Hey Guys,
My 03 with Mini Mania pulley, plugs, AFE intake, (Mud)shark Injector, Blue Spark Plug Wires and Mini Madness exhaust is the slowest thing since that turtle from Looney Tunes...

1) Has anyone experienced belt slip, which would lead to boost loss? How to tell? Is there a good place to tap in a boost gauge tester?
I wonder if this could be the culprit?

2) What to do next? I figure I would go with the Mini Madness head, Cam and the Ultrik Header with new tune and see how it feels. I've driven other Minis with some work, and they felt significantly quicker. Mine feels like someone has stuffed a gym sock in my intake pipe... Even my fiancee is sick of it. She's got the GTI with APR software, and could not be happier..
OK that's a turbo car, but I expect this lil guy to be quicker...

Perhaps after the head and headers, since intercoolers are all over the place from what I read, just installing an Aquamist kit with a mix of methanol and distilled water. I hear 20% meth to 80% water works best without fooling the mix, and cooling efficiently...

I know this car will never be a drag racer, and it won't devour AMGs but I expect some kick for a car that only weighs 2600lbs or what not.
Besides, I drive the Z06 around if I want to roast Gallardos and AMGs... Muahahahahaaaa

Would love any CONSTRUCTIVE and well FOUNDED input if possible!

Cheers,

Greg

 

Hey Greg,
I'm pretty new to the whole Mini thing, but have been reading/searching a lot since owning ours.

What % underdrive pulley was installed?

Do you know what kind of power you were making before the upgrades vs. afterwards?

I've done a few things to my own Mini, and had it tuned... and am really happy, but looking at the dyno charts I felt a twinge of wondering what the numbers were BEFORE new parts were added.

Do you have an auto or manual?

Also... what's the Shark Injector do? Is that a 5th injector?

 

Hey Joe,
Thanks for the response. I have not dynoed the Mini. I guess the local dyno guys are used to seeing 600hp this and 500hp that, so I never bothered to do a either before or after...
My car is a manual. The Shark Injector is Jim Comforti's software which is sold as the Stage 1 kit from Mini Mania. It essentially allows the car to adapt to the 15% pulley, and changes the rev limiter etc... The car feels dead slow, and has no torque off the line, and power drops beyond 5000rpms.

Just wondering if anyone has experienced this. I mean the car isn't so slow that I think something catastrophic is wrong with it. Just too slow for a supercharged car with at this weight!

Thanks,

G

 

have you checked the plugs?

 

preaching to the wise i am sure, but wouldn't some data be nice?

1. GTech RR works (I have one - poor man's data collection...)
2. dyno works too (much more precise if operated well, tried that too)
3. drag strip ONLY if driver is consistant (I'm not, so I haven't)

the setup you describe should be making good power, and good power (ballpark mind you) should mean
1. GTech HP rating of 160-170 (wheel HP)
2. Dynojet also in the 160-170 WHP again
3. high 14s at damned near 100 mph if wheelspin can be controlled (got LSD?)

but you know that if you're that serious you probably want to get past the "they felt significantly quicker" and into some real numbers...yes?

i'm running a JCW and a Quaife on an '04 that weights 2,550 with me in it, and that's the ballpark I am in. the car does NOT feel slow at all, in fact it feels darned quick - so i can see how you might be switching to troubleshooting mode, but...

get numbers before going further... a dyno is cheaper than overcoming a setup issue with further parts investment i reckon...

just two bits sir.

cheers,

charlie

 

Charlie,
This is good sound advice. And worth following up on. The JCW car I drove had headers and light stuff, like mine, and it was WAY faster hands down.. Fast enough for me to be content and to immunize myself from the pesky mod bug.

 

If you don't have a boost gauge yet, you are out of your mind.

Its a necessary diagnostic tool on a car like this and will tell quite a bit about whats going on in your engine. For the average person, this is just about the only gauge you will NEED. I would still have an oil pressure, water and oil temps and a wideband O2.

 

Timberwolf...did you just get those parts installed and can't tell the difference or were you expecting a bigger gain,etc.?

Also what year jcw are you comparing yours to?

Like others mentioned already, try to diagnose the car to make sure it's running properly (like dyno ) before you throw more parts at it.

 

More data are obviously called for. Just one item: location? I drive at 5000ft - 6000ft and my car is pretty unimpressive, but it dyno'd in Dallas at 205whp and always feels a whole lot more fun at lower elevations. Of course, if you are comparing your car to a JCW at the same location, then this point is moot.

 

Are you talking about this package?

http://www.mini-madness.com/index.as...PROD&ProdID=12

I don't see the pulley included with it. Did you buy all the parts separately?

 

I was gonna say...Why waste any more money when something must obviously be wrong...

Like someone mentioned, check your plugs, install a boost guage (depending on pulley size, you should be seeing 15-16 lbs.), bypass valve could be bad as well , slipping belt (NAPA 535 or equivalent size for 15% pulley)...what size are you running?

Not to start a flame war, I realized you have already purchased your mods, but I thought these piggy back ecu's were junk...well not junk, but not the greatest. Check out RMW's products before you go any further, head, cam, header, etc... there's your power.

What kind of engine is in the GTI 1.8T...2.0T? There is no reason why a MINI with RMWs head and so forth should not be able to keep up with her, if not dominate.

 

BTW, are we sure Timberwolf has well formed expectations regarding the MCS? He mentions driving a Z06 in his OP...there's a world of difference between these two cars, no matter how much RMW stuff you have jammed in.

 

Yes, I agree, but he also references his fiance's GTI. That's a little more relative to the MINI

 

whow whow whow, i didn't really read the other posts so bear with me if this has already been said. no offense to mini madness, but go with RMW products. youl see a lot of guys on the forum with parts they have that are rmw. I suggest from reading if you want a faster mini that what you have, do an rmw camshaft, rmw header, rmw head, and possibly rmw exhaust, rmw 400+cc injectors, and then definitely (this is a must) get a RMW tune.
barely any of Jan's (owner of RMW) products are listed on his site, but you can look there if you want.
www.revolutionmini.com
but if you want to go ALL out and drop a load (supposedly about $10K), you can buy an RMW stoker engine (turnes the 1.6L into a 2.0L) with a eaton TVS supercharger ( the same one found on the corvette Z06 i believe, and with some rev limiter adjustments and possibly a shot of nos, it could give the z06 a run for its money.. mb.. lol)
but even i can keep up with a gti and i only have a cold air intake and .. that it besides the oil catch can, so something is quite wrong.

 

Was the GTI chipped? The 2.0's are SICK when chipped...

The TVS is found on the ZR1 but I agree, no disrespect to the other vendors, but Jan's (RMW) products are getting much better reviews and results. If I had the cash, I'd have everything he sells (I have nothing RMW by the way). He has an Eaton M45 car (the supercharger in our S's) pushing 260+ WHP. His stroker setup and TVS supercharger kit is going to be insane Longboard's car has RMW's Rotrex kit on it, and he's 299.xx HP. They could achieve more, but he's happy with where it's at. I think at this point, you can either sell what you're running, and go with a different setup, or stick with what you've got and go RMW from here on out, but first find out what's wrong. I'm still trying to think of what could possibly be wrong with your car...and ways to diagnose it...

 

oh, stroker TVS vid ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFVUvZG207A

 

Can you check the IC rubber boots if they are secured and not leaking? It happened to mine and after fixing the car came to life.

 

How many miles on the engine? Has routine maintenance been performed on it regularly? If everything checks out fine with the engine, you may want to do a compression check. If your engine is low on compression, it won't matter what you place on top of it, it's not going to put out more power.

 

unless the compression leak is from a bad valve on the head, then the rmw head would in fact fix that compression problem. (i am talking about the right thing, right?)

 

We don't have enough info to diagnosis this over the interwebz.

 

Assuming everything mechanical is right, which it may not be(IC boots, etc.) the only mod you listed that will add any significant power is the pulley. The shark injector could be making the problem worse and not better if it's adding timing and the car doesn't like it. Check everything mechanical first(belt, compression, plugs, sensors), then evaluate you parts combination.

 

Check your mechanicals first.....especially for a slipping belt. High RPM power loss is generally a slipping belt.

I would lose the shark injector as there have been some very disturbing reports about this tune.

A friend of mine had his 04 MCS dyno'd on a dynapak with the standard mods (15% pulley, CAI, JCW OEM plugs, one-ball exhaust) and got 195 HP. He saw other first gen cars get only 175hp with the same mods. Lots of variations from car to car. After his tune he got 208 hp. The others were able to see higher gains, but still lower than his.

 

I have his problem diagnosed as follows: he alledgedly drives a Z06 and wanted to come on to our forum and talk trash about how slow our cars are. When in reality He drives a VW and got roasted by a MC with pulley. So there it is, problem solved. If I am wrong then he can post pics by all cars, but I have seen this before where the response is that "I don't have to prove anything". Now I know that I opened up a can of worms but I know someone else here had that suspicion enter into their brain.

 

I ran with a zo6 today, on the on ramp I was eating his bumper, now once we got into a straight line he began pulling on me upper speeds. Now for that STI that I rolled with, well he got a good look at the ole rear end.


Time to put a cam, head, bigger injectors on that puppy. Oh and a REAL tune.

 

BTW, the OP has left the building...this thread should die.

Notice that since Mark sold NAM to the new owner it's been effectively un-moderated? Gnatster still tries, but he can't read every thread.