what am i going to need other than what comes in the kit?

 

A lotta money.................

 

im not worried about the money, im worried whether its going to be too much power for my stock mini.

 

a little common sense. Don't turn up the boost and you should be fine. If you want to turn up the boost, you'll need some pistons and a head just for the hell of it.

 

You don't need a head. Just pistons, and a clutch, maybe ARP head studs and rod bolts just to be safe. Oh and have fun keeping the throttle body to supercharger tube in place. Take a look at it and you will understand. I had to make a custom bracket attached tp the bottom to keep it from leaking.

 

no leaks there with the Helix turbo kit.

 

Thanks to you Il Professore

 

Spillman, you running the Alta kit? I thought you were running the SPI...

If u are running the Alta, I have some questions for you.....

 

A lot of trips to the parts store....I made about 5 trips this weekend, getting addtional hoses, clamps, fittings...and so on...just lil stuff, but thats the way it goes....Also the ability or the gumption to modify some tools to fit. The mini is well...mini, and its very tight to work in. I found this extremely ironic....the engine is held in by 3 motor mounts....and the black plastic firewall thingy is held in by like 10 13mm bolts.....in very awkward places, like hidden behind wirelooms & the such. A bit of a bugger to get to for sure. I will say this much though, after 2.5 days straight of installation of the Alta kit, $900 for install of the helix kit is a BARGIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Other than those pesky details, if you mean to support the additional HP, then to start, I would do the clutch & I feel a LSD is almost a requirement. I did the flywheel/clutch/& Quaife right before the turbo kit. I would reccomend in additon to the Alta kit, a manual boost controller/gauge for initial install. From there I would go the route of Intercooler, AFC, Injectors. Tune it to around 250whp. If you want more, then PISTONS are a must.

So far I am up to to everything but the injectors(which are next) then time to break into the engine.

Hope that helps....I will be posting all my results as soon as I get the bugs ironed out & some dyno time. I did do a baseline dyno run the day of install, so I am hoping to get on the dyno before the end of March. At that time I will post all my results, but in the interim if you have questions, please feel free to pm or email me....

Hope I am of some help...

Cole

 

did you take any photos of the install or maybe a nice writeup???

 

 

Why yes......yes I did! Take lots of photos that is, as for the write-up, not yet....I still am digging the nasties out from under my fingernails!!

I will post everything once I get the car to a point where I have solid data....right now as it sits, I am getting oil into the intake & have yet to diagnose it completely....I have spoken to Jeff today, however I was not in front of the mini to go over the routing of the crankcase breather. We feel that might be the issue, as he mentioned they had a similar case on their car. I will know better tomorrow when Jeff can work with me in front of the vehicle to verify all the routing is correct.

I attached 2 pix showing the turbo, since i havent found any available. This should show you all where the turbo actually sits. The 1st pic is the test fitment & reclocking of the compressor side of the turbo for final fitment. The 2nd pic is of the final assembly of the GT3071 with Downpipe & the oil feed line & coolant send & rx lines.

If you take notice to the firewall....it's required to remove the black plastic housing & heatshields in order to fit the turbo. There is actually a lot of room once that is all removed.

 

so what are you making?

 

Nothing at the moment except a hole in my pants...........I just finished the install last nite & haven't done anything except fire it up, burned oil, shut it down, called it a day & tossed a few cold ones back

I need to go over everything & diagnose how the oil is getting into the intake & thus into the engine before I can really do any testing. Its going to be a few weeks before i can get back to the dyno, as I will be off chillin on spring break...I would like to get back on the dyno for tuning by the end of march. I am shooting for 230 to start then up to 250 with some injectors, but who knows.....The car dyno'd at 167 stock with the stock pulley and intake & exhaust, & compared to the works kits on the same dyno, their best was 167. I am hoping I have a good build in the engine dept...but we will see....I will post all results together when its finished.....

 

sounds good! Good luck sourcing the issues...keep us upadated!!

 

Will do.......I need to install the apex too, but was w8n to see how everything else goes!

 

Hello,
did you do this install alone or did you have help? I am interested in this kit as I don't have to send my car to a shop to get it installed. Are the instructions clear and easy to understand? I've been around cars for a while and I think have good enough skills to get this kit installed. Lastly, where did you purchase your kit from and how much extra am I looking to spend on the "missing" parts?

Thanks in adavance,
Kevin

 

Kevin,

I will try to answer your questions best as I can...
I did this install with another good friend of mine in his shop as his is a lil bigger than mine. I DO NOT reccomend you do this alone, as you really need help lining everything up....its helpful to have one guy under the car & one guy above it.

The Instructions are not detailed to the point like assembling furniture. There is a lot that you need to read into. I do have a copy of them & can forward them off to you to peruse. The biggest fallbacks I have come across are routing all the lines & making sure everything is tight. It's very tight in the mini & there are a lot of things that you need to work around or remove or relocate that the instructions just dont talk about. If this car is your daily driver, then I probably wouldnt do it yourself, as its going to be down for a while. This is a pretty extensive install & if you think the pulley is to risky to do, then this kit is way out of that person's league. To be honest, there are a few things about the kit I dont like. The main one is the routing of the oil return. It routes to the oil drain on the oil pan. So basically you have a 1/2 hose routed under your car. If you are concerened about your powersteering fan getting hit from road garbage, then this rubber hose will even make that worse. If you lose this hose, well you lose engine oil. I am currently working on a workaround for the return. The other thing I dont care for is the placement of the ECU. You basically remove it from its weather protected sealed case & bolt it right to the replacement air filter plate. The main issue with this is, the air ducting from the snout on the engine puts the air feed right onto the ECU, literally aimed with in an inch of it. !st drive in rain, and that ecu will probably see some moisture. I am also working on a work-around for this. I think Alta was working on the Hydra as the main ECU for this kit, which mounts on the firewall.

All n' all this is expiremental ground, there are a lot of variables that goes along with this kit. If I would have a new Mini, I would probably steer away from twincharging it. Once you go twin, there is pretty much no going back. I have a pile of parts that is stacking up that I have removed, and some of the parts needed to be altered in a manner that it can never go back. This car will stay twinned the rest of its life now. If you would decide you would like to go this route, I am available to help answer any questions you may have. I am currently working up a complete write-up of this kit that will also accompany the Alta install instructions.

As for additonal parts you may need.....The kit is basic. It is meant to get you into twincharging at a resonable cost. It is however not the least expensive kit. It does not include the other add-ons to make serious power. Once you add on those pieces you will be looking at the same if not more than the other kits. The attractiveness of this kit is for the DIY folks. It allowes us to keep tinkering with the car. It gives us lots of options of tweaking. Alta did a great job of bringing a product to market that was wanted. The other kits have been proven time and time again, I am hoping that I can have the same success as they have had.

On the addtional parts that I discussed in the previous post, you will find that once you are elbows in, that you may need to run a line differently than suggested, and need addtional connectors or hose. You may find that the way you ran it doesnt work, and need to get more hose or parts to try a different route. Each car will be a lil different, depending on a lot of varibles. Anytime you route new lines, its going to be a custom job most of the time. You just have to be willing to work it through. Just make sure you have the means to get the supplies(ie other vehicle, and its not 2 in the morning!).

I installed the kit in 2.5 days, but tweaking everything takes more time. I spent another 5 hours just re-routing lines after install, just because I wasnt happy with it. I know it sounds like a lot of time, but its very tight in the engine bay, and thats where a lot of time disappears...just trying to work around somthing else. I am sure when I install another kit, it would take much less time, as I know areas I can just avoid as i know they just dont work. I also know areas that need extra attention, because once its mounted (turbo) you cant go back and change things or tighten things very easily.

I just want to also say, I am not saying anything negative about Alta or twincharging in general, as ALTA has answered all my questions & gave me great support on this install! I am so impressed with their customer support, that if Alta makes a product & I am looking to add that to my car, they will be the vendor of choice no questions asked.

Finally I purchased the kit from Coast to Coast. They got the kit to me in short order & had the best price on the kit at the time. They included free shipping, so for me that was an added bonus to the already discounted price!

 

Bummer to hear that with the Alta Kit. With the SPI t/c kit I have on my car, even I could change my car back to stock in a half day. Remove the turbo intake piping, remove downpipe, remove turbo, replace injectors, plug the oil and water lines, re-install the stock exhaust header, reinstall the stock intake, then go to the dyno to retune the APEXi unit (or remove it). Sure the plastic bits in the rear of the engine compartment could get replaced, but really there's no need to do so.

 

did you do the install yourself?

 

this is the most ammount of info anybody has posted about a twin install
well done and thanks
I am really looking forward to the write up and follow up

 

Dr Fuh and Tuls did the install for me. However, I got to watch a bit of it here and there. Not too much work really involved in reverting it back to stock. Much more work getting it to t/c'd.

 

My experience is that removing is very different from installing - not a good comparison in my mind.

 

No bummer......when I say stock...i mean all the way stock....including the black plastic fire wall housing.....You could spend several hours re-install that alone....not to mention the heat sheilds...moving the powersteering & overflow tank which would require changing out the lines & def re-installing the plastic firewall to mount them too....Its a lot more involved than one would think....I not trying to dicourange anyone from doing it, but just dont think you could do it in an afternoon....not unless you have installed several...

It would take you a good day to remove the kit....especially if you change out the pulley....

 

I was referring to 'once its twin charged there's no going back because too much of the stock stuff is modified to make it easy to go back' statement. I agree that removing is much easier than installing. Any day any time. I was not comparing that at all. However, he claimed that it would be a very difficult task to return a t/c'd car back to stock. That may be the case with the Alta kit and their design, but that does not apply to the SPI t/c kit design. The SPI is truely a complete system which includes all the nuts and bolts, hoses, fittings, etc as compared to the Alta stage 1 kit where this guy had to make repeated trips to get parts to get his kit installed. This is a big reason for the pricing difference between these two "stage 1" kits much less that you get more "big" items in the SPI kit such as the intercooler, injectors, and AirFlow Controller. Considering all of that, the SPI stage 1 is a much better value in my mind than the Alta stage 1 kit.