Engine Drivetrain 2nd Gen S Most liked posts in thread: Stock MCS turbo working hard vs. JCW turbo hardly working

Nah, it's twincharged, dow low it's more like a supercharger, with a big ol' reduction pulley, it's been making power and heat from the first post, no turbo lag whatsoever in this thread...:biggrin5:

Like the R56 turbo though, I predict it will very shortly lose steam on the top end...

 

Hmm I can chime in here. I also think you're walking on the razors edge here. After seeing some sh1t hot tunes pulling over 20+ psi on the stock N14 engine and watching a few other guys on the other site decimate some pistons, I was very cautious with tuning on my track toy. 17psi MAX is such a huge improvement over the stock tune on the R56 MCS. At that point, I called it "done" and just focused on seat time 100%.

Yes power is addicting, but I just didn't want to push the reliability that far down the toilet. I totally agree with what you're doing with the suspension on your car but I just do not have a nice warm feeling about pushing lots of boost on a stock N14/N18 engine. If you had a JCW engine with lower compression, you can have a little more but still... pistons pistons pistons!

 

:cornut: Thanks Dnepr Dave. So sometimes engineering can be simple and obvious? Thanks for including Dave.O. 1. He is correct. 2. You saved us all a lot of verbal grief.:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:

Jason

 

You seem to be hung up with thinking that a JCW turbocharger will produce less heat than a stock S turbocharger. Though there may be a small difference in output temperature the turbos are so close in size that the temperature difference is negligible and can be discounted. The place in the intake circuit that cools off the charge air is the intercooler, get an oversized intercooler to reduce charge temperature. For even more charge air cooling, put a methanol/water injection system on your car, Howerton makes the best one for a MINI. For longevity, keep your maximum boost pressure below 20 psi The N14 doesn't like pressures over that and cracked ring lands will eventually result when you boost over 20 psi.

The best tune option for an N14 engine is the Cobb Access Port, it is the only true OBD2 ECU tune, that can be tuned in real time on a dynamometer. All the others are piggyback tunes or they require the ECU be removed and sent in for a tune then re installed. As you have an N14 engine, an Access Port will work for you.

Part of my job is being a certified ABB Turbocharger technician. The turbochargers I work on are about the size of a MINI but the physics are the same as the little ones.

Please put you car's particulars in your signature, then you don't have to add it each time you post a question. We have short memories and don't always remember what year and model car you have from your previous posts.

Dave

 

A combo with number two dominating. Originally, for the R56 jcw engine, nothing was changed, the engine was left alone, and the engineers blew too many of them up for BMWs taste trying to wring more power out of them.

So they changed tack, slightly modified the engine, and only slightly increases HP, much to everyone's disappointment. It's reliable, but it's still close to what the engine's ceiling, there just isn't much more there to get safely.

Fast forward to the F56, where there will be a huge difference with either the GP or JCW models versus stock S in terms of performance. BMW learned something, as R56 JCWs sat there like lead weights on the dealers lots.

It took them 12 years, but they finally listened to peanut gallery. People don't want JCW's with funky aero and tacky badges, or GP's with a bunch of vinyl stickers. They want GP's and JCW's with more power.

I'm willing to wager neither will be tuner friendly either though.

 

That's my thinking. Shave time with driver time, suspension, and tires. The tune is just a fun thing to have but I would never want to be at the point where I was worrying about reducing the reliability of the car every time I was pushing it all day at the track.

 

The first part simply isn't true. Pulleys came out, with a nice bump in performance, literally the day after the first MCS came off the line. Within year two, people were putting in cams, injectors, headers, CAI, and BVH's, tying it together with a tune, and making big power. It happened relatively fast, and the hope was the Prince would be just as mod friendly. But tie in the draconian ECU, and the fact that there just isn't much more to be had from the engine, and it simply isn't the case. The R56 platform JUST ISN'T A FRIENDLY PLATFORM TO MOD. It's as simple as that.

I was specifically warned of this when I bought my car--I had the option of an R53 (I bought and MCS, I should have bought the GP), or waiting a few months for the R56. I was strongly encouraged by a factory type at BMW to stick with the R53 if I wanted to play with the engine; the SC was going to be a better option for what I wanted to do (track). I'm glad I took that advice. The R56 has been a deathly slow platform to mod--look at where we are at the end of the R56 cycle versus where we were at the end of the R53 cycle with regard to power modifications. It's not even close.

The second part is true, about "what they were trying to do"--that applies to both the R53 and the R56; plenty of R53 engines have been blown trying to stretch the limits. But the truth is there is a MUCH larger limit to stretch for the R53. Some people take this as "bashing the R56", but it's not--it's simply the truth. The R53 isn't perfect. It's heavy for what it is, and as a daily driver, the R56 is definitely more comfortable/more refined, if that's what you're after.

The third part is true, sort of. Handling comes first, but when the chassis can handle more, people are going to want more. Set up properly, a MINI can handle 250WHP easily, and the car is pure bliss on the track. That's where I'm at now, I will probably go higher, but the car feels perfectly balanced between handling and power at the moment.

 

Keep the OEM Turbo, get a Helix intercooler and add Howerton Meth kit.

That will keep thing cool and clean which is a must for an R56.

 

Engineering type here.
Jason and Dave O. nailed it.

Dave

 

The truth is, there just isn't as much going on with the R56 in the tuning world. There are improvement that can be made, but not to the degree you can make safely with an
R53. Just be VERY careful what you do and where you go; you've done the research, so you should be aware by now the early R56 disasters and blown engines with some of the overly aggressive tunes that tapped into the overboost. There is a reason why that boost isn't available all the time...

The R56 engine is close to maxed out. There just isn't much room there to do more unless you're willing to start upgrading internals.

Or you could just buy a unichip and be done with it (joke).

 

Have fun with the N18, if that's what you have, it's incredibly easy to tune and modify, moreso than an R53, it's not even close. No offense, but I've come to the realization that you're going to keep digging until you find what you want to hear. That's a dangerous game to play, but that's the road we're travelling apparently. You've been given good advice here and elsewhere. You can find the advice that tells you what you WANT to hear, here and elsewhere. But just because you WANT to hear something doesn't mean it's worthwhile; if you want to join the fairly large crowd of MINI owners with blown engines, knock yourself out.

 

Yeah, I hear you.

Thread should be titled, "You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear."

But you can make a silk purse worth about as much as sow's ear, if you try hard enough.

 

FYI, Cobb stopped tuning for MINI in 2012 and no longer support the product. I wouldn't consider AccessPort to be a viable option.

 

Yes, that's pretty much the upshot of what happened; they couldn't make a ton more power out of the existing Prince without an unacceptably high engine failure rate, so they dialed it back quite a bit. The engine can make quite a bit more power. For about ten minutes.


You won't find articles about the development of the JCW, just a hunk of Prince engine shells outside the R&D department. I believe it was referenced in MF, at least in the comments in one of the early JCW threads.

You can't get around it, without substantially strengthening the internals. Yes, there are some people who have increased power and are still running, but IMHO they are living on borrowed time.

 

Simple. They wanted to go faster and they choose to do that by boosting the engine even more. Result... premature failure of piston ring lands. Ultimate result... you're in the hole 7 grand and you're potentially done for multiple seasons. Let's not get started about what the spouses will think:eek6:

 

First of all, it depends on the car. Some cars can get suprisingly close or past with a CAI and a Pulley and a good tune. A Header/exhaust OR cam should get you comfortably past that, both even moreso. That's for HP. Torque is a whole different animal; you're not going to get 230 ft/lbs at 200HP on an R53 easily, 230 is tough in an R53 without some serious modification that will correspondingly bring the HP way up.

The cars are different. The R56 will pull like hell 1500 RPMs plus, but peter out on the top end (the JCW is better in this regard). The R53 will pull to redline if set up properly--mine with a BVH/Cam/Header pulls hard up to 7500 RPMs with very little drop off. The trade off in my car is down low, where you do most of your daily driving; it's relatively weak there.

There are many different cams for different applications, it depends on what mods you put together, and how well they work together.