by Francis Cebedo

Well what do you know… one of my good cycling buddies turns out to be the GM of Dinan Mountain View. Dinan is one of the premier BMW tuners in the US. And since the Mini Cooper is owned and produced by BMW, Dinan has a host of upgrades for the Mini Cooper S.

I call up the GM and we talk about some options. I research the Dinan upgrades and there is nothing but great things about them. R&D, performance, quality, service are all top-notch. They’re not cheap but their upgrades are not hacks or experiments. Everything is designed to work together as an optimized and reliable system.

So we go for the power upgrades today. The most important of these upgrades is the Boost Upgrade kit. It contains the single greatest performance upgrade for the Mini Cooper, the smaller supercharger pulley. The Mini Cooper S is supercharged. To get more boost from the supercharger, the pulley is reduced by 15%. This is the safest and most reliable pulley reduction available. Then the kit also, changes the fuel pump delivery system to handle the demands of the increased supercharger boost.

Dinan Boost upgrade kit
High Flow -Cowl Induction Intake
High Flow Throttle Body, 59.75mm , Stock is 56mm
Performance Software

Here’s the Dinan facility in Mountain View. The company is headquarted in Morgan Hill with a lot more staff, equipment and space. The Mountain View facility is huge too and is immaculate.

This is the GM, Jeff Hecox’s 2002 race car.

This is the bored-out throttle body by Dinan

Dinan Cowl Induction Intake - This is genius. It looks like stock, has K&N filter and is fed cold air through the vents by the windshield.

And finally, here’s the 15% pulley reduction kit with new fuel system.

Here’s the Dinan technician starting the 7 hours of work.

This is the Mountain View General Manager, Jeff Hecox. He’s the nicest and most knowledgeable guy on the BMW/Mini planet.

After the job was done, my son inspected the work and gave a skeptical thumbs up. “What did they do dad?” he asked. Then as we entered the freeway, he yelled. “OH MY GAWD! YEAHHH”. We both cheered as the car screamed like the supercharged beast from the movie Mad Max. The car screamed as it accelerated and accelerated. Wow. It’s a 205 hp car now but this is a Mini. In most cars that are bigger and heavier, it’s like having 300 hp. This car is fast.

And here’s the videos of some mild test drives:

catching up to a motorbike:

from a standing start: