Engine Drivetrain 2nd Gen S Any long term Manic users?

Not going to find a lot of love for them here.

 

You think you want to... but you don't.

 

They are not called Maniac tunes for nothing.

 

No problems here. Of course I'm a maintenance freak so if I crank up a tune, I'll change/service items sooner. Its my belief that people who have had issues are negligent/lazy. Basically if your going to tune your car aggressively then expect to do maintenance and inspection aggressively. I make sure the valves are always clean and the oil is always full and in good condition. I upgraded my turbo but did not change my tune for it. Safe that way. Besides the uprated turbo will flow more cfm at the same psi anyway so no biggie. If you go aggressive I highly recommend finding a tuner that can dial your tune in for your car instead of a canned tune.

Like others have stated before, not a lot of fans here. They have good reasons. But if you know what your getting into then you should be fine. You should already know, you had a 2007 with an AccessPort. I know of very few people who actually liked that combo either.

 

Did you throw in the JCW turbo? If so, also the mani?

 

K04/0 Hybrid. Much like the JCW, just rated for 30hp more. 43mm Inducer with 56mm exducer. It's rated for 5.52 lbs/min more than the "S" turbo. Very conservative upgrade. But I was going for more midrange power/torque and quick spool instead of all out HP.

And yes I upgraded to the JCW mani. had everything ceramic coated (inside and out where possible) to help keep the exterior temps down.

 

So that's (1) like out of 256 views. :lol:

 

First a disclaimer. I am a Manic dealer. As such I of course have a financial interest in Manic. That interest however is minimal. At Prototype-R we sell many other products and I refuse to sell a product I do not have faith in. I also have a full time job working in quality control in the aviation industry. I don't need the income from the second source. I just love Mini's and making them faster. Having said all that my daily driver has been Manic tuned for over 22,000 miles. First 21,000 or so was on a Manic Stage 2 meth tune. Vlad is my third Mini and is a 2012 fJCW Coupe with a lot of mods but stock internals. Recently however we developed our own 51mm K04 hybrid so the last 1,000 or so miles has been on a Stage 3 meth tune.

Grizld700 put his finger on it exactly earlier though. A stock JCW makes 129 BHP per liter. If the same amount were coming from a new Mustang you'd be putting out over 670 BHP. The more you push it the more important preventative maintenance becomes.

 

I love how people put f next to JCW to tell every one it's special when it's a Fake JCW. Factory JCW cars are the crap sticker packages. Real John Cooper Works packages / cars we only available for the first generation MINI's. Kits were sold by BMW from John Cooper and Co. the dealerships even installed them.

BMW / MINI bought out John Cooper & Co. and took it inside MINI. Sooooo they are now JCW fakes and don't have anything done by John Cooper and Co.

Just like if Shelby was to be bought out by Ford and they started adding Shelby stickers on the assembly line. Or like MINIs are a British car at all.

 

Now now Dave, you know as well as I do they put that "f" there to distinguish it from the dealer "JCW Tuning Kit".

No need to get everyone worked up.


That being said, yes you are correct. 1st Gen JCW held a lot more value than the 2nd gen. It also took a lot more work, with the different head and all.

 

Haha it's all good and Dave.O has a point. JCW today does not mean what it once did. The Mini is evolving and in some ways not always for the better. I still miss Pepper my Gen 1 that had 136k miles when I sold her. If I hadn't ripped the distal bicep tendon off the bone I never would have bought Tigger. I tried but just couldn't drive a stick very well with one arm in a sling.

But to Daves point I always differentiate between tuning kit and factory JCW's on the Gen 2. I used to boot load and tune with WinOLS before becoming a Manic dealer. As a tuner the compression ratio, flow of the turbo and sensor scaling of the MAP and MAF sensors make a difference in how you adjust the maps and how far you can safely push the hardware.


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I have a 2005 JCW with a RMW custom tuning kit with a few mods. :rolleyes5:

 

Unfortunately neither of us have N18 engines....

 

The fJCW vehicles kept the N14 engine through 2012.

 

That's a shame

 

As noted above no N18 here. My last Mini was an N18 and I specifically looked for an N14 since I plan on building this engine to include cams.

With a Stage 2 meth tune Vlad made 263 HP with the JCW turbo. Thats the tune I ran for over 20K miles. N18 figures are very similar to N14 results. In my opinion safe numbers are around 215-220 on an S and approximately 240-245 on a JCW running 93 octane. Add meth and you can move that figure up about 20 HP. I’d recommend not getting hung up on numbers however. Drivability and dependability should be your primary goals. Stay away from speed density style tunes that zero out your MAF sensor. I had one of those from Renntech and my dissatisfaction with it is what got me into tuning.

Also make sure your starting with a sound engine. If you have more than 40K miles get the valves cleaned especially if installing meth. Install new NGK 1422 plugs and have your tuner run a diagnostic before tuning. Tuning an engine that is not in good condition is not doing the client any favors. Finally a bit of advice I give to all my clients. Map C on the Manic tune is the highest level of performance and I do not recommend you drive in that mode all the time. Stick to map A or B for daily driving and reserve map C for when you get a wild hair.

Vlad’s most recent dyno is below. However, do not use these results as any kind of meter stick. This Stage 3 meth tune is the result of our efforts to reduce spool time and evaluate the performance of the X51 hybrid mentioned above. There is a lot left on tap but this is as far as I was willing to push the JCW internals. Map A is 1.5 bar, map B is 1.6 bar and map C is 1.7 bar. We pulled quite a bit of timing out to make it as safe as possible at this level of boost and the meth is acting primarily as a secondary fuel source.

 

looks like its having a really hard time controlling the wastegate up top.