OK. Killed the stupid GIF with a screen shot. Love the movie for sure as it is far from far fetch. See who are in power these days across the globe.

 

Taking advantage of most of the yahoos are out of town we ventured across town for grocery shopping with Desire. As I return with bags full of grocery I noticed the gleaming new rear rotor she is spotting as well as the well polished front one. The brakes squeal so fittingly like a hog and so crabby for in town driving. And you can definitely notice the harsh ride with the rear dampers set to full stiff for rebound. Rides like crap it is. I know all too well the adjuster is far from linear and it did crossed my mind setting it full stiff may not be the brightest of ideas.


the little car that can

 

Did you tighten the rear shock adjusters until they came to a stop? I was told that on the Koni shocks the internal port can be closed off, I guess by doing that, and that it will do damage if left there... Sorry, I don’t have the full facts here, but it was the owner of BimmerWorld who mentioned that to me. I didn't dig into details as the focus of our discussion was in a different direction.

 

I suspect you are right on that one. That was exactly what I did, let them at full CCW. When I first installed them I played with the valve setting and see the force required to pull the rod out, and I concluded then the setting is very non-linear. As I approached the full stiff end a small angular turn of the adjuster increased the resistance disproportionally large. In fact, if memory serves, I couldn't pull the rod out with all my might.

Only if it is that much more work to remove the spring load and check the resistance with the adjustment I would had done it. In retrospect I should have left them may be at 1/8 turn from full stiff.

I think I will do that next time I have the car up on the quick jack. You would think Koni will at least say something, but they don't. All they came with was just some simple cartoon like drawing with no text like Ikea's assembly instructions, as if writing a few sentence will kill them. Yes, I know they are a Dutch company and they sell to every country on the planet so a family business decided not to spend the money translating into all those languages.

 

My Megan's lasted 5 years of daily with them set to about half of full stiff. All 4 need to have the valves redone. I suspect that this is true no matter what brand you have. I'd set them to a softer setting for longevity. You'll just ware out the valves sooner rather than later.

Here's my reasoning:
On the track, the pavement is very smooth. Public roads are not. Even if the dampers are fully loaded on one side on a track due to a corner, they will load up "slowly" compared to the rigors of a public street that are mostly not smooth. Essentially when you are on the public roads, you are driving constantly on the FIA curbing all the time, where as on the track, this only happens for a fraction of a second.

Oh, and BaT has become very sketchy (at best) in my opinion which is mostly based on me getting banned from commenting when calling out a "Factory installed JCW kit" on a early/mid 2004 Cooper S as disingenuous. As we all know that the Oxford factory did not install the JCW kits until mid/late 2005. I would not give them my money. It's still interesting to watch though, kind if like a train wreck.

 

Tracks are not smooth here, I am all up on those curbs and in the dirt some spots will get hard lips like VIR after oak tree. I blew a set of camber plates in a weekend! much harder than street driving here in NC.

FIA curbing makes my whole car shake, that stuff is no joke

 

Portland International Raceway is very smooth. I have not been to Oregon Raceway Park but the track is not that old and I assume from the videos, is still quite smooth. These are the two that I know the OP has been driving. The curbing at PIR are consecutively angled "ramps" in the (only) direction of travel with about a 1 to 2 inch drop but only at the very far end by the grass. Close to the actual track surface, the drop is about 0 and as you get closer to the grass the drop is somewhere between what looks to be 1 to 2 inches. Not sure if that is FIA spec or not. I have no doubt that other tracks and older tracks, the surface could be as bad as a public road which, I would guess, necessitate a lower compression rate and higher rebound rate (or vice versa - I am not well versed in this) to absorb the bump but to also allow the wheel to come back down quickly to stay in contact with the surface.

 

The dampers work differently here at The Brown Hell that is ORP comparing to street driving on crapy road surfaces. On the tracks the frequencies tend to be lower except when you hit the curb aggressively. A guy that supports race teams on tires and suspensions told me riding the curbs especially when the tire is under inflated or cold can do damage to the tire and wheel fast. He specifically mentioned the damage to the sidewalls. It is probably pretty hard on the suspension parts too.

Some curbs are better to avoid altogether like the one at turn 16 running CW. Hitting it will upset the the entry at this curve and risking spinning the car into the concrete wall. I hit the curb once and scared the bejesus out of me when Desire lost composure at the corner entry.

 

When you buy racing pads for the rear OE caliper you are likely to be hit with sticker shock. A good set of pads typically cost $200 and up, compared to the pads for the Wilwood front brakes which are around 1/2 of the cost. The reason is economy of scale with the very popular Wilwood 7816 pad shape. I was told these ST-45 pads for R53 OE calipers are not just made to order, the friction compound is hand cut with a bandsaw, which also means they are hand shape like on a belt sander and fastened to the steel backing plates.

Here is what the pads look like. Just bare bone brake pads without the anti-squeal springs or brake wear sensor slot.


these are NAFTA pads come in this giant box



I just hope these would last as long as the Cobalt XR5s did

Speaking of pads. I just remember to bring the new set of ST-45 pads for the front to be swapped at the track. With the easy pad change the Wilwood allow you to use the pads good to the last drop. More more difficult with the floating rear OE calipers to change pads in the field.

 

So, with all the pads and rotors you are going through, it might be time to get some true carbon ceramics.

 

Believe it or not, today I have a flight of fancy for a Global ND.2 MX5 race car. Here is a video they made before the ND.2, which is slightly up with the HP.

 

those are for looks and bragging only, they get removed and replaced with regular track pads & plain rotors before a real trackday.

 

Not even a hollow victory. This is the true color of Alphabet and YT. At no time were I given the contact information of the troll. Screwgle care for nothing except ad profits. I called the former chairman turned washington lobbyist for the company Eric Snitch. He sat in Apple's board of directors while Steve Job was alive during the development of the first iPhone.



And this happens to be in the news. The fine is merely a drop in the giant profit bucket for the company.



And still more.

 

Weather is trending favorably for the upcoming three days club event. The highs for all three days are forecasted at low 70s. There would be cold nights which is great for sleeping under the starry sky. I am hoping for a good turn out as the more cars the merrier. Only 6 days left for the season unless enough of us ask for extra unscheduled days. This year we have the most number of club days, and Desire has the most appearance.

 

I toiled in the long weekend to get Desire ready for the upcoming club days. Of all things the front brake pads will need some close attention as they are at half life. This set of ST-45 is still the best pads that I tried.


I took only the left side caliper photo; this side has a little more than half life



the thin shims are titanium to retard heat transfer to the SS pistons







the right side pads have a bit less than half life left





Actually they have less than half lives left as you never want o knowingly cut too close. We will bring a new set of pads along for in the field change.

Also the rear Koni's has been reset not at full stiff, but about 45 degrees from it. I found the cheapo plastic adjusting tool from Koni is too sloppy to accurately set the adjusters. I prefer to just use a pair of pliers so I can see the angular rotation.




I suspect these consumer grade models are far from consistent between units but at least I tried. They are quite good for the price point and Desire runs with a Mini with JRZs.

 

You should consider a set of 0.125” thick shims to go with those worn out pads. The pistons will get side-loaded less and your caliper and pistons will last longer.
http://www.tceperformanceproducts.com/brake-pads/

They are listed under the pad listing for your caliper.

You are probably right about the Koni shocks, which is probably why they don’t put numbers on them with a “clicker” as you adjust them. There would be no end of complaints.... “I own a XYZ very fast car, as does a friend. Why are my Koni shocks set at 6 clicks and my friend’s at 8 to get the same ride? Is there something wrong with my shocks? I want a replacement set...”.

Just go and drill a 1/2 inch hole in each of the rear strut towers... easy mc-cheesy.

 

I bought a set of the said shims. They are a PITA to use as often you need different thickness. These pads don't wedge much so I just flip them and cross swap them at the end of the day.

Every time I see this and this shocks have 32 clicks I go

I resisted drilling the access hole for the Koni adjusters. Good that I did as the BC Racing will require different location due to how the top hat difference.


the BC Racing CO has a pillow ball to handle the bend angle - hence will have different location for the access hole



I did a quick survey of what gets in the way of drilling the access holes



You sure don't want to ***** nilly just drill through the sheet metal without checking what's behind the other side - like this wiring bundle with the B+ battery cable



this is roughly where the adjuster access is located once you drill the big *** hole



this sticky bubble gum on these rear tires clings tenaciously; I swapped the wheels to the front to try rubbing them off faster but likely I have to wait for doing at the Little Brown Hell.

And Desire tramlines like crazy because of the tires worn much more outside than inside. She also have the symptom of torque steering because of the skewed tread wear of these sticky tires.


here you can see why the tires affects the tracking and driving on public roads; the rear end is so light that the bubble gum is slow to wear off; look at the bright side, this is free rubber ; you finished with more rubber than you started in the session

 

have you tried st47 yet? I really like the raybestos pads. Just priced them for my 135i, 329 $ a set! I will be trying the rockauto powerstop trackday spec pads in this car

 

No. What have been your experience on the Mini? I so far only tried ST-41 and ST-45. ST-41 kills rotor and itself fast. Saving the ST-47 but may be I should try them since this is the last event for Mini at ORP. ST-47 has a premium over the other ST pads. Interesting you find track day pads on Rockauto. Probably on some odd cars only. They sell Raybesto stuff but just for the daily grinds.

 

brought home some fuel for Desire's campaign to the Little Brown Hell like the van in the Gumball Rally

 

I like the 47 it lasts me even longer. have you found them cheaper than 99 $? I've been buying them here.

https://www.porterfield-brakes.com/P...tManufacturer=

 

I order from Top Brakes. If total over their free shipping then I save the shipping. Just drop shipped from Potterfield.

 

I don’t monkey with them. I run new pads until the 1/8th inch thick spacers will fit in. Then I pun the spacers in and run the pads down from there. It’s not the wedging that is the issue. It is the slight movement of the pad parallel to the rotor when the pad engages the rotor. This side loads the piston which causes wear on the piston and piston bore.

 

I wish they would provide some data about the pads along with a word description of the different pad compounds. To me the descriptions make them all sound the same and wonderful. And there is no temperature ranges given. If it weren’t for you 2 trying them, I would have no idea which to get.

For my short track, I had tried the Wilwood BP30 (the EBay $30 ones), then went to the Wilwood Poly H which worked really well. The BP30s were not so good (as we’ve already concluded) For the long track that is hard on brakes, I used the Hawk DTC60, that I had used before, but this time it was with the thicker rotors. While they worked really well, they did a tune on the rotors. So I need something better for there. Very interested in what you guys come up with when using the Raybesto