Literally. Spring Break vacation with the family is over. It did serve as a good warm up for the transits in One Lap of America though. We traveled all over Arizona, with a little Utah and Nevada sprinkled in for good measure. Most days including driving of 3-7 hours to get to the sites we were visiting. Great time with the family, and probably the most photogenic vacation ever…
But this isn’t a travel blog, so let’s focus on what we are here for.. cars, racing, and all the things in between. Quick check of the calendar tells me that we are just about a month away from the start of One Lap of America 2025. That means, despite having plenty of time, I’ve procrastinated long enough that now I feel rushed to get ready.
It’s not that I haven’t done anything, it just that I haven’t done enough. Let’s focus on what has been done recently. One thing that wasn’t really talked about during our first One Lap was the transits. There were several very long transits in 2023. Generally not a huge issue, but running the 15″ wheels meant running the Mini at 3700-4000rpm for hours on end during those transits. Nothing bad happened, but that’s a lot on an engine (or maybe it isn’t and I’m just conditioned to think it is). I had a friend reach out offering me a deal on his 17″ Sparco wheels from his Mini. I bought the wheels. Now I have to get the tires and mount them to make sure I don’t need to adjust the coil-overs for clearance.
Alright, now on to some maintenance items. First up the ever recurring P0455 error:
This code is a nuisance. It came up during our first OLOA and we chased it the whole event. When I got back it continued to pop up, so I did (almost) everything I could think of to resolve it. We changed the purge valve, replaced some transistors, rechecked all the connections, fixed a broken fan (probably not related, but did it anyway) and finally seemed to get it to go away. When it came back up again, I changed the only remaining thing I could find to change… the gas cap. The old one looked fine, but I guess you never know. The code is currently gone, but given that this is a R53 Mini I fully expect it to return again just to irritate me.
More maintenance… this time in the form of a busted headlight. This is actually a fairly common issue on my car. I seem to lose a (low beam) headlight about once a year. Not a hard fix, just an expensive bulb. Each costs ~$100, but seeing at night is important.
The last thing that I’ve done will help with performance during the One Lap event. Looking at the tracks, they are all really fast. The Mini (comparably) is not. So, what to do? I’m not going to go crazy with a motor build. I don’t want to have the risk, the expense and I really don’t have the time. What is best is to make sure that we are maximizing the performance that we do have available. That means it is time to break out the computers and download some horsepower.
Working with a very well known tuner in the Mini performance community, we went through and played with the 1s and 0s on the Mini to make sure we were getting the best from the setup.
A couple hours work and now the Mini has over 500 horsepower and will run with the Porsches and Corvettes. Ok, no… but the car does idle smoother and feel healthier throughout the rev range. Seat of the pants estimate is 10-20 HP at the top end. Not expecting miracles, but any help on a low power car is noticeable.
Now I just have to get on the rest of the items I’ve been putting off.