Haha good one Simon

I fought the urge to cut my sticks up for years, only to throw them out clearing the shed for a new project. One of them even had the strings wrapped around it...

Anyway Rocky well done mate - a great outcome! A bit more tweaking and you're there

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Cheers,
Rod.
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'63 Morris 850 (Old Secondhand CAR)

Well after a day and a bit fiddling around, I reckon I've got things as good as I'm going to get it, bearing in mind I'm only using string and a ruler to measure with and fractions of a mm make a difference. Things changed a bit after I adjusted the ride height so I started the measurements all over again.

Overall, I've ended up with an overall front toe out of 0.31 degrees (roughly 1.5mm) and on the rear, an overall toe out of 0.02 degrees (a bit over 0.1mm). I may have a bit too much toe out on the front as some info I have says 1.6mm overall while it's been mentioned here that it should be closer to 1mm. An easy fix though.

On the rear, I've read that the toe needs to be considered for each side, not a combined overall toe. After I fitted the modified passenger side bracket I ended up with virtually no toe at all (in or out) and after taking out the driver side 3mm shim, I ended up with a fair whack of toe in. So I made up some shims for the driver side to reduce the amount of toe in with my intention being to leave the passenger side with my already made modified bracket and adjust the driver side so it had virtually no toe. Not ideal I know, but for my use of Minnie, I reckon it would be ok and way better than the overall 7mm of toe out I started off with.

After mucking around I've now got toe out of 0.14 degrees (0.6 or so mm) on the passenger side and on the drivers side a toe in of 0.12 degrees (0.5mm or so). Hopefully the rear tyres will not continue to scrub, although once they start they seems to continue to wear.

I pretty happy with these results and it will be interesting to see how Minnie handles this arvo when I take her for a spin.

Thanks everyone for your tips and ideas on how to fix my problem. I really appreciate the help.

Cheers Rocky

Update after taking Minnie out on the road.

I gave it a good run of about 45 miles yesterday and it's certainly a different car to drive. As I'd never driven a mini before, I just assumed that how it used to drive was how every mini drove. Steering was very direct and while it was fun to drive around bends etc, you did need to be on the ball. That has since been described to me to be classic over steer and as others have called it - lively

It now seems more predicable in the corners if that makes sense.

When I let go of the steering wheel, it drifts a tad to the left but that could well be the camber on the roads as on single lane roads with bugger all camber, it stays pretty much straight. The steering wheel hangs a whisker to the right but not enough to annoy me.

I'll leave as is for a while and see how the tyres wear.

Cheers Rocky

Yep.. thats what rear toe does.. toe out makes them want to turn, toe in makes them resist turning

If you pretend that a car only uses the left side wheels on a right-hand corner (IE where the weight has transferred to), then with toe in at the back, the wheels are like this

Front = /
Rear = /

So you need to steer more to make the difference in the angle of the front wheel more than the back

But with toe out at the back, the wheels are like this

Front = /
Rear = \

It takes much less steering input to get the car to turn, basically even when the front wheels are pointing straight, if there is any weight transfer to either side, the rear will steer - good for turning, bad for stability

Cars with 4 wheel steering are fun to drive, late 80's Honda Preludes (the boxy ones) steered the rear wheels the opposite direction to the front, making turns really tight - so much fun to go around roundabouts - really sticky!

I forget which cars (R33 GTR? Mazda MX6? probably lots) had 4WS that was dynamic, at low speed the wheels turned the opposite direction to the fronts to make the car turn quickly, but the same direction as the front at speed, to make them more stable.

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did I tell you that I won a trophy?

Sounds like you have it covered , well done. Just another word of caution surrounding rear brackets . Have a close look for cracking near the upright bolt area - small hairline cracks can cause flex and inner scrubbing when 'pushed hard" .

Thanks for the tip FNQ. I did have a good look at the brackets when I stripped them back to bare metal and painted them and no cracks that I could see.