For the short version, you can just read my sig.

This is more of a story with picts of my weekend adventure.

Over the past several weeks I had been speaking with Jan over the phone about what to do with my budget/goals for my MINI. We can debate my choices later, but here are the Modification (engine/power related only) my car had as of Friday 10/9

17% pully with JCW belt: CAI: 1-ball exhaust

We decided that bigger injectors and colder plugs would make a big difference, and of course a tune. We agreed that it would be great to do a cam, but my budget (now that I'm engaged, and the wedding is coming from our pockets) didn't call for it at this time.

Saturday at O'dark AM I woke up, and hopped in my MINI. maps.google said it would take 6.5 hours to get to MiniCorsa in N. Hollywood, so I left at 2AM for my 8:30AM appt.

Mini in my carport

noting the time

Gassed up

and was on my way

Sun came up as I was driving through the hills north of L.A


Arrived in N. Hollywood at 7:15AM, Danny, was not there yet, so I grabbed some breakfast. drove over to the shop again at 8:25AM and he was there. ready to work.

the shop

MINI on the lift

on the lift again


Brisk plugs: JCW 380cc injectors: smaller belt installed, compression test done and passed (155 across the board) it was time to leave MINICORSA and meet up with Jan for the tune

Leaving shop


Arrive at Dyno shop

Car on Dyno

another shot of car on Dyno (I also have a video of a run, if people want, I'll post it)


baseline dyno was 174hp/162 lbft

Highest run of the day was 203hp and 182 lbft that was on the second to last run. The graph is from the last run. What's 1-2 hp/lbft difference between friends?


After that, I drove down just north of San Diego to meet up with family that was in town. Crashed in their hotel room and drove the 7hrs back the next morning.

All in all is was a VERY fun weekend, A GIANT thank you to Danny of MINICORSA and Jan of RevolutionMiniWorks. Both were great to work with, a lot of fun, and really know these cars backwards and forwards. I can not say enough good things about my experience with either of these guys.

 

I like happy endings.

Congrats on your new car!

 

Nice to hear and good jump in numbers!

 

The ride back had to be awesome with all the extra HP!!!

 

The man knows his craft!!

 

yeah the ride back was awesome. 7hrs, you'd think would be a drag, especially after all the driving the day before. it was a blast, I could not get tired of putting my foot down and watching the speedometer climb :-) also probably should have taken longer than the 7hrs it did take, but we won't get into that...

Drive to work today was awesome, I can not wait to take the backroads home tomorrow after work (it was backed up today, so I doubled back to the hwy)

so many smiles here..

 

6.5 hours...from Bay Area?
Nice 29hp and 20lbtq added Brisk plugs, JCW injectors and RMW tune.
Congrats!

 

well it's northbay, and having never driven to that shop, I trusted maps.google's estimate, I'll know for next time. I could have slept another hour or so.

 

Love the write up with pic's .

Nice gains across the board.

LB

 

Thanks, I was pleased. and again, just so happy with both guys and thankful they'd meet me off hours.

next up suspension :-) but I need to start my research on that

 

From the OP, all the hardware was installed at MINICORSA, so that the baseline (174hp/162 lbft) included the Brisk plugs and JCW injectors. So the tune alone got to 203hp and 182 lbft.

 

Oh yeah separate locations, base run with hardware, my bad
Well double Thumbs-Up

 

yup, drove down to LA with pully CAI and exhaust, then had Danny do plugs and injectors. after that was the baseline and the tune. those gains are just pre and post tune. Jan is awesome!!!

 

Very respectable gains. Gained 29 hp and 20 lb ft on the dyno, but from a daily driving standpoint and butt dyno, how much difference do you feel?

It looks like you also raised your rev limiter to 7100 or 7200? Did you stop gaining power past 7000, or just lay off the throttle once you reached a certain RPM? I say that because I notice that the slope at the top of the graph almost flattens out. I thought our engines usually kept making more power until 7500 rpm (if tuned properly) even with a stock head.

Words cannot describe how anxious I am to get a RMW tune...

 

I'm not sure, as I wasn't the one in the car pushing the throttle, but it could be why this last run was 2 hp shy of the second to last. Jan would know more about it.

Driving, it's night and day, so much more tq throughout. Mostly so far it's been hwy driving, passing in 6th is butter. getting on the hwy isn't so bad either

It just feels like an entirely new experience, doing the mods felt good, but now she just keeps on pulling. You'll notice I used to have a drop off just after 4k, now it just keeps up.

 

OT: What spoiler does Danny have on the blue MINI?

 

I think it's the MINI challenge wing shown here in white.



I totally stole that picture from THIS THREAD But I'm pretty sure he has that wing in black.

 

I was under the impression that wing was for the R56 only?

 

that looks like the M7 wing? Maybe thats what's on the R53

 

Just gave him a call, it's a total 1-off.

 

Roughly 1-week in, thought I'd share an update.

So I was asked on here and other places the real difference, a few things.

It behaves a lot better (no more stumbling etc)

It's super smooth through the entire RPM range, as you can see, I used to drop off hard after 4krpm. it's probably why I barely ever took her past 5k, but now, it's just smooth as sex all the way to the top.

boost hits lower therefore power comes on faster.

gas mileage is up (even with my foot in it)

:-)

 

We just finished a two day RMW Tune Party here in Austin, TX. 12 tunes and 12 happy people. We had a mix of 1st Gen and 2nd Gen S cars. All cars had nice peak perf gains, of course not all exactly the same but just as important as that is the driveability improvements for all cars. No stumble, etc. or otherwise bad manners that many experience. Much more smooth hp/tq improvements across the entire rpm range makes your car much easier to live with.

 

Well, I like to get to the Valley on the 5 by 7:00AM to beat the traffic to onto 170. Otherwise, Sylmar to NOHO will take over an hour and a half, if you drive after 8:00 AM.