Hampton Roads Club Mini

I know this is a newb question, but how reliable are the Mini motors? Is best to try and find one under a certain total mileage?

Don and Steph put well over 100k on two minis, and they had nearly zero problems to my knowledge.

The only issue I understand Roy (accentz) to have with Justa, is the lose nut behind the wheel. 

Congratulations, get the MCS, drive it for a bit, land yourself a few speeding tickets, then, if you have some money left over, hit the aftermarket industry for those mods, get bunches of more power to the wheels, land yourself some more traffic tickets, and Bob's your uncle.

On a serious note, yeah, go for it, and have a blast, you'll be glad Ya did.

The MCS short block is very strong.  According to the Bentley manual, the crank is forged, the rods are crack-forged, and the pistons are forged with a colloidal graphite coating.

Most modders do the 15% pulley, but there are options to go 19% on the supercharger and 4% on the crank, for a total of 23 lbs. of boost.  Previous research and chit-chat revealed that anything above 15% will require head work to get the flow numbers.  However, Mugami in the Richmond area has put a 19% pulley in his MCS with stock injectors, and he said it runs great.

Beyond the boost, the other mods worth investing in are the cold air intake and a larger intercooler (like the Alta 2.0).

Personally, I don't think the short block will suffer any worse since it's built to handle boost in the first place.  This is comparitively different than taking a stock Mustang and putting a supercharger on top with 8 lbs. boost, as the internals are not forged.  I'm sure you could get alot of feedback from those who own and mod their Subaru WRX'es in terms of block life vs. increased boost.

  I read this in a book about turbo systems, nice book by the way.  It said (and I'm paraphrasing): that for stock cars that run turbos from the factory have a certain amount of headway built into them so that when they run the stock amount of boost, the engine is very reliable.  Cause warranty work on a car is expensive.
  So with any stock turbo system, you can increase the boost, but you are eating into the safety margin designed into the engine.  When you add more boost to a stock engine it won't last as long as if you had left it alone because it is putting more strain on the engine than the stock turbo boost.  Now modern non-turboed engines don't have much head room to run a turbo, due to better engineering and cost cutting measured.  Older non-turboed engines, like pre 90's had a lot of head room given to them and overbuilt parts, so they can be turboed relatively easily.

That is pretty much what the book said, and knowing how the engine and turbo systems work, it makes sense.  I know it was a book on turbo systems, but the principals are the same.

Jeremy

When an engine was made has nothing to do with overbuilt parts or quality.  Although I believe in book knowledge, a book on turbos should talk about turbos.  That book sounds like it had too much generalization on engines.  Besides the books, you are better off talking to a group of guys who work on Mustangs (or Camaros, or what have you) all day long than to consult a book on that matter.

I'll give you an example.  For those Chevy fans out there, you've heard of the old-school pink rods.  Well, a more uncommonly known type of rod that is well-made is the X-rod (so noted with an "X" in the casting) commonly found in lots of tossed 305 HO engines (most Chevy lovers favor the 350).  I have a friend who dropped a valve through the piston of his race engine.  The X-rod was bent into a "Z" pattern, but it never broke.  I'd run an X-rod over a pink rod in a heartbeat.

The stock '02-'06 MCS injectors are 330cc, which comes out to 31.424 lbs/hr.  30 lb/hr injectors are good up to 400 HP in a V8 engine.  Here's a link for some data comparing:  RC Fuel Injection.  That means stock Mini injectors are good to 200 HP.  Mugami, whom I mentioned earlier, is using stock injectors with 19 lbs boost.  To give you a comparison... LT1 Camaros (1993-1996) use 24 lb/hr injectors, and they put out 300 HP @ 5,000 RPM and 340 lb/ft torque @ 4000 RPM.

Beyond fuel and boost, proper tuning is the key.  Stock Minis dump crazy amounts of fuel at WOT.  While nominal air/fuel is 11:1 to 11.5:1 for boost-fed engines, my Mini dumps as fat as 9:1 at top end.  This should give you an indicator of how much more the stock injectors can handle.

I prefer the piggy-back approach.  A guy that used to tune imports at DTP in Chesapeake recommended the Perfect Power SMT-6.  It comes with the control box, harness adapters, USB cable, and software for about $450.  He said it works with an OBD-II compliant computer.  It does real-time data-logging.  When I start doing engine mods myself, this will be my choice.