So today I went out with a group of MINI5280 members to High Plains Raceway in support of our female drivers that where the only ones aloud to participate in todays event. Great time at the track even though I couldnt run. There was a few Porsche GT3's including 2 GT3-RS's, an Audi R8, 2 Loti, some nice M3's, and lots of other sweet cars, all laping the 2+ miles that make up the track, all being driven hard by women. Some of our lady drivers made short work of a ZO6 Corvette, and some other cars that are well outside of the relm of performance of their mostly stock MINI's. Even had one member in a R56 JUSTaCOOPER get bumped into one of the faster groups and put up a great showing.

Durring the lunch intermission anyone was aloud to go on the track for some familiariseation / parade laps. Yes I took my car out. There where a few rules though, NO PASSING, and STICK TO ABOUT 55 MPH, I repededly cought myself (and everyone else) at almost the top of 3rd though! It was a good learning experiance, being my first time on this track, and knowing that I couldn't push the car all out. It was really easy to pick the right line and the car was begging to be driven harder. My suspension setup felt really good where everything is at, and I cant wait until I can afford a new set of NITTO's and to go out for some real hot laps. I had my GoPro mounted right above the NACA duct into the airbox, man does it pick up all the glorious S/C whine, I will post a link if I can get one of the other club members to post it to YouTube. The video is about 25minutes long, and takes you through 6 laps.

Now tomorrow its back to work in the garage, installing the brakes, 64mm S/C pulley and seeing what all it's going to take to replace this leaky oil pan gasket.

 

Love what you did to your hood. Keep up the great work.

 

Looking forward to it!!

 

I am almost done with the brakes, I unfortunately have not been stoping to take pics though. Man do those 13" rotors and shiney red Wilwood calapers look sweet behind the wheels! NO MORE will anybody say that my brakes look so small, even the rear rotors are about 3/4 of an inch BIGGER than the stock front rotors.

And for the bad news, I was swaping my pulley on the Sprintex, and the tensioner failed! The hydraulic tensioner that is used has a weak point, it's held togeather with one TINY little "C" clip like a GM rear end. Turns out if you crank on it too hard when installing the belt it will pop and eventually split in half. I have had a slight click coming from that area since installation, and just thought it was normal, the belt still had FULL tension until I took the tensioner loose for the pulley swap, so even if this failure occurs (atleast in my case) the car is still safe to drive, unlike when a stock tensioner fails.

 

With all of that Hp, glad to see that you have brakes to go with it...
And it sounds like we have a new track junkie in our midst...the drug of choice for some.

I figure you probably already know this but I am going to "open my big mouth" anyway...With the larger rear brake rotors you have changed the braking bias on your car towards the rear. Even with the larger front brakes that may not be a particularly good thing. This can result in the back end locking up and/or the ABS kicking in early. The net effect being either the car will want to swap ends and/or you will have less braking then if you had left it with the stock rear rotors. You may not notice that on dry roads where you rarely do hard braking but you may on rain slick, snow covered roads and/or on the track. The Mini actually does very well on the track with the stock brakes in the rear and 13" Wilwoods up front. My suggestion is, on the track, to use race pads that will tend to bias the braking back towards the front and work up slowly to the bracking limits to see if the car become squirrelly. Last thing you want to do is to trail brake into a corner and have the back end come around on you at 60 mph because the rear locked up. Guard rails are very unforgiving. Brake pads of choice - anything that is full race (up front: Carbotec XP10 or 12, Wilwood Compound B, H or A), not a street/track pad. My bet is you are too agressive for a street/track pad to survive with you on the track. There, mouth closed

 

Just took the car out for its first drive with the new brakes, and smaller S/C pulley.
The brakes are working great, no fade, good pedal feel, and man can they take some heat. To bed the new pads in I went on a secluded 2 lane highway with no traffic and a 55 mph speed limmit, and repetedly took the car up to about 90 mph and practiced my threshhold braking back down to about 50. It took about 10 times to even get the brakes noticably hot, and another 10 to feel the pedal start to get soft. There really wasnt any noticable change in braking bias, but I rarely brake mid corner to find out.

The Sprintex with the 64mm pulley, makes a lot more noise at idle. The change in power is really noticable, especially around 3000 RPM, and holds the new power to my 7200 RPM rev limmiter. The tune is going to need some more work though, it leans out early on and stays about the same throughout the logs. It shuld be a pretty easy fix though, now that I know what maps to adjust to give it more fuel. Boost today was right around 12psi, I know what your thinking I was geting 12.7 with the 70mm. The boost with the 70mm would peak at about 11psi when it was hot out, and go down to 10psi if my airbox temp was 95 degrees or warmer. Today my airbox readings where 110 degrees constant! So the extra boost is there, you just cant see it in the logs right now.

 

Hey Dik. I may have missed something here, but why didn't you use the carbon fiber hood instead of cutting into your stock hood?

 

Well the carbon hood is going to take some MAJOR work to get it straight. Rather than work every day until my fingers bleed on it, in order to get done by MITM, I just decided to cut into the OEM one. I had the OEM hood cut and the vents installed in a day's work. It never left the car, and didn't need to be painted, so it was kinda a tripple plus. I am going to keep working on the carbon one when I have time, but for now the factory sheet metal is good.

 

Where did you get it from? VIS? It sucks that it needs so much work to be used, but the factory hood work looks cool.

 

Wow! I've been reading this since 8 am at work. Very nice work.

 

Slow day at work huh?

 

When you have a chance, tape some 2-3" long yarn or casset tape strips around, near and in those ducks and take the car for a drive. You might be surprised which way they blow. Bu then again, I might be also. ;-)
Very clean and nice work!

 

I didn't get work done because of this.

 

5zero4, it's a Siebon hood, I wish that someone like APR would make some quality CF stuff for our cars!

MiniBOL, Glad you enjoyed it. What took you so long?

Onasled, if you go back in the thread, I actually did that with the carbon hood and a big fan in the garage. I might try it again with the car actually on the road though.

 

Haaa, very typical of me not seeing that. I'll look for it. But yea, do it while driving as it will be different. But who you guna strap on the hood to take the pics?

 

Any body know how much weight the roof of a MINI will hold? I might be able to strap Gary from BoosTec up there!
Na, I'll just suction my GoPro above the windshield.

No hunting nessicary Onasled, the pic's are on pg 10.

 

Thanks, ..I remember now looking at those a while back. Doh!
Yea, you will see a BIG difference when the hood is on the car. Widsheild will alter a good deal of those results.
Man, I'd LOVE to see a movie of this when you do it.

 

Well here it is, it came out blurry as hell on youtube. Thought It posted in high def, Ive got to figgure it out.
Anyhow, they work, the DFIC exit really gets some turbulance going but what do you expect, it's a MINI not a Ferrari.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2dJD3nZw3I

 

FWIW, the video looks (and sounds) great at 1080p, so you've got the high def thing figured out just fine. I feel like I'm strapped to the roof of your car watching that. Glad to see those NACAs are working as expected.

 

Excellent work The one that I find curious is the lone strand in the center of the cowl on the windshield side of the hood gap. That one seems to want to go forward while the rest are heading back to wards the rear of the car. There has always been a lot of discussion as to whether or not the area in front of the windshield was high or low pressure. From what it looks like on your car the center is different from the edges. Thanks for sharing .

Randy
M7 Tuning

 

Thanks guys, that shuld solve any questions as to where the air goes around the front of our cars. That center string is a little odd, but the only way to get rid of its backwardness is to take out the windshield.

 

Love that you did this. Thanks.
Interesting, and somewhat expected. If you feel like doing more then maybe do longer, maybe 12" strings and see where they go. A few rows of those should be even better. Have it so they are taped at least 4" from the ducts. I'd like to see if they lift, or are sucked into the ducts.
Those center ones are doing what is expected.

 

Now I don't have to try and prove that cowl scoops work . I wonder if the reverse strings in the middle are related to your DFIC exit scoop or it that same thing would happen on a stock hood.

My super suckers should really be doing their job Thanks for the vid.

 

Welcome back LB, By the looks of it they shuld be doing something.

How was the islands, I hear there nice this time of year?

 

You know... you could reroute your window wash to be an external water injector into that inlet now.