so how much additional whine did you get? any power boost on the low end?

 

thats what i did too. also you can take out the rubber plug blocking the smaller hole. you don't need to remove the bottom of the airbox to slide it out. i left the flap working but opened this hole. along with the less restrictive k&n, it lets you hear the whine much more clearly after the flap is open, and before it opens you still are breathing through the smaller hole.

 

I do get a little more whine. Being a winemaker, this is a good thing.
Seriously though, there is a little more whine because I don't have to wait for the flap to open and get better breathing and response right off throttle.

 

so all the lines stay connected and all you do is remove the actual flap, correct? nothing else but taking out a piece of plasitc?

 

newyorkcitymini, if you remove the top of the JCW box, you will see four screws holding the entire flap assembly. Remove these four screws and the rest is straight forward. Removal of this assembly leaves a rather large opening in the box allowing full-time air flow through the cowl and subsequent firewall opening.
All the vacuum lines come off with the removal of the flap assembly and that is it. This combined with the K&N RU-3130 is all you need to have a box that works as well as any other afertmarket box.

 

thanks eno - one last question though: what happens to all the vcuum lines after removing the flap? do you reattach?

 

The vacuum lines are attached, if I remember correctly, to an electrical driven solenoid which you detach from the flap assembly. That plug-in is attached to wires which run along the top of the firewall. I simply tucked that electrical connector up along the firewall just behind the rubber gasket along the top of the firewall. The only other vacuum line is attached to a 'pot' inside the top of the box. Once you remove this 'pot' there are no other points to allow for reattachment of any of the vacuum lines.
The only other mod I did to this box was to remove the round, blocked gasket from the back of the bottom half of the box. I don't know how much this helps but the more air the better in my opinion.
Hope that helps.

Cheers, Doug.

 

Did finally get a resonse to my shipping question ...In case anyone is interested, it's 65 pounds ($123ish US, according to google) for shipping the john cooper motorsports airbox to the west coast of the US.

Might either go back to my original idea of getting a rouge engineering/mini-madness airbox or hang out while i'm saving my pennies and see if one of the new john cooper ones shows up on e-bay.

(although, i do think modding an existing jcw airbox is a great idea)

 

Just got done with this exact mod....$29.63 including Cali tax and free shipping from ajusa.com and it only took 1 day to land on my front porch. The only thing I did different was to just remove the flap.....I was concerned about additional dirt/moisture getting into the filter + it still looks "stock". I can remove the entire assembly at a later date if my butt dyno thinks it will help. At 18kmi the OEM filter still looked good (but you can never tell) and I kept all the original parts, so I can go back if needed. Love just that little bit of additional whine. My butt dyno sez, "why didn't I do this along time ago"....but then what does my butt know. For less than $30 why not give it a try............way cheaper than a stock JCW filter and it is re-usable....for that reason alone is worth the $$$

 

A new filter from Mini-Madness for the JCW intake. With this, the JCW should work as well as any other aftermarket intakes, and still with a lot less whine...
http://www.mini-madness.com/index.as...ROD&ProdID=272

 

Is the K&N RU-3130 Filter the same one that MINI Madness charges $99 for; and MINI Mania $126 ?

http://www.mini-madness.com/index.as...ROD&ProdID=272

http://new.minimania.com/web/Item/NM.../InvDetail.cfm