MINI Meets

My thanks again to Gavin for his write-up yesterday; now here is the day from my perspective …
First, lots of MINIs to meet again, including Steves fabulously clean Electric Blue MCS – I first noticed his spotless carpets when I installed a MINI circuit for him, then later saw his engine bay.

But back to the dyno. GBMINI was first tested about 3/4 hour after I arrived … loaded on to the dyno and set up and tested by Yarrow:

The noise during the run is horrifying, with fans to keep the engine somewhat cool, the dyno and of course the noise of the engine being rev’ed up to its max! I recorded and uploaded the run – here is the audio only (you will hear Gavin comment on the low performance at the end!):

I have also uploaded a video of the run but it is over 20MB and not much more interesting than the audio!

The first run was surprisingly low at only 185hp – with JCW claiming 200! Yarrow decided “heat soak” from the drive down might be an issue, and GBMINI was left to cool with a fan blowing on it for a few hours.

Meantime other MINIs ran, with results from 170hp to 192hp depending on aftermarket parts – it was clear that without a reprogram, the pulley and/or exhaust alone do not perform so well. Check out the MINI2 thread for more discussions of the results.

After the other runs, GBMINI was given another chance and showed an improvement to 191hp – still shy of the claimed 200hp but a match for MINIs with aftermarket pulley, exhaust and engine reprogram. For fun, Yarrow and the other dyno guys did another run after “super cooling” the engine intercooler from a cylinder of compressed air (empty of nitrous) – this gave a more than 5% increase to almost 202hp!

So what have we learned:
Testing lots of MINIs together is great fun!
Yarrows dyno gives representative results for a stock MCS and of course reasonable comparitive results for MINIs tested on the same equipment and same day.
Dyno runs make a lot of noise!
Gavins BMP intake gave a reasonable 3-6 increase.
GBMINI showed results no better than a good aftermarket package, and significantly down on claimed JCW figures.
Super-cooling the air into the engine is a big help to maximum performance.

Today I joined 15-20 other MINIs for a “dyno day” at YarrowSport, organized by Rich who runs OceanStateMINI. Various MINI Cooper S were tested, equipped from straight stock through pulleys, intakes, exhausts and engine reprograms (and my JCW).

Gavin, who at the start of the day had a stock MCS, was the baseline MINI; I now hand over to Gavin for his write-up on the day and the experiences with his MINI:

Where to start with upgrades to the car..? I had been thinking about it for a while, I?d done the easy things ? change the runflats for Yokohama AVS100s, upgrade the rear sway bar to a 22mm UUC, but what about the drivetrain..?
I had decided that an intake was going to be the next thing, but which one..? I found one for sale on the mini2.com forums; a BMP with only 5,000 miles on it at a very good price. I read up what I could on intakes, but found the more I read, the more confused I became. There?s a lot of myth about what an intake can do for you, especially when it?s called a Cold Air Intake! My main concerns were would it be too noisy and would it contribute a noticeable increase in power. At the last minute I almost backed out of the transaction to buy the BMP when I read that it added more noise than power, but I?m glad I didn?t.
I waited until the MINI dyno day at Yarrowsport before I installed it, planning to do back to back comparisons to the stock intake. It?s a good job I did as mine was the only stock car there out of 12 (?) to go on the dyno and Yarrow needed something for a baseline. Yarrowsport has a load bearing dyno which is the most accurate kind ? guaranteed to be within 2% at the wheel which is then back calculated to a crank value (I think I?ve got that right). The baseline runs came in at 132 bhp at the wheels which worked out to 162.3 bhp at the crank against a claim from MINI of 163 so the dyno seemed to be running well.
Once the baseline had been done my car was returned to the parking lot and I went to work fitting the BMP intake. It was an easy job; unscrew two screws, unclip the hose to the throttle body, unclip the battery terminal from the stock airbox, remove the top half of the airbox and the stock panel filter, drop in the BMP shield and cone filter and reconnect everything. It took all of amount 10 minutes.
When my turn came around, I wasn?t expecting great gains, but I hoped for something more than just noise. After averaging three runs I was very pleased ? 140.2 at the wheels equating to 169.8 at the crank. 8 bhp from a new filter. Not bad at all. The dyno chart shows a gain of about 3 bhp from 4000 to the peak of 8 bhp at the redline. There?s also a modest increase in torque of about 3-6 ftlb across the midrange.
Having watched some cars get close to (and even on occasion, break) the 200 bhp barrier, I?m sure I?ll be doing some other mods, probably an exhaust next, and I?ll certainly be back to Yarrowsport to test their effectiveness.
The last part of the evaluation was the ride home. At normal highway cruising speeds, the new intake was not noticeably louder than stock, certainly not intrusive. The acceleration in gear from around 3000 rpm seemed a little better by the seat-of-the-pants dyno, but I didn?t need to convince myself ? I had the charts to prove it..!

Thanks to Gavin for that excellent write-up. Hopefully soon we will have graph plots to back up the numbers … and watch out for more about this day, including GBMINIs unexpected results …

Today was the Charles River Ice Cream run, following a route planned by Ivan (snek on MINI2) and ending at Needham Junction Ice Cream, owned by Eliot & Donna (MINIrandolph on MINI2). We started the day gathering at a school just off exit 18 of route 95/128, then took a drive along the Charles River through some great locations, including estates with many multi-million dollar homes … we stopped half way at this pond for more pics:

Finally at Needham Junction Ice Cream, everyone got free ice cream courtesy of Eliot!

Thanks to Ivan & Eliot for a great day (and thanks to Hurricane Charley for not raining on us).