There has been a lot of debate on here, especially with the posting of the 239HP dyno results. These results seem baffling to some, explainable to others.

One of the things I noticed was that JCW includes a ported/polished cylinder head. You would think this would help, but the numbers suggest that its not a huge factor in this kit's performance. It seems that people that are doing the same things as included in the kit, minus the cylinder head, are achieving the same or better results.

I'm a shadetree mechanic, with my background in taking to others as a basis for understand engines - aka. there could be flaws in my arguement. Back when I had a Camaro, I knew a lot of the guys were big on head work to make power. And the guys that had the blowers were sometimes doing head work and changing the gasket size to lower the compression. With lower compression, they could run a little more boost on the engine (the gains were significant, but quoting numbers is useless since comparing the engines and setups are apples to oranges). With the additional boost, the car was running a little leaner, but not to the point that they had detonation and had to retard timing. Read, even more HP. Now apply this to the Mini...

Are people considering lowering the engine compression as a means of increasing the boost? Why didn't JCW employ this technique?

Any thoughts?
Erik

 

FWIW,

I know the kit comes with (well, it would have to) a new head gasket, so there's the possibility that it does.

Jeff