I know you are all probably sick of my turbo questions. But whats the worst that could happen if I put a turbo in my car and run the boost around 5? What if I upgraded the head and pistons? Could it work then?

 

yes it would work.

 

Well you would have to upgrade the pistons and heads, you could get away with using the parts from an S, if you used stock S piston that would be a 8:1 compression and than running only 5lbs with that would basically give you a car with slightly less HP than an S since a stock S runs I think around 8lbs. But if you found forged cooper pistons that would be 10:1. You would probably need a custom ECU tone since the stock unit is not meant to run boost, at the least you would need some kind of AF controller so you don't burn your pistons. But no matter what you do to the engine it doesnt change the fact that the tranny is a really weak link in the system, especially if you have the earlier Midlands

This has been done before, on two different cars to my knowledge. On one the tranny blew and on the other their was some pretty bad failure in the valvetrain. Neither of those cars made it long enough to see what the long term effects of the increased heat did to the engine. S pistons have oil cooling systems to deal with the added heat of boost. I have always wanted to do this myself but everything I hear is telling me not to.

 

It really wouldnt be worth the effort. Ill just add a throttle body, ecu, headers, and a camshaft. That should give me some decent gain.

 

im sure you could get away with 4-5 psi of boost without building the motor. lots of cars do it. its just not technically worth the money to not run more boost

 

Thats my plain, HP is not the real gain with mods like that on the Cooper, its response, especially if you add on a flywheel and clutch. Those two are kinda expensive but a cheaper alternative would be a lightweight crank pullley.

 

If you do those mods, you probably will not get much of a gain without a head. The TB and the Cam are incomplete without a P&P head. You will only get a couple of HP.

 

A head is a really good mod, slightly larger exhaust valves are also a good mod, you may hear some debate about if larger valves are a benefical way to spend money, to me if you already have opened up all the other bottle necks in the system the exhaust valves are the last ones