I bought my Mini Countryman S in anticipation of my first baby. I bought it partly because I assume that it had a fairly strong aftermarket/community. Boy was a I wrong (at least as best as I can tell).

In particular, why are tunes for the Cooper S turbocharged engine so hard to find?

In the past, I have owned a couple of GTI's and a couple of BMW's (135i), and there were literally like 5+ vendors that sold user-friendly ECU tunes.

With VW, you have the GIAC/APR/REVO trio, with a few other vendors that also offer solid products.

With BMW, you have Vishnu/Burger/Unitronic/Cobb/etc. that have all kinds of crazy tunes allowing you to run E85, 100 octane, methanol injection, etc.

All I can find for the Mini N14 engine is the NM tune -- which is produced by Neuspeed, a company well known for being overly conservative with its tunes.

Why is there no market for these tunes? Why does no one produce them? What am I missing?

 

There is way too much backstory to get into, but there is a thread in the 2nd gen forum you should read. Go to 2nd gen Modifications, Drivetrain (Cooper S) and read the thread on N18 tuning. It talks about the difficulties and available options. There are about 5 tuning options for the N18 engine these days.

 

You do have options....but mini locked down the ecu after so many folks had warrenty issues with the n14...many had tunes....with hard yo detect tune.
The n18 can be tuned...but needs to be removed from the car...no odb port tuning is said to be possible...expect BMW to do more of this in the future to save repair costs...

 

If you live in the Midwest and your CMS is a built date pre-Feb 2012, come out to Detroit Tuned this summer to get a RMW tune by Jan. setup is for late August, beginning of September.

 

I appreciate the responses!

I have been in contact with the owner of Burger Motorsports, maker of the most popular (and by far most affordable) piggy back tunes for BMW's turbo engines.

He is interested in making an N18 piggy, which, if historical pricing prevails, should only cost $300-400 if he decides to produce them. The beauty of the piggback system is that it requires no software modification, and can easily be removed before going in for dealer service.

I am going to send him detailed pictures of the N18 engine bay. If they are similar enough to the BMW N20/N54/N55, etc., he might be able to create one fairly quickly.

Just thought I would let people know this.

FYI: http://www.burgertuning.com/

 

There's piggybacks already available for the countryman-s, along with all the normal problems (throwing codes occasionally, extra torque down low... but not much help on top). I had the JB on a 335, and it was great though, so maybe he can do better than what I've got on there now (which intercepts the boost and MAP).

But I wonder whether any piggyback can get around the more restrictive thresholds on the N18. I've got 65-70k miles on my All4-S most with a piggyback with no probs yet. I'm still hoping for a reasonably aggressive tune for around $500 that works on an automatic. Maybe NM will start selling their tune (for people with autos) again later this year.

 

Spoke to Jerry at NM and said sometime this summer they will unveil the automatic tunes again. Still working on kinks!

 

Rob, looks like you and I are both stalking Jerry. I email him once a week like a crazy girlfriend.

 

Haha, hey! They said call him every two weeks to see what's the deal. I'm set on who I'm going with unless anything changes until beginning of July.

 

Which piggyback are you using? I have been looking all over for one for my 2013 Countryman S All4 with no luck.

 

got mine from tmcmotorsport. they don't advertise it as a countryman box, just a generic 1.6l turbo mini box 2010+, but it does work.

i'm not endorsing or blasting it... it's sort of what i expected. dial it to setting 6 or 7 and there's a very noticeable increase in low-end grunt. but when climbing a hill, in automatic, on cruise control, at low rpm, you may well throw a CEL (requiring either stopping and restarting car, or clearing ecu errors on the fly with torque). when i first got it, i did a bunch of timings and it didn't really make 0-60mph much faster. but i kept it on since it improved driveability and gave it a little extra power needed for normal driving (easier to slide corners, etc.). when countryman first came out there weren't many choices for ecu tuning. now the same amount of cash will buy a NM tune which should be the safer choice (more fuel and less timing advance at high rpm to go with the extra boost). like others, i'm just waiting for NM to offer the tune for people with an auto trans again.

i had the plugs/wires/coils changed at around 50,000 miles, but haven't seen any misfires from the box, and the plugs looked fine when they came out.