#TBT: Simple mods to get more power out of an R50 Mini Cooper | Articles

Red Line Oil PowerPack

• price: $85.95
• horsepower: 107.7
• torque: 103.9 lb.-ft

Red Line Oil recently started packaging its synthetic lubricants into combination packs that are easy to purchase and use. The PowerPack for the Mini Cooper (it also works on the Cooper S) includes five quarts of their 5W30 synthetic oil, two quarts of MTL synthetic transmission fluid, a bottle of WaterWetter cooling system additive and a bottle of SI-1 Complete Fuel System Cleaner. It also comes with a Red Line Oil embroidered hat and a collection of stickers. While this convenient package was created to market Red Line products to new customers, it does make it easy to completely switch a car to Red Line products in one fell swoop.

We were approaching 10,000 miles and our Cooper was due for its second oil change, so we drained out the factory-recommended Castrol 5W30 synthetic oil and poured in the four-plus quarts of Red Line’s finest. The transmission was also drained, and we then used a small hand pump to squirt in the two quarts of MTL. Next up, the WaterWetter was poured into our coolant expansion tank (we used a turkey baster to remove some coolant first so we wouldn’t have any overflow problems). The SI-1 was poured into a full tank of premium unleaded fuel.

The Mini was started and allowed to warm up on the dyno’s rollers. We covered about 30 miles on the rollers, going up and down through the gears to thoroughly mix in the new fluids. Once that was done, we sampled our horsepower and torque, coming in with an additional 1.6 horsepower and 1.6 lb.-ft. of torque. While that slight gain may lie within the margin of error of most dynos, it was repeatable and we’ve found in the past that the Red Line products offered noticeable improvements in shifting and engine performance.

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