2nd Gen R56 Diesel Most liked posts in thread: Mini Cooper SD

Somebody just needs to find a way to tune the Diesel, and throw a big turbo (at least a 16G) on one...
Let that black smoke roll!

 

I would take one in a heartbeat!

The milage you get says Prius, but all that torque!

 

The story of diesel is one of TQ....not HP...
When folks toss numbers around, I remind them a typical 18 wheeler has a 320-360 HP motor pulling a 50,000 lb trailer for a total weight of 80,000 lbs....and driven well, can get about 10 mpg...
But needs 9 , 10,13,or even 18 gears to keep it in a 500 rpm tq band.. Typically 1100-1600 on most modern motors....so efficient, but lots of rowing, and not much fun....
Then add to the fact diesel fuel is taxed MORE IN THE US, so it usually costs slightly more than 93....it is not do clean cut a winner....then add lower quality diesel fuel issues in the us...gelling, etc.

 

That would be sweet! However just getting the engine/electronics/ other stuff for the swap off of a ONE-D into the states would be near impossible!

 

Yup for years people have been trying to push Diesel in the US and we don't want it just like the Metric system. :lol:

 

The USA does not get the MINI SD.

Welcome to M/A the FUN MINI site.

 

Would be interesting. Back in my VW days, heard they supposedly did a diesel GTI, believe it was called GTD. Would be nice to have a chance to drive an SD.

 

Some people want them some people don't. I think it's fine but I don't need one.

 

But the looks say....:lol::nonod:

 

I have had an SD for a couple of years now and while the huge torque is nice on the highway, the rev band is still too narrow on winding roads - and the SD has a much wider power band than many diesels.

I have found the SD uses 20% less fuel than the justa Cooper I had before and I don't think that's enough to justify it, so I will probably go back to a justa next time (particularly now it's a turbo with more bottom end grunt). The SD probably uses 30% less fuel in the same driving, but then I lose some of that benefit enjoying the big torque.

Gatto, one thing to watch out for is that the SD has only the brakes from a Cooper and not the bigger brakes from a Cooper S, so it is easy to make the brakes fail if you drive really hard. Converting to S discs is easy and (fairly) cheap.

 

A few years ago they were bragging about the MINI Diesel getting close to 70 MPG and begging for them to bring it to the US.. If your getting less then 40 mpg it's not worth it in the US from a cost per gallon, compared to gas, unless it does have a huge Torque advantage....

 

Wonder how much of a challenge it would be to source diesel fuel during MOTD?

 

Robbinsville has a few stations with diesel...

 

Don't believe k even made if there this year. Went a lot of other places, but not Robbinsville

 

Certain. Only some very early SD hatchbacks from the first year of SD production (in 2010?) got 294mm Cooper S brakes and all SDs since then have got 280mm Cooper discs. If you drive hard in hilly country, the 280mm discs are not good enough, but if you are mainly in the city, they are OK.

 

These numbers aren't the least bit relevant to car diesels, though the limited rev band problem is, to some extent. The SD diesel has peak torque from 1750 to 2700, max power at 4000 and redline at about 5000 (when power is definitely tailing off), so it can happily rev upwards.

The problem is that there is sufficient torque that in normal driving revs are so low that you drop off the bottom of the rev band - 1500-2000 rpm is plenty for cruising but starts to get big turbo lag if you slow at all. Having to dip the clutch to go round city corners, because the engine refuses to be slowed below its idle speed, is common. So having to change down is probably required as much as it was in my previous non-turbo justa Cooper.

Having converted to diesel, I will probably convert back next time - the flexibility of the new 3-cylinder engine (peak torque from 1250 rpm!) sounds nice.