MINI S Starts Strong! Feb 26, 2007
Kim and Per got a few hundred miles on the car before we hit the autocross course on Sunday.
We ran in the second heat, so we had an idea that D Stock was in low 37s, along with some other GS cars that were in the 37s as well. Per started out with a 37.7, without shifting to third...Kim shifted to third and pulled out a 37.5...Kim countered with a 35.5, Per countered with a missed downshift into second (going past the detent into the no-man's land below reverse..no harm, but kills the run..that detent is a little soft). Kim went slower on her next few and Per came back with a 35.0 for his best. That was good for 1-2 on index at our 100-ish car local event.
So, basically, w/ the index we are starting out about where we were in the Cooper...I'm pretty sure that we were faster than we would have been in the Cooper, but we need to do some learnin' to get improve it past the index.
MINI Meet Mar 1, 2007
Kim and Per went to a MINI meet here with the Daytona Area MINI Motorists: DAMM Thread on SunshineMinis.org
MINI people are wacky, but fun.
New Enkeis for MINI S Mar 12, 2007
We're going to be testing the advantages of the factory 16x6.5-inch wheels and available R-compounds vs the optional factory size of 17x7 inches. SCCA's rules allow for any wheel that matches the factory dimensions (thus 16x6.5 or 17x7 are legal) with an offset that is within 1/4-inch of the factory amount. The factory offset is 48mm for the 17x7, which means that we can run the offset as low as 42mm.
We chose these Enkei RPF1s with a 43mm offset because they weigh just 14.3 pounds. That's featherweight for a rim of this size. They are also pretty reasonably priced at $237 per wheel through The Tire Rack
We'll be using some sort of 225mm wide tire on this rim to get a larger footprint.
MINI S is *ahem* fast. Mar 13, 2007
We ran some 0-60 times yesterday, our four run average was 5.7 seconds. That's a bit faster than the other published numbers but it does back up Randy at Webb Motorsports dyno figures of 209 horsepower and 238 lb.-ft. of torque.
We'll strap ours to the dyno ASAP.
MINI S on the dyno Mar 13, 2007
We strapped our MINI Cooper S to the dyno today to see how the factory numbers of 175hp with 192 hp on "overboost" relate to real-world chassis dyno numbers.
We came in with 174 horsepower and 197 lb.-ft. of torque. Not too shabby!
We're not sure how this relates to some other dyno figures we've seen, as this was done at sea level with SAE correction factor and a smoothing of "5" That's how we do all of our testing here at GRM.
Run 1 was in 4th gear with no fan on the front of the car
Run 2 was in 3rd gear with no fan (not a lot of time to build boost, less torque)
Run 3 was back in 4th gear with the standard fan in front of the car getting airflow (as you'd drive the car)