Took delivery of a new JCW Hardtop about a month ago and I'm considering doing some track days. I'm looking for recommendations on a set of wheels and tires as well as brake pads. I'm in South Florida so the tracks will be Homestead, PBIR and possibly Sebring. I've got quite a bit of SCCA experience at those tracks, but it has been about a dozen years since I have driven competitively. Just looking to get out and have some fun. Any recommendations based on your experience would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

I run race tires at the track so I have an extra set of tims to mount them on. I was surprised they and not much lighter than the stockers but they allow for more air I believe. The stock Dunlop RF and not bad on the track if that is what you have. The turn is excellent with the stiff side walls. Brakes stock are not bad unless you go to sticky tires and how agressive you are. If you stand on them you will melt them. I went Carbotech X10's front and 8's rear. Loud ont he street but livable. X12 would be track only in my opinion. With stickies I can get them hot enough to start to melt and transfer material. But this is 9/10 to 10/10ths standing on them trying for fast lap of the day. You are in FL and you will be even hotter then my running in the PNW. Hard to get the tire temps hot enough witht he light car. On a hot day pushing it to the max I can get them maybe to Mid-Range temps which is great. On cool days I am always on the cool side of ideal temps. Best thing is to measure you temps in 3 areas after each run. Inside, Outside and center. Try and get the temperatures even across the range to be optimal. I start out at around 25lbs cold on my race tires. Street tires (Rain set up is around 27). They will heat up. I see many MINI always way over inflated after a couple of laps. They claim greasy bad tires etc. I drop 5 lbs and they have a new car.

 

If you're switching tires at the track, you might as well switch the front pads too. Use Bobcats for the street, The XP10's for the track (that's really not a street pad), and your rotors will thank you. XP8's on the rears are fine year round.

You don't have to rebed every time, the Bobcat's are a similar but less aggressive compound to the XP10's.

 

For track you want light and strong wheels on a budget with grippy but durable tires.

If you go with 17x7" wheel and Extreme Summer tires you can mount the tires at home, (no TPMS needed for track duty unless you want them), and drive to the event on the street and back again without having to switch out the wheels each time.

If you go to tirerack.com upgrade garage for your JCW MINI you will find-


O.Z. Alleggerita HLT/HLT SE from about $359 each, 14-14.4 lbs each, various finishes.


Enkei Racing RPF1 Silver Painted
17x7 et43 $230 each 14.6 lbs


Kosei K1 TS Light Grey or Silver Painted
17x7 et42 $196 each, 15.0 lbs


Enkei Racing PF01 Silver Painted
17x7 et45, $243 each, 15.6 lbs


O.Z. Ultraleggera Silver, Black, Matte Graphite Silver finishes
17x7 et37, $280 each, 15.9-16.0 lbs


Motegi Racing MR125 Matte Grey or Black Painted
17x7.5 et42, $173 each, 16.2-16.4 lbs


Motegi Racing SP10 Black Painted
17x7 et40, 137 each, 17.0 lbs


Sparco Assetto Gara Various colors Painted
17x7 et37, $143 each 18-18.4 lbs

For tires-

BF Goodrich g-Force Rival Extreme Summer tire, 200 treadwear
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires....7GFR&tab=Specs
For all 17x7 rims, use 215/45-17 $147 each, 3 rib tread design, 21 lbs each
For Motegi MR125 17x7.5 or any 17x8 rim use 245/40-17 $173 each, 3 rib tread design, 24 lbs

If you don't care about looks the MR125 17x7.5" wheel with 245mm wide tires looks more grippy. It's tall at 24.7" so use JCW suspension is OK.

If you have done SCCA driving in the past you know that front negative camber needs to be maxed out if you want to use your track tires to their full potential. The MINI doesn't have enough front negative camber in OEM form. Front Adjustable camber plates might come in handy.

For your wheel and tire questions try Alex@tirerack.com
For camber plates try Way at Waymotorworks.com

For now the BFG Rivals are the tire to beat in Extreme Summer tires, there will be more tires in this class coming. The other alternative is Toyo R888 which can be run on the street and track without needed to do a wheel swap at the event. The R888 is noisy on the street and not good in the wet.


Toyo R888 (R compound tire), 100 treadwear
205/40-17 $199 each, fits rims 7-8" wide, 19 lbs
235/40-17 $210 each, fits rims 8-9.5" but will squeeze onto 7.5" rim OK for track use, 24 lbs., tire diameter 24.7" Ok for JCW suspension, not OK for lowered suspension
245/40-17 $231 each, for 8-9.5" rims, 24 lbs each

 

Congrats on your new toy.

1). First off all with the must do: you will need proper track pads! OEM pads will fade at a summer autoX, never mind a DE event. Choices and price points vary depending on your experience and skill. Assuming you know what which way up is, you can start with either Hawk Blue or Carbontech XP10s on all four corners:
http://www.ctbrakes.com/pads.asp

2). The tricky thing about wheels is that there are preciously few non-OEM wheels that are made in native hub-centric Mini sizes and offsets. Vast majority of choices come with either spacers or centering rings that add a level of complexity that I personally prefer to avoid. You choices in wheels are numerous (start with TireRack.com), but I went with second hand OEM 17" wheels to avoid balancing or installation complications (which spacer with which lug bolt do I reach for now?)

3). For tires, OEM 17" size has VASTLY more choices than the factory 18" size: 52 vs. 4 from TireRack.com. For dual purpose street/track tires, I'm had great experience with Bridgestone RE-11a and Michelin PSS. Neither is the fastest on dry, but both a quiet, very sticky. You can get marginally faster tires, but they will be noisier and burn up faster. Then there are the R-tires, but you won't be asking for advise here if you thought you needed them already.


Or, you can do just #1, and burn up the POS run-flop factory tires on track!

HTH,
a

 

Autocross is not enough to need pads other than OEM. I have never experienced brake fade. Track days obviously need a track pad.

I think the Enkei RPF1 wheels are a great wheel to get for track and autocross. They are 14.7 lbs and not too expensive.

 

On street tires maybe, but you want to go to a stickier tire. You'll shred the stock pads; you're going to want dedicated pads for the setup you're looking at.

 

Regardless of what tires you run do not run 245 tires that's ridiculous. That's too much tire even for 17x7.5 wheels and you'll slow yourself down more after you've had to deflate some of that air out. Do not go bigger than 225. If anything 215 is the sweetspot.

 

I run 225's...

45/15's

But he's absolutely right for a 17 inch wheel, that's too much. Wide, but less rolling diameter than stock seems to work better in these cars.

 

Just the other day I was reading an article about tire sizes and how people think a wider track is better, but actually isn't good for you. It's in one my my mags (Automobile, R&T, or Motortrend, can't find which issue it was) and it was a good read.

Anyways, 225 or 215, really shouldn't stray any wider...

 

An option for more camber, to start with, is the free camber change that you can do. There are white plastic pins on the top of your strut tower that you can pull, then loosen the 3 nuts on the top and push the top of the strut inward. This will get you -0.3 deg more camber which should give you a total of about -0.6. This helps a lot. The next option, if you are going to use the car basically as a street car with occasional track days, is the IE fixed camber plates. These will get you between -1.5 to -1.6 deg of camber (same as the new GP). The advantage of these over the adjustables is that they are made from BMW parts and will retain the car's ride quality.

Brake pad upgrade is a "must" in my book. You say you have SCCA experience, which I assume means race experience, then you know how to "brake" and with anything less than a full race pad you will over tax them. Based on my friend's experience, I would recommend the Carbotech XP12s up front. He is a very agressive driver and found the 12s to be better than the 10s.

Wheels and tires - Minihune listed a number of nice wheels of which the Enkei are really nice. The PF01 can also be had with a 38 mm offset - the MINI really likes less offset than stock. So the Enkei's 45, 43 and 38 offset options are nice. 225-45x17 R888s on wheels with a 38 mm offset is a nice setup (at least for autoX) but one word of caution is that they will rub on the outboard side of the rear wheel liners (don't know how bad yet on the track). Size for size the Toyos have quite a bit wider tread than other tires. If you go to more offest, then you will need to be careful that the tires don't rub on the shock/strut in the front where I have about 1/2" or less of clearance.

 

That's true, but it depends on HP--if you can't get the power down, a wider wheel helps tremendously. It also helps with braking. But going wide when you aren't making enough power to actually need it, yeah, it's only slowing you down.

I'm making just shy 0f 250 at the wheel, and 7 inch width isn't enough.

For what it's worth, the Miata guys run the best lap times on 9 inch width rims.

 

Thanks to everyone for all of the great advice. Lots of wheel and tire choices to think about. The road noise of the Dunlop RF's is bothersome to say the least, so I may initially do brake pads and fluid and use the Dunlops up on the track, then get new street tires then wheels and track tires. The Carbontech website says that if you have been using a different brake pad you should resurface the rotors before using their pads. Have you found that to be the case and is there any issue switching back and forth between street and track pads? Also, what are you using for a high temp brake fluid?

 

Yes, they need to be resurfaced before you put the Carbotechs on, which you can do with a quick sanding. Otherwise you're likely to get uneven pad deposits and some serious judder.

Once you have clean rotors, if you use Carbotech Bobcats for the street, and XP's for the track, there are absolutely no issues switching back and forth--they are similar compounds, the track pads are just a more aggressive variation of the same theme, so no need to resurface between pad switches.

 

For Wheels I like the NM Engineering wheels as they will clear almost any brake setup you have or get in the future, and are only 15lbs each.

Then for tires if your and old racer you can handle race tires, but I'd still start out with some high performance summer tires like Yokohama ADO48, or BFG Sport KDW's.

 

I have interchanged the Carbos with the stock MINI pads and Yellow Stuff pads without any rotor touchup and no problems. May not have been the best of ideas from what I have read, but I didn't have a choice at least once at the track when I overtaxed the Yellow stuff pads and had to switch to the better track pad.

As for brake fluid, a lot of people go with the ATE amber or blue. If you are aggressive on the brakes, I would go with the Motul 600.

BTW - Way Motors should be able to get you the pads and fluid.

 

You probably won't boil the ATE, but I've had problems with it. If you can spare the extra money, the Motul IMHO is the way to go, I've never had a problem with it; it's worry free.

Many have switched from ATE to Motul. Few, if any, go from Motul to ATE.

 

The gentlemen asked about track use, and the OEM pads will absolutely fade after the first lap.
All competitive autoXers find the need for dedicated autoX pads sooner or later.... draw your own conclusions.

Enkei Performance F1's are certainly light and reassonably priced @TireRack.com. However, the kit comes with centering rings ;-(.

If Way's NM Engineering's RSe05 are truly hub-centric with 56.1mm MINI bore, ****my vote is for Way's RSe05's bore, **** !

a

 

There are a lot of wrong wheel weights in this thread. When a manufacturer claims wheels weights for a certain wheel that's always from the smaller wheel they make.

The 15 inch rpf1 weighs that much.

 

Congrats.

from what i have read, it seems like everyone is in the same boat as i am.
X10 front X08 back for brake pads
OZ Ultreleggiera are a good rim 17x7 is what i run
Toyo R-888 or Yokahama Advan A048 tires

if you run these tires, you may want another set for daily driving...

i would suggest a different suspension and a locking diff as well.

i experienced a ton of body roll and a new adjustable suspension got rid of that...

a locking diff will keep the wheels from slipping around corners, had a terrible time last year with this problem. i recommend a Quaife locker.

 

If you are new to the track then tires up to 215 or 225mm wide are OK.

In autocross we often see Miatas running 15x9" wheels with 275/35-15 race tires and they go just fine with less power than my MCS. I'd add 275mm wide tires if I could get 15x9" rims to fit without cutting my fenders.

see
http://forum.miata.net/vb/archive/in.../t-406778.html

 

What about 949 UL's? A number of guys run 15x9's up front, 15x8's in back without cutting, and with spacers.

I'm waiting to get my 225/45/15's on them, hopefully get them back from the shop in a day or two. 8mm spacer on the rear (but I hear a 5 will work), and 15mm up front. We'll see if there's any rubbing on the rears--hopefully not, and on the springs up front with -2.4 camber.

 

i am currently pushing my limits with using 215/45 R17s. i am about a quarter of an inch from the KW CS suspension with a 2.6" camber up front. i may get away with a 7.5" with a different ET offset.

also, if you go down under a 17" rim, the Brembo Caliper on the JCW does not fit and 16" rim for the normal S, and since you have a JCW, 15s wont fit.

 

I have weighed mine (7x17") and I get about 15#s which is what Tire Rack and others quote them as being at.

I have 225-45x17s on 7x17" rims with a 38mm offset and if they were any tire than the R888s they would fit perfectly. As it is they rub a little in the rear wheel well but plenty of clearance up front. I think the R888s would fit fine with a 40 or 42 mm offset wheel. I also found out that the wheel well on the R53 is a little different from the R56 MINI and the R888s (225mm) fits fine in the R53.

 

Why do you feel wheels without centering rings are better?

The Enkei wheels I have and have had all came with metal rings which were never a problem. I know some wheels come with plastic rings which can melt when over heated on the track which would not be good. Or are there other problems with them?