Ok I am sure this has been beat to death but aside from being a vendor and having an endless supply of $ what is the best motor to mod? I have had two different 2005 S's and the last was modded with a 19% pulley, AGS, Quicksilver exhaust, and a few othert small mods. I am thinking about another Mini and love the earlier body "02-06" but I am wanting to heavily mod this one but want to put $20,000 in the motor, whats the most street legal HP are we seeing now from the turbo vs SC and which is cheaper to achieve this?

 

A bolt on R56 will blow the doors off a bolt on R53. However, heavily modded R53's are putting down more power than the R56 as there is a much larger aftermarket for them such as Motor swaps, head swaps, larger superchargers etc

 

20k in the motor??? Well I have some super secret parts I can sell you. I will make you a hell of a deal too....

 

Heck for that much you can have my motor, maybe even the whole car

 

Putting 20k into the motor of a FWD car? Why? Having much more then 300whp is pretty useless on the street in a FWD car. No one has put nearly that much money into a R56 engine yet. I know there are a few R53s that have 400whp +. Im sure that is achievable with 20k.

 

If you guys dont think M7 and a lot of the other builders dont have that much in their car and still not at 400hp you better check again, I have owned 2 different 05 S's and to have 400WHP you better have a hell of a lot in it for it to be reliable. And not a single person answered my question, I am not some teenage kid on here posting, I have been a member of this board for about 4yrs and have seen a lot of mini's and a true 3-400whp car I have not seen except a few big builders and a guy that was local to me that went by spillman on here that did a twin charged kit and a lot of motor work, I SIMPLY asked which one was easier to achieve thr MOST hp for the money, didnt ask for sarcasm!

 

Did you not read my post

 

If the ECU wasn't so tight in the r56 it could get some great power. But like you have run into in this thread there a bunch of nay sayers(pretty much just a bunch of *** hats) that say big pwer is not possible in an R56. The going thing on here is that an intake and exhaust should get me 10s in the 1/4 mile. Pretty much an upgraded turbo, manifold, intercooler, better cams, PnP the head, a downpipe that doesn't throw a code, and n awesome tune and it is possible to see 300+hp. $20k should take car of all of that. Hell that is a lot toward the motor. Heck I wish I had that kinda of money cause I would have already done that. I hope every thing works out and please keep us posted.

 

What is your goal? What do you want out of the car? What do you want to use it for? How do you like power delivery to be? Do you just want a show car with 400+?

You can get 260-270whp, rather easily on an R53. But you're lacking the torque that you can get with an R56...

If you want more...the Rotrex R53's are a blast...and their power delivery makes it very easy to manage 330whp+, even on the street. They will put most supercars to shame.

You can get around 250whp and 300wtrq with about $2-3k in an R56. You'll spin through 3rd with that...so how much more do you want? Much more will be possible in the future...the R56 tuning world has taken forever to advance, but it is finally going somewhere. If you wanna toss $20k at an R56 and do it right....you'd have a complete monster for sure, but what do you want it for?

You don't need to spend $20k to get a fast MINI...but I don't know exactly what you are looking for. I promise if you spend $20k on either the R53 or R56....your end results will be about the same. It all just depends what you are looking for....

 

Sorry com3tojo3 I missed yours after reading the smart comments, the main objective is I dont want to put anywhere near that kind of money in it and I agree Porthos about the pulley and exhaust people on here, I had the main bolt ons on my last 05 and it was a sweet car and just like was said it would redline and roast the hell out of the tires but wouldnt hook up. I just want a reliable daily driver that I can take to the track "drag" on occasion to have fun in, I know you have a quicker response in a SC engine but I would think you could do more overall to the turbo.

 

so which is it? did you make a typo in your very first post which drastically changed the meaning of your post? Everyone freaked (made the smart comments) because it looks like you said you want to put $20k into it.

Jan can hook you up with a $20k r53 motor that probably has close to 400hp or more... Street drivable and reliable? What are your definitions of street drivable and reliable?

Or you could go the R56 route and for less than $2000 you can spin the tires in third gear with great drivability and reliability.

Basically, you can get cheap massive torque on a R56 or expensive massive HP on a r53.

I have driven a 350+whp turbo r53 - and it ran like crap except at WOT. The owner wants to sell it now.

I have also driven a ~250whp SC r53 that ran/idled pretty decent (but cost several thousand to build).
I like the way mine drives better. The low-mid range torque is very fun on a daily (read "every time i drive it") basis.


edit: The simple answer to what seems to be your question: You'll get much more bang for your buck with a R56.