Ahhhh, the Days of Future Passed, even here on NAM. Some good, no make that "fine" theatre in this thread. Jan was not around at the time it was started but there were enough RMWiacs to defend his honor. Whether it is theatre or theater, this one sure has some magic in it. Magic? Yes, magic as a major component of magic is "misdirection" and this thread does its best to keep you looking in one direction. No Consumer Report type comparison here but rather one head with some larger ports and valves versus another head with even larger ports and valves. Then muddy the water a little more by using two different cars. As one post lamented that I agree with, the "comparison" should have been between the RMW and the Thumper TPR2-T, not the TPR2.

Just some numbers. 1.) TPR2 Intake valves are +0.5 mm larger than OEM, RMW are +1.8 mm larger than OEM. 1.8/.5 = 3.6. 2.) TPR2 exhaust valves are +1.5 mm larger than OEM. RMW are +2.33 larger than OEM. 2.33/1.5 = 1.55. 3.) The TPR2 intake ports are close in size to the OEM, the RMW intake ports are larger than OEM. See the pictures below.

OEM


TPR2


RMW

 

Getting the popcorn ready for the Trolls, Fanboys and Fireworks.

 

Not a fan boy either way but I was looking through some photos tonight and I found my Stock to RMW head comparison photos, This was my head from about 3 years ago.

 

The RMW is an excellent head and the CNC tolerances far exceed those of the cast OEM head. Marketing the RMW Head via comparison to the TPR2 is aimed at a person not intelligent enough to see through the misdirection yet it is still being done some 10 years after the last Gen1 engine was placed in the 2008 R52S.

 

I'm not sure why you can't see the difference in performance
the thumper head even had more boost going to it........you can't even make this stuff up

why don't you get Mike Pinson to post up a video of his Thumper engine with 22psi of boost on his Sprintex
then people can get an idea of the acceleration you get from these products

 

The question is not whether I cannot see the difference in performance, as with the sizes I noted above there better be performance, it should be why RMW continues to use comparisons to a TPR2 or even a *TRP1? If somebody is going to use such comparisons then I can see that same individual cooking the tunes as well.

* The TPR1 is ported but has OEM size valves

 

Anybody want to get in on the Office Pool for when race podiums are mentioned, offers to test the Thumper head on the Bomber are made or when some Troll that makes like 7 posts a year comes out of their cave to join in?

 

[/troll font]
@ThumpeR52 - it was more than 5 years prior to your post that this thread ceased to be and you are trying to call out Trolls? Really? You quite literally dredged this thread from the dead to get responses... you work for the Russians? If not, they could use your talents to get Trump reelected. Your very good at this type of thing.
[/troll font off]

 

Couple of things:

1.) The @membername thing does not work on NAM as they have the VBulletin platform. MA has the newer XenForo platform that has that.
2.) Pushing the limits here but the Russians were more working against Hillary than for Mr. Orange Hair. She played some games over there when Vlad was running for President after Medvedev to which he was not very happy.
3.) On this thread, the thing is when you do Google searches for comparisons between RMW and Thumper this comes up. I will bet the farm that there are allot of folks out there that think the RMW and TPR2 are very similar. This is portion of Post # 22: "it was just a comparison of two similarly equipped cars." I am not aware of too many auto folks that market by comparing a Big Block Engine to a Small Block but yet this is just what has been done for years relative to the MINI Gen1 Head.

I was a Newbie here some five years ago and for many years thought that the sun rises and sets over Irvine, Ca. Not any more.

Now I have to wait by my phone for Mr. Orange Hair to call me.

 

Is the Thumper Head still hand ported? ( all 3 versions )

Also you gave us the specs on the TPR2 head compared to the RMW head and said it should be compared to the TPR2 T head instead but you didn't give specs on it. What are they?
As we all know it not just valve size that matters it's the flow of it all thru the valves and ports, header, etc etc...You can't just throw in big valves and make power...

 

Mike Schultz that is ThumperHeads is an old school guy and does the work himself with his own two hands.

From what I have read/heard RMW has upwards of three different CNC Machine Shops produce the heads. RMW has some great stuff that includes his big valve heads. He does his homework for testing a product and is associated with race teams that have won numerous contests utilizing his products. With all that said, I find the type of comparison used in this thread to be dubious marketing.

Here is an even older thread that I believe the guy at 1320 posted where a TRP2 on one car is compared to a RMW on another. At that time I do not think Thumper had a true "big valve head" only the ported TPR1 and the TPR2 that I provided valve and port sizes on above. He did have a TPR3 that had big valves but it was a bust, had poor numbers so he when back to the bench and came up with the TPR2-R that has an 8,000 rev and the same size valves as the the RMW Stage 1 ( Jan has three different heads). From information I have found the flow values of the RMW Stage 1 and the TPR2-R are up around the 190 CFM area. From this same information it appears the RMW Stage 1 has larger intake ports than the TPR2-R but the Thumper unit has a little higher port velocity. What I also find is that although RMW has three different heads, I do not recall ever reading what specific Stage head was being tested/used.

 

For clarification, I believe the Jesus Head is what Jan now calls Stage 1. On the Stages, I found this:

Stage 1 head, 1.8mm intake/2.3mm inconel exhaust valves
Stage 2 head 1.8mm intake/27mm inconel exhaust valves
Stage 3 head 33mm intake valves/28mm inconel exhaust valves No price yet (prototype with flow numbers coming)

It also appears that Hubie Fuh came up with the 1.8/2.3 valve sizes for the Widow Maker MINI he was involved with for Fireballed.

http://www.superstreetonline.com/fea...mini-cooper-s/

 

As we all know there is no way for someone doing hand grinding on ports to duplicate that time after time.. A reasonable person would think that some of those hand ground heads have got to be better then others...So you have to wonder which one did I get, the better one or the average one... Might be a decent head, I don't know... The only person I know who bought a Thumper head ended up selling it to buy a RMW head.
I don't know who does RMW's CNC work but once you have the program to use, it doesn't really matter which shop does it as long as they are using the same program to do the work... I have a "program" to CNC cut my splitters and any CNC router in the world could cut the same splitter using my program file..

On your podium comment. Jan doesn't bring that up to just claim to be making more power. As we all know the most powerful car doesn't always win, what it shows is that the people who have good race teams, drivers, and or cars search out the best products to use for HP, reliability, service, etc. and those people are using RMW...

 

Yes with hand porting there will be differences just as there will be with CNC albeit to smaller percentages. All CNC means is that the cuts are in the same place relative to each other, not relative to the openings in the head that is cast. I would think that a top flight race team would take a CNC head, check to see how the CNC cuts are blended and then determine whether a little handwork would be beneficial. Race Teams are into the hundreds of a second, most MINI owners may dream of being a Racer but in everyday life what is a hundredth of a second? What is a tenth of second to most of us?

I have seen enough of Jan's responses, including those to my own posts, to recognize a SOP regardless of what the original post was. That is evident in the recent post I made in this thread. I pointed out the differences in the head and yet Jan did not even venture there, rather he stayed to his well rehearsed SOP spiel.

There are ThumperHead owners here on NAM, one made a post in this thread. Five years later he still has the TPR2-R.

 

This is interesting. I have been hearing the same data for years, however no one has put all the data together as you have. I have been following all the RMW posts here and on Facebook. It is becoming an easy choice after seeing all these facts on the RMW BS just to discredit another Cylinder Head . Do you have any actual numbers for the RMW Head? I always hear the RMW BVH doesn't need numbers?

 

So now I'm cooking the tunes? You know that's slander right?
I have never , ever detuned a car that had someone else's parts on it........NEVER

the reason for this is: I'm the only one with proof that it actually works.......you obviously don't

at least someone sees the nonsense of ThumpR52 posts

Maybe you should stick to what you know......you are listening to hearsay and it's shameful. I have had ONLY 1 CNC HEAD PORTING SHOP TOUCH MY HEADS........
You find it dubious marketing yet you post info that is blatantly false.........got it
you don't even understand an adjustable cam gear and how it affects the engine power curve.

There is nothing to discredit, the performance does it for me. Show me 1 National championship Mini with the Thumper head on it?

 

Here is what real dyno graphs look like
the one that is constantly touted by ThumpR is from a dyno showing peak torque at over 6200+ rpms........that car had a street cam where peak torque will show itself around 4200-4400 rpms when everything is installed correctly. The only way i have ever seen a torque curve like that is when the supercharger was junk and it only picks up on the high end with rpm. Once you learn to understand camshaft design and how it actually works in the real work you will truly understand what I just told you. No amount of nonsense will make it true

 

So a head with larger valves and ports beat a head with smaller valves and ports. My God, what is the world coming to?

Nothing different here, the same old marketing spiel that reflects an inability to admit that misdirection is involved. When somebody like Consumer Reports tests a RMW Stage 1 against a TPR2-R then I will be interested. Until that time stuff like this is just staged marketing drivel.

 

I did some digging for some cam numbers as RMW will not post what they sell other than some real simple stuff. So we are testing a head with bigger valves, bigger ports, a more aggressive cam and a header against a car with smaller valves, smaller ports, less aggressive cam, a larger pulley and no header.

TPR2 Car- 17% pulley, W/M injection, +.5mm intake / + 1.5mm exhaust and the NS1 camshaft spec: .343" Lift - 176 duration

RMW Car - 14% pulley, Street header, +1.8mm intake /+ 2.3mm exhaust, and the Dominator camshaft spec : .400" lift - 190 duration

All being used to tout one head against another. No, not false advertising but in my book not proper advertising for somebody that comes off as whatever he says is gospel and anything anybody says is untrue.

I will not trust any individual that pulls this kind of stuff nor would I be surprised if they had other unscrupulous business practices.

 

Ok, so in all the threads you say small ports are better, so now it's, " well your car has bigger valves".........you can't have it both ways. Either your head porting solution works or it doesn't. So why did Thumper go to bigger valves now? Because he realizes I was 100% correct in getting more power out of the engine.

did you magically forget that the Thumper car had 3 more psi of boost and still was almost 30hp down?

now the cam isn't as good? Let's open the honesty can here..... thumper was pushing it .......surely had to be better. Why do you think he went to Newman to get his cams ground?
There are tons of cam grinders here in the USA he could have used but he went to my grinder to get help to develop what Newman learned from grinding them for me. You can try and spin this any way you want, but the cold hard facts are there to see.

 

nothing says "clown" more than you locking threads and deleting posts that you can't take the heat on.....
when you want to have a real test of theories.......get your boy to build an engine and we will have a test for the whole world to see

 

Wow...

Calm down boys...breath...
Put'em on the track (drag strip) and test'em...real world. NO dyno stuff that can be fudged, or the setups differ, big cooling fan vs. small cooling fan, etc., etc., put up some real world testing. This can be done in different parts of the country and a tenth (of a second) is a tenth anywhere you race.

Mike

 

I'm 100% calm
I'm not the one posting false claims and acting like they are facts. He still doesn't even know how the ACG works. I'll work on getting 2 Mini techs at a dealership to post
1 bought Thumper's stuff
the other bought mine.......

I'm still the ONLY Mini tuner to have won anything, if even half the stuff was true from the others claims they would at least have a podium
you can downplay the facts..........but facts are facts and the rest is just marketing

 

Guess 1320 doesn't count in your book then.

 

I know you are new to testing because if you truly understood testing on a roller dyno that 2.8 ft. lbs of torque is well within the acceptable range of standard deviation.(Just look at the thumper car in the graph up a few posts, you can see the same result in those graphs between runs , let alone unstrapping and re-strapping it) You can unstrap and re-strap the dyno and more than 2-3 difference in torque/hp. I could show you in 10 minutes how flawed your testing actually is. What was the ambient temp from last time you dyno'd and this time? What was your IAT last time and this time when you started the run. What was the coolant temp? I guarantee you don't have the data. I can show anyone here how it affects the numbers.

I think you are way more interested in trying to discredit me than actually a true comparison of any products. Again, lets get an engine contest going so you and the world will see the truth or are you that petrified what will happen? ( I know Mike Schultz doesn't want this to come to fruition, if you don't believe me....ask him......if he says he's not afraid to bring his engine then lets get it on. We will set up a Normally aspirated challenge so Mike can show us how his small valve, small port design destroys the big boy ports. This way no one can say , his supercharger was better than the others supercharger.....there won't be ANY excuses , just the crying of the loser)

You state that the ACG lets more air in , it also closes the exhaust valves faster too......of course you will have more cranking compression......so why didn't the fuel lean out? (please explain)

you dropped $245 for an ACG that got you 2.8 unverifiable hp.......more than likely a peak since you didn't even post the graph......what a bargain
(you do realize that not all factory deck heights are exactly the same, so how do you know where to set the cam position without a cam degree kit? It's called "GUESSING".. How do you know for 100% sure your cam was in time to begin with? You don't, you never verified it. The car will still run 1 tooth off) Why not just grind a cam that was correct for the application to begin with

Let's address some of the nonsense above:
Do you think hp would go up or down if I took 3psi of boost away from either car? We all know the answer here...... the fact that he had 3 more psi and it was still down 29hp shows you what a difference the proper parts actually make.......(head/cam/header design) Comical you try to spin it the other way when you had the advantage is pure product bias nonsense......

So why did Thumper push those products to the customer if they weren't the best? (don't put the blame on me, I did my job)

My header design is my own, I chose specific size of the pipes and collector design to get the desired result. It's the only one like it

My head design is my own, there is only 1 like it and it's flow benched. I've created multiple valve sizing for different applications and port geometry for different applications even though you try to claim it's a 1 size fits all head.

Maybe you should take a tuning class so you can see that every single engine has a different afr and timing curve based on that VERY ENGINE, they are different, just like human beings>..... The cars data will show that to you, it's a balance of max power vs reliability. Before I tuned one of the professional Porsche teams, they went through 10 engines at $50k each for the season.......they ran on my 1 engine all year long and won with the same drivers. I would say that few thousand dollar investment was worth every penny of it. The Porsche team agreed

When you are truly ready to learn something instead of posting data which would not be accepted by any reputable testing company because of the lack of control measures, let me know. I will gladly give you the parameters to data log to show real comparisons that would be accepted. Everyone wants to see apples to apples comparisons, not apples to rotten oranges and passed off as facts.


Years ago I did testing on some intercoolers......everyone thought that intercooler was the rave........I was bashed repeatedly about the results (saying I was just saying it because it was a competitors product...which I never even offered one against it because the stock was already better) until someone actually went out and did the exact same test with the proper procedures....guess what they found? Exactly what I had found YEARS BEFORE! People don't want to be reminded they bought something that didn't work so instead they lash out at the guy giving them the correct information.
It's human nature

Same thing with the Sprintex........go read that mess of a thread. I outlined all the issues about it on another forum. ( which is why I NEVER SOLD IT and was the 1st and only to actually track test the thing with data )
I think before you go casting stones at my reputation you first look in the mirror and figure out proper control testing procedures and work on setting up the engine competition because I'm sure you are dying to find out how great your theories actually work in real life instead of in your head.

Racers are a fickle bunch, they will run WHOEVER makes the best products because their money is where their mouth is. It's why every single Mini champion out there runs my parts and tune
Don't think for a minute that if someone comes out with better stuff, they won't leave me. It's the nature of the beast. Keep innovating or get run over

So who wants to see the truth up close and personal on that engine build? I'll bring the car to whatever dyno you bring yours to on the same day. ( Ideally it would be a dynapack as there won't be any strap down issues, camber issues or tire pressure deviations) We can film it live , post it live to facebook and then to youtube so everyone here on NAM can see the results. Marketing dream for any vendor out there unless you are scared to put your work up for the world to see on same dyno , same day.

This is exactly why there are pissing contests because people believe a dyno that was shown without any kind of control data to verify the gain over the previous setup. It's very easy to end all of it....
build your best N/A Mini engine, show up to the dyno and run them.