Who's done a cam swap on a daily driver R53?
 

Thinking about doing a cam swap on my mini. Maybe the Crower NS1 from WMW or the camshaft that Mini Mania sells. Not sure if the time/money is worth the gains. WMW said you might gain 3-6 hp...seems like not very much.

For those of you who have done cam swaps.......on daily driver street cams (not track cars).

1. When it was all said and done, was it worth the time and money? Did it make driving the car more enjoyable....or more peaky on the torque curve to you really had to rev it up a bunch to make power?

2. Did you need your tune (custom or stock) changed in order to get the motor running right with the new cam?

3. Did you feel any real gains? Did you loose power in low/mid range?

Interested in this since it's on my future mod list. Any reason you're not also considering the RMW/Newman cam?

Sorry, forgot to list that one. From what I've seen, lots of people seem to like that one also.

What's you driving style?
When I was debating this, I asked a few folks...people who like rpms noticed and liked it, but "cruisers" often saw no change or were negatively affected.
One tip...
I would NOT BUY A USED ONE...
Have seen many folks buy "used performance" cams that are likely the OEM one that the prior owner took out....just put into the performance box. Unless you get measurements, I would only buy new.
Folks who bought used often said no change....go figure.
if I did it, it was going be a RMW/Newman cam....much debate about who copied who or if they came to the same specs independently...but they work.

My car gets 70% of the miles put on it going to and from work on the highway. The rest is around town driving. I usually try to keep the rpms under 3000 unless I'm in a situation where I know I'm going to need some power...merging on the highway, passing cars..stuff like that.

The R53's don't really have much power and torque under 3000rpms anyway....so I was hoping that the right cam may boost some of that low/mid range power and torque and maybe even help on the top end a little. What I don't want is a car that is even more gutless under 3000rpms....and only starts to get out of it's own way when you are getting full boost and spinning the rpm's to the moon.

I've done lots of cam swamps in V8's, and those are a different animals because they have so much low end torque anyways...it's not a big deal to lose a little low end torque to gain a bunch of mid range and top end power.....but the Mini's are gutless at low rpms, and I don't want to lose any more low end power...there isn't much to lose :lol:

I put a cam in when I did my rebuild. I am impressed. Still need to get a tune done though.

Daily driver......

Nik

What are you impressed with... do you have more low-mid end, or is it all at the top? Also, why did you decide to go with the adjustable cam gear?

drop in cam wont gain the benefits of having the tune. while it will make power the tune will have the ideal timing. there is also the grinds that way makes(race and street), the catcams 6820 (I think).


a cam will wake this car up from what I hear, and ill be dropping one in very soon with a tune, I want a lumpy idle and I love mid range. im also a DD. I don't do a lot of highway and I do a lot of sprited driving


other than head work, which may happen at some point. I was leaning more towards the catcam or way's race cam. I don't have the specs on the race cam, but its more lift than the street. so it requires a tune for idle quality.


you can also get an adjustable cam gear, where you can phase the cam a few degrees and get the low end and sacrifice some topend. so there are many options.... but yeah, buy new

R53 Cam
 

There is a good camshaft review article here along with an installation guide:

http://new.minimania.com/Search_Results/cam/All

Here is a review of the Schrick cam:

http://new.minimania.com/European_Ca...haft__NME6041_

Here is a great alternative which includes the cam and ECU upgrade:

http://new.minimania.com/part/NMK170...-Mini-Cooper-S

Please let us know if we can help!

Drive Hard. Drive Safe. Keep Grinning.

I was just going to mention the Adjusted Cam Gear, most of the Cams available for the Mini are going to give you more if a benefit in the top end of your RPM, the ACG will cost less and give the stock cam a boost of HP & Torque from a much lower RPM point. Mine was a vast improvement in the lower end, which was quite surprising considering all my other mods are geared toward top end power.
Plus the ACG can also be reset to work with any cam later on down the road should you decide to get one too.
Here's a graph of the benefit I got from just the ACG.

OEM Gear
ACG
(bottom graph is boost only, wanted to show, that's not where the power came from)

Attachment 142834

It's hard to tell....but it looks like the power and torque with the new cam is less that the OEM cam under 3000rpms.....

Look closely, the torque is slightly less before 3200 (which is where the graphs cross), power is the same.

*Had to edit this post after I went back and checked my settings for VD, didn't remember if I squeezed the 0-4000 area or not, it's actually 3000-4000*

So it looks like you picked up around 5hp and 5ft/lbs through the rev range? Is that small of a gain something that you can actually feel?

*EDIT:....more like 10hp, not 5hp....

The torque is what I could actually feel, it completely changed the way the car pulled down low and was instantly noticeable when driving, esp in the lower gears.
Granted, I had the rest of the mods, but it made the difference of traction -vs- no traction if you stood on it at 3000 in first gear.

Ive got a street cam and was hoping for improvements below 3k but think it isn't there. Definitely helps at higher rpms. Wish I had gone with the more aggressive cam as the street cam didn't really help at low rpm.

Street cam will obviously be quite mild, slight gain mid to upper range but nothing major. An aggressive cam from what I experienced, in my buddy's r53 which I drove quite often, was a more prominent flat spot from 2500 to 3000 or so rpms. Really wasn't awesome for around town driving in my opinion. After the flat spot it definitely had torque though, each car will be slightly different however.

I've never been a fan of regrind cams as they don't get the extra lift you need. We tried the different cams and between cost and the failures we saw we just never used them. So we finally got our own WMW cams done about 2yrs ago and they have been exactly what we wanted. We used brand new billet blanks to grind so no core or regrinding needed. This also allowed us to use top quality material that wouldn't fail. Then we set them with the extra lift we wanted, just as much as we could do without hitting the spark plug tubes. But set the advance and duration for mild or race.
So our Mild cam will work perfect for a street car just wanting more power and torque, but not require a tune to run.
https://www.waymotorworks.com/way-mi...t-r52-r53.html

Our race cam has more advance and duration requiring a tune or at least and idle bump to make the car run without dying at low rpm. But will really rip.
https://www.waymotorworks.com/way-ra...t-r52-r53.html

We did some testing with adjustable cam sprockets and found they wouldn't lock down tight enough that they would move over time. Also for the average customer they didn't want to spend the additional cost to set it up.

I have 2 R53's and both have fully build motors and are daily drivers, including CAMs.

No problems, the auto is almost invisible to the lose of low end, the manual needs to be above 2k rpm or its gutless.

https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.nor...3ad3a11ea1.jpg

Here is the Auto:


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.nor...af100afe28.jpg

I run a newman in my 2003
Well worth it
No midrange loss but motr top end with no new tune but already have an mth tune
Do it

Which version Newman did you install?

From the dyno graphs.....the gains looks pretty darn small....unless you are always driving around at 5000+rpms. What am I missing here? :confused:

I'd have to agree, doesn't look like a worthwhile mod, I thought with a tune and bolts ons it would be an easy 10hp gain.

After reading this thread, I'm starting to think my used MINI I bought might have had a cam put in, cause it's impossible to accelerate at all under 2k RPMs. Idles fine and all that jazz, but if I'm cruising, and I hit too high of a gear and it goes under 2k, I may as well take my foot off of the gas, cause I'm not going to go anywhere any time soon. Pop it down a gear or two to get above 2k, or around 3, and the thing flies like a rocketship.

How can I investigate this without motor disassembly? Can I even?