The idea of getting a trailer has been growing on me. I can really pamper Desire and he would soon thinks he is a natural born track animal.

I would be able to spend the night at the distant tracks in comfort, and have some decent tools for track side pitstop crew of three (I, myself, and me) service. My biggest challenge is where to park/store the bloody thing. I can make room for an open AL trailer. I would love an enclosed one but it may be a bit much. Enclosed trailer also would weight considerable more and I would be taxing the 18' long tall and heavy German built Sprinter motorhome.

Preliminarily these seems to be the ticket. I need to think thru the ramp angles and security of the tiedowns. Of most important is tongue weight, static and dynamic.





I also don't want to having to buy it more than once, should I later regret that I should have gone with an enclosed one. A lot to think about including the potential need for registering for a plate.

I have been traveling very light to the track but what I bring is growing by each event Latest is a $8 Costco tote box


this is one nice AL open trailer but the owner upgraded to an enclosed one; must be those steep and slippery aluminium ramps

 

Another brass hammer award for this one.

I have been regretting since. On MiniTorque forum there are a few brave souls that has successfully in refilling the stock mount with 2 part polyurethane. It is essentially what all these aftermarket mounts are like, and in my view, can be better because of the strong SS body.

Here is one person's soon to begin attempt.

image credit Astroboy (who has one of the best threads there)

 

^

Just looked up some facts. I can tow up to 5000 lbs per spec. So that cuts pretty close for the Porsche or Mini that are roughly just under 3000 lbs. That leaves about 1800 lb for the trailer. Enclosed trailer is likely too heavy for technicality.

tall, short, and heavy Sprinter T1N motorhome; it does not have the tandem rear axle

 

When I say Desire may get into its (ambiguous gender ) head thinking its a natural born track animal this is my idea of said track animals.

mini hogs racing

 

Internet has to be the best thing since sliced bread - or even better than men's discovery of fire for cooking. I came across this video of Mini hog's brain - so to speak. Not much there but amazing the jobs that it does.


got to go!

 

OK. I broke down and bought the Dataviewer from Bytetronik. I am still unable to register the software after the installation onto my Win 7 desktop, which I was told only affect the ability to play back.

Ignoring the registering problem I played with the program with a captured CSV file from the track day. Here is a screen shot in the middle is somewhere accelerating out from a turn and onto the straight. The pink curve is speed which peaked out at 107.5 MPH. The green curve is throttle plate position that max out at about 82 degrees (no Sprintbooster of sort in my Mini so it does not quite get to 90.0001 degrees ). The blue curve is calculated load which has many Plateaus - what do you expect when you pedal to the metal? The yellow curve is the Innovate MTX-L WB lambda sensor. And the other blue curve hugging the x-axis down in the mud is the upstream narrow band O2 sensor. Quite interesting.

To make sense of just the WB A/F mixture you have to ignore the overtly lean part of the yellow curve as when you slam shut the throttle right after wide throttle angle even the WB sensor throws up its hands.




This is just a very cursory shallow dive into the recorded data by the Bytetronik Miniport.

 

Here is one lap at PIR. I can identify each turns of the track based on the speed change sequence. Starting from the left of the graph is the front straight which peaked at the braking zone before turn 1 at the chicane where the speed drop to ~40 MPH. After that are a succession of small peaks and valleys that are the turns up to the back straight. The long rapid rise to the tallest peak is the back straight which always give a higher top speed than the front straight. It is then followed by two valleys and one small peak at turns 10, 11, and 12. The last long rapid rise to the slightly lower peak is the front straight up to the braking zone before the chicane at turn 1 and the fun cycle repeats.

one lap of PIR all squeezed into one screen






As I have 16" 45 AR tyres the DME see slightly higher speed than actual.

 

I have only been doing some shallow dives into the data logs captured by the ByteTronik full assess MiniPort. As with huge mountain of numbers how do you do data-mining to get some usefullness out is the question of the day.

I have always thought it is not possible for injector duty cycle to come close, let alone exceed 100%. Yet my Mini managed to do just that, though not for long. Like all things on the internet, never just blindly believe what you read.

There is one as high as 118%. How is it possible, scratching my head? My thinking is why not. It depends on what the designer of the ECU coding criteria of the start and end limits of the injector turn on. If you search the web, you will see fancy graphs of a pulse width modulation showing you when the injector on time reaches 100% duty cycle, there is no more room for it to grow further as it runs into the adjacent pulse. It is not the case when you have more than 1 cylinder, and that fact it is 4 stroke (no 4 cycle political correctness BS please ) which a full cycle spans 720 degrees.

4-cycle, really? Buy, use a few days, trash, landfill



An interesting observation is the highest duty cycles that are >100% briefly tends to occur in 3rd gear at WOT.

I thought it is just some interesting fruit for thought. I know I can be all wrong as I don't know what the injector duty cycle mean in the context of the Mini DME.

Edit: I tried googling "can injector duty cycle exceeds 100%?" can the results are quite interesting. Need more digging with a lot of speed reading between the lines. As always, the top hits are the most worthless.

 

I ignore the top hits from google, as I do most of the time. Just a bit of selective reading and to me this is the most useful answer, not to read too much into the formula.

"Posts: 7845
Joined: Sun Jan 29, 2006 1:45 am
Location: Adelaide, Australia
Contact: Contact Matt
Re: Very large duty cycle?! 130+
Postby Matt » Thu Dec 19, 2013 11:10 am

Duty is calculated as injection time * RPM / 1200 / 100 %

Here your injection time works out as 24.37ms x RPM at 6525 = 132.51%

That is quite a large injection time which is why the duty cycle works out this high. However AFRs are the main thing to look at here and those seem to be fine.

You can measure the physical injection duty by using an automotive multimeter with duty cycle measurement for an exact representation"

I truly believe that 95% of answers on forums are rubbish, like the facts that you get with telephone game. The most useless answers are those one with a PWM GIF.

 

I thought this is a good video on brakes, despite it is a bit infomercial. What missing in the spider chart for me is rotor wear that is an important attribute for me for consumables budgeting. I had no idea Stoptech and Centric are related.

 

Good video.

I know you aren’t pitching StopTech, but I see a lot of StopTech brakes on larger cars and people swear by them. Great setup. However, the last I looked, their offerings for the Gen I and II MINIs are limited and only allow for 17” wheels. Wilwood setups get you down to a 15” wheel. I find the smaller 15” wheel and tire works well for the shorter tracks around here.

 

I am quite sure StopTech makes very nice brakes. I think their offering for Mini are quite expensive. In the video I cringe when he use yaw to describe the spread of the 2-piece caliper which is wrong. Yaw sound more technical than spread. The truth is caliper does yaw minutely under very hard braking.

Interesting that on some caliper they use an external connecting hydraulic line. Seems to be done to minimize the increased radius of the caliper over that of the rotors for max rotor size. I don't see the benefit of the removable pad retainer except for added complexity.

The initial part about the making of test pad compound is quite interesting, and is almost exactly my envisioning. Assortment of sintering binded together by binder and molded under pressure and high heat.

 

I double check my assertion, and it seems that I am wrong. I have been assuming an injector only squirt the fuel when the intake valves are open. Inspecting the injector on time in the CSV file suggest otherwise. The on time can be as high as slightly above 20mS. Which means the injector can open for a significant time when the intake valves are closed.

Take 6000 RPM for the ease of math. It is 100 rev/s. This gives 10mS per revolution. As it is a 4 stroke, there is 2 revolutions per combustion so youhave 20mS max to deliver all the fuel you can at 6000 RPM. You do hit 100% duty cycle and the injector have to just stay open with no more added flow rate.

Of course this is a very simplistic view as injector takes finite time to open and close.

At high RPM the injector spends a lot of time pissing at the closed valves. So much for the emphasis of dual beam spray pattern needed for the cylinder head and valve design.

 

I found this one brief moment when the injector past 100% duty cycle. It is during WOT at 6898 RPM. The injector pulse is 17.63 mS. But thankfully it is always very brief as you always have to change speed or/and gear. The WB lambda is 11.70. The nominal value of lamba is never concerning under heavy load WOT or not.

I need more RPM, and I need bigger injectors for track!

I didn't bounce off the rev limiter that day. I would like to see what the data looks like when I do. I read that the ECU limits the injectors' on time so not to kill the cat and cause explosion at the header.

 

What is your rev limit?

The JCW injectors are larger than the S’s and there are ones that are larger yet. The JCW ones show up in the market place here every once in a while.

 

It is the stock limit which I am a bit foggy exactly. I think is around 6750. I have a set of 550 that I bought with Bytetronik tune. I just still really enjoying the 15% alone. I actually also have a set of used JCW.

So what is holding me dipping into the war chest, you ask?

 

Mini thinks he own the house. Bought all those shoes it only worn once or twice, and more arrived.

 

Sometimes it is such a pleasure to receive something so nice and costs so little.

v-power!




V for victory

 

I am adding this part to my thread for posteriority. I am fortunate not needing one. It is reported by a owner in another forum that fits gen 1 Minis. Dorman 904-261 oil filter housing drain back valve. It looks to me you have to transfer the plastic top hat over.



If you bought one and verified it fits, please report back as other owners would appreciate it.

For those wonder WTF this is , here is one of many, countless threads to the unbreakable lump's kiss of death. Do ignore the title of the thread as it is not an oil pressure relief by design, but relieve it does and a very effective one.

 

My understanding is the first illuminated light on the tach marks the "red line;" which would be the limit in which the manufacturer doesn't want you to go over and that is 6750 or there about. The fuel or air cut off (not really sure what is cut off) is at 7200 or 7250 - whatever the first line past 7000 is. Back in 2004, my car came to me with the red line set at 5500. The departed original MINI dealer here, now a Lithia owned shop, "fixed" that and moved that to the 6750 mark that it has today. They did that when I brought the car in for it's first oil change or was it a "recall" of sorts or something to that effect. Anyway, it was 5500 now its 6750. My car also had a lot of sludge in the coolant overflow tank for the first year of ownership. Spent a lot of time in the shop for that... come to think of it... I have no actual documents on that.

 

I check one track log and the highest I hit was 7069 while shifting from 3rd into 4th on front straight. I think by the nature being a fuel cut off how high you can hit depends on the rev'ing momentum. I am a bit surprised the cut off is that high. Last season I kept bounce off the cutoff in 3rd before turn 4 and waited it out until braking . This season I haven't have the urge to "killing it" yet.

Strange your car has the limit set so low. Bet to wonder who asked for that.

 

I am quite surprised so few here on NAM chose to install either the CAE or CoolerWorx short shifter. When I set out to buy mine, I contacted the US seller that I would organize a group buy. Fortunately for me he didn't follow up after he told me to send him the email with the specifics of my suggestion of price breaks as a function of quantity.

At the mean while, suspecting he is not legit, I contacted the Canadian seller trying to buy one of his remaining inventory during the slow season. Instead of giving me a yes or nay he gave me song and dance about the US seller drop ship from Europe and I will incur important customs BS, and he initiate a group buy on FB. I immediately place my order online with the US seller, and a few weeks later I got mine.

I am glad that I dropped the group order idea as the reception in North America seems less than lukewarm. In all on NAM I know of only three installations. As I checked the FB group order gotten no where.

No so with MiniTorque. There have been two group buys there on the CoolerWorx. Here is the link to the second GB. I know it cost much more than other short shifters, but yet people would spend big bucks on carbon this and that, or aerodynamic body kits that are only cosmetic. I know if I strap wings on my Mini hog, it will never fly unless launch from a cliff.

 

I think that MT is primarily a performance oriented type o' forum, so it goes that they talk such the serious good stuff --- I love reading that forum, the banter is lively and it's gotta lotta personality...

...mini2 is more like the "normal" mundane stuff:

http://www.mini2.com/forum/first-gen...lock-lock.html

I like the mix here at NAM as there is a great mix of both.

I plan on getting a CAE/Coolerworx at some point, but right now I'm in resto mode doing boring maint. related tasks...

(edit)
...but yeah, I know what yer sayin' --- the amount of $ spent on cosmetics has usually outweighed the serious performance bits 'n bobs because people like to "look cool" and I can diggit because aesthetics are important I think, but geez are there some abominations out there and I'm always bewildered as to why people like them???





It is always a wonderful thing when a balance is struck and an owner takes both performance and aesthetic design into regard.

.

 

That's one vintage performance catalog.

I used to read JC Whitney and rolled my eyes at the craps they sell. I just notice JC Whitney abbreviates as JCW. Someone should start a plain Jane Mini to JCW upgrade conversion, using only goodies out of their catalog.

 

LOL!

The JCW connection escaped me! LOL

You have a great eye for the small details and you don't let the anything of anything escape you,
jollygood brilliant.

Your idea for the plain Jane JCW transformation using items from the JCWhitney catalog is good stuff!
It'd be a fun entry for the 24Hrs. o' LeMons!



JCW used to sell a really cool illuminated hood ornament (which is cooler than illuminated door sills!) that was a thumbnosing jester character,
which would look great on a MCSJCWGP!

It's a pretty nice design methinks...







Nowadays they sell for mad money sometimes because they're kool as heck for ratrodd'd modbosses...