I contacted my local performance shop here in St. Louis regarding Dinan's Boost Package. They are a Dinan distributor. I had wanted to know if I could just get their supercharger pulley without everything else in the package. According to them, and I trust this shop entirely, Dinan said that installing a supercharger without at least an ECU tune-up is dangerous because of shortages of fuel. I know a lot of people have SC Pulleys, but do you all have ECU mods for it? Let me know what you all think because I want a pulley but I'm not gonna do it now if I need to rework the fuel system too. I trust my shop, but I'm not sure about Dinan in this case. We're talking a $1500 package through Dinan, or a $110 pulley through M7, Alta, or whomever.

 

I am new to minis and modding. The SC pulley is the FIRST thing I did when bought my car. I have had my mini about 4 months and had the 15% pulley on just about that long. As you can see I have since done other mods. I LOVE the way my cars runs. I have had NOTHING done to my ECU yet, though I do plan on a tune. Just wanted to share my experience.

 

Could be true, but unlikely.
MINIs run rich to start with and if you stick with a 15% pulley it is unlikely you will max the injectors.
Many here have been running up to a 19% pulley with the stock ECU program. A reprogram is better (a custom tune is much better) but I can't remember anyone posting they burnt a piston from running lean.

 

Your fine on the factory tune. Use the search tool its very handy.

 

You are safe... just ask jan... RMW.... some companies canned tunes are worse than stock ( my timing was advanced 20 degrees+ from GIAC!)

 

DAM +20* did your MINI want to stay running after turning the key off LOL.

 

haha, yea I know... Thats why with race gas it felt so good at the top end... It might have adjusted from my earlier dealing that week with 1 gal race gas (109 octane) 6 gal of premium 91 octane... our ecu's do adjust decently... but still I doubt my own computer would advance timing that extremely...

 

Dinan's research called for added fuel. They saw two ways of doing this, injectors with a tune or a fuel pump with a tune. I have no clue why they chose the latter (perhaps because it's more expensive?), but they did. They engineer everything they make to be on the extremely safe side considering their warranty, so it stands to reason that if there was any instant in their testing where they were worried, they'd put the pump (or injectors, or any other way to increase fuel volume) in as "necessary." Or maybe it's all a marketing ploy to get more money; although that's a bit ridiculous considering the % the Mini market contributes to their total customer base. Dinan is not your bang for the buck outfit; in the BMW community, they run on reputation even though there are cheaper/faster/more powerful options out there.

mb

 

Just curious, which shop did you contact?

 

Best place to call is Revolution Mini Works

 

Dinan claims you need a whole new fuel system to add just a s/c pulley, yet MINI found the standard fuel system perfectly fine for the GP, which makes more power than Dinan claims. Fishy? Absolutely. This only cements how much of a rip-off Dinan products are.

I've made 360HP on the factory fuel pump and regulator with my single turbo project, and tested it on race courses with monitored Wideband AFR. Guess what? The factory fuel pump and rail are totally fine at that power level.

Buy a 15% pulley, new belt tensioner, and a NAPA 060535 belt. A set of colder range spark plugs are recommended, one of the new hotness is Brisk BR14YS. That package will gain you ~20wHP and lots of smiles per mile, with no worries about longevity issues. Want proof? A friend of mine has 190K miles on his Cooper S, and almost all of those miles were with a 15% s/c pulley.

Cheers,
Ryan

 

Well said Ryan!

 

I agree... most dinan products are BS... but i actually think they did a good job with the cai

 

Thanks for that post Rye. Puts my mind at ease

 

Thanks guys. If I was @ Dinan I'd at least want to revise my program knowing the GP achieved what it did with the stock fuel system [minus injectors]. While Dinan is painfully cautious, they simply lack the resources to do full bandwidth testing like an OEM.