The Independent American Magazine for all Mini Owners
Issue link: http://mc2.epubxp.com/i/33538
and the holes through which your strut is mounted are slightly elongated. Simply remove the screw or pin and loosen the strut top nuts. Press the strut towards the center of the car and retighten the strut top nuts. Easy! Baby Needs a New Set of Shoes Alignment is important, but if you’ve just put out the money to align a set of worn-out tires, chances are you won’t see a lot of result. So consider whether you could use a new set of wheels and tires. Everyone knows that good tires are critical for good performance, but your wheels are also an important performance component because they are unsprung weight. Your wheels affect your acceleration, braking, and suspension response. The stock wheels that MINI provides are designed to survive all kinds of abuse and keep going. They’re very heavy. Substantially lighter wheels, in correct sizes for your MINI, are available through aftermarket, but they’ll cost you several hundred dollars apiece. If you plan to do your performance driving using special tires, buy an extra set of wheels on which to mount your competition rubber. Autocrossers, racers and track day enthusiasts should all have a dedicated set of doughnuts kept in good condition and reserved for playtime. Suck It Up The easiest way to improve engine performance is to upgrade the air intake, and it doesn’t cost very much to make this modification. You can gain up to 10 horsepower and 10 pound-feet of torque just by adding a cold air intake. What you want is the least restrictive intake system that will provide clean cold air to your engine. You really do need a filter, though, especially with a supercharger or turbocharger, since all kinds of stuff can get sucked into your engine. Nothing good has ever been reported about feeding a small rock into a supercharger or turbo compressor fan. 7KLV &ROG; $LU ,QWDNH IRU WKH 5 &RRSHU; 6 LQFOXGHV D . 1 ÀOWHU DQG D customized cold air box to pull intake air from the high-pressure area at the base of the windshield. simply blocked the hood scoop with a blanking plate. Some R56 cold air intakes remove that blocking plate to direct cold air to the intake, which is so obvious that you have to wonder why MINI engineers didn’t do it in the first place. R56 cold air intakes cost from $189 (without the ram air scoop) to $448 for the cool DDM Works Racing Intake System (RIS) kit with a Cold air intake kits for both the R53 and R56 Cooper S are plentiful, and some suppliers offer replacement upgrade filters for JCW cars. Kits are also available for R50 and R56 Coopers. DDM Works, for example, has a nice kit for the R50 for just $189, and that’s an affordable upgrade. R53 cold air kits retail for $199-$249 from a variety of suppliers. The R56 air intake is fundamentally different from the R53. Where the R53 uses the distinctive Cooper S hood scoop to duct air to the intercooler, the stock R56 has a front-mounted intercooler, and MINI You don’t have to dig into your engine to increase performance. Most gains are available by simply bolting on a few easy parts in your garage and getting a custom tune afterwards. Issue 30 MC2 Magazine 33