I replaced them with Wilwood’s Poly H pads. Great improvement. Like you, I am unimpressed with the BP30 pads. Not sure what they will be good for. They are advertised as being an endurance race pad, but I am not sure who would use them.
On one that you’ll appreciate - I finally changed out the BP30 pads I was using. They still have some life in them and seemed to work OK for this track I drive that is moderately easy on brakes. But I replaced them as they were past halfway and wanted to try something different. I replaced them with Wilwood’s Poly H pads. Great improvement. Like you, I am unimpressed with the BP30 pads. Not sure what they will be good for. They are advertised as being an endurance race pad, but I am not sure who would use them.
I picked up 5 sets of BP30 on eBay for cheap and I thought they were bargain of the century. Ignorant is bliss, as the saying goes. At the time I had little experience how long a set of racing pads should last. Now with some experience with Raybestos pads I realized they were the most expensive track pads I bought. They worn off like cheese braking hard on the tracks compared to ST series. Life is about the experience of the journey and I was glad to see the ups and downs. I think BP30 were good pads in its days, but in light of the modern pads, they are simply very obsolete. They might be good for beginners or intermediates that track their cars occasionally.
I broke down and bought a set of this for Desire. I went totally cheap and these are no thrill but I figure as long as the dimensions are correct they should work just as well as those costing 2/3 more. We are cheap and we squeak when we walk.
08-20-2019, 07:26 PM
as I wrote this post. His pilot gets to drive free with them as he is an instructor. 
