One of the MINI’s biggest challenges is the heat produced by the Eaton M45 supercharger. This is a relatively inefficient supercharger design, that has the double whammy of both heating up air as a natural byproduct of compressing it, and creating additional heat of friction by literally beating the air as it spins.
It’s the job of the intercooler to remove as much of this heat as possible before the air enters the intake manifold, is mixed with fuel, and enters the engine. Unfortunately, space and engineering limitations resulted in a fairly small intercooler perched right on top of the supercharger and intake manifold… where it’s subjected to radiant heat every time the car stops moving and air stops flowing in through the grille and hood scoop. This results in “heat soak” - where the intercooler is effectively saturated with heat and unable to cool the supercharged air flowing through it. Much testing of top-mount MINI intercoolers has been done by others and, while aftermarket ICs are available, the stock IC is a pretty good compromise of cooling efficiency and rapid recovery from heat soak once you start moving again.
OK… I’m gonna start catching up on posts… really, I am…
First… what I just finished… well, almost finished… still gotta wetsand and polish after the paint cures a bit more…
Dale at Voltage Products is making a fantastic big bonnet scoop. I like the lines of it much better than the other big scoops on the market - M7 and Uber. It really flows into the lines of the bonnet, no hard transitions like with the other scoops.
Here it is in “raw” primed form.
I have lots of spray equipment and airbrushes in my sculpture studio - so I decided to use this as an excuse to work on my “professional” auto paint skillz…
While I had made a few mods to the look of the engine bay (wires, intake hose, scoop decal, painted a few accents, air diverter plate, etc.), I really wanted to do something to make it different, and make it POP.
Here’s the result…
It’s been an incredibly busy summer…. and I’ve gotten WAAAAAY behind in posting about it. I’ll catch up over the next few days… have a lot to talk about:
- Blimey’s Tour of Terror II
- RMW Tune
- Schroth Harnesses
- Carbotech AX-6 pads
- GT Tuning Strut Brace
- Engine Bay makeover
- Body-color roll hoops
- Nitto Neo Gen tires
- RMW Cam
- RMW Header
Not that you really care about this list… but without it, I’d forget what I need to post about. Stay tuned… more to come….
I have two problems. Most of you haven’t noticed them. But I need to fess up.
1) I like to go FAST.
2) I like to mod my car.
There. I said it. I feel so much better now that you all know my secret shame.
Even though I told my Motoring Advisor, on the day that I picked up my car, that I planned to leave it “pretty much stock”… well, I had no idea what the next couple of years behind the wheel of my MINI were going to do to me… I NEEEEEED more power. NEEEEEEED it. Bad. Always. This is a story of how I got some.
Jan Brueggemann Rocks. There, I said it. Call me a fanboi. I don’t care.
Thanks to Joe for arranging a tuning party at Speedwerks in Thomasville (right around the corner from Grassroots Garage). Several folks from THMMC, along with others from between DC and Charleston and Atlanta and Tennessee, showed up over a Friday and Saturday for their hour or so of magic on the dyno.
Jan uses DimSport tuning software and hardware to modify the MINI’s ECU maps, to optimize performance. This has an impact even on stock cars, but is especially impactful on cars that have aftermarket mods like pulleys, heads, headers, exhausts, intakes, camshafts, injectors……. you get the idea. The dyno applies a load to the front hubs of the car, and measures the torque and RPM generated, as well as analyzing exhaust gasses for air/fuel ratios.
Here’s Blimey on the SpeedWerks Dynapack chassis dyno:
Note that the front wheels are removed, and the car is hooked up to the Dynapack load units on each side. The big fans are used to provide radiator, engine and intercooler airflow to similar driving conditions on the street. In reality, you can’t move nearly as much air with a decent sized fan as you really get when driving, but every little bit helps. You also spray the intercooler with water between runs to reverse heat soak and create as much consistency across runs as possible.
Here’s Jan at work on his computer, tuning the ECU maps before uploading them to the car.
The automatic transmission is VERY challenging to dyno and tune. You can’t “bog” the auto… it will automatically downshift, even when in “manual” mode. Likewise, if you floor the accelerator past the “kickdown point”, it will downshift automatically. The dyno pull has to be done in third gear, so you have to set the dyno to start reading at about 3000 RPM, then very carefully modulate the throttle to get the RPMs just below 3000 in 2nd so you can upshift to 3rd, then floor it to (but not past) the kickdown point and hold until the car builds to max RPM and the run is over. It takes a LOT of trial and error to get this technique down.
Even when you’re done, the auto is harder for Jan to tune. The torque converter prevents clean transmission of power from the engine to the axles. So there’s a weird dip in the middle of the torque curve until the torque converter “locks” then torque jumps up suddenly.
Even with all these challenges, big gains are possible with work. Here’s my melted dyno sheet (the ink got wet on the way home… and Jan didn’t save the files so I couldn’t have a reprint done)…
You can’t assume much from the left end of the charts… but on the right end, note the blue line is higher than the red line… those are significant torque gains… that you can immediately feel on the street. Jan tuned the car a tad rich to allow for my cam install later, or gains would have been even greater.
… and now I have a pair!
Yesterday I tore down Blimey and installed a pair of Koni FSD struts and Ireland Engineering fixed camber plates. I’ve been eyeing the Koni’s for a while, hoping to get a deal. A used set recently came up for sale on NAM and I grabbed them. I figured, while I had the front struts out, it was the right time to add camber plates if I was ever going to do it. So I ordered a new pair of Ireland Engineering plates as well. All this stuff sat in my garage for a couple of weeks before I could get time to install them.
Had a great run last weekend with the Tar Heel MINIs, plus a few others from around the country who came to join us. Many folks met Thursday night in Waynesboro, VA at the northern end of the Blue Ridge Parkway and started out on Friday morning. Work intruded on fun for me, so I couldn’t get away until mid afternoon on Friday, and met up with everyone for dinner Friday night in Sparta, NC. Had a great day of driving on Saturday, spend Saturday night in Asheville, and Sunday morning drove the rest of the way to the southern end of the Parkway in Cherokee, NC. Sunday afternoon, I led a small group on the “long way” home, up to Waynesville, NC and down the insanely awesome NC215 on what we dubbed Blimey’s Tour of Terror. Gawd, I love that road… climbs 3000 vertical feet to the Blue Ridge Parkway at Devil’s Courthouse, then drops 3000 feet on the other side. 35 miles of twisty bliss.
In specifying and modifying my MINI, I’ve paid a lot of attention to the man/machine interfaces:
- Spec’ed leather seats - because I like the way they feel.
- Ditched the rubber mats for coco mats - partially because of the feel of the rubber mats
- Replaced my OEM tach/speedo domes with Optium to reduce glare.
- Wrapped my steering wheel with a wheelskin for improved fattness and feel.
- Replaced the OEM Armrest with the Euro Armrest to match my elbow position.
- Modified my fire extinguisher mount to be exactly the right extension and height.
- Carefully positioned my GPS, phone, radar detector controls, G-Timer, ScanGauge, driving light switch, etc. for optimal usage.
- Replaced the OEM shift knob and e-brake handles with skull knob and aluminum UJ handles - for both feel and appearance.
- Wrapped the Chrono Pack face with black satin vinyl to reduce glare and improve eye-appeal of the gauge cluster.
- Added the Euro Parcel Shelf for easy-to-reach storage.
- Added the MCAW window circuit to make it easier and quicker to control my windows.
But there was still one major interface I hadn’t done anything about - the foot/pedal interface…
Given that I have two kids, the MINI cabrio is much more practical for my family than a two-seater would be… but that doesn’t mean it’s totally practical. While we can - and have - packed everything we needed for an overnighter in to the boot, if we’re going to be gone for more than one night, this just isn’t feasible, given how much my family loves their “stuff”… See? not much room in there…
For last year’s trip to MOTD, I installed a MiniDoMore hitch and used a Cargo Buddy platform and weatherproof cargo bag. This is a great setup for a couple of nights, or for longer trips when we can pack light. But this year we were going to MOTD for five days and four nights, and I wanted to take LOTS of MINI-related stuff, and car wash / detailing supplies, and beer, and…. you get the point. So I needed a more voluminous option….