I think 90+% of the folks that do a pulley have a trouble free upgrade...
Here in the Northeast US, we can still get pump 93, and sometimes 94, so most folks have been using 17% for a few years (many upgraded from 15%)...the higher octane does help due to the hotter intake temps (a byproduct of running a sc faster at more boost...air gets hot when compressed, cools when expands, basic science)...but that having been said, folks have run data logging on gen1 cars using that crappy CA 91 (OR ISIT 90?) Octane fuel, and found the timing just on the verge of getting pulled back by the computer....but this is not ping...just the motor doing its thing. In this case, the more octane, the more advanced the timing can be, so the more power you can make.
When a car pings with adquate octane, something else is going on.
maybe a timing chain jumped a notch...and his timing is advanced? A bad sensor? Like wmw has said,or rather emoted to, you just have to figure it out, and it sometimes takes parts...some can be tested, but some just get tossed and replaced.

 

So Zippy, do you think adding a larger/more efficient intercooler will help in any way? Especially if you're running a 17%...possibly?

 

Doing a pulley is a known good mod. heck I've done over 400 of them and we don't have customers with problems. I would never hesitate on doing a 15% pulley. If you were to find your ign system weak after doing a pulley take it as a blessing as you find it before it fails and leaves you stranded. If your car or supercharger is going to break, it will break with or without the pulley on it.

 

Might be an ideal thing to do...look at the GP...THE BEST IC AROUND IMO..
Not needed,but it is about ensuring you have or keep the hp under adverse conditions...like a hot day....much has been written about ic desgin, but for the vast majority of folks, the oem style+desgin is best...low restrection, fast recovery from heat soak, and good fit. One is on my wish list!! But in all honesty, it is not needed, but if you get the modding bug, and want some GP bling.......

 

I am not an expert so no, I can not know for sure if it is pinging, which is why I scheduled shop time to get an AFR pulled and see what the timing is doing. Will also try to get a compression test done and also a fuel pressure test.

The car when at full throttle, make a 'ping/tic' noise between 3500-4500 rpms. I listen for it by concentrating on the supercharger whine.

if I do a full throttle pull starting at 3500, it sounds like...whrrrrrrrrrrr-tic-rrrrrrrr-tic-tic-rrrrrrr. Sometimes it wont do it at all, but I can usually recreate the problem and it will tic 1-4 times in that range. It does not seem to do this at all from 4500+rpms to redline. No CEL is coming on during the event. There is not a noticable power loss during the tics and if there is it is small enough to not feel with a butt dyno.

 

NEW UPDATE:
replaced the coil/wires and checked gap-- noise is still there

finally took the car to reputable local MINI shop. First had the mechanic drive the car alone to see if he could re-create the sound. He came back and said he didn't hear anything that sounded like pinging and that MINIs are just noisy but he thinks he MIGHT have heard something when he listened with the windows down. He scoped my pulleys and checked my tensioner/belt and SC said everything was running tip top. He pulled my plugs and said they looked like they had a slightly lean mix look to them. We went out and did 5-6 full throttle pulls with a wideband sniffer and the car was pulling 11.2-11.5 AFR to redline. He said stock AFR is in the 10.0 range and 15% pulleys usually take that up to about 10.5 but R53s are usually tuned to 11.5-11.7 for max power. So the verdict is that the car is running slightly lean-er than it should with just a pulley but it isn't at a dangerous level.

A bad FPR, bad/clogged injector or a vacuum leak seem to be the next contenders.. I got my hands on a 2nd set of injectors and sent them off to DeatchWerks to be cleaned and flow tested so I can be 100% sure its not an injector and I will also be replacing the FPR next.

 

Better to be safer than sorry but it sounds like you might have mistaken a ping for something else. Good to know that you are getting it sorted.

 

That AFR range is the sweet spot and how mine is tuned. If it was at the 10 range, I would adjust it back to where it is.

 

I did a 15% pulley on my 04 MCS and upgraded the ECU with the Shark injector. No pinging whatsoever. The only drawback is degraded mileage and every two years I have to convert it back to stock to do smog here in CA.

But the car runs the way the car should have run from the factory. The car also has a K&N CAI and an Invidia catback exhaust.

More air (boost) means more fuel is required. And knowing what pinging does to a motor I wasn't going to chance that the stock ecu could supply the correct fuel.

 

just did smog with my 17% pulley... dont worry, they wont care.

 

You are right, they don't care (or maybe even notice) the smaller pulley. But everytime they give me crap about the CAI, even tho it has the CARB sticker on it.

I have to convert back to stock ecu program a couple of weeks before the smog, as their OBD2 computers read whatever software version is being run. It's no big deal tho. 20 minutes at the most to do this.

I had a sticker on the OBD2 port cover that said something about different software, and they about crapped their pants over this. Even tho I was running stock software, and their computer indicated that I was running stock software, they were very concerned about the sticker.

 

One thing the op might have been feeling ....
I did notice my car was not as smooth after modding...till i got a tune...made it smoother than oem. Any chance you are just feeling the feel of a "tuner" car....modded, but not at 100% since it is not tuned? Getting a custom tune does make one worry less about ping/etc, sinc the computer is running software maps optimized for the installed mods...untuned, it seems to be good enough, but suboptimal.


To the CA owner...how are you gonna switch back to a stock pulley?! Removing it deforms it....and it is hot pressed....not sure if anybody makes stock replacements. That having been said, i don't think you will have an issue if you don't do anything stupid to draw attention to the car....
the tune should be fine...plugging in, they cannot tell that the maps have been adjusted.
maybe the car could still fail based on the sniffer test due to overly rich/lean from a polution standpoint, but in the 10 years folks have had modded gen1 mini's on the road, very few folks have had more than minor issues ....heck rmw is BASED is CA.

 

Zippy, I don't know whether you are talking to me or not, but I believe the OBD2 computer reads the name of the software running on the ECU. One time I forgot to convert back to stock, and they noticed this difference as soon as they plugged in. If the stock map is modified, they probably can't tell. The Sharkinjector holds the performance map. During the install, the stock map is downloaded to the Sharkinjector, then the new map is uploaded. Easy to convert back and forth. There is a trick to it, but I've figured that one out.

 

The shark has been found to be almost 100% a timing change on the gen1 mini..basicly makes up gor a bit of detuning in us software to help save the motor if you get/use a tank of lower than spec octane.
Custom tuneing on a mini (canned is different) is done by downloading YOUR cars software/maps, adjusting them, then reuploading them....they are encrypted and the maps cannot be "seen or read". The software revision, name, etc stays the same!! The only change is the master computer reading that lists the total number if times the computer has been updated.
One poster seemed to indivate he would remove the pulley and go back to tge oem one..

 

I run a custom tune, they dont know anything... really youre giving "them" too much credit. as long as you pass visual and the sniffer, you're golden.

just dont put a sticker advertising to them, the facility doing the smog test is LIABLE if they see something like that and say nothing, so dont give them anything to be concerned about. oh, and the CAI, if you run a closed top box that should take care of any concerns... not seen, not a problem.

 

Added NOS octane booster. No more pinging and pulls hard and smooth.

 

incorrect. if the car is running stoichiometric at full load, yes this would be true. However the R53 is tuned to run extremely rich at full load, rich enough that a 15% pulley should be completely safe with no tuning. In fact, under normal circumstances the car should still run slightly rich even with the 15%.



New update for the OP: the car is definitely pinging. I finally got my hands on some 100 octane and the engine is silent and smooth and full throttle. Considering getting putting it back to stock at this point, I am out of ideas. I am not interested in driving around a pinging car.

 

Try some new or cleaned injectors before you give up. I had bad injectors once on my Subaru and it was a major pain to diagnose but so obvious once it was fixed. Deatchwerks do some good stuff.
Another possibility would be to do a borescope to have a look for piston defects or carbon build up that would cause hot spots.

 

I have!

so far the car has gotten:
coil
plugs
wires
fuel filter
fuel injectors (cleaned and flow tested at DestschWerks)
fuel pressure regulator

:(

 

well, that would about cover it then. You are only left with too much timing somehow or incorrect fuel map which would be coming from the ECU, but you have a stock map so that seems unlikely. Strange.

Maybe you could swapping ECU's with someone local or a tuning shop to rule that out?

 

Since it seems you have done most everything easy, and a few $$ things, it sounds like it just has too much timeing....a guess since 100 octane fuel does fix it....
Any chance the car was either cammed, and the timing moved a tiny bit when it was done, or the slight possibity that the timing chain jumped a tooth??
Hate to send somebody deeper in to a motor....but short of a hotspot in the head from a defect, it sounds like you have rules out most everything! Maybe wmw or one of the other mini pro's will chime in, but it sounds like most stuff has been checked....
On the good side, this moror has been looked at pretty good, and it sounds healthy but for the ping....hopefully it gets fixed...does suck, and having it be this persistent is kinda rare...

 

Meth injection. solved.
https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...-and-ping.html

 

From what the mechanic said, doesn't sound like you have _very_ much spark knock. I've heard a few Mini's give some spark knock in the 3-4k range. The way this ECU works it could just be your luck... what I mean by this is that the factory knock sensor gain (output sensitivity) is a generic calibration to the ECU by the calibration data (tune). Also the ECU is programmed with a knock zone in which it learns the "typical" amount of knock retard required for certain zones deemed dangerous. This is not very well calibrated in some of the ECU's I've seen. Also there are settings in the OS layer that allow for temp & TPS transient knock retard, but the factory isn't using all of them, so really BMW is relying on the "basic" knock function to retard timing instead of really dialing it in across the full range of temp, TPS, and fueling.

I have not seen any tuners adjust these extra maps... but I have on my car.

 

Would a dirty/faulty MAP sensor be the case?

 

I am pretty sure it would throw a code if that were the case.

The fact that 100oct cures it pretty much narrows it down to not being a hardware or fuel supply issue.

The car is either just an anomaly or there is a tiny possibility that it was flashed prior to me putting the pulley on and is running timing too advanced for 93oct on a 15% car pushing 16.5psi.

Either way, once I get the meth installed it should take care of all that.