Big Jim’s modded chilli red R53 (225bhp)

As you may know I’ve decided to sell up the R50 convertible and blue 03 cooper S to fund a newer 06 plate cooper S supplied by carsorbikes

the blue car was starting to become a money pit and I’ll be honest I didn’t really want to sell the convertible but I needed to find the new car, the convertible has (or will be soon be) going to a forum member as a summer car

as for the my new one, it’s an 06 facelift R53 with factory fit LSD, Sean has taken a few bits off the blue car and refitted the to the new one for me, i went over and ‘helped’ last Sunday with things like the exhaust, I’m sure I was a helpful 2nd set of hands!



so off came the bilstein coilovers, miltek exhaust, janspeed manifold and wheels, all of which Sean refitted in the day, it then went back later in the week for the airtek intercooler, MSD coil pack, magnecor leads and catcam to be swapped as well as having a vibratechnics engine mount and my powerflex mounts fitted







This was it at the weekend before I returned it to Sean while I was experimenting with dechroming it, used the black door handle covers off the blue car and a piece of belt line tape I had left over, you can see it covering the door chrome, also put black scuttle vents on too, I like the look of it so have ordered a new roll from kill all chrome to do the job properly when I pick the car up


cosmetically I’ve got the carbon G-wing to go on, got to remove the cooper spoiler though, the atomspeed scoop needs to be fitted too but I may get that professionally painted red to match the car before I refit it (or run it black for a bit), just going to put 2 black LED spotlights on this one as opposed to 4 on the old car I recon, keep this car a bit stealthy!

Internally it will be just the headunit swap for now, putting the double din front/single din rear pioneer unit in it so I don’t need to start cutting the centre console up like I did for the Sony in the blue car, I’ll also upgrade the speakers and fit an so and sub box, again going to see about going stealthy in the front and using the original grilles, mount the speakers behind the door card

performance wise as well as the stuff already swapped over I picked up a pipercross panel filter new off eBay for £13 and last night grabbed me a new 15% Kavs pulley and belt this evening for £70 plus postage, that can be fitted by carsorbikes when I get it back to him in the new year for a supercharger service

Not going to add the superchip bluefin to this one but put the money toward a proper dyno tune/map at 1320 as well as getting them to fit the 550 injectors I had in stock for the blue car

the other major thing I need is the decat removing and a tomcat putting in its place as it’s a bit to noisy for my liking at the minute

so there we have it, just need to pay for it fully on payday and it’s mine, hopefully this thread won’t be like the blue one where I describe how it’s broken again or somethings snapped or gone pop on me in every other post!

And there we have it, new car, new thread, when I collect it, watch this space