1st Gen R53 Cooper S An exhausting question...

Why exhaust? Power?

 

May not matter to you, but passengers, neighbors, and local police will certainly care about the sound.

 

What ever you do, do the opposite of the exhaust on Gnat. :wink:

I had a JCW exhaust on mine & liked the sound. A bit louder but not obnoxious, no highway droning.

 

Yeah.... That system is blown out and WAY TOO LOUD....:crazy:

 

On a street car I'd go for more torque. You'll be the torque of the town.

 

What you want is RMW shorty / street header, plus RMW cam and tune. THEN you'd benefit from a JCW or Miltek exhaust. Exhaust before header won't buy you anything except a little sound.

 

The stock exhaust does have some restrictive bends in it and restrictive mufflers. So another exhaust may not get you but a few horses. I've read about 5hp. Not enough to tell by the seat of the pants. So the added benefit is the sound.

Jan said, when I had mine tuned, that I would not need to retune it by adding a header and a high flow cat.

Now on turbo cars it's different getting rid of any back pressure is beneficial.

 

I think I can safely say I have more modified miles on my car than 99% of the cars on here (15% pulley/ RMW cam/ header/ Jetex cat back exhaust (over 110,000 miles)on these/ Vipec ECU (50,000 +miles driving on the vipec).

I reinstall the stock header / exhaust every two years for smog. The difference with the swap is silly. The car feels very lethargic in comparison - the header really helps the motor breathe even on a stock head.

 

Real solution is opened up exhaust ports in head (ala JCW head or aftermarket grind job), free flow header to get the gases away from engine, and free flowing dual exhaust per what your ears can stand (I use street Milltek which is only mildly offensive to tender ears). BTW, stock exhaust is NOT a dual exhaust...so aftermarket dual exhaust will breath better.

After above hardware then have a tune done which will alter the rest of the system to take advantage of the better breathing.

In my case I gained a good bit of power throughout the range in addition to increasing fuel mileage economy by 6 mpg...in spite of moving to larger fuel injectors at the same time. Impossible to point to any one item as the cause for the increases...I saw it as a complete system upgrade.

 

THIS

I've been swapping the stock header back on annually. The difference is night and day, with the RMW header.

 

Single outlet

Has anyone come across a single outlet exhaust like this for their MINI?
http://www.carid.com/images/d2s/spoilers/p986-w3-porsche-boxster-3.jpg

 

There are a couple, but not ones that I would recommend. In terms of cat back exhaust, where sound is the chief factor, The conversation begins and ends with Milltek in my book. They caught lightning in a bottle with that exhaust.

 

Milltek #1.

It's what I have had for years based on Eric @ Helix recommendation and I could not be happier after all these years.

(NOT the knock off Strat version)

 

Standard Dude has one on his car. It looks good and sounds nice. The issue is it came with the car so he has no idea what it is. PM him and he'll send you a pic.