Rear castor is out....who makes best brackets?
Turbo Mini Forums

Alright Gents,

I had a little incident a couple of weeks ago in the mini which involved a lump of sandstone and a little bit of a slide. I was trying to dodge a lump of rock in the road and caught a second lump (luckily only sandstone) with the drivers front wheel which then led to quite a dramitic slide with the car mini very nearly ending up on its side!

Anyway the problem is that the handling is a bit awfull now, the front tracking has been knocked well out which is easy enough to sort but the rear is also out.

Its pretty easy to see that the rear drivers side wheel is running pretty much parallel whilst the rear passenger side has a fair amount of toe in. Im running minispares fixed rear brackets with 1.5 degree of additionional -ve camber.

I remember when i had the alignment checked after i fitted them a few years ago and they both ran 0.75 degree of toe in.

What do we reckon could have caused this and is it worth getting a set of fully adjustable rear brackets?

Also what is the optimum castor angle?

Cheers
Andy

There is no castor angle on the rear. I guess you mean camber. 1,5 degrees is a bit much on the street I guess..

KAD Brackets are supposed to be the best at the moment

im going to get kad ones, ive got huddersfield ones on at the moment and there shite. there camber only not toe and there set at max and ive got 0 deg camber, and slight out, and at first i thought there were fitted wrongly but there not.

Hi Vegard, they only add 1.5 degree of negative to what was already there, it used to run positive camber as standard so they wont be making the full 1.5 of negative.

Minispares offer a bracket which allows full adjustment of camber and also the amount of toe in/out is adjustable, will check out the KAD ones though now.

Edited by Andy500 on 21st Jun, 2009.

Just seen the KAD ones and they look pretty good but are £65 more expensive than the Minispares ones, are they worth it? I like the sound of indestructible though!

he mini sport ones are a similar design to the Kad ones, not as nicly made though.

KAD ones are most substancial but more tricky to correctly adjust than the Minispares one which need a bit hacksawing off for some reason!

On 5th Sep, 2011 Vegard said:
I stand corrected. You should know

Very carfully inspect and measure everything. You won'y have just 'knocked' the front toe out, you'll have bent something. You need to find what you'vr bent. Adjusting the toe at the front will just mask the problem.

Same for the rear, but it's less critical, and new brackets might be ok. It's very likely you could have bent both subframes.

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph

From my source at Minispares, the KAD ones are well worth it.

Right, the KAD brackets it will be then. Cheers gents.

Will i ve spent a couple of hours inspecting everything and cant find anything that is showing signs of stress, bending or even movement. I think the rear may have been pulled out by the tool fromn the recovery company who strapped it on to the flatbed when the HG blew last year. Its hard to believe that a slide would pull it out of alignment would it?

I cant find anything out of alignment at the front and it does feel like just the tracking is out. Does anybody know a decent place in the Northwest where i can get the alignment sorted propoerly? and things checked over.

Just to make doubley sure im gonna have another look at the front setup tonight. What do we think is most likely to bend? Tie rods?, steereng rack?

both?

Don't go slow !!! Go Turbo :))))))

I've bent steering arms and tibars in less of an inpact than it sound's like you had.

Fastest 998 mini in the world? 13.05 1/4 mile 106mph