In this installment of the MotoringFun Suspension Project, I will cover the final improvements I made to Scooter to take an already well-handling car and turn it into what can only be described as an adult go-kart. To recap, in part one of the project, I added lighter wheels and grippier (is that even a word?) tires and brakes. In part two, I added the ALTA rear sway bar and SPC adjustable control arms to reduce understeer and prepare the car for part three ñ BC Racingís fully adjustable coilovers/camber plates, Powergridís adjustable endlinks and M7 Tuningís Understrut System.

I donít know about you, but I had never heard of BC Racing before. So when I was contacted by them to see if I would like to test out a set of their coilovers, I did some homework. To my surprise, BC Racing has been producing coilover kits for various makes since 1999 and from what I have read, their customers are very pleased. The MINI is a new market for them and is why they wanted some feedback on their systems from someone who uses their MINI as a daily driver, with the occasional track weekend.

Realizing that suspension tuning is not my forte (remember ñ mechanically inclined I am not), I sought the expertise of a few people I trust who have way more experience and knowledge than I do when it comes to MINI suspensions. We all took some time to examine the coilovers and came up with what we thought would be a nice setup for daily driving and occasional track use.

The coilovers come with either 8K springs front and rear or 8K fronts and 6K rears. I decided to go with the 8K/6K combination since I was going to use this in my daily driver and figured the softer rear would help soften up the ride. There are 30 adjustable damper settings on each coilover and I decided to go with 15 in the rears and the fronts to see how the middle settings would work, and fine-tune from there. The camber plates in the front were set at -2.2 degrees of camber to help provide more surface area contact with the pavement under spirited cornering. To help bring the center of gravity down a bit on the car, I decided to adjust the height on each coilover to lower the car about an inch.

Since I was lowering the car a bit, I was told adjustable endlinks were in order to remove the pre-load from the front and rear sway bars. The Powergrids were the endlinks that kept coming up each time I discussed this with various suspension tuners so thanks to Pete from Minspeed, Powergrids is what I chose.

Installation was pretty straight forward. I will try to post up a how-to install guide for the coilovers when I have a chance. The four-wheel alignment took about an hour since we were adjusting height, camber and toe at all corners of the car. When all was said and done, I went out for a test drive and I was completely blown away. I was expecting a pretty harsh ride and was amazed at how liveable the middle settings felt. Taking a nearby 360 degree off-ramp in a spirited manner really opened my eyes to just how stable the car had become. The car turned in so quickly and felt like no matter how much throttle I threw at it, it just stayed in line and rocketed through the turn.

As for normal motoring, driving on the interstate at about 70mph, I did hit a bridge joint which popped the front end up a bit and caused the front tires to lose contact with the road for a second. Thankfully, this is an adjustable system and so I dialed the front damper settings softer by 5 clicks to a setting of 10 which took care of this problem and made the ride even better. While I am talking about the adjustability in the system, let me say that while the front camber and damper settings are easy to adjust using the easily accessible adjustment knobs/bolts, the rears are a different story. Unlike other cars, the MINI does not provide access to the rear shocks from inside the rear quarter panels. There is sheet metal blocking this access and if you need to adjust the rear damper settings, it does involve unbolting the unit from the car. Luckily in my case (and I would suspect in most cases), the rear setting of 15 is perfect and I have no need to adjust them. I know there was a post on NAM that showed some sheet metal cutting in an installation of the BC Racing coilovers, but I can assure you, no cutting is required.

So now that I have improved, yet again, the handling of this great little car, what could be left to do? The only issue I still had with the handling of the car was that there was some slight body roll evident in hard cornering situations. While it was not HUGE, I felt it could be improved and would help the whole geometry of the car if we could dial it out as much as possible. Enter the M7 Tuning Understrut System.

I have to admit, I was a bit skeptical about what exactly the M7 USS would be able to do. For those who donít know, the USS is basically three brackets that bolt to the underside of the car at various places along the frame to reinforce it and keep things straight. Installation is fairly simple if you have the proper tools and know-how (ie. I did not install this myself). Once it was bolted on my car, I took it for a test drive and, while during normal driving I did not notice any difference, taking a hard corner gave me a sense that all was right with Scooter now. Body roll was almost non-existent. Of course the true test would come at the track.

As you may know, a few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of going to Sebring for a weekend with the local Porsche and BMW Owners Club. I got the opportunity to put Scooterís new suspension upgrades to the test and test them I did. On the first session, my instructor immediately noticed the improvements and commented on how much better the car was handling compared to the last time he was in the car at Homestead. The car just turned in so nicely and remained FLAT! I hopped into my instructorís 2006 JCW with the JCW suspension and immediately felt the difference. The amount of body roll in the JCW suspension is quite noticeable. Needless to say, the suspension package that Scooter was sporting was at a totally different level. You can see for yourself just how well the car handled in this video I shot during one of my sessions at Sebring.

So what do these three components cost? You probably will be surprised to know that the BC Racing coilovers that include camber plates sell for only $1099. Compare that to $1800 for other similar pacakges and you can see that the price point here canít be beat. The Powergrid endlinks will run you $300 for fronts and rears. Both of these items you can find over at Minspeed.net. The M7 Tuning Understrut System costs $349 and can usually be found even cheaper if you do some online searching.

Overall, I am completely amazed at how Scooter has been transformed from a good-handling MINI to an AMAZING handling go kart that can really impress on the track (notice how flat Scooter is in the above picture coming through turn 17 at Sebring at 80+ mph), yet still provide ear-to-ear grins on my daily commute. I want to personally thank ALTA MINI Performance, BC Racing North America, M7 Tuning, Minspeed by MyMini, and SPC Performance for their help and support throughout this project. Without them, it would not have been possible. I encourage any MINI owner looking to improve the handling of their car to seriously take the time to do their research and open dialogues with each of these vendors. They really have a wealth of knowledge and do a lot to make the MINI community what it is today.