I have many years experience in Autocross and Ice-X, and have already had experience Autocrossing the exact model of Clubman I have just purchased (except mine is a stick, because, it has to be, or course!). I normally Autocross vintage rear-engined Porsches and VWs, but the combined age of my vintage cars is now 101 years, and the reality is that there are times neither of them will be available for an autocross. I have also retired the Porsche from winter driving, so it will be unavailable. I'm happy with the clubman's handling overall, but as with all modern cars there are some things I just want to disable completely, or at least get under my control more if possible.
A handful of hopefully very quick questions for anyone familiar with the breed:
1) Can I permanently disable the Stability control? I never want it on and I don't want to have to turn it off every time I start the car. I never want it. Not in autocross, not in ice-x, and not in daily driving.
2) Same question but for traction control. Anyway to turn it *completely* off? Any way to make that change permanent?
3) Any way to default to Sport mode every time I start the car? (TBH I have not investigate this myself and maybe it's there and I've just missed it.)
4) Any way to take control of the AWD system to force a steady-state such as 20f/80r?
In my testing the Clubman did an admirable job of remaining extremely neutral with the automated AWD variable torque adjustment thing it does, but I know myself and my driving extremely well. Anytime a modern car tries to *fight* what I am doing it screws me up. (In my autocross testing of the Clubman to date both myself and my daughter were *seconds* per lap faster with Stability Control off, for example. For me it was costing me 3 or 4 seconds a lap, and for my daughter, who has less autocross experience, it was still costing her 1 or 2 seconds.)
You can tune it but otherwise no to all of your answers about stability control.
Unless you have adaptive dampers, sport mode doesn't do anything in a mini. It just changes the throttle map to give you full throttle in the first 1/2" of throttle pedal travel.
I have not seen a center diff tune from any of the normal vendors.
I had a Clubman JCW for a while and found it needed a bunch more camber for autocross. It rolled onto the sidewalls on every turn. No spare made me nervous to autocross more than an hour from my house. If you are serious about autocross and you want to stay in stock class, there is an oem replacement hub that is stock legal and gets you to 1.5 or 2 degrees of camber.
ojannen said:
You can tune it but otherwise no to all of your answers about stability control.
Unless you have adaptive dampers, sport mode doesn't do anything in a mini. It just changes the throttle map to give you full throttle in the first 1/2" of throttle pedal travel.
I have not seen a center diff tune from any of the normal vendors.
I had a Clubman JCW for a while and found it needed a bunch more camber for autocross. It rolled onto the sidewalls on every turn. No spare made me nervous to autocross more than an hour from my house. If you are serious about autocross and you want to stay in stock class, there is an oem replacement hub that is stock legal and gets you to 1.5 or 2 degrees of camber.
OK, thanks. I had the feeling the answer would be "no" to many of those, and even with only the Stability Control off the car handled plenty good enough for me to enjoy the experience. I'm only "serious" in autocross and ice-x in that I want it to be very fun, which it is. I am quite good at it, it turns out, but I never care enough about performance to do anything wild (or expensive) with my cars. I general I prefer to run Street class.
What about just pulling the right fuses? Any chance of that doing what I want? I expect such crude methods are a thing of the distant past, but even if I don't have to turn the darn Stability Control off every time I drive that would be a real boon. It's just an annoyance I don't want or need.
The center diff is probably controlled by the wheel speed sensors. You might end up with a fwd car if you pull the ones that kill abs and stability control. You can try it it though.
Are you doing the 3 second press on the dsc button to get to the second level of traction control?
ojannen said:
Are you doing the 3 second press on the dsc button to get to the second level of traction control?
Yep, it's just really annoying to have to do it all the time. Mind you, I did realize that getting a modern car would provide all kinds of annoyances that I simply don't like and will often not be able to avoid. More importantly however, I've actually found these system to cause me serious control issues in winter driving situations. I've spent my entire driving life hooning back roads to ski resorts and back every weekend (often 100+ miles each way), mostly in rear-engined cars with zero nannies of any kind. I'm just one of those people who is super-comfortable with sliding around. During the time of life when I had to drive a lot of family cars, I had significant control issues when the nannies would cut in, especially in the winter. My normal driving repeatedly and by-design includes things that Stability Control Systems think are me losing control, and I'm not, but then the system kicks in and suddenly I am actually at risk of losing control because the car is actively fighting me. I mean, ultimately it's a minor point, as it's only a few seconds to activate the mode I want, it's just that I'll be doing it thousands and thousands and thousands of times in my life with this car unless there is some magic way to default to the mode I actually use.
Unplug one of thw wheel speed sensors and see what happens. In my M3, when the sensor went, I had no traction control or ABS.
The problem with unplugging wheel speed sensors is that it may also keep the all wheel drive from working properly, if it is a computer controlled reactive system and not computer controlled pro-active. Assuming it is the front wheel drive with a clutch on the rear diff style that most manufacturers use. I know some transverse Jeeps and most transverse Toyotas have actual center diffs.
I suppose it could also be a simple viscous coupler, but that is unlikely nowadays with how cheap electrons are.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
You are right. I bet Minis are front wheel based and not rear wheel based like BMWs. On my wife's BMW I can have it run on rwd only if I want.
Did not think how the speed sensor would affect the all wheel drive system.
dps214
SuperDork
5/2/23 11:31 p.m.
Pete. (l33t FS) said:
The problem with unplugging wheel speed sensors is that it may also keep the all wheel drive from working properly, if it is a computer controlled reactive system and not computer controlled pro-active.
Also ABS, which might take brake bias control with it as well.
ojannen said:
The center diff is probably controlled by the wheel speed sensors. You might end up with a fwd car if you pull the ones that kill abs and stability control. You can try it it though.
Are you doing the 3 second press on the dsc button to get to the second level of traction control?
There's your answer, you need to rig up something that pushes that button for 3 seconds every time the car is started. 
Maybe electrically bypassing the button?
panjandrum said:
What about just pulling the right fuses?
Typically when looking to defeat stability control one needs to look for a yaw angle sensor and unplug it.
red_stapler said:
panjandrum said:
What about just pulling the right fuses?
Typically when looking to defeat stability control one needs to look for a yaw angle sensor and unplug it.
On an E46 you can supposedly do it by unplugging the steering angle sensor.
Interesting stuff here. Other than a handful of bland daily drivers this is my first sporty car that isn't a classic (and I'm talking full-manual *everything* not even power steering or brakes). The Mini All4 system (from what I've been able to discover) starts in AWD drive mode by default, not FWD, and can send up to a 50/50 power split F/R. My spirited driving suggests this is pretty accurate. It can send more power to the fronts, up to 100%, and defaults to 100% front power at over 80mph (something like that) for the sake of fuel efficiency. I would love to diddle with that and make it much more aggressively use the rears for power; something like a static 20/80 or 30/70, but I'm certainly not willing to put any significant $ into that kind of thing. I can probably get the rear a little looser with something as simple as an upgraded rear (adjustable) swaybar or slightly stiffer springs if I absolutely have to. But it is a pretty neutral handler overall, with just a little understeer on-throttle and just a little oversteer off-throttle. At least that's my impression so far. There might be some Mini enthusiasts in my club; I'll pick their brains a little.
For the R50/52/53, an electronics guy built a gadget that plugged into the back of the switch panel between the harness connector. One of the functions it could do was to automatically go through the sequence to shut off the traction control upon start-up. I suppose it's possible something similar could be designed and built for the Countryman.
red_stapler said:
panjandrum said:
What about just pulling the right fuses?
Typically when looking to defeat stability control one needs to look for a yaw angle sensor and unplug it.
Yaw sensor is typically built in to the airbag module, but I know the R53 had a discrete yaw sensor component, which I thought was a little weird.
In reply to panjandrum :
That car will never be rwd biased. Unfortunately, no matter what you do, it just will not happen.
In reply to Slippery :
Technically it happens in tight corners if the rear diff is fully locked up, since the rear tires have to describe a smaller corner radius than the front tires.
All that aside, a rear bias in a front heavy car would suck. "Man, pickup trucks handle well and can really put power down" said nobody ever 
