Tuning the Rover Mini
Mini tuning tips from the car tuning guide, we take a look at the best power mods for the Mini in our latest guide.
Available in standard form with power of upto 96bhp (depending on the year), so this goes to show the tuning potential of the Mini. From this you can increase the power from anywhere between 105.6bhp to 163.2bhp but this depends on how deep your pockets are and how much fairy dust you want to use! You will almost certainly need to look at turbo or supercharger mods to get near that maximum power figure and your engines internals would need to be a fair bit stronger!
The more powerful Mini Saloons provide a suitable donor engine for the lower powered models in the range. Rover have produced some interesting cars over the years. The Minis really will benefit from a hike in the power. Mini tuning projects should generally start with some improvement to the intake/exhaust of the engine. So get a stainless steel exhaust and good quality sponge or cotton gauze panel air filter. A good fuel pressure regulator will up the throttle response.
A fast road cam will make quite a reasonable difference to the peak power of you Mini. Turn your attention next to the Minis engine head. With a good gas flowed ported engine you will see much better mid and peak range power and some owners have reported more economy.
The top Mini offers a base power level of 96 bhp. The car tuning guide would expect you to see power gains from 105.6 bhp to 134.4 bhp!
The largest power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. It is easier to bolt on a supercharger than it is to get an add on turbo working. With a turbo the boost curve is related to the engine speed making it hard to map. The nice steady boost to rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. High on your list of mods for your Mini should be handling improvements. You shouldn’t really lower a car by more than 30-35mm.
We will have more detailed Mini modification guides in the near future. Please check the site regularly for updates.
For further reading on any of the topics we have discussed we suggest you visit some of these links:
Car Tuning Great guide on just about every car modification around.
Car tuning Blog Blog with many topics covering all aspects of car tuning and driving.
