For the past eleven years, I have joined other MINIacs at the Walt Disney World Resort for the annual Mickey & MINI event that takes place each September. This year’s festivities were awesome and everyone had a fabulous time! If you haven’t had a chance to make it to a Mickey & MINI, you really need to plan on coming next year.
Video Credit: “bones0393“
Continue reading Best In Show: Clark Takes Top Honors at Mickey and MINI 11
First off, a HUGE thank you is in order to Jerry at NM Engineering for going above and beyond in assisting in this project. When I first went looking for aftermarket wheels for the F56 JCW Brake Kit, I didn’t realize how much of a challenge it would be to find ANYTHING available in the after-market. Every option that I found required spacers to push the wheel out enough to clear the massive Brembo calipers of the JCW Brake Kit. As I described in part 1 of this project, Jerry agreed to get his hands on a JCW Brake Kit himself and install it on the NM Engineering test F56 to see what could be done to bring to market a wheel that would clear the brakes without the need for spacers. If you recall from part 1 of this project, Jerry was going to enlarge the center bore and reseat the lug holes of the NM Engineering 8″ wide VW spec wheels so that they are perfectly matched to MINI spec (66.5mm and canical seat lugs). After various test fittings, here are the options that are available for customization to clear the JCW brakes: Continue reading Found: A Wheel That Clears The F56 JCW Brake Kit
Hop on any MINI Cooper forum these days and I bet you that you will find MINI owners trying to figure out what after-market wheel options exist for the F56 John Cooper Works MINI. Try going to TireRack.com and searching for compatible wheels that will fit a 2015 John Cooper Works Hardtop 2 door and you will come up empty. The lack of after-market wheel choices is surprising. Of course, the issue is that the JCW Brake Kit includes MASSIVE brake calipers that even required MINI to develop 2 versions of some wheels to make sure the JCW versions were bowed out enough to clear the massive stoppers (talk about confusing)!
Continue reading Challenge: Finding a Wheel That Clears the F56 JCW Brake Kit
The guys over at WhiteRoofRadio.com spent some time this week discussing Clark’s Dyno results and how the most bang for your MINI buck currently is an F56 Cooper S with JCW Tuning Kit. Take a listen and see what they thought:
Can you spot the difference between the 2 photos below? If your answer is “no”, move along… there’s probably nothing on this site that interests you lol. If you answered “yes” and immediately noticed that the photo on the bottom shows an F56 MINI Cooper S with a properly lowered suspension, keep reading…
Continue reading Lower Is Better
So I have discovered if you start the car with the exhaust flap open first thing in the morning, an awesome sound is produced for the first minute or so as the engine warms up and the idle sits at close to 1500-2000 rpm. Pardon the dirty MINI in the video as this video was shot right before I detailed lol.
So far Clark has proven to be one fun ride!! I am amazed at the amount of torque this MINI has without any noticeable torque steer. Since most of the torque is being produced below 4500 rpm, I am having no trouble staying below the recommended rpm limit during break-in period. Speaking of which, I am just about at 1250 miles and getting ready to have my first oil change to flush out any break-in residue that may be floating in the oil. With engines these days, there most likely isn’t anything floating around in there, but I am old school when it comes to the first oil change getting done early. Can’t hurt…
Continue reading 2 Weeks Of F56 Ownership
If you have been on any of the MINI forums, you undoubtedly have seen the awesome cartoon MINIs in people’s signatures. What you may not realize is that most of those signatures were designed by a member of the MINI community “COOPERation” aka Planet Cooper on Facebook. If you go through his Facebook page, you can spend HOURS just mesmerized by the talent he possesses. This week, I received an awesome gift of a sampling of new signature banners depicting my new MINI, Clark (aka SuperMINI). The one below is my favorite!
Huge thanks to Craig (aka COOPERation) for such an awesome work of art!!
If you haven’t seen the video of my trip to the dyno this past weekend, make sure you check it out! Big thanks to Lee at Genesis Automotive in Oakland Park, Florida for running the dyno and helping us get the baseline data.
I brought Clark down to Ft. Lauderdale, FL in 100 degree heat (yea yea I know – not ideal conditions) for his baseline Dyno run this weekend and I was quite impressed with how he performed. I expect to have the raw data from the dyno shop e-mailed to me tomorrow morning so be on the look-out for a post with SAE corrected graphs and more detail. Until then, enjoy the video below: