The Mini growing a pair

[SANDERS1]

Well, since I wrote up about the GTO, I thought I'd write up the wife's 06 Mini Cooper S progress. Where to start? We picked it up about 8 months ago on a Friday used from the local BMW dealer. Since I was already going to a track day with the S2000 guys that Sunday, I decided to take the Mini as well to get a base line of how it performs in it's stock form. Here's what it looked like the day of track day.

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Unfortunatly it was a VERY wet track day to say the least!

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I quickly decided to get the stance down, firm up the spring rate a little and get the Rota's swapped out for a set of RH Evo C3's in black!

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I chose a set of Alta/H&R springs for daily use and light track use.

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Here she is at a local car show

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Now after driving it around for a while with the springs in place, I dicided to do something about the rear camber issues that plague these cars once there dropped. I built a set of rear control arms to test with. These proved to be a welcomed item. Now I have a few other parts that will not be show(just like anything else I fab until there proven/tested, they will not be shown)

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I finally made Julie get off her...... Well, I asked her to come help install her new rear control arms. LOL!

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And Katelyn Helped too!

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Final product installed!

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Now since then a CAI has been installed with a box install(no pics for now, sorry). and I cut a 54lbs resonator out of the mix. The stock exhaust comes down mid of the car, curves to the pass. sideinto a massive resonator, then goes into a muffler on the driver side before exiting out the middle of the rear bumper area, well I dicided that it only needed to go into the muffler then out the back, so the res. got hacked out and 90 degree pipe went in place.( Refered to as a "One Ball system) LOL!

Now up to about a few weeks ago the car has been untouched for a while. I decided to change this again. For gauges I used a Scan Gauge II unit to monitor water temp, air intake temp,ign. timing, and boost. It's really nice and compact and fits any where! I ordered a new set of 18X8 Motegi SP10's that are stacked awaiting the correct studs to install them(tomorrow they should be in) and I decided that 9.8 PSI just wasn't cutting it, so in goes a 17% reducer pulley, tensioner stop(for safety), new smaller belt, and colder staged plugs to equal... Ready.... 15.1 PSI!!!! It will get tuned in the next few weeks I hope, but from what I have reed, these cars are fine without the tune, but to be safe it will get tuned.

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If you look just past me in those last pics, you can see the SP10's waiting their turn to get on the car! And now there on!