So here is my situation with my car, the timeline of events as they occured. I hope everyone reads this word for word because it is the factual truth of how my car went from blown to built to blown in 10,000 miles.

January 2010 - Mynes Tuning tuned car

March 2010 - Stock motor with bolt-ons, melted a hole through piston #1 in 5,000 miles since tuning.

April-May 2010 - Talks begin with Mike Wong and Jayson Bowman of Mynes Tuning, Hubie Fuh of ABF Performance, ABF Motoring, MEGAmini USA. I was told “If I shipped the car to them I would have full support of ABF and Mynes throughout and after the project.”

May 2010 - Decision was made after considering all options at the time car was shipped via Magic Carpet Automotive Transport to Lake Forest, CA for work to be done by ABF and Mynes.

June 2010 - Flew out to Lake Forest, CA to pick up the car. I arrived to their shop where they were doing fluid checks before putting it on the dyno for break-in and tuning. I asked Jayson if they pumped out the old fuel out of the tank. He said “No, it will be fine” I said “Alright.”. Jayson spends the next 2 hours tuning after Hubie broke the motor in. During the tuning process I asked Jayson “Why are my numbers so low?” Jayson said “Don’t worry about the numbers, Just drive it and then you will know.” After that I drove home back to Kansas.

August 2010 - Car was acting up while in Colorado. Jayson dismissed it as the ECU having a mind of its own sometimes. First time I felt pushed aside no effort on his part was made to find out what was going on.

September 2010 -. Intially I had no clue what was going on with the car. It was erroding away cylinder #1’s spark plug grounding strap. After several attempts I got a hold of Hubie to ask him what was going on. Second time I felt pushed aside with no solution. I ended up having to troubleshoot myself and fixed it. Found out my ignition coil was dead and wasn’t replaced at rebuild

September 2010 - February 2011 - Only drove the car on the weekends (Friday Evening and Saturday) or if weather allowed (highways clear, not icy,)

March 2011 - Pre-North Carolina road trip maintenance and check-up.
First compression test
#1 - 150psi
#2 - 150psi
#3 - 110psi
#4 - 150psi
Another case of several attempts and finally got ahold of Hubie to ask him about my results. He dismissed the down in compression on #3 was ring alignment. I was hesitant but went with his explaination.

April 25-May 2 - North Carolina roadtrip did a compression test once in North Carolina.
Second compression test
#1 - 145psi
#2 - 143psi
#3 - 110psi
#4 - 150psi
The day after returning home I ran into my house over lunch to get something before heading back to work. I come outside to find my car idling on 3 cylinders. After work I did a compression test and found.
Third Compression test
#1 - 150psi
#2 - 150psi
#3 - 100psi
#4 - 125psi

Chat session with Mike Wong 7/9/11
[22:56] Michael Wong: did you get a hold of Hubie to figure out what's wrong with your car? or what might have caused it?
[22:59] Alex Comeau: The last compression test I didn't get an answer back on where we go from there.
[23:02] Alex Comeau: The results of that compression test were 150,150,100,125
[23:03] Michael Wong: o, that's not good..
[23:06] Alex Comeau: Remember when I talked to you about a misfire
[23:07] Alex Comeau: It sure wasn't electrical
[23:17] Meebo Message: Michael Wong is offline


July - August 12, 2011 - I have come up against a few hassles which have really wore me out. I will no longer be seeking anything from Hubie. I haven’t contacted Hubie since the first half of August. I myself haven’t been contacted either.

September to Present - The investigation started. I pulled the motor, started pulling it apart. I discovered I didn’t have my original block as it didn't have a sleeve in cylinder #1 as a repair to the wall damage from when it it blew back in March. I also found that I was missing all the oil squirters which I found them in the oil pan. I pulled the piston/rods, found high amounts of carbon build up, blow-by, incorrect piston to bore size, incorrect ring gaps, glazing. With what I found about the pistons really explains the 1qt per 1,000 miles when running 15w50 (Spring/Summer) and 1qt every 600-700 miles on 10w40 (Fall/Winter).


To conclude I put a lot into my car I feel sorry for those who have bought or done business with Mynes Performance/Myne’s Tuning/Bytetronik or ABF Performance. If you have been tuned by Mynes or through bytetronik you better save up for a new motor because your going to be needing one.

I encourage anyone who has had issues of any degree when dealing with Mynes or ABF Performance to come forward. All this keeping quiet is for the birds anymore. Something needs to be done. No one should be silent any longer.

STAND UP AND SPEAK

 

Sucks Alex. Glad you found a shop that is going ot take care of you now.

 

That's rough. It seems there's a horror story for every major tuner out there. Pay to play, indeed. Hope you get your MINI back on the road and running right.

 

Sad to hear but atleast you know what NOT to do this time..
Any course you can take against them??
Who is going to build your next motor??

 

checkmate,
Don't blame Bytetronik, but blame Mynes and ABF performance, the tuner and the fact that was not your original block and probably an unknown/low mileage used block thrown in to make money on not machining, labor and fake parts invoice. I'm sure they charged you an arm a leg then hoping that engine would hold for a good 50kmi so you'd be blaming your foot and that you've "got your money out of it after all the abuse" kinda talk. Seeing as Bytetronik is their product I would see a problem using it, because is this the treatment you get with there products and service? Well the 2-3 people who have popped on Sprintax with their help got the same treatment so don't feel too special.

I would like to say there is probably 2 sides of the story but some stories(like this) you just can't make up. So sorry for your misfortune.

 

pics?

The story is a sad one indeed.

 

I know of several cars around the world who have been tuned by mynes or by mynes through bytetronik or by another tuner using bytetronik so i have global picture and when those cars come forward you will see it is the tuner, and the tuners software.

 

Well I know the software is somewhat funky because of how our ECU works. Still it sucks you've wasted so much time and money having to rip into again 10kmi laters.

 

Very sorry to hear this but I can't say I'm surprised at all.

My motor cooked in a similar fashion with a Mynes/Bytronic tune.
They were very quick to try and deflect the blame onto my installation and the blower but everyone else involved points the finger at the tune.
Seems like a lot of these "tuner gurus" just woke up one day and declared themselves experts...

My current motor has a JCW tune and runs great. I will never put my trust in an after market tuner again, NEVER AGAIN. Good luck.

 

Ouch! I'm sorry for your loss. You just dont know who you can trust anymore. Hell I'm still up in the air as to who exactly is going to build my engine. I would also atleast try to get some of my money back, I know how expensive theese things can be.

Good luck with everything, I will be watching to see how it all turns out. I'm hoping that MYNES will stand behind their work, IF NOT, well it looks like they will be loosing some buisness.

 

Not taking sides at all. But I have had a tune from another tuner not mentiond and my tritec ran like crap about a month later?!

Now that I have the JCW maps my car has never ran better.

Sorry to see the issues bud.

 

I had my car completely built from the ground up by these guys and the car is running great. Hubie and Dez were both really helpful with the whole issue. Hubie tuned my car himself. I supplied all the parts to them but I'm sorry to here you are having these huge problems with your MINI. I got my MINI back after the rebuild around the time that you got your car back too... Which MINI did you have at the time? I had the grey 02' S. It was definitely there around the September time.

 

Did anybody by chance get the serial # off of your original block Checkmate?

 

Do you currently have any check engine lights or consistent misfires now? My MINI doesn't eat up that much oil either!!! Yikes! Which pistons did they have for you?

 

Bad news CM.

How do you account for the rise in the latter tests in Cyl 1/2/4 ?

What injectors were you running. At the onset seems like the engine was running too lean. Lean mixture creates too much heat and breakdown.

 

No tune can fix mechanical issues....
It sounds like the motor was doomed from the start...interesting they did not tell you about a block swap to a rebuilt one...sounds like the issues are from the bad assembly/block...communication is always an issue, as is shop racing to get a car out the door to meet expectations...
safe to assume you only posted all yhis after failing to get the situation rectified with the folks who did the work...

 

I hope they buy hookers and blow with the money they stole from you and get arrested.

 

It may of been their tune file.... Do you run an EGT gauge? I ask this because the first file they sent me was supposed to be stock with just the scaling of the injectors done. I was noticing my egt was running extremely hot cruising speed, and like 1600 hot and brought it up to them on many occasions. They didn't address it until I was on the dyno troubleshooting a boost build issue. They sent me a new file and all of a sudden my egts dropped 300 degrees. I asked Jay what he did and he mentioned he reset the throttle/requested torque maps back to stock!

If they put a file in there with those parameters changed you would cook your motor in short order by just normal driving.

 

"March 2011 - Pre-North Carolina road trip maintenance and check-up.
First compression test
#1 - 150psi
#2 - 150psi
#3 - 110psi
#4 - 150psi
Another case of several attempts and finally got ahold of Hubie to ask him about my results. He dismissed the down in compression on #3 was ring alignment. I was hesitant but went with his explaination."

Almost 30% is a big problem! I don't believe for 1 second that any ammount of driving, after that day in March, would help a ring allignment.
After you remove the head, please post some pics.
All the best & everyone have a great thanksgiving...............

 

I live in Kansas and my car was at Dynamic Autosport in Lake Forest from May 14th to June 21st.

No never thought about that when the motor popped the first time.

Currently the car is in pieces. When the car was running I was getting a P0303 and dropping to 3 cylinders.

I honestly don't know about the rise from one test to another.

I was running the 550 Bosch OE's that Mynes sells.

The motor is already in pieces.

 

Can you post a pic of #3?

 

I simply cannot resist modding my Mini, but it's stories like this that just go to show how very RIGHT the many highly educated, highly paid engineers who designed our cars got them in the first place. Start messing with things, and start messing them up. There's just no way a tuner - let alone a shade-tree hack like myself - could do it better, with weeks or months or even years of preparations, for a few hundreds or thousands of dollars, than the original designers and manufacturers could over many years with many millions of dollars, and borderline limitless resources.

That said, I plan on doing some messing around with my own ECU in the very near future, and will bear all of this in mind...

 

Piston #3

 

CM, so sorry to hear about this. I don't visably see a failure. Did you measure ring gap when it was still in the cylinder? I assume when you did your leakdown test you did a dry test, no? Did you try a wet leakdown test? This would help you diagnose whether or not it was a ring/cylinder or a valve pressure drop. But I would guess by the looks of the side of the piston, the cylinder wasn't square or round and you were getting blow by due to this and your pressure was low. It may of measured ok at one point in the stroke but at another point it was to big due to poor cylinder honing. This could be due to a machine shop doing a poor job or someone using a hand hone and not checking how square or round the cylinder is.

Post a pic of that cylinder or take the block to a machine shop and have them measure it for trueness. Chances are this is the cause of all your issues and the longer you drove it, the more out of round it got due to the rings trying to bed into the cylinder wall. The machine shop should be able to tell what the cause might be from.

If you need any help, feel free to contact me!

 

There wasn't a catastrophic failure this time. I did a wet and dry leak down, on the dry I heard air out the dipstick only on #3 the other 3 cylinders were solid.
But the running state of the motor didn't feel right ever which will always be the tune. It felt lean below 4k and then would richen up and go flat.

I have been planning on taking it to a machine shop to have the block checked out.