I've had my mini for five years now, first car, love it to death. That being said I'm looking to get a cheap power boost. I was looking at a 17% pulley and a lightened crank pulley from alta. Looking to do more upgrades in time exhaust, injectors, ect. Question is how dangerous are the boost levels gonna be for a daily driver. As in will the supercharger go bad, am I gonna run into temp problems.

'05
R53

Any help would be most appreciated.

 

Heat is your enemy, not boost, but you should be fine with that combo for a DD, just upgrade your I/C should you ever decide to track the car.
And no, there has never been "wear" issues with a 17% as far as the Supercharger itself, don't forget you're only talking about "more than normal" rpm's with the S/C at high rpm, under normal conditions it would be no different than just driving around @ 5-7 mph faster than normal.

Oh, 380 injectors would be in order if you do much upper rpm driving, that would really be the only time you're pushing the injectors, at high rpm. (6300+)

 

How healthy is the car? How many miles on it?

The general feedback you are likely to get is "go for it" -- here are some thoughts, pro and con...

Pro:

• The pulley change just turns the blower a little faster, so unless you are above 5.5 k RPM you are within the design limits of the blower. Up near redline the blower is turning faster than the designers intended of course.
• The increased quantity of air presented to the engine is within (just barely) the duty cycle of the injectors, so again unless you are running near redline you should expect a sane air/fuel mix - it should not go lean on you.
• The increased boost increases torque across the usable range of RPM, meaning that again unless you get greedy you will not need the top 10% of the rev range, nor need to drop a gear for a decent roll-on at highway speeds.

Con:

• If the engine has a fragile component - valve seal that is marginal, cylinder wear, scuffed bearing, weak injector - then the increased stress from the blower will find it and finish it off sooner than had you left well enough alone.
• If the performance tempts you to try and set speed and acceleration records (personal ones) then the increase in inherent stress added to the change in driving habits will also shorten the life of the drive train.

My personal suggestion would be to stop at the step below 17%, as my own experience with the JCW setup (a 12% pulley) left me believing that that is a significant and entertaining improvement on the base power numbers, and not likely to shorten the fun in any significant way.


Cheers,


Charlie

 

With a 17% you should be fine....boost levels are still low enough, the engine is fine internally.
lightened crank pulley....i'm not a lover of....no dampening....can be a issue, but folks have used them without issues in general.....
the 17 pulley is more anout making boost at lower rpms...to get boost sooner....
The effecicency of the sc drops off at higher rpms, making mostly heat, so total boost gain is not as dramatic as one might think.....but for a daily driver, imo, it is a good choice.

 

Yes it can be safely done.

With the mods I have it tops out at 18psi. I am not a fan of the lightened crank pulley though. Just from a driveabiltiy standpoint, the lack or inertia from the rotational mass ( spun weight ) on the crank was actually hindering torque when going on / off throttle at highway speeds say when letting off gas getting around a car and back on the throttle.....took too damn long, like it was thinking about it for a second before executing the task.

So this lack of weight was acutally counterproductive. On a short track, never getting out of 2/3rd gear, knock yourself out.....will probably work great under those circumstances, but just not for me....So after 3 months I went back to the crank pulley from an 05'/06', and when that goes I will opt for the 0% Superdamper from ATI. Way Motor Works sells them and is a time proven product which is also approved by NASCAR.

I think where some folks can get into trouble is modding an R53 with higher mileage, which on the face of it is ok as long as the PO took care of the car maintenance wise.....

I didn't start the extra modding until it had some 70K miles on the odometer. But it already had an Alta 17% SCP. And didn't mod fuel / air until about 80K miles.

Some seem to forget about the other side of air management with these cars, which is increasing the fuel flow. High heat temp cycles on a Supercharged MINI plus over air management with CAI/Filter/Intake tube, can cause lean conditons, even drop a lean code now and then. It happened to me. The periodic code ( lean on bank1 ) did not go away until larger JCW 380 injectors were installed and Inskip MINI flashed my computer with the JCW Software.

Better to keep things cool in the upper cylinder head, any lean conditions will only reduce the longevity of the engine.

If you go with a 15% pulley and CAI, you may never see a code, but if you opt for a 17% you have a better than 50/50 chance of seeing it.

I guess to answer the main question, can it be done safely ? For the most part yes, but other factors such as current condition of the engine, and how well it was maintained since new would certainly be a factor. If over 90K miles I would be thinking time for Supercharger services...( SC oil replaced/gaskets/water pump ect )

Take note. I have 177K miles on my MINI with appx 100K miles on current set up...runs like a bear. SC service was done at 80K when I added the newer version Supercharger.

 

Awesome info guys really appreciate it.

I never realized the lightened crank pulley behaved that way. I only read some stuff about it on the ALTA site, but to be honest I was curious why I hadn't seen much mention of it on this site.

Cars got about 72,000 on it and runs very well, was serviced regularly.

Once again thank you.