This morning I stopped at my buddies at Advanced Chassis Dyno in Troy, MI. Andy the dyno operator has been my main man getting good quality dyno data in years past, and the R56 will be no different. Detroit's low elevation and mild climate leads to a consistenly negligent SAE correction factor, meaning there's minimal difference between raw and corrected data.






Here's the money: 170wHP & 202wLb-Ft! This is at the wheels! For reference, my bone-stock '04 MCS had baseline pulls of about 150wHP & 140wLb-Ft. This monster torque clearly demonstrates why the R56 MCS pulls harder than any R53 to date.



Here is a representative plot transposed from my Auterra OBDII Scan-Tool. This is showing Boost in KPa versus RPM. For the PSI crowd, this shows ~15psig between 4,000 and 5,000 RPM, and then a low of 9.8psig at 6,100 RPM [not counting boost threshold at low RPM]. Just like Helix and Grassroots has shown, the R56 MCS has a bit of a tough time figuring out what boost to run around 3k RPM, dipping between peaks.


I'm way impressed with these figures; though that said, the car does feel this strong. Big thumbs up to MINI for a hearty evolution!

Cheers,
Ryan

 

Congrats Ryan Let the R56 moddn roll...

 

Amen! I was going to ask how long the R56 will remain stock!

Jim

Oh,Ryan. How'd the Hot Rod project turn out?

 

jimz; the hot rod is assembled and running, right now at the paint shop! It's been a long time coming, but the result is looking A+

 

Those are some sweet numbers, man! Thanks for posting.
Did you already lower that thing?

 

Yes they are some sweet numbers. Yes I have already lowered the car; a mandatory move IMO so it looks proper: Check out this thread in 2nd Gen Suspension

 

Great report!!!

 

Thanks for the link.
I agree about the mandatory lowering, the R56 looks like 4WD out of the box. Your car looks pretty tight now.

BTW, it's cool to have you back posting more on here. There's been like a Ryephile lull going on.

 

Thanks a bunch man. It feels good to be back

 

Just don't let me see any threads with the whole front of your car disassembled, and you converting it to a supercharger.
I'll send Sid over there to smack you around some.

...and with the numbers you just laid down, I don't see that happening.

 

Great to hear!! Can't wait to see some photos of the completed project!
Jim

 

I know very little about interpreting this kind of data, so I hope you don't mind some simpleton questions.

1. Is it correct to think that this means there is little point in going above 4,500 RPM, and that much above that is actually detrimental to performance?

2. Does the HP plateau beginning at around 4,500 RPM mean that with better breathing, it could put out a lot more power -- assuming one could keep it from overheating?

 

It's so great to have you and your expertise back on the site, Rye! I missed you so much! Welcome back!

 

I guess you have to consider what rev the shift will put you in. If you shift at the peak HP or peak torque and you end up in a lower torque zone(like that dip at 3000), you won't keep accelerating the car as well as if you drive beyond the peak and get in a good position for after you've shifted.

Regarding the second question, remember that HP is just a function of torque as it relates to engine speed. So the leveling of power is really a reflection in the dropping of torque. If you change the breathing you'll affect the whole torque curve. In the old days you picked your prefered rev range and maximized torque there, but I think nowadays with variable length intakes, variable resistance exhausts and ECUs to tweak the boost, fuel, and spark any way you want to, folks can deliberately tweak each part of the curve.

If I had to make a guess, I'd say after driving my R56 MCS for a couple of weeks, that since the car likes to operate in the 2300 RPM zone (ie, it's not struggling in any gear to motor there indefinitly), it could be there was some sort of compromise make in the tuning to optimize fuel mileage in that 3000 rpm dip. Otherwise, it looks like a weird unfinished mapping of fuel.

 

Ryan, how does it compare to a '05+ Stock MCS with the shorter gearing? That dyno comparison has not been provided anywhere, yet. To me there is simply a huge performance divide between the R56 and the pre-2005 MCS. Heck even the '05+ R53 feels faster than any stock '02-'04 MCS.

How does the R56 feel approaching redline? Does the car loses steam at the top of the power band? Just curious.

It seems to me the R56 will be a great drag car.

 

Great numbers! Really impressive that these numbers are at the wheels!

 

my car pulls very strong with 192 tq at the wheels.... 202 stock is fantastic..... I think I said months ago that the 56 was going to be a monster and it is...... thanks Ryan

 

Great report Ryan and impressive dyno. We'll be seeing you in just a few weeks at the Dragon dude.

 

Hey Ryan...I see you've learned your lesson about proper dyno strapping

 

That's a lot of torque, 270 nm from 3800 to 4500 rpm and not a lot less even under, from 2500...

I thought Mini claims 260 only under overboost, it's like yours is always over!!!

Can you post some in-gear time, to compare them with other R56 and R53? A 50-90 kph in 2nd or 100-130 in 3rd would be the best!

 

Very Kool now let the Mods Begin

 

I've only owned pre '05 R53's, however I've driven many '05-'06 MCS. Frankly there is no comparison; the R56 is quicker in every regard, as you can see from the dyno plots, and hence Grassroots Motorsports' measurements of 0-60mph. I will say that the R56 feels simliarly quick to my R53 when it was running about 200lb-ft of torque. Yay for butt-dyno!

The R56 pulls smoothly to redline. It does not lunge for 6500 RPM like a Honda S2000 or my turbo R53 did, but it doesn't wheeze to redline like the VW mk5 GTI either. When driving quickly, there's no reason to shift early. It may feel like a diesel down low, but it's still a gas engine.

MINI claims 260NM in overboost AT THE CRANK, the chassis dyno measures AT THE WHEEL. Every pull was in "Overboost". I didn't feel it necessary to bother with standard boost mode. This is tremendous for an SAE rated engine. To translate wheel numbers into estimated crank numbers, I'll use the traditional 12% driveline loss.

My stock '04 MCS:
wHP peak: 152 translates into 172 HP SAE
wLb-Ft peak: 140 translates into 159 Lb-Ft SAE

My stock '07 MCS:
wHP peak: 170 translates into 193 HP SAE
wLb-Ft peak: 202 translates into 230 Lb-Ft SAE

 

great stuff mang!! .... now.... pull the hose to the wast gate and doo it again! LOL

 

Man these R56's are looking good, I like the drop thats definetly a big help, still could go a good bit lower. Can't wait untill these new cars start being really modified.

Keep up the good work, thanks for the numbers

 

WOW!, what a difference in torque between the R53 and R56