Since you're in Ca, there are at least two tracks I would love to run on, Sears Point and Laguna Seca - both are ab fab tracks! There are lots of smaller, less known tracks of course (Thunderhill, Buttonwillow etc), but those are the two biggies for me......
I know, but if you keep your eyes and ears open, sometimes you can get in on another club's event or run a NASA DE or something and save some $$$$ I ran a NASA DE at Watkin's Glen (another track on my "bucket list") for about $250, it was well worth it IMHO!
How far is the drive from KC to Watkins Glen??? I've thought about driving from NC up to Watkins Glen, but it's a haul. Was all that gas worth it?
it's about 1100 miles, and 16-17 hours on the road...... However, I flew - and shared a car with another driver once I got to the track. I would do that drive in a heartbeat tho - the track is spectacular and so much fun to drive!
Day at Mynes Performance Yesterday, I drove down to Lake Forest, CA to have Mike and Jason at Mynes Performance tune the MINI. Here's how it went. The car went on the dyno immediately. Jason is on the left, and Mike is on the right. The car went through three baseline runs, and they were very consistent. After this, Jason pulled the ECU and went to the office to do his magic. While Jason was working on the ECU, I pulled the injector rail and replaced the stock Siemens injectors with new 550cc Bosch injectors. Then the fun started. Mike and Jason did a dozen pulls, and made some progress, but we had a mystery on our hands. At the end, we wound up with 191whp, which, while nice, is not exactly setting the MINI world on fire. As shown by a recent Mynes tune on a stock MINI head with an NS1 cam, this setup should make at least 200 whp. So, what's the deal? First, let's list the mods: Old MTH Cartune map (which Jason and Mike told me was a good one), street-ported head, stock valves, Crower NS2 camshaft (yes, I'm allowed to say it now), 15% reduction pulley, 550cc injectors, CAI, stock exhaust manifold, five year old Magnaflow exhaust. Stop. You should hear the exhaust when the car gets over 6000 RPM on the dyno. It makes a rushing, whooshing sound - the sound of a plugged exhaust. Not good. I suggesting doing a dyno run with the cat-back pulled loose, but Jason indicated that this would be worse, not better. Best thing to do is to replace the cat-back (and ditching the seven year old stock header and cats wouldn't hurt either). $$Cha-ching$$. :rolleyes5: And me, fresh out of money. Also, although I did kill the horrible noise coming from my engine due to a bad chain tensioner, i still have lifter tick at start-up. I'm leaning towards adding 2mm lash caps to the valve stems just to see if the lifters stay quiet. Adding about 2mm will bring the lash back to something close to factory spec. Bad lash adjusters are just that, bad, but these do pump up just fine. Sometimes one of them sticks for about 10 seconds, which is annoying but certainly not a big deal. Besides, I just read that another MINI owner just replaced a bunch of rocker arms (with integral lash adjusters) at a cost of $550.00, and they are still getting the tick at startup as the lifters pump up. Lash caps are dirt cheap by comparison, so it will be a very cheap experiment. OK, so it's not going to muscle around every MINI it sees just yet, but there are a lot of other benefits to the Mynes tune that I can already enjoy: First and foremost, the engine is now properly tuned as a system, rather than a collection of parts. When I do finally replace the exhaust, the car will immediately respond. The tip-in map is modified to sharpen up throttle response. This is a fantastic change, as it really wakes the car up without causing the car to become difficult to drive. I can't begin to express my joy over this one little change. The idle is raised from 800 to 900 RPM (no a/c). All those little rattles on my car at idle? GONE. The cooling fan setpoints are shifted down 9 degrees C for better engine cooling. The knock sensor reference map is reworked to lower the sensitivity at higher RPMs (some MINIs, like mine, come from the factory with hair-trigger knock sensor maps). This will keep normal engine mechanical noise from setting off the knock sensor and retarding ignition timing unnecessarily. Other maps are also modified to improve the character of the engine. The cumulative effect is like pushing the "race" button, or turning the Ferrari manettino switch to the right. The engine sharpens up, and the smile on my face nearly splits my head in two. Bonus: Jason turned off the airbag light that's been on ever since I installed a Sparco seat (and accidentally pinched the airbag lead wires in the process). How many tuners do things like that? To summarize: Mike and Jason really, really, reeeeeeeeally know what they are doing. If you have a MINI, get thee to Mynes. Now.
Nice update and great pics. I would definitely get a good header on that beast with a nice high flow cat. Get that replaced and see what you have in perf before you go and chuck the cat-back. I would bet that the OEM header is the weak/restrictive link, not the Magnaflow cat-back. BTW, what is the report on the AFR readings after the tune? Do you see improvements as expected? I think you stated that it was pretty rich over a large rpm range. Oh, and yeah, you are going to have to remount the bung on the new header. Actually though, a few headers already come with an extra bung. Also, I had no idea that the knock sensor sensitivity could be adjusted with a tune, awesome. Anyway, great build and some respectable pulls, but it's not over, we are never finished are we?
Nope, never finished - what would I do with myself? You have a good point in that I don't actually know what is the real problem with the exhaust, other than it is all old, old, old. A wholesale replacement is probably the best option. A/F: oh yes, thank you for the prompt. In comparison with the Mustang dyno A/F sensor, the Autometer gauge reads about one point richer at high RPM. So, it still says rich, although not pegged as before. Jason pegged the fuel curve at 11.5 at higher RPMs in every gear. The actual A/F curve from the dyno looks a lot like the ones in other "after" plots that Mike has presented.
Thanks for the update It's refreshing to hear someone being truthful. Not all tunes and dyno runs are monumental. Nice to hear that you are happy with the results, now just get some money and get yourself a quality exhaust system. Speaking of exhaust, just got my Alta header ceramic coated, came out looking brand new again after 4+ years. Say what you will, the older Altas were made very well and it produced good numbers when I was at Mynes, they were even surprised by it.
Thanks for the 'blow by blow' Dr. Mike jiminni, I liken Alta these days to buying stuff at JC Penney. I just don't know whats crap and whats well made so I don't use any of it Back in the day when I believe they OEM'd quite a bit from others it was pretty good stuff. Screwed most of those folks and gonna ride that rep they made for as long as they can.
Wow, that looks great! So, just taking a guess here, what does it cost to get a header ceramic coated? ~$150 I am sure whatever the cost it would be cheaper if the vendor offered it as an option.
Oh I completely agree with you. It would be hard pressed for me to buy anything from Alta again. Thats why I stressed saying "older" :lol:
Thanks Yep it was $150. The place that did mine has a contract with a Volvo vendor and does a bunch of them.
I'm no expert, but from my limited reading the best (i.e. most accurate) place to measure AFR is exactly where you have your bung, before the cat. A measurement after the cat would be ~0.2 to ~0.5 more lean, and a sniffer at the tailpipe would be even farther off. Maybe the 1.0 that you saw. Anyway, I am thinking that if your pre-cat Autometer gauge is reading rich, then likely you are actually still running rich. A little on the rich side is safer though. Any experts here to chime-in?
Our 1025whp EVO is running a MoTeC ECU with lambda control and exhaust backpressure sensor in the exhaust to measure exhaust backpressure and make compensations for lambda sensor backpressure that affects readings. On ABF dyno, this car reads 11.8 AFR (0.80 Lambda) and the sniffer also reads 11.8 AFR. On the other note, Mike's car Autometer and ABF Mustang dyno AFR sniffer reads the same AFR reading to the tee, until the engine starts to go into higher revs and when it makes that struggling exhaust puffing sound out of the exhaust. Since the sniffer is in the rear and the Autometer is within the backpressure area of the exhaust would allow it to read richer. Do a Google search "on exhaust backpressure and lambda sensor readings"; it'll explain more in detail.
I will do that (search)! Also I will look at exhaust pressure sensors, not for my car, but for use as a high temperature pressure sensor at work. I doubt it would stay alive at 3000F and 500 PSI, but I could find a use for it.
FWIW My AM WB AFR reads 14.7 at idle (perfect), and the ECU is always attempting to keep it there in closed loop. The bung is pre-CAT, between the OEM sensors. With that, I assume it's reading accurately during open loop as well. I compared the data I logged during some GTech pulls, to the AFR plot from my RMW tune and the shape of the curve was pretty close as I recall.
I searched around for information on pressure vs. error for wideband sensors, and found this graph (source): I recorded a difference of about 11% between the in-car A/F reading and the Mustang dyno reading. Reading this as an error of 11%, and working backwards through the plot, the pressure in the exhaust manifold (on average) comes to 22.9 PSIA, equal to 8.2 PSIG (PSI above atmosphere at Lake Forest, CA altitude). 8.2 PSI in the exhaust manifold is way, way too high IMO. Of course, a real measurement would be to pull the A/F sensor and screw in a temporary pressure tap to a pressure gauge (through a long, coiled-near-the-hot-end metal tube to remove the exhaust heat, of course). I'm pretty certain that I have enough evidence to point at a clogged exhaust system without doing all that.