Well, got the boost gauge wired up.



It was actually a pleasant experience for the most part. I already had the sender installed so that lightened the load considerably. I started last night with a friend who somehow enjoys wiring and we got the gauge setup in a couple of hours. We did, however, have some problems with operation that I learned after we adjourned for the evening were not our fault. More on that later.

A few weeks ago I tapped into the nipple on the intake manifold under the outlet horn of the supercharger to use as the boost/vacuum signal for the gauge. I used the tee supplied with the gauge from Marshall, but the hose they supplied was too small to attach to the tee or the input on the sender. Made a run to home depot and got some clear hose to do the job. Routed the hose under the intercooler and under the wiring under the thermostat before coming up to the input at the sender, which I installed on the partition next to the airbox. I can't remember if the DDM intake I have replaced that part of the partition, but I had a hole with a T30 bolt at the top of the partition that fit the bill pretty well for a mounting spot. Installed it using a couple of rubber grommets on either side of the mounting flange so it doesn't get as much vibration. The gauge has 4 connectors: a 3-pin for an optional menu button; a 3-pin for optional peak/warn features; a 3-pin for the signal input, and a 5-pin for power/illumination. I didn't use the optional connectors. I used Alta boost gauge installation instructions to find a suitable 12v switched wire and the illumination wire. I already had some Posi-Taps setup at the DLC for constant 12v and a ground that I was using for the throttle controller (which I have removed). The 12v switched wire is a green wire with a blue tracer and yellow hatching located at the connector bundle under the steering column. It was in a nice spot for a Posi-Tap and would be hidden by the lower steering column cover. For gauge illumination, I used the grey wire with red tracer at the green tachometer connector. There isn't much space for a tap there with the tachometer installed with the gauge pod, so I took the dash top off and got lucky finding the wire in a much larger bundle above the bulkhead. It just so happened to be facing me already and I only needed to cut a small strip of tape to get space for the Posi-Tap. Very convenient. The dash top is easy to remove; just pop off the covers on either side of the dash (you may need to pull the door seals back a bit), which reveals two T20 bolts on either side. After those are removed, there are two more T20's above the center vents and then the dash top lifts out. You'll probably need the tachometer removed to get it off; it's a tight fit trying to remove or install it with that in place. That completes the wiring for the gauge power/illumination. The other connector is for the signal, and that's where things went wrong. I learned later that the instructions I had been sent were incorrect. I wired up the red/black wires of the sender to the red/black wires of the signal connector on the gauge and the white wire of the sender to the green wire of the gauge. This is what my instructions told me to do. The actual setup is to have the red wire of the sender wired to 12v switched and the black to ground. The red/black wires on the signal connector of the gauge get cut and sealed. So last night we had it wired wrong and the gauge was reporting far too low. As for the connector itself, I already had a small slit cut in the firewall grommet to feed the oil temperature wire through, so we just poked the connector through that and all was well. There's a small slit under the weather strip and the partition/airbox on my DDM intake that made a good slot for the connector to go through. The other issue I was having an am still having is that the backlighting flickers occasionally. Marshall tells me this is a common problem with the MINI gauges because the car is sending diagnostic pulses over the illumination circuit, which interrupts the 12v signal and causes the gauge illumination to turn off whenever this happens. I'm going to try wiring a power relay in-line with the illumination to correct this. Got them wired correctly tonight and now the gauge appears to be accurate. Reads slightly under 0 at key-on, 17-18 in. Hg at idle and ~15.5 psi at full boost. If the gauge is to be believed, then I suppose I have a small boost leak. I think a 17% pulley should give me ~17 psi.

To make the gauge fit in my pod, I had to grind off the studs that most gauges come with to use with their stock holders. I had difficulty when I was initially test fitting them a couple years ago to get them to slide in the pod. I actually broke one of the faces trying to get it back out of the pod and Marshall had to replace it for me. So this time, I lubed up the gauge with some Sil-Glyde and it slid in pretty easily. The gauge pod has a relatively small slit in the back, so I hooked up the connectors before installing the gauge in the pod and fed the wires out the back. The wiring actually came out pretty clean. There's space enough between the dash and the top steering column piece to get the wires in between. They can then feed down the lower steering column cover and won't be seen behind the knee panel. We also made sure to use heatshrink and tape where appropriate, so the wires aren't too loose where they shouldn't be.

Didn't feel like looking at the front end squeak or do the trailing arm conversion yet. I'll do the oil pressure gauge next week and take a look at those then.

 

Re-wired the boost gauge and installed the oil pressure gauge last week. The boost gauge now reads close to 0 at key-on, ~18 in. Hg at idle and ~16 psi at full boost. I usually only see 14-15 psi, I've only seen 16 psi once in third. Not really happy with those boost numbers. Judging by what others have said, the consensus is 17 psi with a 17% pulley.

The oil pressure gauge install went pretty smoothly. I already had the sender in place in between the stock sender next to the oil filter housing. We put the top heat shield in a vise and bent the corner that gets close to the sender back towards the block. Now has a good inch of space between the heat shield and the sender prongs. We found a good route for the wires; there's a grommet at the bottom of the partition underneath the top motor mount that we passed through and then we routed the wires behind the partition and bolted the ground wire on the wiper motor mount bracket thing where the ground for my oil temperature sender already is. Passed the sender wire through the firewall to go up to the gauge. We taped up the first foot or so of the wires from the sender and passed them through a short piece of plastic conduit to help insulate them from the heat before they go through the grommet in the partition. Nicely enough, the conduit naturally bends around the oil filter housing so I probably won't have to disconnect the wiring to change my oil filter, not that it would be a big deal anyway. Not much evidence of accessory wiring in the engine bay with the new gauges; looks pretty clean. Inside the car, we reused all the taps we already setup for the boost gauge. The Posi-Taps are kind of a struggle to try and fit 2 or 3 loose wires into them and the twisting 3 together makes them too thick to fit. Had to finesse those a bit, but they're in there now. An interesting thing to note about the flickering I'm getting with the illumination is that the gauges don't flicker at the same time; the actually flicker in sequence. One of them will flash first and the other will follow in a tenth to a half a second later. I would think they would flash at the same time if the car were sending diagnostic pulses over the illumination circuit like Marshall says. Oh well, perhaps the relay capacitor things will still sort them out when those arrive in a month or so.

I'm reading ~70 psi of oil pressure at most engine speeds when the car is cold. As it warms up, the pressure gradually drops until it reads ~16-18 psi at idle and I think near 60 at high engine speeds. I don't know what the numbers should actually be, but those seem reasonable enough to me.

 

Also want to ask you guys if you all know of any good R53 tuners besides RMW/Jan. I've exchanged a few emails with him in the past and I think he really only wants to deal with people who want full race heads/stroker short blocks etc. People who have a lot of money and want to make a lot of power. I'm thinking my power loss issue is related to the possibility that my fuel pressure regulator vacuum line was unplugged when I got it tuned last year. I'm guessing it's running rich and trying to compensate unsuccessfully, so I need a re-tune to get it running right again. Jan wants me to have Bytetronik remove their software from the ECU since he uses something else. Just curious if there are other good tuners around who use Bytetronik and do canned tunes.

 

I data log my boost on the track, the most I see at VIR is 215 on the map sensor, that's just a little over 16 psi after correction to altitude

 

Thanks, so I guess it may be okay. Idle vacuum is good. I just expected more boost. How are you data logging?

 

I use a racecapture mk2, it also streams the data to podium.live this is a lap from the last time I was at vir in september

https://podium.live/events/vir-2018-sep-09/device/mini?laps=18

 

Wow, that's pretty nifty. Thanks for the link.

 

you going on the NC club run saturday ? https://www.facebook.com/events/586650358425222/

 

I work every Saturday. Would like to meet up with some people, just doesn’t seem to be in the cards.

 

We replied to your email. Who tuned your MINI? Do you have the MINIPort hardware or did you get a "custom dyno tune" only? Your boost seems fine; how about your AFR? What is it reading under load?

 

I thought I replied back. Ugh, it saved to my drafts. It was Chris at SneedSpeed. I don’t have any hardware but he said I had a license registered to my VIN so subsequent tunes wouldn’t require me to re-purchase the software. I don’t have an AFR gauge.

 

Your VIN is locked to Sneed's Dealer cable. If you send us your ECU and provide a return shipping label, we can revert your ECU back to OEM. But you must make the request to have Sneed email over your Stock Rom (from the initial uploading of FA53). Hope this info is helpful.

 

Wow, well that really sucks. I can't put my car down for the time it would take to ship. I'm not even sure if Sneed would even send me the stock rom; they don't always reply to my emails.

 

In reviewing my emails to SneedSpeed in November, he mentioned I could talk to Mike at Bytetronik to do remote tunes. Is this possible?

 

In order to perform the remote tune, the end user will need to have the hardware; otherwise, how will you flash your ECU? Correct.

In addition, we would need your stock rom and stock tune in order to proceed with the CRM (custom remote mapping).

Just a FYI: Sneed is no longer a Bytetronik Dealer/Reseller as of Nov 2018.

 

Okay, what hardware do I need to proceed? I'll try to get the stock rom from Sneed.

He did tell me last year that he sold the dyno and no longer does tunes.

 

Finally got a facelift anthracite driver's door card today to match the one I've had on the passenger side for the last year or so. Had a bit of a fight with the screw clip that receives one of the short screws going through the door card and into the door. On facelift door cards, this screw is hidden by the armrest and you have to remove it to remove the screw. I don't believe Allmag did this to remove this door card from the donor vehicle; the screw clip that normally sits in the door to receive the screw was attached to the door card, presumably with the screw screwed into it. The armrest is very difficult to get off so I ended up fighting the screw clip that was attached to my door for like half an hour before I got it pulled out enough to cut it off. Then I could snap the new card on. And it sure looks nice! Still need to trim the deadening material that I added from around the side of the card, but that can wait for another day.

 

Looks good! I like that darker look! How much did you spend on them?

Also, did you get your car retuned with bytetronik? I have been talking to them and seeing if its the best direction to go with the current mods I have on the car.

 

Yeah, I’m a fan of the anthracite. My dad has the white silver trim, which I also like. The glossy finish is nice. The alloy patina that’s standard on R53’s (which mine had) is pretty ugly IMO. The card with the armrest was $95. I already had an anthracite tweeter surround I got with my other card.

Bytetronik did not respond to my last email in which I asked if they might be able to just do another tune for the mods I have if I sent them my ECU, and what the turnaround would be on that. I definitely think I need to do that, I will try contacting them again when it gets closer to summer and it’s more likely that I’ll be able to ride the bike everyday while my ECU is gone.

 

Been noticing the car hydroplaning a lot more recently, decided it was time for some new shoes. Ordered a set of Falken Azenis FK450 A/S last week and installed them today, along with the R56 trailing arms and polyurethane trailing arm mount bushing inserts I got some time ago.

The tire mounting didn’t actually go very well, but they’re on. Finished that in about an hour and then spent the next 7 hours installing the trailing arms and aligning the rear. I’m so abysmally slow it’s insane. I was expecting to have that stuff done in a couple hours.

The trailing arms were bought as a conversion kit from a used R56. They came with all the necessary R56 hardware. New bolts for the trailing links (the lower adds an eccentric cam for adjusting camber - a nice addition!), lower strut bolts with machined adapters for the flat strut clevis, wheel hub bolts, wheel speed sensors and bolts, trailing arm mounts with the throughbolt and plate, and endlinks and nuts. I guess things went pretty smoothly; I just spent a lot of time figuring out the hardware and finding the right tools for each component. Another nice feature of this swap is most of the bolts attached to the trailing arms are more easily accessible; the stock steel units are hollowed out in a way that makes access to some bolts like the ones for the wheel hubs hard to get at. This is better.

Once they were installed I only got the suspension bolts started and took it down to the alignment rack. Got the camber perfect using the new cam bolts on the lower links (again - very nice to have) and then spent quite some time working the tire around to adjust the toe. The way it’s done on the R53 is by having all 3 trailing arm mount bolts loose and tightening them carefully once you’ve moved the tire where it needs to be by hand. It took some time and there may be some trick I missed, but I eventually got it good enough. I think one of the mount bolts is supposed to somehow pull/push the mount axially to adjust the toe, but it seemed like they all did that for me so it was quite tedious. Got the rest of the suspension bolts tightened up and went back to my bay to reinstall the wheel liners. Finished up there and went out for a test drive.

When I rolled the car off the lift before aligning, the ABS and tire pressure light came on. I was pretty sure I had hooked up the new wheel speed sensors, so I was worried that they were bad. I hoped that driving it for a little while would allow it to figure itself out, but the drive home did not alleviate the problem; in fact, I could feel ABS intervention during normal braking. Not good. Got my Mac hooked up to it and used INPA to read the DSC module. The German in this module apparently doesn’t have an English translation, so I used Google to determine that the car was having issues seeing the rear left sensor. Figured I would have to do further diagnosis tomorrow, but cleared the memory anyway. Pulled up the wheel speed sensor data list and set off for a test drive. All four sensors were reading and the lights stayed off... but the brakes were still shuddering as if ABS is activating. At this point I remembered the rear right rotor bolt had not seated correctly; I remember the rotor having some play if I pulled on it. That bolt hadn’t gone in smoothly, but I had started it by hand so I assumed it would be okay. I should have tried cleaning up the threads before jamming it in, but I didn’t expect it to be a problem. I believe it is a problem. I’ll try and chase the threads and that may fix it if the threads are still good enough to be chased. We shall see.

 

Light came back on this morning. I don’t understand. All four of them were reading last night.

 

I realized I was being pretty stupid with my earlier comments about the rotor bolt. Obviously this would have no effect on braking performance as the pads and wheel would clamp the rotor straight at all times; most vehicles don't have rotor bolts anyway and the rotors are free to fall off once the calipers are removed (provided they aren't seized to the hub). Silly me. I did go ahead and clean up the threads in the hub and the rotor bolt yesterday and now they are nice and smooth again. The rotor is still not tight with the bolt installed, but I'm chalking that up to some improper tolerance in the rotor hub diameter (they are of the ECS Geomet variety).

Did some further testing of the wheel speed sensors and determined that it is in fact the left rear causing the fault. I believe the translation for the code description in the DSC module indicates the sensor is occasionally going out of range. When I checked the data list again, I noticed with the engine on and the vehicle stopped with the parking brake disengaged that the left rear sensor reading would bounce around between 20-40kmh. Doesn't seem right.

I emailed Allmag last night and they responded this morning to let me know they are shipping a replacement sensor today. Hooray for quick customer service!

In other news, my initial impression of the Falken Azenis are that they certainly decrease steering effort and end up making the car feel a little more skittish. I'm used to the impeccable tracking of the MINI and it does seem to be a little less precise now. Perhaps I haven't had enough time with them. It rained today and I didn't hydroplane so that's a plus. Looking forward to getting this ABS issue sorted so I can explore them (and my new trailing arms) in more detail.

 

Looks good! You are a little ahead of me with the mods i am planning. Glad you finally worked out the issue with the speed sensor; its good to have the correct tools for the job. I'd be really interested to see how you like the rear trailing arms and if you can feel anything in day to day driving. How much did it cost for all the parts for the rear arms? I recently picked up a set of FSR shocks, so it may be worth doing it all at the same time.

 

I doubt that I will notice a difference. I have never participated in any autocross or track events so my sense of suspension adjustments or tire changes has not been trained at all. I'll certainly post some thoughts here once I've had driven more if I notice any changes. I can tell you that the construction of the arm makes it easier to get at most of the bolts attached to it and the addition of an eccentric cam for camber is also nice, though I have mine maxed out negative and I'm just in spec at -1.2 degrees. I got it to -1.5 (the spec) but when I adjusted toe I raised the rear and when it settled back down the rack read -1.2. So I guess it's somewhere in there anyway. However, I was looking at parts diagrams on realoem and it seems like R53's built from 10/2004 also have the eccentric cam bolt, which I didn't know. Oddly enough, the part numbers for the trailing arms don't split until 11/2004, so I'm not sure adjusting camber works on 10/2004 production cars without the groove cut into the arm.

I guess I did it because I had read it was a worthwhile swap and Allmag offers a complete conversion kit with all the necessary hardware and sensors for $400. I think WMW does this as well, also for $400. I think my last stop in the suspension department will be Koni FSDs, though I'm not sure yet. Maybe I should get some nice coilovers, but I really don't know much about them and all the people I know with coilovers are "show car" idiots who just want the thing to be slammed. I think the car would look better a little lower, but comfort takes precedence with this being a daily.

 

Unfortunately I'm probably in big trouble. I have tried swapping the rear sensors and 2 additional sensors to no avail. Even with the sensor removed from the hub, the reading is still erratic at key on. Once unplugged, the reading of course goes to 0. However, when I swapped the rear sensors I noticed the reading was no longer erratic at key on, so I thought maybe I had fixed it and reassembled the car. When I started it however, it started reading erratically again. It reads erratically during driving too. It normally reads right around the other sensors, but every ~1/4 of a second it will drop a lot. So at this point I'm assuming I somehow created a short in the wiring back from the sensor to the ABS module. I can't see anything wrong in the short section of exposed wiring before it enters the wiring harness. If it does end up being this problem, I'll probably have to replace the entire wiring harness under the car. I just don't understand how I could do this.