The truth is the dyno was not friendly to any of us this weekend in Plano, TX, just north of Dallas. Nathan (gnatster) had put together a great event but the usual gremlins (why did they ever name a car that?) turned up to lengthen each car's time on the dyno and raise the frustration level just a little. Still, Jan kept his cool throughout, seeming either accustomed or immune to the delays, and just went to work eeking the most out of each car.
In the end, for me, like cucho, I would have loved to take home a dyno plot with the magic 200 on it, but it wasn't going to happen. Even Paul (PRattenbury) with an RMW head and cam didn't see too much over 200 (I left before Terry (mini_racer) with the same set up got on the dyno.) But to those who've experienced an RMW tune this will not come as too much of a surprise--it's all about the power/torque and the shape of the power band. Jan worked for over 2 hours on mine and my car is significantly faster now than it has ever been--transformed would be a little strong, but revealing more of its potential for sure. Gone are the lumps and bumps in the power delivery and it pulls hard from around 2000rpm.

Anyway, a big thanks to Nathan for organizing this, and to Jan for his patience and persistence in applying his expertise.

 

Sure sounds like the dyno had calibration issues. I guess the number doesn't matter if the end result makes the car run like it should. It's happened before but it seemed eveyone was happy.

 

Jan picked up a whopping 6 ft/lbs. of torque for our R50 between 1.8K and 3K rpms and 6 ft/lbs between 4K and 6k. There was a dip between in torque between 3-4K that he softened by about 2 ft/lbs. That's a range that we see quite a bit for autocrossing, so I gotta work on getting that solved. HP went up about 5 hp all the way up the line.

Gone is the peakiness between 4K and 6K from the Shrick cam - the car is much more driveable. The grunt between 1800 and 3K is noticeably better.

Jan gave me a plan to get the dip we saw out of my car between 3K and 4K rpms, which I had been thinking about, anyway - let's just say that we should see an aftermarket intake manifold for Coopers that are running the Shrick (and the like) cam. The long intake runners on the OEM manifold are battling with the cam and head work - the ECU is doing what Jan told it to do, but it's all obviously not playing so well.

 

All in all we had a great weekend. Everyone was happy, if not with the numbers being show, then with the changes that were shown and more importantly easily felt.

 

There's no doubt that this is about as "custom" as one can get in the auto world. I think Jan ran my car on the dyno at least 14 times and he tweaked the map a whole lot. Each car is truly unique--I could spend hours describing each little "character flaw" that my car has. Thanks to Jan I am much more familiar with them. Some I can work on, others will just become idiosyncrasies

 

How did Terry make out, I wonder? I expected his car would do better on the dyno than my car did. I know he was intending to go to the track. How did you fare, Terry???

 

+ 1...what matters is the result

 

How many cars turned up and what make of dyno was it ?

 

Paul: I think about 8 cars got tuned in total over 2 days. It was a Dynapack unit. Jan had used it before (tuning gnatster's car at least, and maybe others) and said that it read about right back then. It could have been a calibration issue with one of the packs, but as we all know, it's about changes, not so much absolutes. Everyone walked away with plots of torque and/or HP that looked a whole lot better. The people who have checked in so far all say their cars drive better. I know mine does, by a long chalk!

 

I thought that was strange, because I remember the last time he went to Texas it was a dynapack, just presumed it was another shop.

If you can feel the difference it was worth the pain, did Nate go on or was there anyone there who was there last time.

Its hard to get across to people on shootout / drag days here, to forget about the numbers its the delta between cars and more importantly who has for whatever reason there **** togeather on the day

 

10 cars total + two updates.

10 saw dyno time, none were on this dyno previously.

We had used this dyno before, since then they have had some software changes to make it read like some others in the area.

It was explained to all that the final #'s are not the important thing, it's the deltas and driving experience.

 

I couldn't have said it better!

 

Hey Guys,
Delay:
Sorry for my delay in post/response, I had a complicated journey home to Austin involving (to mention a few):a leaking tire/wheel valve, a night spent in the parking lot at Discount tires, a sidewall blow-out on the same wheel just 12 miles after Discount, and about 20 hrs, which should have taken 5 hrs. It was an adventure for sure. I came very very close to taking a spare wheel, but thought that I can't take the whole damn garage. I have a pump and plugs, I am covered.........or so I thought.

Dyno:
Call the shop (Autoscope 972-867-7467) to get PDF versions of your dyno plots, they can email it to you. I spoke to the shop about the dyno accuracy, and my take away was that they had similar complaints, gee thanks for taking care of the problem before our event. They had the action to check for any software updates and investigate what Jan had complained about, which is water cooling to the dyno itself. It seems like we were working it maybe a little too much for no active water cooling.
Also, from what I can piece together, including chats with Jan, if we take our results and multiply by a factor of 1.15X we should be much closer to the 'real' numbers for the car, this would be for hp and torque. Maybe Jan can comment here.

My dyno time:
I only needed 1 hr on the dyno, and finished with a 212hp/170tq on that machine, scaling that would indicate a 244hp/196tq max, and I can live with those numbers. My MINI is a beast, AND driveability has been improved all around.

Track day:
On Sunday, Gnatster Jan and I went to a BMWCCA event at the Eagles Canyon Raceway (see the Gnatster earlier posts). I had my first ever track day and was as green as can be. It was an incredible experience that will be repeated! I have learned that my car is much faster than I am capable to drive it, but I am catching up!

Thanks Gnatster for the organization, thanks to Jan for the nice new map/tune, and great to meet everyone that participated. It was great fun, and I am happy to be a part of it.

 

Based on the feedback, I can happily report that the Monstah Cooper (R50) is putting down a "corrected" 126.5ish hp and 115ish ft/lbs (yes, that's a MAJOR increase from stock for sure). I've got some feeback from Jan to bump that number up a bit, too, and I believe that will include his race header along with our to-be-designed-and-constructed intake manifold... Hopefully, that'll get rid of our dip between 3K-4K rpms. With that, I'd hope to get to 130/120. All I can say is, the Cooper is a freakin' beast - just ask the e46 M3's and 335i's passed all weekend long at Eagles Canyon...

The suspension was working like a champ - and our BDM kit allowed me to catch those pesky 3-series in the braking zones. Once we hit the twisty bits (turns 9-13), they disappeared in the rear-view mirrors... Ah, the MINI was truly MAGIC in the corners.

Also, the BDM kit on Nathan's car stood up well to the beating of an incident that shall not yet be named...

 

That brake kit looked very nice! I had never seen one before, but it is very well designed and implemented. I am sorry I was traveling on Friday to the event, so I missed meeting any TSW folks. I am a big fan of their stuff, and really wanted to see if there was an engine mount lying around somewhere that needed beta testing...

 

We missed ya - maybe at a future AMVIV? I want to get back on Spring Mountain again, anyway - what a great track!

 

Ahhh, ya got me by 4 horses. I guess I'll hafta rip things apart someday when I've saved up enough patience and swap out a few sensors so the computer will act right for me. Then I'll take another crack at ya. In the meantime, you da man! Sorry to hear of your tire issues. I have been there, done that recently myself, so I feel your pain.

 

Actually, you may already be there just by cleaning the corrosion on the coil terminals. I am sure with that and some new sensors.....you will be there. It is not much of a difference anyway.

I sure am enjoying the tune! Even the exhaust sounds different, much more smooth and refined sounding, less harsh and much less pop/burble. Maybe I was running excessively rich before? not sure why that changed so much. Jan, care to comment?

 

Late Post!

The event was awesome! i was only slightly disappointed when my printout read so low,
but EVERY time i get in my car now its comparable to that first drive after the SC Pulley!

Jan got me over 10-20 lbft across as well as 10 hp across the range! and thats what the printout said, so who knows what it ACTUALLY was!

all i know is that my mini runs so much more smoothly and its so much more drivable!

it was awesome meeting everyone, rynegold, intense, gnatster, JAN, poskey, cucho and whoever else i met that i dont know your alias'esses' (whats the plural on that? )

it was awesome getting to meet fellow motorers!

Special Thanks to Nathan for setting this up and to Jan for taking time to come out to texas and let us be able to do this, and for being such a B.A., for lack of a better word!

 

What if after changing the belt out with a 17% scp, there is still only 3/4ths of one hole appearing out the top of the assembly. Does that indicate a problem with the tensioner ?

 

Don't worry about it if the belt is not slipping. Mine looks more like the bottom photo - barely any of the top hole showing. I got the RMW tune like that, and I track the car every month like that. No issues. The less pressure on the tensioner and belt the better - as long as it doesn't slip.

Alan