Thank God there is Systran for ignorant mono-lingual Americans like myself.

 

I think you are being a little "thin skinned"....
if you want to spend 5-6K for 190whp more power to you
having a warranty is great
some of us just want maximum HP out of our cars at the most affordable price
power comes with a price... if you want to "play" you have to "pay"

 

El,

Not trying to be thin-skinned, it just gets tiring after a while, to hear the same people continue to jab the product, for the exact same reasons, over and over and over again.

By the way, I love your car. I don't even want to guess as to what you have into it.

 

thanks, I have friends with the JCW on their cars and they run fine... most put them on with only a few hundred to a few thousand miles. I bought my car for 20k off a guy who needed money fast and it had 3300 miles. Drove it for a yr and half to about 17k miles..... then..... I did that to it..... MORE TO COME! I have a disease and I got it bad. Project Porsche killa .... almost complete
35k as of now....
15k of mods.....

 

I feel that my comment on the JCW head may have led to the " high jacking " of the thread which was dealing with high performance heads . I did not make that comment with the intention of creating a bash JCW event. My point was that if anyone of you have seen a JCW head up close and personal you will most likely agree that it is far from " high performance ". IMO the JCW kit serves a purpose well and fits the needs of many that want to retain their warranty. If someone really needs the comfort of a warranty then the price is justified. If you are looking for perfomance without the warrenty coverage then there are other more ecomomical ways to go but it will be on you if there is a problem in some but not all cases.

Randy
Team M7
www.M7tuning.com

 

The mini mechanic @ my dealership said the JCW is worthless as a performance package. You're basically paying MINI 25% of the kit price for the parts and 75% in order to keep the warranty to 4yr/50k miles. I thought my car already came with a "free" warranty. I guess it's best to scope out the dealerships and weed out the ones that are unfriendly to aftermarket parts before you buy.

As far as the resale value and mods, there will always be someone out there that wants to buy, mods or no mods. Me, I never plan to get rid of a vehicle before 5 years, so mods don't worry me...I only sell earlier if I happen upon a good deal.

 

when I started on my head odyssey, the JCW was still vapor, so the only way to get one to work on was to buy a stock head outright or a used engine, unless you wanted to leave your rig apart for a while...

One of the main benefits of the JCW is to flood the market with spare heads and blowers; right after its release is when the head packages started showing up. So guys like dgz who pay the 6k are essentially fronting for this off-broadway development anyway.

 

Hey, I am only paying $5,500. Glad I could be of service to the aftermarket crowd.

 

Isn't there a $1k core charge? I think you can add superchargers to the list of available parts.:smile:

 

aka: blowers

 

[QUOTE=04yellowS]The mini mechanic @ my dealership said the JCW is worthless as a performance package. You're basically paying MINI 25% of the kit price for the parts and 75% in order to keep the warranty to 4yr/50k miles.
I confirm what your mechanic said i didn't purchase my works package because of it's performance advantage I wanted the extra large cupholder and the works package was included in the deal.
I really have to hand it to you, I've heard of some baseless bashing here but you my friend get the award for the best (worst) one.

 

Missed that in your previous post.

 

I think that the vast majority of stock heads and blowers are returned to BMW when a JCW pkg is done at the dealers. The big question is what is done with those components? Are then they turned into JCW pieces or returned and put into the new car assembley line. Either option doesnt seem like a good thing for the consumer IMO. You know they aren't throwing them out so what are your thoughts ?

Randy

 

I'd suspect they are cleaned up, checked, and put back into service as "refurbished" parts for warranty work. VW does this all the time, just look for an X at the end of the part number.

 

Yup, I confirmed this with a MINI man.

 

As the Fonz would say, "Correctamundo!"

I have seen a replaced MCS head with the aforementioned "X."

Incidentally the owner of the car was not aware that the temp gauge wasn't supposed to go all the way up (had an 02 with problem coolant tank, ended up warping the head but it was replaced under warranty).

Marty

 

Thanks for clearing that up. I just hope BMW never has that many warrenty repairs for heads or we are all going to be in trouble

Randy

 

Just wanted to throw in .02 cents here-

We have to remember that many of the States that have members here are also smog states which get a different emssions/performance package and have **** poor fuel. Cali (as well as the Northeast) have half fuel/half water 91 octane. This was recently tested and shown to be closer to "equivalent" 85 octane fuel (sub-regular) fuel.

Observed dyno numbers produced under these conditions will be lower than the rest of the world. This problem was brought up repeatibly at SEMA this year since the magazine industry is left coast biased and does there tech articles with 91 octane fuel.

This effects EVO, WRX, SRT-4 and MINI owners especially since they are forced induction based production cars. Coincidently, three of those have similar archeitecture.

 

Could you elaborate on this please? Thank-you.

 

I'm just on the periphery of this issue but a number of high performance vehicle are having serious problems coping with Cali gas. The oxygenated 91 octane fuel is the best that can be convienently purchased. Most OEMs recommend "Premium Fuel" as a concession to Cali, while most mean 93+ non-oxygenated. To fortify against harmful engine events, most OEMS either supply a unique Cali Emissions (now known as the ugly 7 I believe) and a regular vehicle to the others. This has come to light as many high performance vehicle owners are experiencing reduced performance and catastrophic engine event issues when a non-Cali vehicle is run on 91 Cali fuel. Any example would be a visitor to California who fills up with Premium fuel in their AMG55 and then breaks a ring land off.

Now, it was circulated at SEMA this year that an independent has tested Cali 91 Octane fuel using the standardized Research Method and the Motor Method (DIN 51 756; ASTM D 2699 and ASTM D 2700). It was found that the rated 91 Octane gasoline actually had a RON+MON/2 average of 85. This has been very hush at this time, but I would expect an expose' sometime next year by a car magazine.

There is much speculation as to why, with a lot centering on the controls of the test, but it should be said that the fuel was treated much like a consumer would. I would suspect that this test will be run again.

Now getting back on topic, the JCW package was tuned by Ricardo, and was set to worst case. This means that the kit installed on a MINI who could see 91 octane Cali gas (there is certified research-grade 91 Cali gas available to specialty labratories across the country and abroad for this very purpose) would live with zero failure. MINI and its parent BMW are very safe and want to ensure zero defects. Therefore, they do not try to push the envelope.

So, I suspect that a MCS with the 05 JCW kit has about an 11:1 air/fuel ratio on 94 octane. Using good gasoline, this could be leaned out to 12-13:1 and produce significantly more power. This could be achieve by more tuning, increasing boost, or the best option, increasing the efficiency of the motor to better use the available fuel (more air mass for a given boost pressure).

Does this matter? No. A person in California who is dedicated to performance already knows they need to buy and mix with higher octane, un-oxygenated fuels. Owners in "free states" purchase 93+ fuel.

BTW, 94 octane is $1.72 today.

 

I'm more than a little skeptical about this. Weights and measures for each state control the accurace of the distribution of gasoline. Are they also responsible for testing for purity and grade?

 

They are but with cutbacks under Gray Davis, the expense of testing 30,000+ samples per year has exceeded the available budget and manpower. Also, you have to remember that California's main goal is cleaning up the air, not vehicle performance.

 

not here - the only 94 around here is Sunoco, which has ethanol. The cheapest I found two days ago was $2.10/gal. Yesterday alone, gas prices jumped 9 cents to "compensate" for the holiday rush, lol.

MINImotor - you seem to have inside information regarding octane and testing of fuel. Who is your source?

 

Hey my car is stumbling and Bogging and I think I can link it back to a software upgrade from the dealer. Whta have you done to correct this?

 

That's the Holy Grail of MINI ECU, SpiderX Besides trying to reset the adaptive logic, replacing the garbage Siemens ECU is probably the only [good] solution.