I bought my first car and first Mini r52 a couple months ago, I'm really enjoying it except for the fact that it seems to have little power below 3.5-4k rpm. Is this normal for these cars? Or is my bypass valve out? It feels weaker than a Civic till about 4k and then it starts to pull pretty strong. I tried pushing on the supercharger bypass valve and it seems pretty stiff, but is there anyway to know for sure? I'm going to do a pulley swap anyways, so hopefully that will help with the low end power. Just want to know if it's normal though or if I need to change my bypass valve, the car has nearly 60k miles on it.

 

I think it's pretty typical for these cars to be pretty gutless down low. Putting a 17% pulley on them really bumps up the boost in the lower rpm's. My car is pretty weak until around 3,000rpms, then it comes to life. These little motors are designed around boost...and and lower rpms, you just don't have much to work with. They like the rpms to be up in the range you are talking about. If you byspass valve was bad, you wouldn't have power anywhere.....it would be weak all the time. If you can push the little arm in, and the spring tension will push it back out when you let got...it's fine.

Look into getting a 15% or 17% pulley, they really help! Also a Detroit Tuned Bypass Valve (DTBV) helps with low end power also.

 

Thanks, I can't wait to swap the pulley out, looks like the valve is fine then.

 

I just wanted to say for anyone looking at this post, I replaced my spark plug wires and the low-end power did seem to improve. I also added a 15% pulley and it feels a lot better now, throughout the rpm range.