2023 Mini Cooper SE Live Journal & Review

Oh yeah... Never from a dig! Wheel specs are:

NM Engineering Rse12

Size: 18x7.5
Offset: +40 mm

Tire size is 215/40R18

The wheels and tires I had on my 2019 Cooper S, I was worried about how they would fit with the SE's extended flare but they are fine. Here was my 2019 Cooper S. The funny thing is, other than the newer OS on the infotainment, and the SE being electric, it feels very at home on the new car. Both cars are Iconic trims. Taught my 13 year old son to drive (first in my truck, then to the manual trans Mini) and he said the SE is boring in comparison. I think I am doing better without a manual than he is.

 

You will definitely need spacers if you plan on using your stock wheels. Here is a pic of mine before I had the TPMS sensors swapped over. See how inset the rears are?

 

If you don’t care about anemic range on SE your bigger and wider tires are going to make a range worse and in IL with snow lowering a SE which is low from a beginning don’t make much sense.

 

I lost about 10 miles or range at best guess. For me, it does not matter since the SE is not my only vehicle. But yes, if would definitely hurt if it was my only car. I also live in Southern California, the car will never see snow or temps below 30 degrees F.

 

NVM on my previous comment of the FUSE, was looking at the wrong one on the Fuse diagram, it seems it is position 50 the one you used, which is a 5 Amp fuse.

 

Are we buying SE to have best range or we try to make them hot rods ? I put on my bull bar with LED lights to express my self to be different and I see with bigger tires SE looks very masculine that s why we modify them.I own different cars to but once I get to I 3 in 2016 I sold 911 and 944 for good to not make my hands dirty .My driving is only 3000-4000 mile a year with SE second car have 5000 a year.

 

I was referring to@ Wreckles117 inIL

 

All season tires in IL no help use summer tires for summer and winter tires in your location any bigger tires no help in cold climates .

 

For the SE, not really a hot rod but I am the type of person that cannot leave anything alone. The only real performance modifications to the SE that can be improved is handling. The stock Goodyears were horrible and the suspension was something easily improved with good coilovers. But in reality, as I said, I cannot leave anything alone, my truck is lifted with bigger tires, the Mini is lowered with aftermarket suspension, wheels and tires. My previous gas cars were modified, some were turbo’s, some were supercharged, others had built engines or a combo of all of the above. Driving a stock car to me is boring. Plus, I like them to look like the way I want them to look. Cars are a hobby to me, so why not?

 

I’m going to be using a 3M sticky mount for my Escort detector as well but wanted to tap the RJ11 power cable into the mirror (or other available power). Has anyone done this or know if there are available power connectors to take this at the mirror/ACC assembly?

I’m going to be using a 3M sticky mount for my Escort detector as well but wanted to tap the RJ11 power cable into the mirror (or other available power). Has anyone done this or know if there are available power connectors to take this at the mirror/ACC assembly? Might also be putting the FitCamX in at some point in the future so prefer not to use the power port it uses.

 

I'm totally with you and yes, I have tried to google if there are ways to easily "tune" an electric car. I do not have the background for even attempting that myself, I can design, fabricate, cnc or manual machine anything but that programming stuff is not in my wheel house. My only conclusion so far would be to go aftermarket. There are a good few companies out there selling EV motor controllers. At this point, the little SE is just a shell to do with as you please, rear drive, all wheel drive can be fabricated, add more batteries and adjust for weight balance etc.

 

It won't be easy to fit a Tesla battery into your SE--especially along with AWD. A Tesla motor with the SE battery is probably a 30-mile range proposition.

 

Thanks for the help, just mounted the Radar detector, I did uses mirror mount since also have a dashcamera that piggy backs for the power source, used the same ground under the carper, very easy.

 

Maybe not obvious to someone used to ICE tuning but the biggest power limit for the SE is the battery's peak current output.

Each cell has a maximum current/power (C rate) it can output so small battery packs with less cells are limited to less power. Adding a 2nd motor will not increase total power since the battery's peak output would still be the same and would need to be divided between the two motors (each motor limited at half power)

The only way to a faster SE is either with a much larger battery pack, an upgraded pack with high C-rate cells, or gamble with life of the current pack by pushing the cells to a higher C rate.