The time has finally come when the warranty has run out on my Mini Cooper S (I've had it nearly 3 years now!) and I've always thought that once that happened it would be open for abuse in the area of tuning mods! Although this time it won't be a DIY job as it's not my 1992 Cooper with an A Series engine! this time it's tuning mods for GEEKS!

Gone are the days of listening down a piece of tubing for the slight changes in noise coming from the twin carbs as you tweak the mixture ... now we attach a handheld computer to the diagnostics port in the cabin and hack the ECU! This doesn't even involve soldering or removal of any seals to void warranty (if you had one) you can even set the ECU back to it's original state whenever you want. As the 'S' of Cooper 'S' means SUPERCHARGED, there is a popular modification that does require a spanner and this is the fitting of a smaller pulley, this increases the boost of the charged air.

So we combine the two and get the following:

Of course, do you really want to do this and hike up the insurance, not to mention the possible detonation of a 20k spec car! hmmmm, the need for speed or the need for sensibility that is the question.

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