New STX Project

Hi guys, I bought an '08 Cooper S about a month ago. It's a Chili Red/White Top with no sunroof and cloth seats. Only had 31k miles. It did come with upgraded exhaust and CAI. Suspension is standard with 17x7.5 Enkei's and 205/45/17 BFGoodrich Sport Comp 2's. The car runs great, couldn't be happier. I've been autocrossing on and off since 1996. Haven't been serious in a while though. I've been doing 3 or 4 events a year for the last few years with the Las Vegas region SCCA. I have also been running a couple of HPDE's a year with NASA SoCal. My last event was at Willow Springs in May. All these events were done in my '88 BMW 325 E30. Great car also and bulletproof. It's not pretty but it has a lot of mods and is a great track car. Anyway the E30 is not very competitive anymore in SCCA autox. My new Cooper S though has some potential. It's not the car to have in STX class right now but it's close enough to take a shot with. At least I'll have fun trying. Keep in mind that I've already done some mods to the car and run a few events with it. I will update the project in the order it's been done.

JR

 

So here's a few pictures of the car:

First day home


Alta Cold Air Intake


Alta Exhaust

JR
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So the first week I had the car, I was very impressed with how peppy it felt. It was definitely faster than my E30. Funny thing is it felt so light and nimble compared to the E30 yet the stock weights are within 100 pounds. I was wondering at this point if the car had some kind of tune. Fortunately I saw an ad for a Dyno Day the following weekend. I could get 2 pulls for $40 so I thought why not. My buddy and I drove over to the shop saturday morning. There were only a couple of cars there. I paid my money and got the car strapped down:



Notice how they strapped it down backwards because it's front wheel drive. The cooling fan is behind the car. It may have made a small difference in the readings but I really just wanted a baseline run. Here's the results:



I'm not complaining. After doing some research, these numbers are right in line for a stock tune with free flowing intake and exhaust. I'm not thrilled about the lean a/f ratios but again that's expected with no tune.

JR

 

Thanks Lens, I was starting to think that nobody autocrosses MIINI's anymore. Actually I've come to the conclusion that most MINI owners in general aren't overly interested in any type of organized performance driving. And that's fine; different strokes for different folks. They just don't realize how much fun it is to drive a MINI in anger in a safe and controlled environment.

 

OK so after I got the dyno done, i decided it was time to see what the MINI could do in an autocross. My SCCA region runs a summer nights series because frankly Las Vegas heat is brutal in the summer. We run the night series at a smaller lot with average times in the low 40 second range. Mostly first gear with occasional brief shift to second depending on the car. They setup some surprisingly fun and challenging courses given the lot size. I decided to run the car as it was on stock suspension just to get a feel for it, and get a baseline. I set the tires at 36 front and 38 rear. I never touched the pressures again. The car felt surprisingly good stock. I was able to make it rotate with throttle lift. It felt composed and very nimble. I got into the ABS too much for my liking but I was generally happy with the performance. I didn't do great; ended up in third (out of four cars) half a second behind an '07 civic si and a second behind the winning '13 FRS. However both these cars had good extreme summer performance tires with suspension mods. I also haven't autocrossed a FWD car in over 10 years. So I'm happy with those results. I ended up 22nd in PAX out of 52 cars and 23rd overall raw time.

JR

 

Although happy with the first autocross, it was time to step up my game. With the next event two weeks away it was time to make some changes. I broke out the credit cards and ordered some goodies. First thing was an Alta 22mm adjustable rear sway bar. I then ordered a set of Swift Spec R lowering springs. Added to that a set of Ireland Engineering fixed camber plates and some NM Engineering torque arm bushings. Finally, a set of Motorsports Hardware 75mm studs and nuts. The icing on the cake was finding out my TRM C1 15x8 wheels from my E30 fit perfectly. And these are wrapped in a fresh set of 225/45/15 GForce Rivals. Now were talking! A few pics:

Suspension Stuff




Wheels and tires


Completed package ready for battle

JR
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Tires are awesome. I bought them for my E30 last April with the wheels from Tirerack. I drove to Willow Springs on them in May and did four 20 minute sessions on the track. They where nice and grippy and easy to drive on. I put a total 0f about 700 miles on them between the round trip to Willow and the event itself. There was very little visible wear. I had not driven them in autocross yet. Update in next post......

JR

 

So now I was a little more prepared for the Aug 3rd night event. This time we had 9 cars in STX. Seven of them were FRS/BRZ's. Most of these were novice drivers with mostly stock or slightly modded cars. The other car was the '07 Civic Si that beat me by half a second on my last autocross. I set my tire pressures at 37 pounds all around and left it at that. Main reason is that the grid area is dark and it's a pain trying to read pressures. I gridded last in the class so I could keep tabs on what everybody was doing. First run, the FRS's were coming in with times in the 44-45 second range. The Civic came in with a 40.4 time. I made my first run and posted a 40.2 taking the lead. Obviously it was going to be a battle between me and the Civic. My second run I got into the 39's. Then on it's third run the Civic got ahead by .2 seconds. He stayed in the lead until the 5th runs where I posted a 39.377 to take the lead back. We had a total of seven runs. On his last run, the Civic makes his best run and unbelievably runs the exact same time as me! I've never seen that happen. Both tied with a 39.377. I went out for my last run and decided to let it all hang out. When I came through the lights I couldn't believe it. 38.948! So I took the win by .429 seconds. I was ecstatic. This is my first class win in a very long time. Best of all I broke into the top 10 in PAX. I finished 8th out of 58 cars in PAX and had the 15th fastest raw time. Huge improvement over my first event. The MINI felt awesome. The short fat tires not only had great grip but really improved acceleration being almost an inch and a quarter shorter than my street tires. Also the wheel/tire combination is almost 5 pounds lighter per corner. Overall a great performance by the MINI!

JR

 

OK so now we're all caught up to real time. My next event will be this coming Saturday night, the last event of the night series. As of today there's 3 cars signed up for STX. Notably there's a 2007 Mustang GT that I've seen run in the past. The driver is very good and according to him he's finally got the right wheels and tires for STX. Which probably means he's maxed out in rim width and tire width. I definitely have my work cut out for me. He's got more power than me but he's also close to a thousand pounds heavier. I guess we'll find out soon. On another note I couldn't get an appointment to get my car aligned before Saturday. I haven't aligned it since doing the suspension mods. It's obviously working ok but I need to get a baseline and start tweaking settings. I'm also going to experiment a bit with tire pressures. I've heard of people running crazy high pressures in the rear of the car. I'm going to set my rears 5 pounds higher than my fronts to see how it goes (37f/42r).

JR

 

Hi Lens, a limited slip is definitely in the plans. I'm thinking of going with the Quaife unit. I've heard good things about the OS Giken but it's almost double the price of the Quaife. Either way It'll probably be a few months before I get it. I definitely want to have it in place before next season starts. As it stands right now I'm really just getting to know the MINI. I haven't yet run a regular large sized autox course. I'm trying to emphasize the driving aspect first. Over many years of autocrossing I have seen people who keep on throwing more and more mods at the car yet never improve as drivers. Driver skills make a huge difference in autox as I'm sure you know. Next month we'll move to our regular venue which allows for 60+ second courses. Then I'll be doing a track day with the Porsche Club. The plan is to get comfortable with the car for the rest of this season. Get as much seat time as I can. I may also go up to San Diego and run one of their events just to see how I stack up. The San Diego region has a lot of fast drivers so it'll be a good metric.

JR

 

I'm running the standard shocks at the moment. They're working fine right now since the car only has 32k miles on it. Will definitely be going to Koni yellow's in the near future though as I'm sure they'll work better and I'm feeling the springs could use a little better damping. The car handles great though as is.

JR

 

Be aware that if you buy a Miata specific wheel you wont be able to run it on the MINI. The miata wheels have a smaller center bore (54.1mm) than the MINI wheels (56.1). They do share the bolt pattern 4x100mm. The wheels I'm running are for a BMW E30 which are actually 57.1 mm center bore. You could get a wheel to fit the MINI and buy centering rings to match the Miata bore.

JR

 

So we had our last event of the summer series last night. It ended up being a little disappointing. We ended up with seven cars in STX. This time we had three mustangs, a BRZ, a Civic and a Focus. We ended up with 77 cars total so we had 5 runs. After first runs I had fast time with a 50.656 in STX. This time held up until fourth runs when the Civic got by me with a 50.375. Unfortunately after my fourth run I was rewarded with a nice yellow Check engine light on my dash. Didn't know what it was as my code scanner didn't show any stored codes. I checked fluids, quick visual inspection of the engine compartment and didn't see anything. I decided to go for my last run. This is where I made my final mistake. I was so overzealous about getting back my first place that I slipped the clutch hard to build boost and come off the line harder which it did. Unfortunately after the first turn, I got the wonderful aroma of roasted clutch. The smell was very strong and the car didn't feel as fast. I feared the worst so I immediately shut it down and coasted through the rest of the course, basically forfeiting my last run. I had to work the course after that run so I just parked it. After the event, the car started up ok and the CEL disappeared. Drove home with no issues and even got on it a few times and it felt strong. The clutch even feels ok. So I ended up 2nd in STX for the event. Still not a bad showing finishing 15th in PAX out of 77 cars and 24th overall fastest raw time.

JR

 

During the last five days the car has had a weird start-up symptom. On three occasions when starting the car up in the morning, the car would sputter and struggle to keep running for about 30 seconds. Then the idle would settle and it would run fine for the rest of the day. I did some research and it seems this is a symptom of the HPFP going bad. So I get up this morning and decide to check the car out. Sure enough on start-up, I get the sputtering and the yellow CEL reappears. This time, my Torque app reads a stored code. The code is:

P3091-Fuel Rail Pressure Pressure-Rate-Controlled, fallen below minimum pressure

So looks like the MINI is going to the dealer to get a new HPFP. Luckily I'm still within the 60 day warranty the BMW dealership gave me. I've also read that this issue is so prevalent that MINI has extended the warranty to 100k miles for this item. So well see what happens. I'll continue updating.

JR

 

So an update on the MINI. Turns out the HPFP was indeed bad. Good news is that it was covered under warranty. Bad news is they found carbon buildup on the intake valves. This was causing the engine to shake pretty good at idle. This of course is not covered by my extended warranty. They did the walnut blast to the intake valves, did a fuel system cleaning, replaced the spark plugs and did a software update on the ecu. Total cost $887. Ouch! Welcome to MINI ownership.

JR