Maybe some of you MINI experts can explain this to me. I've always wondered why it's so hard to find options for tuning a MINI. It seems like options are pretty limited unless you want to spend a ton of money.....there are a few guys/shops around the country that can tune these things or have software to tune them....but they want a fortune. Why aren't there more people out there doing this?

I know a buddy who's got a BMW M3...and he said that it's darn near free to get turning software for the things, and the people out there that know how to tune them are everywhere. Heck, even my Dodge Ram pickup has sevearl options as far as canned tunes, hand held tuners, and/or people out there that can do custom tunes for not a whole lot of cash. You can get a hand held flash device that will let you upload several different canned tunes, and do all kinds of other stuff for $300-$500...much less if you buy them used.

Why is it that MINI's are so hard to "tune", and why are there so few people/companies out there doing it? Should it really cost $1000+ to get a few extra HP out of your MINI? Why aren't the bigger, more well known companies like Superchips coming out with flash programmers for them?

Just wondering if some of you guys could educate me.

 

Your question is kind of broad and depends on which MINI variation you are talking about. An electronic tune for your supercharged R53 would add little, the standard for it is changing the pulleys to provide more boost.
For turbo MINI's, i.e. R56, it was always said that BMW ECU encryption was so complex that few people had any luck cracking it, I believe a few have now. I always wondered why they didn't try a "piggyback" ECU which is what is common for Fiat Abarth turbo engines. It does the same thing but via an add on unit as opposed to reflashing the OEM unit.
I think the bottom line is really the market, or lack thereof. VW/Audi's have a number of well known chip tuners, but there is easily 3 times as many of these sold yearly as MINI's so there's a much bigger financial incentive to develop tunes for them. Bigger markets will make the prices lower too.
Aftermarket exhausts for my 911 are very spendy, $2500 and way beyond. It's not because of the Porsche tax, it's because there's less than 8K or so of them sold in the US a year and only a small number of owners want an aftermarket exhaust hence price per unit goes up.

 

I have heard talk about the complicated BMW encyrption also......but it seems like the BMW guys have it all figured out, so why hasn't that rubbed off on the MINI's? I keep mentioning the M3's because I friend of mine has one and I can't believe all the stuff they can do with the ecu's in those things.

It just seems like anything tuning related to minis is black magic unless you are one of the few people in the country that knows how to time them....

Can I get my R53 tuned? Sure...I call one of a few guy who can do it and pay them a fortune......or I buy one of the 2 or 3 self-tune systems out there and try it myself....also a fortune, and not much info out there for anyone to learn the software.

 

I reiterate, don't expect major gains from ECU tuning on your R53. Big gains come from increasing boost, that is done by changing pulleys not by ECU changes. Driveability might be altered for better or worse with the ECU, but not horsepower.
Same for your friend's M3. ECU tunes don't do much for naturally aspirated engines, small changes can be made to accomodate exhaust and intake changes, but nothing like the gains by turning up the boost on a turbo.

 

I understand what you are saying....but when you add more boost and you need larger injectors.....you need ecu tuning. When you add an aftermarket header.....you need ecu tuning. When you change the cam or do head work ....you need ecu tuning.

And one thing cool about the M3's (so I'm told) is that you can change the cam timing an overlap via ecu ...so 30-40hp increase with just a good ecu tune is pretty easy.

 

So besides the "minis are a niche market".....what other reasons are there for next to none options as far as tuning goes?

 

That is pretty much the main reason. Its supply and demand....tuners are in the business because they like moding cars, but they also want to turn a profit

 

I understand they want to turn a profit....but why do mini tuners charge so much more compared to other car tuners? Like I said....the software and tunes for BMW's is cheap....but MINI tuners want $600+ for a canned tune, and $1000+ for a custome tune on a dyno. That's insane. Especially when you are talking about a 6-8hp gain...not much return for $1000.

Why aren't there more people out there trying to learn mini tuning software...and developing new and better software?

 

Instead of trying to get more power out of MINI with a tune, why not just buy a pulley for some cheap power.

I have an Audi TT 2.0 turbo and it was easy to get 50 hp with a $600 canned tune - in simple terms, reprogramming simply turned up the boost.

A tune in your MINI will help optimize the other mods you'd do first. Before you tune, do pulley, intake, and exhaust. You amy find that once you done those mods you have enough power to suit you.

 

I've got a JCW mini...JCW head, exhaust, intake, pulley, injectors ...I'm not talking about my car specifically. I'm talking about minis in general. Not enough tuning options out there for them. And when you want to do more than the standard bolt on stuff... You will need some ecu tuning. It stinks that a mini owner needs to spend a grand to do a little ecu tweaking. I can't be the only mini owner out there frustrated with the high cost and lack of tuning options out there for our cars.

Why are only non-mini owners responding in this thread? Ha!

 

This summer I got a custom tune at a tuning party for $550. I got an increase of 10hp.

 

I think your answer is demand.

Burger Tuning recently release a piggyback style tune for the N18 engine for $300 (great deal BTW). They might sell a few hundred. Now compare that to their BMW tunes ($400 - $500 range for up to 80hp gains) with thousands and thousands sold.

They go where the money is, they have to feed their families too.

 

I have a MINI, too. I looked on your sig block where you listed your mods - you didn't include what you just mentioned so I didn't know you had done all the above.

Ever hear the expression "speed costs money, how much do you want to spend?" You get a lot of bang for the buck with pulley, exhaust, intake, etc. When you start wanting more power (it sounds like you do) you have to spend more money (it sounds like you have) and the cost per hp goes up. Does it stink? Not really, it's just the way it is. Want even more power to go with that tune? Ask around to see what it will coist to have your engine balanced and blueprinted. You'll get more power but you'll spend a lot of money for the gain.

 

it's a very tough code to crack and thus takes many hours and thus lots of $ in development. Just economics i'm afraid.

 

It's really very simple... No market size!

 

Encryption isn't the problem. Remember the GTR's "untunable" ecu when it came out? Yeah, it was cracked and now for a few grand you can take one to north of 1000hp on the stock ECU. Also the C7 corvette ECU which was supposed to be untunable was cracked BEFORE the car was even released.

The mini market is tiny, and tuners don't tune for fun. They're going for the low hanging fruit and MINI's ain't where it's at.

 

Yes…I agree 100%. I don’t think the code is hard to crack….people are definitely doing it. It’s just the fact that the market for MINI tuning is small, and I guess as long as there are people out there willing to pay way too much for a tune…nothing is going to change.



Like I mentioned before about the M3’s…..there are guys out there selling the cables you need to upload your tunes for $25, and there are also guys out there sending out canned tunes for free. The last I looked a cable/module you need to upload a MINI tune is $300, and the canned tunes are $500+. Just seems like the prices are way to high…but I guess if there is not much demand, than the prices will be high.

 

This.

Not only is the market size small, but there is little demand for tuning because performance gains are so low.

If you are able to get only an extra 15 hp from tuning, it's a considered to be big deal on a MINI. If it was possible to go to a tuner and walk out with 30 hp extra, tuning would more popular and there would be more options available. There isn't much headroom in a R53 or R56 engine for easy big gains. You might expect more options when the F56 comes out with its 2.0L engine (and it will be shared with BMW models, which will help for tuning demand as well).

 

I agree, the gains are small in HP. But tuning is still required to make them run "right" if you add bigger injectors, or do a header, or swap cams. But in the end I know what you are saying....why spend all that money for such small gains....especially when it's going to cost you another $700-$1000 to get it running right after your mods.

 

Who is charging $1000 for a tune?

In addition to what everyone else has already said.....the percentage of people who actually want to mod their MINI's and get them tuned is VERY small in comparison to MINI owners that want to buy Hello Kitty mirror caps and junk like that . There were more performance oriented people when the R53 was the only thing around, but most have moved on

Now in comparison, the percentage of M3 owners that want to mod their cars is HIGH, as they are already paying more to get a factory performance oriented version of BMW's most mass produced car. This type of person is going to have more desire to extract every last bit out of their cars, over and above what the factory has given them....and they have the $$ to pay for parts that WORK. MINI owners? They refuse to spend the $$ required to develop parts for these cars that work.

So...bottom line, its market demand....more consumers willing to spend drives more tuners to spend time and R&D $ on platforms like an M3, STi, Evo, etc which brings down prices of parts/tunes. Sure it might seem like there's a lot of people on here who want more performance for their MINI's but in reality, the number is very very very small.

 

RennTech charges $1000

 

ECU tunes do for increase for N/A engines for sure, the gains obviously arnt as high as boosted ones.

my car gained a lot, and went WAY SAFER with a tune. For those who runs a 17% pulley with no tune, I am amazed you don't blow stuff up. they run so lean.

look at my graph before/after... STOCK injectors.

 

I would like to add that everyone is saying very little gain from the tune; but the average amount gained from a tune is about 15WHP.

Well when you start out with 150WHP on the average lightly modified R53, that means you got a 10% gain! That is not bad for say $600 dollars.

That is a REAL documented power, not something that the manufacturer is claiming is the average HP gain.

Also there are side benefits:

• Throttle response is WAY better (so no need to buy a throttle boost cable) Saving you 200 right there
• Speed Governor is removed
• Mileage is Usually increased as the mods that have been added are optimized

Now, that being said I agree that the price of the tune is HIGH and the amount of people that are getting TUNES is going down, so that will not help the long term of the tune prices.


Also the fact that everyone that ever tries to get tuning information into the public domain gets jumped all over (i.e. you are going to blow your motor, I would not chance it etc etc).


The so called cracking of the encryption is not really an encryption, but a check sum on the bytes of the file, it is really more to check to make sure that the file is not corrupt.

 

600$ tunes for r53's are cheap IMO. subarus run around the same thing and they have super common software, Minis software and licenses are rare and expensive.

I think it is pointless throwing tons of mods on a car if you dont get a tune. 600$ tune will be 1000 x better than a 600$ catback. people spend stupid amounts on exhausts for minimal gains, but not the tune to really get the gains.

Also as you can see by my graph the AFR was super lean and dangerous witha 17% pulley yet every post on this forum says "the ecu compensates its not dangerous"

-B

 

Where are you getting that from? Most of the "well known" tuners I've talked to say that 8hp is a pretty standard gain from just a tune on a stock R53. Who's getting an honest 15hp from just a tune....and if that's just an average.....are you saying that some guys are getting 20+hp from a tune? I'd like to see the dyno graphs on that.