Lets lay it on the line here guys, especially those of you who have modded with an aftermarket head. I don't recall anyone who has upgraded the head on the S posting here on how great it was. I usually get the feeling that some are almost embarrassed to post here that they were just plain disappointed. ...?

Maybe it's just me, but I'm getting the feeling that this $3K upgrade is a bit of a letdown?

Let's be real honest here. Let us know just what you head mod results were.

 

BH (before head), the most I ever got out of my rig was 169 whp: header, cam, 15%, intake and exhaust. no change with Evo software, larger TB, several exhausts, many dyno sessions at helix. main suspect was the exhaust valve/port bottleneck

with the Endyn head, 19% and One-click, I got 180 at Helix; later, with the Apexi, larger injectors over 210 (At hubie's)

So I would have to replace the stock head, then do the Apexi and injectors to know for sure what the head mod was contributing.

my guess is you have to look at breathing over the entire power band (area under the torque curve) to measure it. However, the best way is the track.

 

Since I do not have a scanner, I will not post my before and after dyno numbers.

I am completely happy with the head/cam upgrade. Even my Dealer (without being told) noticed a difference.

I know several other MCS owners who have done head work and are satisfied with it, however, they do not post here.

 

very interested in seeing where this thread goes......a head is my next thing on my wish list, but doin some research and thinking about it for now.

 

Yeah, this thread might get interesting. From what I've gathered, a head isn't going to give you much power by itself but once you get P&P on the intake and SC, exhaust header, larger valves, etc then it will all come together.

 

Yeah i was planing on going with the P&P, larger valves, double springs....all the goodies.

 

 

Good headwork and overdriving the supercharger are just about the only modifications accessible to most of us that will provide predictable gains in acceleration performance from low midrange to the upper limits. The rest of the stuff will provide a little bit of this and a little bit of that, here or there, depending. Good tuning of course is a performance giver but requires a different level skill than is available to those of us on the fringe.

The dollar per satisfaction equation is often more subjective than quantifiable depending on personal objectives (take a look at what’s going on in onasled’s garage). My objective is street performance and many of my former mods have gone by the way side in favor of street realities. When it comes to money well spent there is no embarrassment here; my big valve headwork was less than $1200 and produced much more than 12 hp and a healthy dose of torque throughout the rev range. I don’t know of any other stand-alone mod (other than overdriving the SC) including the cam that will get $100/hp and comparable torque increases also.

I did many things along with modifying the head but I feel confident in saying well-executed headwork will provide positive results regardless of whether every thing else remains stock.

 

so what im getting from this is that you took the stock head and just upgraded that through a local shop? and didn't bother buying an aftermarket head?

 

How come most of the people posting on here, about how good their head is, don't know for sure if that is what gave them the "gains" that they feel? From what I have read you guys have done other mods at the same time.

 

I did my mods in this succession: 1. CAI, 2. pulley, 3. Powerchip, 4. header, 5. exhaust, 6. Unichip, 7. throttle body, 8. head/cam, 9. 380cc injectors, JCW DME reflash, 10. unichip remap.

I would put the head work up there with the pulley in terms of immediate/greatest before and after feel.

I also dyno'd three weeks after installing the head. Since it was at the end of the mod-train (so to speak), I have a decent idea about what the gains were.

 

the basic question is a bit incorrect in that good headwork with a potato in your pipe will look crappy. you have to do it all to see the benefits of any of the components.

 

This is why I won't be adding much to this thread, unfortunately- my Cosworth head was done with a ton of other stuff [the rest of the kit, to be exact]. I'll be getting dyno runs done next week sometime, so I look forward to at least adding another data point.

edit/update 04.18.06: A ton of time and little work later, no dyno sheets yet. My plans got really side-tracked this year, because school is really eating up my every minute. For what it's worth, I haven't forgotten my promise!

 

I head work done along with my other mods so I cannot tell specifically just what gains were gotten from head work alone. All I know is that the total mod package is a BLAST in performance. I am still waiting for a copy of the dyno from the tuner.

 

DrkSilvrMini, the headwork was performed at ENDYN in Fort Worth, and although not just around the corner locally, I did the drop-off and pick-up. The core cost wasn’t mentioned because that was re-cooped selling the original head. The stock, springs, retainers, and cam are more than adequate for my operating parameters.

spillman, gains attributed to headwork can be approximately extrapolated by subtracting known approximate gains attributable to the other respective additive components . For example, the gains on a 101 F day were about 60 hp and 40 ft-lb torque over the stock baseline. The other proven power givers were, 19% pulley reduction plus 380cc injectors & GIAC/Helix flash. The complementary modifications were port matching, transitional adjustments in the intake/exhaust path, and an ENDYN modified SC. Have fun with the speculative math.

I had a goal and did some reasonable planning to get there (potato excluded from exhaust pipe ). It is prudent to consolidate time and effort while under the hood. It still doesn’t mean no confidence is applied to the headwork on its own.

 

The REALLY FUNNY thing is how much PULLL you get with a Good Head and Schrick CAM !!!

Night and Day ABOVE 3,500-4,000 rpm ----Where the stock MINI really needs it .. Try going down LONG STRAIGHTS with no head work, above 110 mph and the car just doesn't climb speed very well up there, in high gears (Until you get a HEAD-CAM)

I drove a JCW MCS at Laguna Seca, ALL DAY and it was "on par" with the other MCS out there going up hill, BUT the racer MINIs (some had head work for sure) just PULLED up hill and gained ground on me there ...

 

Very true. The cam changed the character of my car very nicely .

 

You are cracking me up here. What makes you think that you simply add up all the power that certain mods put out on average. And then subtract that from the overall gain.

Just because two mods may give on average 10 hp that doesn't mean you can add them together. They will more then likely be at two different rpm's.

What I am trying to get a across is does anyone have before and after dyno's or experience for a head being put on a heavily modded car. So that the "potato" is removed from the exhaust.

 

I though in here https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...ad.php?t=55669
consensus was you need to do the headers, IC, TB in conjunction with the new head but the some of the parts did NOT equate to the sum of the whole?

 

our cylinder head made a huge difference... i personally do not believe in larger valves... i don't really think that they are making a huge difference on the MINIs and don't really think that they are worth the money. I would rather concentrate on smooth uninterupted fast airflow... the higher the velocicity of air the more power you make and lmore low end power you will make...

heck thats the main reason why we got our car down to a 13.2!

 

I guess I didn’t put enough cartoon faces on my last post to illustrate the tongue-in-cheek method of differentiating power gains . I still don’t think attributing at least a conservative 12 hp from the mix to the head is unreasonable. The main story is the early torque increase and that was a whopper over stock; much more than what would have come from the 19% pulley alone. As I alluded to earlier the benefit of quality headwork is useful in a broader range than most of the bolt on stuff.

 

Yes. I have seen two dynos for cars that had the heads installed after the other mods and have heard of at least three more. I would say a range of 12 to 16 hp and 9 to 13 ft/lbs of torque is not unreasonable depending on whether the cam was done.

 

Thanks for all the post. It helps.

 

If you ever make it to the left coast, drop me a PM - I have no problem with you taking the rattle-trap for a spin..........

 

where at on the east coast are you?