would like to say hi.

i'm a good friend of mike g. i bought his old 07' mini cooper s back in march, you know the silver with black viper stripes. WELL I CAN SAY IT'S A QUICK LITTLE CAR. especially compared to my old fully modded 04' cooper s.

I love the car except lately i've had some issues hopefully you guys can give me some pointers.

issues with the ecu, car would not start with crazy codes. i removed the ecu and no issues since then.

i talked with alta and told them the issues i was having, that was a month ago. they led me to unichip where they were very helpful and told me it was the harness. they told me to send it to them so i did.

a month later they call me "by the way they just now looked at it" and told me they couldn't do anything for me since it was a hard wired kit. after i told them the symptoms they told me i had to buy a new ecu. i can't believe i had to buy another ecu since the old ecu was on the car in less than a year. i thought they would stand up to their 1 year warranty claim. i guess not.

any way i hope this will resolve my month of waiting and bounced around from one guy to the next.

also the stock shocks are bad, that's what happens when you have the factory shocks compressed all the time from the H&R springs, they're making a bunch of noise in the front, and the stance has dropped a bit more. any body know of a sport shock that is out yet? i really don't care for a coilover kit since it's my daily driver and if i replace it with factory shocks i'll have this problem again later.

thanks guys and hopefully you guys can give me some ideas.
ttm6

 

have you tried jcw struts? im debating between jcw struts and aftermarket springs or hr coil overs =/

 

didn't even think about it. do you know how much drop the jcw springs are compared to the regular s?

i believe that might be the ticket.

what about koni, bilstein, do they have any sport shocks? i tried to look for some on the net, nothing.

thanks for the pointers.

 

jcw doesnt lower much, but hey its factory
theres a pic in here https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...d.php?t=150325

i still dont know what i want =/ tein's on my DD are nice tho =p

 

thanks, checked it out sounds like people are happy. what about me using my H&R springs though, do you think the smaller spring compared to the jcw spring will have the same issues down the road?

i feel this will be a better way to go for now. i'll call the dealer today and see what's the price on the shocks and hwo much lower the car sits. the H&R springs dropped the car a lot,compared to the jcw kit. i feel .5 inch difference i should be fine especially since it's such a light car.

i'll let you know what i hear from the dealer.
thanks again for the advice.

 

What sort of sounds are you hearing? I think i might have the same problem?

 

Just to emphasize for all the UniCrap supporters....

This is a HARDWIRED UniChip and its having issues too. So its not "just the harness" like everyone says. I know Mike loved it and I'm pretty sure he didn't have issues with it in the beginning. He was one of the first people to get it, thus why its hardwired. Looks like it has just as many issues now as the PnP version...

Sorry you can't enjoy the car man! Mike's car was awesome

Reason #29837498237 to wait for proper ECU tuning options people.

 

yeah it just started this a couple of months ago, the car hauled ***. what started was the boost would drop tremendously. i took it to the dealer and they found out the factory waste gate was bad so they replaced it.

another problem it had a bunch of crazy codes so they figured it was the ecu. after they did the work they drove it and told me the car ran fine and up to boost with no boost loss. when i went to get the car it wouldn't start. so the next day i went back to remove the ecu. before i started to break it down i cranked her up. guess what she started so i drove her home and removed the ecu. it's been over a month since then and have no issues with starting up or cel's.

i talked with alta and unichip and so far they have another ecu coming which i had to pay out of my pocket. unichip claims the ecu is what went bad, i don't know if it's because the ecu sat inside the engine bay or just bad luck. anyway i will be hardwiring it again and placing it inside the car so hopefully this will take care of it.

i'm not expecting a rocket since my m6 is my street racer at 750hp.
i just love having my mini for it's awesome gas mileage and everyday quickness.

i tell you it's a sleeper though and do miss the extra power it used to have. it's funny i raced a porsche 997 911 carrera s and beat him, funny thing is he was a friend of mine that didn't know it was me. he saw me come up to his *** with it's aggresive stance and race sripes so he kicked it. i went right by him. not too fast but pulled past him. he was like holy **** with his mouth hanging down to his knees. i said to myself holy **** you think that was fast, if i had the ecu in the car i would of spanked the hell out of you. i haven't seen him since but i'm pretty sure he'll have a story to tell.

firebolt, the noises are kind of like somethings lose, especailly when turning the wheel back and forth, don't have to be driving over bumps just driving in general. i inspected the springs to see if they moved, everything looked fine. i've been modding cars all my life and can remember i had the same issue on my old 95' e36 m3 when i had just installed srings with out struts. after a couple months maybe a year the car drove like **** and made a lot of noise. i replaced they struts with bilstein and no more noise and the car handle incredible. since then i've been through 01' e39 m5 which i also replaced with H&R front springs i had no issues. now i have my 06' e63 m6 with H&R springs with no issues.

i guess sometimes struts will hold up and sometimes they won't. the reason i haven't changed the struts in my m6 is because there are factory adjustable dampers so there's no reason to upgrade struts unless i have problems like i'm having with the mini.

by the way what do you guys thing of the koni FSD struts and shocks. i think for the price it's not bad. have you guys heard of anything good or bad?

i don't track that car but i've taken it to the dragon. i think these struts should do fine. what do you guys think!
thanks again for the help.
ttm6

 

ttm6....do you live in Scottsdale too??

If so...I'm demanding a ride in your M6!! What do you have done to it to where it has 750 hp??? That's insanity! Well....judging by your screename I'm assuming twin turbo.....I didn't even know they had any working turbo kits yet for the V10. Do share though!

Hope you get all the issues solved on the MINI though!

 

sorry live in nc. but if you're ever in town i'll give you a ride. mike moved to arizona because he new my m6 would smoke his heavy chevy, lol just kidding.
mike and i are good friends and keep in touch, that's how i found out about him selling his mini. by the way love the car and it fits my personality and has my typical signature in mods. the car fits me in every way.
as for the twin turbo you're right about not being out yet, but the reason for my screen name is i'm planning on it maybe next year.

a buddy of mine in miami is building a twinturbo as we speak, for the v10. check out his sight "asr engineering".
my mods are all bolt ons from a custom exhaust, headers, intake, pulley, pushing 504 rwhp, and then add the 150 shot of nos to that. my buddy from miami did the install.
check out this video you'll notice second gear at 40 mph roll it burns the tires up and that's with 325's in the back. no traction what's so ever in first and second. if i don't let off the throttle into third it'll burn through third as well. hope you like the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDn_qTFXx4Q

hopefullly he'll have the twin turbo done at the end of the year. he claims 1000 rwhp, fully built motor. they plan to run the car at 750rwhp so that the tranny will hold up. so far with my mods everything is running strong and holding up. the factory clutch is a twin carbon fiber clutch so no issues in clutch failures.

as for twinturbo without touching the motor and low boost, they felt it was not worth building it since their nos set up will do the same numbers. so they decided to go with lower compression pistons to up the boost. there's a lot of work involved between the intake manifold and exhaust manifold. so far they've been working on it for almost a year.

we'll see what he comes up with. very smart guy and knows his ****.
enjoy the video.

 

i live in NC! give me a ride!!!

 

i'll pm you when we go on a mountain cruise if you want to meet and go for a ride.
take care.

 

Your on carolina euros!!!!! Im UBERMINI on the boards! Welcome to NAM!

 

that's me, thanks and glad to be here.