Pulley Party

Today I headed back down to YarrowSport to watch a Randy Webb Pulley Party and get another dyno run on GBMINI (to see if the recent JCW upgrade upgrade offers any measurable improvement).
Lee, a friend and one-time MINI Peabody tech, came with me – first we went to the local Krispy Kreme where MINIs-Making-A-Wish was helping to launch a toy collection, and Steve, MINIs-Making-A-Wish maestro, was interviewed by the local TV station:


Steve had recently been at Randy Webbs Pulley Party, getting this air intake (and a pulley) fitted (he commented that it was now like driving a new car); so Lee & I headed over to YarrowSport to meet Randy. While we were there we watched a short-shift kit being installed on Marks Pepper White MCS – Mark already had a pulley, computer, exhaust and intake done by Randy at a previous event.
I met “Onasled” again – since the previous Dyno Day he has personally installed a pulley, air intake, computer, header, exhaust and intercooler! Wow! His first dyno run gave 197hp.
Once again Yarrow got creative, adding racing fuel to the car and then super-chilling the intercooler to get a highest reading of 214.6!

Eventually GBMINI went back on the dyno; Yarrow told me that the rig corrects for ambient temperature & humidity differences so it is apparently fair to directly compare the September run with todays run (unfortunately Yarrows printer had no ink!):


We can see on this plot that todays run shows an increase all the way up the rev curve showing a peak torque of about 186 compared with 177 – but the red line cuts in about 200rpm lower, so the peak hp shows only about a 4hp increase.
It looks like there should be about 6-8hp increase (maintained up the curve from about 3300rpm) and I don’t know if the red line is due to operation of the dyno, or a side-effect of the V39 engine update.

So we once again try to conclude some results:
The JCW upgrade upgrade seems to give about 10 lb-ft increase in torque, but the expected hp gain does not show on the above dyno run – apparently due to a lowered red line
A full aftermarket modded MINI can still beat the “210hp JCW”, by about 6hp.
Randy Webb is a great guy who can put together a very high performing package (all the top-performing MINIs at both Dyno Days were equipped with Randys Unichip/Pulley/etc packages.
That intercooler really does need to get cool to give good performance.
Yarrow needs to stock up on his printing supplies!

UPDATE: A close comparison of Onasleds and my plots shows that while his peak hp is better than the JCW, the JCW shows higher hp at lower “real world” revs:

rpm JCW aftermarket
2100 61 57
2700 86 80
3300 115 105
3900 137 132
4500 157 155
5100 171 171
5700 182 187
6300 185 194
Peak 193.7 197.0

 

UPDATE: here is a video of the TV coverage:

BMWCCA ADSS video

At the recent BMWCCA ADSS I had a camcorder filming both inside and outside the car. Unfortunately I don’t have the video editing skills needed to put pictures to music, etc (for that, I get help from Keith at MINI Peabody).

Anyway. here is my drive of the track, with Peter (instructor and MINI owner) giving me excellent advice on how to improve, which I am clearly taking no notice of – too busy concentrating!

COOPERS for CAREGIVERS – a great success!

Today went very well, with reasonable weather and excellent company. A total of 15 MINIs met at Beverly Hospital this morning, for a 9:30am breakfast and some speeches – a good breakfast was provided by the hospital, including bagels as well as bacon/sausage/egg/etc. Thanks!
Deborah introduced the special guests (those not driving MINIs!) and a special gift basket was presented to State Representative Mary Grant who is also a caregiver.

Next the MINIs headed out to deliver a total of 9 gift baskets to a selected caregiver in each of Beverly, Wenham, Hamilton, Manchester, Magnolia (Gloucester), Rockport, Essex, Ipswich and Topsfield. Special thanks to the Topsfield police for making our crossing of route 1 extremely easy!

A big thank you to all the participants 🙂

UPDATE: There’s also a video from Keith Polischuk: