Road Trip + Mods

Hi Countryfolk,

Last week I took my MINI from Connecticut to Florida and back - This is my post to tell you about my experience!


The trip was planned two days before we actually left the house.  The reason for this short notice was a lack of snow in the upper North East mountains.  There needs to be snow to snowmobile, and since there was none, we just headed south.

The reason for the trip was to see colleges and universities that I could realistically get into.  In total, we saw 22 universities and colleges in 8 days!  This was not the whole reason for the trip though, I wanted to find a place to put on a full exhaust system for my car.  The place we selected was MINI of Orlando because they had an aftermarket division that could put on any part you wanted, as long as they approved, under warranty! Unfortunately this section closed shortly after the work was done on our car.

On Saturday morning, we packed up the car (more like, threw everything we needed plus more into the car without any real organization) and headed towards Florida!

For road trip technology we used the almighty and infamous Valentine One as our super sensitive radar detector, for a back up detector and GPS accurate speed we used the ESCORT Passport 9500ix GPS Enabled Radar Detector, for music / MINI Connected - The iPhone 4S, to capture photos the Cannon 5D MKII / iPhone 4S.

On the way down my dad and I saw some pretty interesting sights.  Anything from people being arrested to a plastic ski mountain!

One of the coolest parts of the trip was to see our previous R57 MINI!  I've kept in touch with the current owner and when we were in Naples we stopped by and got a picture of the two of them together!

Now to talk about the modifications we had done to Kowalski.

1)  While in Miami another Countryman owner Facebooked (is that a verb now?) me and let me know that there is an aftermarket MINI shop called Precision Auto Works that has a tune for the Countryman!

I called up PAW and to make a long story short, by the end of the day Kowalski was pushing close to 207hp and close to 250 lb/ft of torque!  To make the power, they pulled the ECU, physically broke into it to ground out a pin, then hooked it up to this really sophisticated system that they could make a tune specifically for my car.

 

Quick side note - Kowalski was put on a Dyno at Performance Race Solutions, because they had an AWD Dyno... It's really a great shop!

2) Akrapovic downpipe (Normally these throw check engine lights - We have solved it! We put in an 18mm spark plug spacer on the bottom O2 sensor to fool it into thinking that the catalytic converter is still restrictive.... Over 2,000 miles later and no check engine light!)

3) JCW midpipe (we also cut out the silencer, so it is a straight pipe back)

4) Unmodified JCW Backbox

After all the work that went into the car.... It now sounds like this!

Eight days, 4,000 miles, and 27mpg average later, the trip came to an end.

Kyle