Hello , i drive a Mini cooper s r53 and have been for almost a year and a half , around 8 months ago i added a 15% pulley , k&n typhoon air intake and removed the catalyst from my stock exhaust and i was really contemplating the idea of adding around 20-30 horsepower to my car and wanted to ask for your advice , i was thinking a water injector to the intercooler or maybe a map for the ecu or a new exhaust , i don't want anything way too expensive or something where i have to do major changes to my car , anyways sorry if this is a repost and thanks !

 

The cooling for the r53 is fine and really doesn't need to be upgraded until you've done some more extensive engine work.

Looking at an exhaust may be a good place to start, obviously, more airflow = a good thing. Flash tunes are okay, but they will never be as good as getting one from RMW or Mynes--unfortunately, not all of us can make it to Colorado for a good tune :/

If you have already done the pulley and CAI, you are going to be hard-pressed to add another 30 whp without spending a fair amount of money. An exhaust may give you 10ish whp. After that, plugs, wires, cam, headers, injectors, tune all come into play. Plugs and wires are cheap but don't add much HP-wise, and the rest will run you 500+ each (new and not including install).

You could also take a look at suspension/brake upgrades, it all depends on what you want out of your car. A lot of people start with the rear sway bar, but there are a lot of options. Hope this helps!

 

Good advice skyler07

There are many good aftermarket exhausts for the MCS, but I went with Borla only because Alta had discontinued theirs at the time I purchased. Anyway, Alta has brought back their quality exhaust system at a reasonable price: http://bit.ly/bElnLI

While you're shopping, I also would recommend the ignition upgrade. Colder plugs are best with your boosted S/C, and more spark will gain the best possible combustion and HP yield. http://bit.ly/dlZirB

From here, you'll have to dig into your engine and replace the head, cam and exhaust header for the ~250HP mark. If you have more money to burn , you can twin-charge your MINI, but you'll need to rebuild the motor to handle the power which can exceed 300WHP, but that's getting pretty exotic because you'll have to upgrade many supporting parts too!

 

Thanks for the reply guys i see what you mean , i have been doing some research and i figured i decided i wanted an ecu remap / map / chip or whatever you call it but i don't live in the states and found these forums very helpful , was considering a company similar to superchips or powersystem but wanted to know which company is the best for some of you , i don't know so much about tuning just the basics , thanks !

 

Hey,
Exhaust is always a good option. I have been recommend supercharger pulleys when I posed a similar question.

 

I just want to say, in the way of ignition...

Respected tuners have said that our stock ignition is fine up to 300 hp, and that the only real reason to buy an A/M ignition system is if your current setup is old and worn out.

Colder plugs are a definite thing when running a smaller pulley. But that's really the only part of the ignition system that needs to be changed.

On topic, a Cam/tune combo is probably the next best gain per dollar.