...Couldn't convince my son to leave his MINI alone so he went out and bought some Alta parts, specifically the cat back muffler and the turbo inlet kit...
... very nice quality pieces they are....i suggested we strap the car down for a chassis dyno pull for a baseline before he installed the mods , and then run it again after...so, we did using a competent local race tuning/fab shop with a DynoJet 248....they tune about 4 or 5 cars a week....

..the base line pull showed right on the money....we ran 2 for confirmation and got a peak 164 whp... which would place the flywheel at about 175hp, right where the factory says it is....the torque curve followed suit, crossing at 5250 rpm...

...took about 1 1/2 hours to work through the install, and after lunch strapped it down again for another pull having no idea what to expect....the improvement was pretty much restricted to the 3000-4500 rpm range....the peak whp jumped three (3) whp and the torgue a corresponding 8 (eight) ft-lbs... the peak was also acheived about 500rpm lower than the stock results....very modest performance results , but the parts sure look good and it has a great sound...he may go the chip route, if so we'll report the results...

 

just remember (or tell your son) that mods for a turbo car need to be a SYSTEM...
More air in + More fuel in + more air out = more power.
If only one thing is bumped, then you don't any more power...

Thanks for the write-up though!

 

mmmm ... those results are less then I would have expected. What happened to the 10hp and 10ft-lbs advertised just for the cat-back?

 

good question... either way, so long as he's happy with the mods more power to him.

You say he has the "turbo inlet kit". Do you mean he has the CAI and the inlet hose, or just the inlet hose? If he doesn't have the CAI I recommend it as it looks/ sounds great and increases MPG (to offset the heavy foot that goes along with the mods )

 

Hey folks! Just a few quick points on the dyno results and meaning NO criticism or complaint to the OP (which BTW thank you for your business!)

The R56 is a difficult beast to dyno properly. On the dynojet (unless it is brand new) it doesn't LOAD the motor. So the results are different than a load type (mustang, dynapack etc.) You have to be VERY careful how you launch the car into boost, what launch RPM, gear selection etc. It takes some practice to get the results to be both consistent and accurate. I am pleased to see gains there. But I can say the butt dyno in this case is more accurate due to the testing method (in my opinion.)

Thank you again for choosing ALTA!

PS: Can you post the graphs?

 

Modern cat back and inlet systems are generally very efficient, especially at stock or near stock boost levels. Without raising the boost I don't really see how there would be much gain, and your sons dyno session appears to prove that. When he adds more boost there might be more of a delta with the intake/exhaust.

While he was on the dyno did they monitor air/fuel ratios before and after? I'd be curious to see the results!

Thanks,
T

 

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe the dynojet provides the load equivalent to a 3000# car. In the case of a MCS, actually very close. I find butt dyno to be very very inaccurate. A louder exhaust can play tricks with you... best to verify parts on a dyno, or better yet, on a track.

 

Front wheel drive cars (in general) have a 10% loss of power from flywheel to the ground. This being the case, you are probably now make 192 to 195 crank horse power. That is REALLY good for a 1.6L motor.

 

Uh oh. Let the pissing match between ALTA and Burger begin.

 

Do a 4th gear pull on a Dynojet and then on a closed road. The Dynojet pull is less than 10 seconds, whereas a closed road pull will be closer to 30 seconds. The Dynojet does not have the equivalent load of a 3000 pound car.

While I found the R56 easy to dyno, it's only because I'm very careful to datalog my sensors and only do runs where IAT and ECT are as close to identical as possible; start and end RPM are identical and DBW time/position deltas are closely monitored. I can imagine sloppy dyno pulls being rather misleading, especially if you're not monitoring anything but the dyno's TV screen.

My custom cat-equipped turbo-back exhaust yielded 11wHP and 10wLb/Ft in overboost mode, so the OP reporting 8wLb/Ft gain is very probable to me.

Cheers,
Ryan
P.S. I found the R56 MCS has an approximately 11% drivetrain loss. This is calculated with Garrett's equations, plugging in measured boost, AFR, and airflow, calculating BSFC, and plugging that in and figuring out crank HP.

 

...he's got whatever it is you show in red here....

 

...i'll get the data... i asked for a file

 

_________________________-

...we get into varied opinions here....try this one...
http://www.sdsefi.com/techdyno.htm

if i use the median value the hp comes out on the button with factory claims

 

I'm working on getting the charts files....very simply the run was initiated at 2500 in 4th gear and terminated at 6000, lasted about 10-12 seconds...the two runs before and after were consistent.....

 

That's the CAI and Turbo Inlet Hose

 

I was hoping the cat back increased HP closer to 10HP but like most manufacturers the claims seem optimistic. I am glad they developed it with a mild sound and the look is outstanding. I will hope the exhaust produces 5 HP because anything less is just cosmetic.

I placed the order through MINICORSA today so hopefully Alta will ship it immediately so I can get it installed and throw an opinion out there.

 

When I ordered the other day they were out of stock

But she thought there'd be more by Friday, so hopefully mine ships this weekend!

 

Keep in mind, almost every mod I did took the ECU a few starts to adapt to the changes. I think once the ECU adapts to the air/fuel mixture you may see more power. Just my 2 Cents

 

before I read post #2, I would just like to say, the dyno is going to be blamed, then the install of the parts or some other variable etc etc blah blah... LOL.. ok let me read on!

 

________________________________

...good point.....there is a PnP chip on order ....so we will definitely be getting more independent dyno info after it arrives....

 

Depends on color. I know we had a few Stealth in stock yesterday. But polished may be out until next week. Plus the sales team may have robbed some temporarily for the event tomorrow. At last count we have 150 cars RSVP'd! Yikes!

Call me monday for a better status report. Thanks again for the order!

 

Terry,
I would completely agree with you if we all owned NA (normally aspirated ) cars. Gains are very minimal. I have seen Honda's struggle to make 3WHP, and V8 powered BMW's barley make 5WHP. But in the land of turbos, this is just not the case.

We have done lots of testing with different R56's, even automatics, and all of them make very decent and noticeable gains with a catback exhaust. During our testing, we showed everyone our own discoveries as we prototype parts on our car.

Here is the Intake system and the gains we saw with no other tuning. We can put up the 7 runs of each we did. Both are averaged runs. This isn't the highest we got with the intake, just the average.



Then we have our catback testing we did. This was just the catback with no intake installed. The graph is pretty self explanatory.


Here is the power with the complete turbo back. Again its easy to see the gains.



With all of these tests along with the Automatic test we did, we see about the same gains from car to car. To say the stock exhaust is designed perfect is just not the case. First off, i have never seen a turbo car that doesnt benifit from a 3" exhaust. The ONLY downside to making it bigger than stock (on a turbo car) is noise and cost. I don't see how at stock levels it couldn't help. We even saw gains from the FMIC on stock ECU tune. There is no way you are going to say that the stock FMIC is very efficient at or near stock levels.


Turbo inlet hose dynograph showing the gains from this.


And finally FMIC testing with no ECU tuning. All of this shows how bolt on parts make more power at stock boost levels and stock ECU programming.





I fully agree that a dyno is a great way to prove or disprove parts. BUt the Minis can be a little finicky on the dyno if not done correct. That may have had something to do with the results. Who knows though. The time the car runs on the dyno vs. the number of runs done before and after really help determine what is going on.

You keep asking for AFR's, its getting a little strange as though this will allow you to build your piggy back ECU with out having a car there to test it with. We have never seen any of our bolt on parts cause a change in AFR to where an ECU tune was required for it to work properly. We have tons of AFR graphs to back this up, but its not relevant to what most people need to see especially surrounding bolt on parts.

Yes, monitoring all those things is the best way to make the runs consistent. Normally we just use a settle time of 30 seconds or so, to get the coolant temps back to normal.

 

Hi Jeff,

I know Alta has done a lot of great work with the MINI and R56 in particular, so no offense to you or your development team was intended.

But, I come at modifications from a different angle. For example, our BMW 335i twin turbo (currently the 'worlds quickest' 335i), is still running the stock catback system, stock intercooler, and stock secondary cats. The factory parts are that good. Even the stock 335i airbox and paper filter hold up well up to 360-370rwhp (100rwhp more than stock).

Looking at some of the R56 components, my gut feeling is they also look pretty solid. I'll of course do my own dyno and track testing to determine whether I'm off base, but frankly I've been pretty underwhelmed with the R56 dynos posted so far. Very few are independent, and most exclude critical parameters like boost and air/fuel. I think being in the business you'll agree it's pretty difficult to analyze a dyno run without these parameters. Plus I can't figure out why people don't throw a GPS based performance box on the car to time 40-110mph times before and after, to see if dyno results translate in to real world performance.

On the intercooler, data logging showed a 40 degree delta. Not great, not bad. Just average. I'm not in the intercooler business so I have no dogs in this fight. If an aftermarket cooler shows significant temperature drops and less of a pressure drop, I'm all for it. But I'm a bit skeptical.

As far as our car, it finally showed up! Unfortunatly with 200 miles on the clock its back at the dealer to fix a misfire condition.


T

 

all....i have the graphs.....a couple of bitmap files of 1 meg each....anybody tell me how to upload them?

 

You can email them to me and I will resize them for you, terenceburger@gmail.com. Or you can try to open them in paint and save them as .JPG files.