MINI Coupe Tuning

"Thanks for reading my MINI Coupe tuning guide."

The Coupe is a good tuning project to play with. With the right mods your Coupe can be transformed into a stunning project. Don't waste money, do your homework and follow our unbiased guides to each performance upgrade to avoid disappointment.

Turning our attention to the Coupe's engine we need to get a bit more power out of the top end.

The best power gains come from larger engine sizes. The more you start with the bigger the return on investment so engine swaps are good value mods for small engined cars.

Engine tuning mods.

Typically these parts are usually carried out by our members, decide how far you want to go before you begin.

Getting the best tuning upgrades for your planned usage of the car is vital. Stage 3 (competition) mods just don't work well on the road making the car difficult to drive.

Stage 1 modifications: Lighter flywheel, Suspension upgrade (drop 30-40mm), Remap, Alloy wheels, Panel air filter, Sports exhaust.

Stage 2 modifications: fuel pump upgrades, Power/Sport clutch, Fast road cam, high flow fuel injector, Ported and polished head.

Stage 3 modifications: Sports gearbox, Competition cam, Adding or upgrading forced induction (turbo/supercharger), Engine balancing, Internal engine upgrades (pistons/head/valves).

• 1.6 L I4 Prince (turbocharged petrol)
• 2.0 L I4 BMW N47 (turbocharged diesel)

Your targets when modding the engine should be a wide torque output. You don't want all the torque to be at the top end of the rev range unless you are creating a motor sport car.

The whole aim of our guides is to give a starting base of modifying mods and point you in the right direction, our forum is the place to go for detailed advice and tips on your modified car project, the best tuning mods and all aspects of modding cars.One of the most cost effective mechanical uprated upgrades you can do on your NASP engine is to fit a fast road cam .

It improves the intake and exhaust flow and pushes up the power if done right. Ideally you'd add other mods and finish up with a performance chip. TorqueCars would caution you not to go with a competition cam as this affects the engines idling and general town driving characteristics.

When pushing up the power you will need to increase to the fuelling. More power needs more fuel.

Frequently power losses, flat spots and erratic idling after parts are done can usually be traced to timing or fuel delivery issues.Uprated injectors will enable you to supply sufficient fuel to the engine.

A fuel pump will only deliver a finite amount of fuel, so you may need to uprate this if your injectors are demanding more fuel.

Intake and Exhaust Tuning.

The next area for modification is the intake and exhaust. Contrary to popular belief there is generally a small if any power gain got by fitting an induction kit, they only become beneficial and are recommended after you increase the engines power to the point where the standard air intake box cannot cope!

Derestricting the air flow into the engine is a primary goal of car tuners so get a freer flowing air filter if you find that the car is running lean. Induction kits can sound fun but due to the warm air in the engine bay they will not really increase power and usually rob you of power.

Sports exhausts will certainly help air flow through the engine but avoid an exhaust that is too big or you could will reduce the flow rate. Stick to 1.5 to 2.5 inches for best results.

Getting the head ported and polished will help get more air into each cylinder. This is definitely a job for a pro with a flow bench. When you heavily modify your Coupe you will reach a point that the standard clutch starts to slip so get an uprated clutch. The best mods in our experience for your Coupe are Remapping or piggy back ecu, fast road cam and air intake and exhaust.

Turbo engines are just asking to be Reprogrammed. You will see big power gains on most modern turbo charged cars including diesels making a remap one of the most cost effective and big modifications for your money.The most phenomenal power gains for NASP engines usually involve the addition of forced induction. Superchargers are generally easier to add than a turbo. Turbos provide boost in increasing proportion to increasing engine speed and this can make mapping difficult.

The nice steady boost and rpm characteristics of the supercharger make them easier to map. Decreasing the engines compression ratio will allow you to add forced induction, water injection may also help prevent detonation.

Handling/Suspension upgrades

Improving the handling for people often first priority in your Coupe tuning project.

Fully adjustable suspension allows you to fine tune the handling of you Coupe dramatically enhancing your drive.

Drop the car by as much as 23mm - 36 mm and fit modified stiffer dampers, bigger drops will need other modifications in most instances.

Alloy wheel upgrades.

As alloys are lighter they improve performance and they can help to cool the brake disks. Further improvements can be made to your cars handling with the addition of soft compound tyre. We should point out that although they can look cool on the Coupe large alloy wheels will actually decrease your performance. The larger you go the lower your acceleration will be - this to the change in your effective final drive ratio.

For this reason endeavour to keep the overall rolling diameter of the wheel the same as supplied from the factory. In all cases we do not recommend going bigger than 17 inches.

There is a more updated version of this MINI Coupe Tuning article on TorqueCars.com.

For more information on Tuning your car please join us in our friendly forum where you can discuss Coupe options in more detail with our Coupe owners. It would also be worth reading our unbiased MINI tuning articles to get a full grasp of the benefits and drawbacks of each modification.

Please help us to improve this article, we need your feedback in the comments box below which is there for you to pass on any tips, pointers or facts we might not have covered..

We really like hearing from our readers, and hearing about which upgrades were the most effective for them, it helps us improve our recommendations and articles to reflect current trends in modifications and ensures that our EZ engine guides and tips are kept up to date and we remind our visitors of our non profit non commercial approach to running this site.

All comments received are used to improve the accuracy of our site and these articles which are continually amended, tweaked and updated.

Please Check out my YouTube channel, we're regularly adding new content...

Click to accept YouTube Cookies & Play.

This article is flagged for an update, so please pass on specific tips below that I can include. All articles, and content was written by me, Waynne Smith TorqueCars founder. Some outlines are just too general so I appreciate your feedback and suggestions. This entry was filed under Mini. You can leave a response below or join our forum to discuss this article and car modification in detail with our members.

If you liked this page please share it with your friends, drop a link to it in your favourite forum or use the bookmarking options to save it to your social media profile.