Wheel Lock Removal and Anti-Roll Bar Jun 15, 2009
With the Hard Dog Fabrication cage installed, our MINI looked to all the world like a ready-to-go race car. However, there were several key changes that still needed to be made before we could pass a NASA tech inspection and hit the track in Performance Touring.
Before a car can pass tech at a NASA racing event, it has to meet the rules set forth by the Club Codes and Regulations. We're addressing each of these safety and legality items on our MINI, making upgrades along the way. First up was removing the wheel lock, installing a quick-release hub, and putting in a new Ireland Engineering anti-roll bar.
First among these (in no particular order) was the removal of the steering wheel lock. When a street car's key is removed from the ignition, the steering wheel can only be turned a tiny bit before a lock mechanism engages and prevents further steering input. For safety reasons, race cars are not allowed to have the steering wheel lock in place. Removing the lock on our MINI Cooper S would require a bit of trial and error, since we'd never dealt with a unit quite like this one before. We found the lock location on the third try--our exploratory drilling is your benefit, as thanks to our prodding you won't have to guess.
We first removed the steering wheel to optimize our access to the ignition column. As the first photo shows, the locking lever is housed in a square section that neighbors the cylindrical ignition column. The photo is taken from the bottom of the assembly, but the interesting bits were on the top. Once we discovered its location, we used a rather menacing combination of a narrow step drill bit, an angle attachment and an 18-volt cordless drill to make short work of the little spring-steel roll pins that were holding the cover plate in place over the hidden lever. Photo three shows the panel, now free from its roll pin attachments and ready to be removed. The spring arm that's poking out is attached to the locking lever.
With the plate out of the way, we got a look at the hardened steel lever (it's black) in photo four. The lever pivots on a larger steel pin that's made out of the same adamantium alloy that coats Wolverine's skeleton. It is appropriately marked "IMPOSSIBLE TO DRILL" in photo four. We knew that removal of the pin was going to be the key to this operation, so we broke out our trusty Dremel and outfitted it with a new fiberglass cutting disc to attack the surrounding area.
At first we hoped to cut halfway and wiggle the pin out from the side (photo five), but the pin was lodged too deep into the assembly for that to work. So we opted to pick a new line and remove all the metal surrounding the pin from the top (photo six). With the pin fully exposed, a pair of Vise-Grips and a few firm tugs set the adamantium pin free. The black lever slid out from its casing easily once the pin was removed, and with it came the car's ability to lock its own steering wheel (photo seven).
After vacuuming up all the metal dust, we decided that while the wheel was off we'd go ahead and install a quick-release hub. Since our MINI Cooper S already had an aftermarket Sparco wheel on a simple extender, installing the quick-release mount was a simple matter of attaching 12 hex-key bolts--six to the pre-installed adapter plates and six for the wheel-to-hub interface.
We did hit a minor snag along the way, however, as the quick-release hub had a trio of dome-headed bolts that were preventing the wheel from mounting flush. We marked the point of interference with a silver Sharpie and drilled the back of the wheel with a half-inch bit to make room for the bolt heads. With the interfering metal removed from the wheel, everything mounted together snugly.
While we had the car in the garage, we decided to jack up the rear end and swap out the stock 17mm anti-roll bar with a 22mm Ireland Engineering piece. The Ireland Engineering bar retails for $189; it features sliding Heim-jointed endlinks to allow for fine adjustment of the anti-roll bar's effective torsion.
Swapping the anti-roll is a bit daunting when you look at all the stuff that's in the way, but it's not as bad as it seems at first. The entire rear subframe assembly has to be unbolted from the unibody, the fuel tank straps must come loose, and the lower shock absorber mounting bolts need to come free so the lower control arms can be fully extended. There are a few big bolts involved, but once the space is opened up, the anti-roll bars can slide in and out with relative ease.
The Ireland Engineering bar came with polyurethane bushings and included bushing grease, so we lubricated the bushings and bolted everything back together. To make sure that our bar was symmetrical, we used a ruler and a Sharpie to mark off the bar ends in centimeters. We then guesstimated a starting position with the forward edge of the end link at 8 centimeters in. We'll fiddle with the setting as necessary once we start shaking down the car.
A View to a Kill (Switch) Jun 22, 2009
Every sanctioning body that we can think of requires the presence of a master disconnect switch (often called a kill switch) on any race car competing under their rule set. The kill switch has a simple function: It turns off the car. While this might seem like a redundant feature in a car that still has its factory keyed ignition, the kill switch has one more important function: It completely disconnects the battery from its various target systems as well.
With the hood open, we decided to take a short detour before tackling the kill switch; our car's hood pin posts were simply gross. They were welded into place well enough, but for whatever reason they never got a coat of paint, so the bare metal had lots of ugly surface rust. A wire wheel on a Dremel made short work of the rust. Then we masked off the area and blasted it with a couple coats of leftover Rust-Oleum from our cage painting.
Our parts list for the kill switch job was pretty short. The main component was a QuickCar Master Disconnect Switch, which we bought for $34 at Daytona's Action Performance Speed and Custom. This switch is designed for use in race cars, and has four posts on the back, a pair of big posts for the large battery cables, and a pair of smaller posts for the ignition. We also went through some zip ties, a little bit of solder, and approximately 20 inches of 12-gauge wire.
The first step in wiring up a kill switch was to figure out exactly where the various battery connection cables were routed. In our 2005 MINI Cooper S, this turned out to be a multistep process, as the rear-mounted battery has two large positive cables: one for the starter and the other for the underhood fuse block. The fuse block cable is routed along the driver's side doorsill in the interior of the car. The starter cable follows a similar path, but once it leaves the battery it follows the sill on the outside of the chassis.
Our MINI came to us with a simple disconnect switch already installed inline with the grounding cable from the battery. However, since it wouldn't turn off the car once it was running--the alternator provides power when the engine is spinning, so the battery isn't necessary--it wasn't the right kind of switch for the job. Also, because it was mounted inside a latched hatch, neither the driver nor any corner workers could get to the switch in a moment of need. It was totally useless, so we removed it.
We planned to mount our proper four-pole kill switch in the circular hole where the leftmost dashboard vent was situated, and we needed both of the positive cables to meet up at the same kill switch. We decided to re-route the outside cable along the same path as the interior cable; this ended up giving us a couple feet of extra cable, too. Disconnecting the exterior cable was a simple matter of clipping a bunch of wire ties and undoing some plastic screws to gain access to the left-front fender area behind the plastic shield. In the back, we had to temporarily remove a few heat shields near the battery well and exhaust cans.
With the fatter of the two cables free of its position, we rerouted it on the inside of the car and used zip-ties to hold it in place. We snuck the engine bay side of the cable through an available grommet in the firewall and reconnected it to the jump-start post that ultimately leads to the starter.
We spent some time freeing the wiring loom around the interior cable until we had enough free play for both of our cables to reach our intended kill switch location. Then, we cut both the cables and used two pairs of crimp-style battery cable lugs so we could bolt our freshly cut cables to the kill switch.
We knew that the battery was fully disconnected from the car's electrical systems at this point, so now we had to find a way to cut the ignition. We put the switch inline with our rerouted cables to confirm that the switch was indeed cutting battery power, and then broke out our digital multimeter to do some exploring in the neighborhood of the wiring harness at the back end of the ignition cylinder.
NASA racer Rich Peterson, who campaigns a 2004 MINI Cooper S in the US Touring Car Challenge series, found our query post on northamericanmotoring.com and suggested we go hunting for switched 12v power in one of the two larger-diameter red wires coming from the harness. We actually found switched power in both of the wires, so we did like any proper bomb-diffusing action hero would and simply guessed which wire to cut. We guessed right, but the worst-case scenario would have involved splicing a cut wire and snipping the other one. However, it's possible that cutting either red wire would have had the same end result.
We soldered in an extra length of wire to each end of our cut ignition wire and routed them to the smaller poles on the kill switch. With the switch in the on position, we fired the MINI right up, let it idle for about 30 seconds, and then flipped the kill switch to the off position. The MINI instantly sputtered and died, just as intended. Better still, it started again after we put the switch back to the on position and cranked the key.
To give our kill switch a functional and reasonably attractive home, we removed the dash element surrounding the wheel and performed a bit of surgery on the area around the leftmost vent. The switch is designed to mount to a hole drilled in flat steel, so we cut an approximately 4x4-inch square of 16-gauge steel and drilled the appropriate-sized hole in the center. Using a Dremel with a cut-off wheel, we careful cut several slits into the plastic structure on the back side of the vent housing so that the metal plate could slide in snugly.
Because we needed to mount a metal plate firmly to a plastic housing, we decided to break out our good friend JB Weld. We mixed a good dose of this magical binary epoxy and smeared it all around the front and back of the plate, locking it firmly into place; as the JB Weld dried, we situated the on/off plate so that it would also be Welded to the assembly. Then we masked off the surrounding areas and spray painted the whole lot black.
With our kill switch in place and functioning properly, it's time to get our personal safety gear properly bolted up.
Readying for Race Debut Jul 20, 2009
A looming magazine deadline precludes a full-fledged update, but our MINI Cooper S is getting the final necessary touches and will be making its on-track debut at the July 24 Hankook Ultimate Track Car Challenge event at Virginia International Raceway.
After that, it will run some races in the Performance Touring series. Recent additions have included an RLC Track Commander data acquisition setup, some fresh oil, a coolant flush in favor of straight water, and Red Line Oil WaterWetter. We even got the car dynoed so we can figure out which class we're going to be in. We'll post the details at the first opportunity.
Successful Debut Aug 7, 2009
To our knowledge, our MINI Cooper S had never been on a dyno, so getting a baseline run was high on our to-do list. Power and weight factor heavily into the classification for NASA's Performance Touring class, and this won't be the last time the MINI hits the rollers, but it's a good snapshot of where we're starting. We loaded the MINI onto our trailer and headed to Jet Black Motorsports just down the road in Daytona Beach, as they've got a DynoJet, which is the model required by the NASA PT rulebook.
On a particularly hot and humid Florida day, we witnessed a measurable drop in power from our first run to our second. It seems that our pressurized MINI Cooper S engine doesn't like to get toasty, and it protests by losing some power. Still, our peak of 162 horsepower and 160 lb.-ft. of torque were decent for our little 1.6-liter engine. The air/fuel line shows that the car goes super rich just before 6000 rpm, and the spike in fuel is accompanied by a drop in output. The engine wasn't overheating or showing any particularly bad behavior, so we were confident with the VIR race debut weekend looming.
We had a few housekeeping items to attend to before we could head out for a proper wheel-to-wheel race at VIR with NASA. First up, our MINI was still full of the very same fluids it arrived with. We like to start with a clean slate, so we emptied out the oil and replaced it with Mobil 1 5W30. We had to drain the coolant as well, since it was still full of slippery antifreeze. After flushing the system, we refilled it with distilled water and added some Red Line Oil WaterWetter.
While we were under the car, we noticed how chewed up one of our brake ducts was from interference with the left-front tire. Our MINI has a steering rack limiter to help avoid just this problem, but obviously this duct didn't get the memo. We reshaped the duct by hand so it sits a little flatter, and then used duct tape to restore integrity.
Our safety gear is all up to snuff, but NASA does have a rule that requires lateral head protection. Since the Recaro seat in our MINI doesn't have built-in wings, we had to install a center net. OG Racing sells a very nice Piper Motorsports net for $100, and the net installed easily onto the car's cage bars.
After an awesome time photographing the cars and meeting the competitors at the Hankook Ultimate Track Car Challenge on Friday, we unloaded the MINI Cooper S from the trailer for some fun of our own on Saturday and Sunday. We haven't finalized our power to weight on the car, so we ran in PTC to ensure that we'd be within the letter of the law. We were the only car in our class, so the classing wasn't a problem.
The MINI performed without incident on the winding track at VIR, and we had a blast driving the car. The lack of a limited-slip differential was a bit frustrating out of the Oak Tree corner, but the car exhibited great stability in the higher-speed elements and was a hoot at full throttle up the climbing esses. We ran a 2:23.543 fast lap in the Saturday race and finished ninth overall. Although the car was torquey, we didn't feel like we had a ton of thrust down the long straight. As we pondered the configuration of the car, we started wondering how much benefit we were getting out of the rear wing.
For the sake of experiment, we pulled the wing off the car on Sunday morning to see what effect it would have. The car was only slightly less planted--the only place we noticed it was on the right-hander at the top of the climbing esses--and our revs were higher everywhere. In fact, we were down to a 2:20.795 fast lap. The conditions were admittedly better across the board, but we had qualified fifth overall, so the relative improvement was there.
In the Sunday race, we had a great battle with some PTE cars, notably the Nissan Sentra SE-R of Team Speakman Racing. The ambient temps were back up a bit and we had slowed to a 2:21.928 in the race, but we still took fifth overall, and the MINI demonstrated great endurance on its BFGoodrich R1 tires. We were less convinced that removing the wing was a silver bullet, but if it goes back on, it'll be at the lowest downforce setting.
Next on the radar is a Redline Time Attack event at Carolina Motorsports Park.
A New Layer of Protection Jan 8, 2010
Karl LaFolette of TearOffGuys.com stopped by the GRM headquarters on his way back from the Rolex 24 Test Days at Daytona, and saw that our MINI Cooper S was not wearing any protective layers on its windshield. Armed with his van full of goodies, he offered to fix the problem right then and there. The small crack that was at the top of the windshield is now hidden from view, and the windshield has a clear protective layer to ward off future damage. Thanks Karl!