look up abacus on google .they're in virginia. i hear they start at 600.00 and it's all up to you what you wanna do and how far you wanna go . just cleaning the slag will help and polishing the exhaust ports. you can then match your header to them ;helping more. match up the intake too. if you're not looking for big valves and a fancy valve cut then this should suffice . make sure they all cc the same. the rest would be the cam .but the schrick may work best with bigger valves i couldn't say . but the above does work on a budget . it's been done for forever and is proven . call abacus . they'll work with you .

 

this is the age of the tuner cars . evos; minis ; *** cars all ; we're all in the same boat ; if it's hot ...wack um !! and good!!

 

see my first car was the same thing... and that was an '85...everything I wanted from Cosworth was the same price then as it is now... heads... motors... so to say we are getting wacked... I just think it's the value for your $$... yeah you can get cheaper stuff... but you get jsut that... .cheaper stuff

I have the same problem with doing Digital contract work... "well I can go to kinkos for $40 an hr" Good you do that!! Cause I am worth more... and that's why I have no problem paying good money for good product... cuase I would hope people would do the same with me... cause I know what I put into my work... and yes I expect the same from others...

 

herbie man, when I saw you talking about abacus,
I thought you were talking about one of these...

...and I was like WTF?
(herbie's cool and all, but he's always talking about an abacus)

Anyway, thanks for the tip. Have you had any work done there?

 

you missed my point. the tuner market is marked up . look at edelbrock. a fine company ;many great products; cult like following .; and waaay cheaper than tuner stuff . cosworth is like shelby 50% is buying the name . but some folks think if they pay less for something ; it can't be any good. it's the old "fool and his money " thing .

 

not yet but this summer ; yes . one of the nammers turned me on to them . he is more than happy with them . as stated ; they talked for some time and he just had to say what he wanted and they started at 600.00 and went from there . it's a good place to start seems to me . you can gain with basics. no you're not gonna get a race head for that ; but better than stock; it is s/c 'd after all . it's a single cam too so the shcrick should 'a come down in price by now. i think they only offer one grind ; so it kinda proves my point. people will pay ;so take it . nice thing with the chineze counter there .

 

ha ha yeah I see what you mean.... the thing is... you can never compare domestic to "Tuner" ...I.E. import.... cuase just as a comparison... I can get a domestic throttle body... for HALF the price of a BMW.... same crap... jsut marked up for being "imported"

and thats why Heads are more for instance... casue the core it's self is more.. so after you are charged for the work... and the cost of the head... it's just more...

yes I agree it sucks... but it's what it is... the C&C work done on heads or hand porting.. is still worth XX dollars... but then you have the cost of hte head... and so there really is no way to get it in the price range yo uare talking about... hell I can't even do that and I make the stuff! LOL

 

okay... im with you on some of this and not...

yes... i too believe that cosworth is like shelby in the sense that you are getting more of a name for your money. It has been proven that there cylinder heads don't exactly make the most amount of HP.

However... don't look to edelbrock for pricing. THey can spread there costs of parts out over MILLIONS of engines. there products were mainly for the small block chevy motors... which they made elventy billion of... here are maybe 120k minis in the US. less than half are S's. 20 percent probably (pure guesstimate) mod them and .001% have cylinder heads. The point that i am trying to make is that they can build more... make less on each one... and still make much more money. Plus they have all of the equipment bought and paid for for the last umteen years... so its no big deal to engineer another part because they have every tool at there exposure. Pretty much every tunner in this segment is new to the tunning world. None of them have really manufactured parts for other cars so they really don't have the resources to sell at stupidly low prices because costs are sooooo high... and then you have to hope and pray that you can sell enough to cover the costs of the new equipment that you bought let alone your time, and materials for the part you are making.

Another small point... if it was worth edelbrocks, greddy, hks, etc... time to make parts for the MINI they would... but they likely don't see the profit in it like they do in other products due to the limited supply and the limited amount of people actually moding there cars beyond a pulley intake and exhaust

 

well i partly agree . the heads we see are mostly of the stages type . not custom . the core charge is at most what? 400.00 ? so the sorce of the head isn't a huge issue. most have a disclaimer that the core be "good" . so they have an out . which is good bussiness . cnc machines are programmed yeah? so you put in what you want and walk away. then come back and do another dimention . so once a formula is proven to work to the point where i can advertise it as doing x then that's that ; run it .flow it and maybe maybe maybe tweak it . so don't forget they're using your head or someone elses so it's labor!!! and some bitchen valves if you want em . cnc's cost alot of money. a machine shop ain't gonna tie one up longer than necessary for your waay cool cooper head . they're gonna do to it what worked in the past and is proven and pronto! josepe ain't sittin' there with the 100 grit massaging your intake .

 

it's all true . but if i were a machine shop i wouldn't see the profit in it either unless i already had the machinery; and once my moves on a head are to my satisfaction ; it's no big deal to pump um out . look at cams again schrick's got one grind yeah? they're not gonna custom grind nothing . no money in it . hence the stages on heads. they cnc crap for a reason; so they are free to do other things and the product will be more consistant; thus less need for testing . but whatever no one is gonna convince me that we're not the victems of greed . happy F ' N motoring

 

ha ha... funny stuff... if it's so easy and cheap... open a machine shop... let us know how it goes when yer machine is tied up milling a head for free... so you can't do work that pays... LOL

LOL I am just giving you a hard time... seriously I understand... I just don't care that much... supply and demand... boooo

 

i'd be stupid to buy machinery just to do cooper heads now wouldn't i ? but if i already had them well why not ? these guys will pay!!! yahoo!!

 

you don't exactly pump cylinder heads out if you really care what kind of numbers you put down. I am not a fan of programing a cnc machine to do the work for me. I am much more meticulous than a machine. also, there are a few differnt kinds of MINI cylinder heads... i have come across a few differnt casting designs... and your head work must vary with the differnt castings.

as far as schrick is concerned... schrick makes upteen billion differnt kinds of cams for all makes and models... they also make intake manifolds etc... they are a busy shop... cams are easy to "pump" out. they make pretty good profit margins when they are wholesaleing the cam for about 400 bucks


if edelbrock or any other major performance manufacturer thought there was a market that they could exploit... they would. Right now it just isn't worth there time to turn there resources (there machines) onto mini products because of the opportunity cost.

 

Sadly, doing this for me would be flying back and forth from Italy to U.S.A. and UK to try some cars...I'd expect this to be quite pricey plus also quite time consuming...

 

So, is a Cosworth head/cam available now? Has anyone tried it?
Links?

 

M7's web site STILL says the Schrick is "substituted" for the Cosworth in their "Stage 2" kit. I haven't seen the Cosworth MINI parts sold by anyone other than M7.

 

http://www.mini-madness.com/index.as...PROD&ProdID=64

 

Custom Mini Shop has these in stock most of the time. I have run one on my MINI for over 70K miles and am quite pleased with the performance. I have no numbers I want to publish now since I don't want to start another numbers war. I will say that my MINI does very well on a very conservative dyno even with no tune.

Steve

 

My m7/Cosworth w/ Schrick does OK.

When I bought it, the Wegner & RMW weren't available.

I'd guess it's more than 10 whp down when compared to those heads.

AFAIK, it doesn't offer larger intake or exhaust valves.

I'd change it out, but at this point the car is already a lot faster than I am capable of making use of...

And the real bottom line - that'd be an expensive mod to go from the already expensive Cosworth for the additional benefits ....

 

We can get the Cosworth head with bigger valves, but the cost is about $3K.

Steve

 

Too rich for my blood. Let me know how it works!