Hey Everyone!

I recently purchased my very own MINI a few months back and I have been working on modding my car. So far I have mainly done exterior & Interior look and Lights and so far this is what I have

CF Mirror Caps (Coming Soon)
CF Hood Scoop & Tailgate Handle
CF Shift **** & E-brake

Driving lights and Fog lights are now white Halogens
Signals are now Mirror Bulbs to give a overall whiter look

The best question after this is.....Where Do I go from here? Any Suggestions? Performance? Suspension? Handling? Any real concerns on what I should look out for to prevent? I mean my car is under warranty for a while but I just wanna look into what I perhaps should look into? any advice would be great!!

 

It will depend on what you want to do with your car and how much money you want to throw into it. Just remember, pretty well anything you do will affect the fine balance achieved in the overall design of your MINI.

There is a balance between handling, power, reliability, longevity, comfort, fuel economy and safety.

Adding significant power would normally require an upgrade in suspension and brakes to handle the power. Changing the suspension for better handling might affect ride and cabin noise & vibration.

I'm not sure about power upgrades on a turbocharged drivetrain, but a pretty good cost effective update to suspension might be a stiffer rear antisway bar. A stiffer rear sway bar would reduce understeer and allow your car to turn and change direction noticeably quicker. That was the first upgrade to my car. A cold air intake would be an inexpensive update that would improve either fuel economy (depending how you drive) and engine smoothness. There's always the JCW bits that would do significant upgrade to your car's performance and keep your full factory warranty intact. But they are usually considered fairly expensive. The local MINI dealers sometimes have sales on JCW packages in the mid spring or late summer timeframes.

 

1. Thicker rear anti-sway bar to neutralize understeer.

2. Better air flow Intake.

3. Bigger Exhaust downpipe.

4. Alta AP Tune @ 93 Octane.

Read on R56 forum but most turbo cars start mods as above. I think that is enough for spirited street drive.

 

JCW Kit.. with "show" you need more "go"

 

Go for putting on coilovers and lower your mini. Or even a torque arm insert, it's cheap and a great mod.
Jorge
DS 07 MCS

 

Hmm...Great advice everyone! Thanks!!

I guess it's true that once you start modding you just get hooked and can't stop!!!

This is an expensive Hobby!!!

 

n0mis, what would the torque arm do?

Eddy, what would the air flow intake do? Downpipe? Alta AP Tune? As you can see I am a harsh Rookie at this!

Calz, are you talking body or the tuning kit?

 

Always great advice Ken, Thanks!