For as long as I own ICE cars, the exhaust will always be something I pay particular attention to. For the Mini I wanted something that would suit an OEM+ build and thankfully one of the best exhausts for the Mini is the factory John Cooper Works (JCW) Pro exhaust. It's sold as part of the JCW Tuning Kit that includes a tune to add around 20HP and a lot more crack and pops. Seeing as how I've already added power via the JB4, this is a bit pointless so I'm not taking the car to the dealership to get the ECU reflashed permanently. This is not a one person job that I wanted to tackle in my garage so I enlisted the help of SJF and Jenna.
JCW Pro Exhaust Installed - 2-25-2023
The stock exhaust is a pretty big unit that goes all the way from the downpipe to the tips as one piece. Removal was pretty straightforward minus the clamp that bolts the front of it to the flex pipe that had a bit of rust requiring some heat-based persuasion. It eventually came loose without falling apart which was important since the kit didn't come with a new one.
Factory Exhaust
Factory exhaust removed
Factory exhaust removed
I don't think the new exhaust weighs any less than the stock one but I'm not a fan of overly quiet boring looking exhausts. Next up was the pretty straightforward effort of bolting on the new exhaust and lining up the Carbon Fiber tips.
JCW Pro Exhaust Bolted In
That mechanical process took roughly an hour. The next 3+ hours was spent on the wiring. A good chunk of the trunk trim had to be removed so the valve control module could be bolted into place. The wiring loom had one connector going to the valve control module, a wire with new grommet and connector that went to to the valve, one wire for ground and another wire that you had to snake through all the trim alongside the inside of the body to get to the fuse box in the front.
Valve control module installed
Exhaust Valve Connected
The fuse box is behind the glove box so you had to remove two screws holding the panel covering the bottom part of the glove box then lift the left corner of the fuse box so that the whole thing released from the mount. This was necessary since there were two wires that needed to be connected to the fuse box from the back of the panel. There's these blue plastic locking pins that hold the wires in place so to connect the new wires, you had to disconnect the sub-panel attached to the main fuse box and pull the blue locking pin out. The instruction say to connect the read cable to fuse plug F74 then put the provided fuse into that spot. It then said to connect the black cable to fuse plug F59. The problem with F59 is that on my car something was already plugged into it. Upon looking up the fuse diagram, it turns out that F59 is for "Camera-based driver assistance systems" which my car is equipped with. Thankfully, it turns out F57 is not used for anything so we wired up the black wire to F57 and put in the 3Amp fuse there instead.
Black wire in F57
Red wire in F74
We then affixed the provided JCW Tuning Kit badges.
JCW Tuning Kit plate for engine cover
JCW rear badge
The valve is activated via a bluetooth "loud button" that comes with a foam mount you're supposed to put in one of the cup holders. I didn't like this since I use my cup holders quite a bit so I got a 3D printed mount from AdditiveAuto on Etsy that places the button just under the start/stop button instead making for a super clean install.
Loud button mounted
Double press that button and "track mode" gets engaged opening up the valve to effectively make the exhaust a straight pipe bypassing the muffler. In sport mode with the valves opened up there's some very nice overruns and crack and pops on throttle lift off at higher RPMs. It's can get pretty obnoxious but it sounds really good. There's absolutely no drone on the highway and it's very mellow when just cruising around but if you are aggressive with the throttle, it makes some pretty glorious and aggressive sounds. Certainly one of the best 4-banger sounds out there.
