[Tone]

I understand that the lower the gearing the quicker the vehicle shifts (all things like power/torque being equal).

Is this so? And how does the "S" compare?

[thanos30]

Comparing the Cooper and Cooper S - the cars and their transmissions are not the same, but probably not the way you expect. Even with the extra gear, first gear and second gear are higher on the S.

Overall ratios and mph:
Cooper 5 sp
13.46:1 (37), 7.67:1 (65), 5.25:1 (96), 4.15:1 (121), 3.33:1 (est 124)

MCS 6 sp
11.43:1 (44), 7.18:1 (70), 5.39 (93), 4.41 (114), 3.64:1 (est 135*), 2.99:1 (est 135*)

Right, the lower the gearing, the sooner you need to shift (ie, the Cooper redlines at 37 mph in first, the S at 44). This also makes the car accelerate faster - the lower 1st gear on the Cooper makes it competitive with the S - to 40 mph 4.3 vs 4.1 sec, even with the extra shift! I imagine for first gear (to 37 mph), the lower gear of the Cooper balances the power of the S, thus getting roughly equal times. So, an S with the first two ratios of the Cooper would be clearly faster.

Interestingly, the S is not "that much" faster than the Cooper - with 48 more horsepower (41% more), it only manages 0.7 sec better on the quarter mile (15.9 vs 16.6). The strange difference I see in the test cars (Road & Track) is that the S is much heavier (loaded with options, extra person?), coming in 420 pounds over the Cooper.

[macncheese]

.7 seconds is HUGE. I've heard 1 second approximated at 20 car lengths.

--
Cheese

[Albert]

A rough guestimate is about 1 car length per tenth of a second in a close race.

[thanos30]

Of course, to lose to someone by 0.7 sec would suck. But, if I later found out that he had a supercharger, I'd ask why he didn't blast me, say by 1.6 seconds (200 ft?) like a turbo New Beetle would.

Short of a turbo, I haven't heard anyone even pretend to add 48 hp to the Cooper. To add 6 hp to the Cooper, and then beat stock Coopers by one car length is not important in my book.

This is the real problem and competition for me, I feel pretty stupid seeing all the ricers with their funny wings and stickers and realize that I can't race them because I'll surely lose (even to a Civic). The S would lose to a Civic Si. This is the competition, I would congratulate someone with a fast MINI (and a fast Honda), but not a Honda with stickers and stock performance.

By the way, other cars tend to have lower gearing than the MINI, depends on the car, but especially for 2nd and 3rd.

[linux78]

Actually the new turbo beetle is only about .1 second faster than the MCS. (according to Road & Track)
Turbo Beetle: 0-60: 7.6
MINI Cooper S: 0-60: 7.7

In the 1/4 mile:
Turbo Beetle: 15.8@87.7mph
MINI Cooper S: 15.9@89.3mph

Of course the Turbo PT Cruiser was the fastest of the lot, the MINI S was the most fun to drive. (again according to January 2003 Road & Track)

Oh I also forgot to mention that the MCS now holds the record for the slalom, ousting the Porsche 911 GT2.
-Chris

[James Haigh]

BMW's quoted figures of 6.9 to 60 look to be a bit out in stock form don't they?? Has anyone actually seen a roadtest or AP22'd a figure which matches or beats this quoted figure? BMW are usually pretty conservative with there figures too.

[bigbaddaboom]

I think 6.9 is doable in the stock form, with 16" alloys and no sunroof. I think when you add the other equipment on and the heavier wheels the car becomes a couple of tenths slower. With the right launch technique and a bit of practice under 7 seconds is very possible. Garfield has managed to get his car down to 6.1 and all he has changed is the exhaust (a supertrapp) and the alloy/tyre combo (SSR Comps with Falken Azenis). He just gets the launch right and away he goes.

check out this thread:

http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthrea...ghlight=launch

And this one before the supertrapp was installed is just great as a comparison:

http://www.mini2.com/forum/showthrea...ghlight=launch

[Garfield]

On competition scales, my S weighed about 100lbs more than my co-drivers Cooper. This is with little to no gas, Enkei wheels, Hoosier tires, and Supertrapp. This is in no way doing any unusual lightening of the chassis, just normal mods.
I can't fathom how heavy and how bad a driver these guys at magazines are, but their times and weights for the cars are rediculous.
It wouldn't shock me if the PT and Beetle are faster as well, but if I recall, the MCS had one the heaviest drivers. The smaller the car, the more the weight makes a difference.
The G-Tech is not 100% accurate, but I can assure you that it's not over ONE SECOND inaccurate.

[retroom]

Quote:

Originally posted by Garfield
On competition scales, my S weighed about 100lbs more than my co-drivers Cooper. This is with little to no gas, Enkei wheels, Hoosier tires, and Supertrapp. This is in no way doing any unusual lightening of the chassis, just normal mods.
I can't fathom how heavy and how bad a driver these guys at magazines are, but their times and weights for the cars are rediculous.
It wouldn't shock me if the PT and Beetle are faster as well, but if I recall, the MCS had one the heaviest drivers. The smaller the car, the more the weight makes a difference.
The G-Tech is not 100% accurate, but I can assure you that it's not over ONE SECOND inaccurate.

Add all the measuring equipment the magazines put in/on the car, it should be the same for all the cars in the comparison.

retroom

[thanos30]

Reading about this more, the times vary too much between reviews. Car And Driver shows the MCS as a 7.0 sec 0-60 and 15.5 sec 1/4 mile, compared to 7.7 and 15.9 from Road and Track. The Beetle Turbo S gets 6.7 and 15.0 sec at C&D. For a weird comparison, the Accord V6 gets the same times as the MCS. Maybe BMW lists the MCS at 6.9 for 0-60 since this sounds like a sport time, even if it takes a perfect launch to achieve.

Maybe I just have to accept there's no smog legal way of turning the Cooper into a fast car. Effort would be better spent on what it excels at - handling. Get lighter rims, new tires, lower suspension, add braces.

From Grassroots Motorsports:
The interior of the Cooper S has now been completely stripped of all door panels, carpeting, headliner and the stereo system. We removed a total of 157 lbs from the Cooper, bringing the weight from 2619 to 2463 (full tank of gas). The weight loss has helped the 0-60 times, dropping them from the low sevens to the mid 6's

[warren33]

thanks for that. I did not order a sunroof in my S as I suspected the extra weight may affect the performance.

[thanos30]

Also from Grassroots Motorsports but for the Cooper:
total weight: 2409
lf: 746
rf: 762
lr: 452
rr: 449

[Tone]

Why I initiated the thread was because of this quote from a motoring article, "the NSX Type-R is wonderfully sharp and responsive. It has no more power (280bhp) than the normal NSX but has lower gearing for better acceleration."

So, if it's that easy - why are the guys paying for conversions? Presumably torque is the same in both cars, but no mention is made of this.

[thanos30]

Assuming the only change is gearing, lower gearing does help certain things (like acceleration), but hurts practical things (like fuel economy, interior noise). Just imagine cruising the freeway at 5000 rpm.

Still, simply decreasing the 0-60 times is not necessarily ideal, what if you're on a track where your speed is between 40 and 90 miles an hour? Then you'd want gearing to best suit that speed range - which is different from gearing for the best 0-60. To squeeze the gears down for quick 0-60 doesn't leave enough gears for the higher speeds, thus there is a trade-off, even if your only concern is performance.

[James Haigh]

First and second should be geared closer together in my opinion and the become more spaced out further up the range.

[Tom F.]

Quote:

Originally posted by Tone
...So, if it's that easy - why are the guys paying for conversions? Presumably torque is the same in both cars, but no mention is made of this.

Changing gearing, or just the final drive ratio, is easy to say, but not easy to do.

The five and six speeds are totally different transmissions by different builders so I'll be surprised if you can just swap any of the gears. Its also not clear to me that the Getrag has what I would call an conventional r+p.

Last summer I installed larger tires on my 4x4 VW Camper and increased the final drive from 1:4.86 to 1: 6.17, for slower "creeping" speeds off road, and then changed three out of five forward gears to redistribute the torque and get back to something similar to factory rev/mile at cruise. I had to import the r+p (actually two, one for each differential) from South Africa, get a Europe only third gear, and have custom gears made for fourth and fifth, and in the process of installing these had the trans rebuilt. Excluding what was done in the front diff, the trans part of the exercise cost about $3,000, I did all the removal and installation labor myself. Absolutely worth it as far as I am concerned, but not easy.

Back to the MCS, I do feel that the car is geared very high, at least in fifth and sixth, both of which "feel" like overdrives to me. But to cut them back and redistribute the torque evenly -perhaps with a goal of 135MPH in sixth at max rpms- would probably involve replacing most of the gears in the transmission.

[thanos30]

Oh yeah, at this point it would be hard to change individual gears. I can't imagine that any gears would be swap-able between the 5 and 6 speed. 3rd gear happens to be the same ratio, but I doubt the size, number of teeth, etc are the same. The 6 sp is supposed to handle about 50 hp more than the 5 sp, so no MCS should even look at the 5 sp.

Of course, Getrag makes transmissions for BMW, so maybe something from a 318 can be swapped into the MCS?

My complaint is that the original design put the gearing so high. Even the Z4 has lower gearing for 1st and 2nd, and it has 110 (or 62) more hp.

[Andy@Ross-Tech.com]

Something to keep in mind with the Cooper S is the nature of the gearbox. Multiple ratios are achieved through combinations of the gears and the two final drives, it may be tough to change gearing without negatively affecting other gears that you may like as is.

As far as first gear, my MCS is currently traction-limited in first, so a lower gear wouldn't help it one bit. Overall, based on shiftpoint analysis, it looks like tighter gearing would help acceleration since there are gaps between acceleration curves at several shiftpoints. A higher rev limiter can help somewhat in such situations.

[Adriann001]

gearboxes can not be swaped from a BMW to a MINI due to there physical size, shape and mounting points. there should be no problem replacing a cooper box with a MCS box. the onlty thing you can do is change the internal gear ratios and final drive ratio doing it properly will be very expensive.