cam upgrade & big bore throttle body

[toby]

Tobys original qusetion wa how to retain torque- easy, ditch the AFM and remap the load sites to concentrate the delivery where you want it to be.

Thank you for answering the question. It is simple when you put it like that.

[toby]

clock speed of the CPU is more relavant than anyone would give credit for, and using 2 processors to fiddle the OE system does nothing to help that situation imho.

Which is why I don't like piggy backs either. There is little point in messing around with an old computer when a newer one will do a better job of calculating at speed.

[fowler]

Ant wrote:


clock speed of the CPU is more relavant than anyone would give credit for, and using 2 processors to fiddle the OE system does nothing to help that situation imho.


Which is why I don't like piggy backs either. There is little point in messing around with an old computer when a newer one will do a better job of calculating at speed.
_________________

Agreed toby.

[toby]

Considering a stock 325i in good condition will make around 180bhp then adding MS brings it up to near 200bhp - this is only just over a 10% increase. This includes removing the AFM restriction and revised fuel and ignition parameters this is not unrealistic.

I too have driven lots of cars with revised engine management systems too including Ant's car and the difference is clear.

Of course adding wildly expensive mods will aid low down torque, but (I hope) we are talking about intelligent tuning methods here not open cheque book dreams.

[DaveD]

Considering a stock 325i in good condition will make around 180bhp t

Stock from the factory when new was 170bhp and 99.9% of all engines are 15+ years old ...180?

[bss325i]

Considering a stock 325i in good condition will make around 180bhp

You have got to be kidding right? No low comp b25 will come close to this and i woud be very surprised if a high comp one did this.

Also to use other cars getting a consistent result on the same dyno on the same day as confirmation that the dyno was correctly callibrated and set up is not good enough. On a recent 5forum dyno day at DS Automotives and pretty much all the cars put out what they shoud roughly be, except mine! A completly stock (all be it in fine health with low millage) low comp m20 b25 with a result of between 189-195bhp and a flat tourque figure of 210lbft between 3900rpm and 4800rpm! What a load of b*ll*cks! I had to find out for sure that they had made a mistake and had it dynoed that week on Bexleys Sun dyno (171bhp), Sanspeed's bosch dyno (156bhp) and Sals dyno dynamics (165bhp).
What im tryng to say is mistakes can be made, even between dyno runs on the same dyno same day.

Here's a link for the 5forum dyno day results.
http://www.bmw5.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=1 ... d7&start=0

[Demlotcrew]

So Ant are you telling me that your car is running 440cc injectors at 27% duty cycle with a 5*12 resolution and still keeping constant AFR's after being mapped on the road?

[M5pilot]

clock speed of the CPU is more relavant than anyone would give credit for, and using 2 processors to fiddle the OE system does nothing to help that situation imho.

Which is why I don't like piggy backs either. There is little point in messing around with an old computer when a newer one will do a better job of calculating at speed.

Toby,

Read what Gunni said. The speed of the Motronic is more than enough.

I can perform a simple test here with my dyno. I will remove the standalone and do a back to back test with the standard ECU setup with AFM on the Alpina.

I will adjust the map on the motronic to get as much power as possible and then we can truly see what difference standalone really makes on the same dyno on the same day on the same car.

Sal

[march109]

clock speed of the CPU is more relavant than anyone would give credit for, and using 2 processors to fiddle the OE system does nothing to help that situation imho.

Which is why I don't like piggy backs either. There is little point in messing around with an old computer when a newer one will do a better job of calculating at speed.

Toby,

Read what Gunni said. The speed of the Motronic is more than enough.

I can perform a simple test here with my dyno. I will remove the standalone and do a back to back test with the standard ECU setup with AFM on the Alpina.

I will adjust the map on the motronic to get as much power as possible and then we can truly see what difference standalone really makes on the same dyno on the same day on the same car.

Sal

As someone who has followed this thread since it started and has no real experience in the tuning methods being debated i for one will love to see the dyno plots side by side and to compare with hard solid data i can understand what to spend my hard earnt on.

[M5pilot]

Considering a stock 325i in good condition will make around 180bhp then adding MS brings it up to near 200bhp - this is only just over a 10% increase. This includes removing the AFM restriction and revised fuel and ignition parameters this is not unrealistic.

I too have driven lots of cars with revised engine management systems too including Ant's car and the difference is clear.

Of course adding wildly expensive mods will aid low down torque, but (I hope) we are talking about intelligent tuning methods here not open cheque book dreams.

Toby,

I have seen standard 325i and many of my own cars on different dyno's over the last 7 years. I have yet to see a standard late 325i make 170 bhp. Even low mileage ones with brand new AFM's don't make it.

I have then seen loads of high comp 2.7's hardly make it past 200bhp and only the 2.7's with 6 branches and good tuning every make it past that.

I have seen 2.7's on standard motronic have standalone fitted and also MAF conversions fitted, never have I seen over 12-15 bhp increase.

Losing the AFM alone doesn't extract as much power as some may like to believe, it's the mapping that goes with it that releases the extra power.

Sal

[Andyboy]

A good standard 325i will make 171 bhp. I've seen a few over the last 20 years since they were nearly new cars. Trouble is, not many are 'good' because they're so old. However my red Touring made 168 bhp at Bexleys and 172 bhp on AmD's dyno with 130'000 miles. Rechipped it went up to 180 bhp. Then it broke a piston ring due to me caning the tits off it.
As a new car with proper fuel any BMW will make factory quoted power - it has to by law. Anything less than factory power figures indicates a fault somewhere be it wear and tear or just a problem.

Gunni has it spot on - there is nothing you can do with any of this piggyback crap that you can't achieve with Motronic. Bosch aren't stupid. Don't forget Bosch were modifying ECU's for Alpina and the boys 20 years ago - 325i but with an extra 200cc, high lift/longer duration cam, faster piston speeds etc etc etc. The Alpina ECU can be improved on in the same way a stock 325i ECU can. The things they have in common are a) BMW warranty b) emmsions regulations. c) insurance ratings. These are what prevents them from achieving the engine's full potential

It's an old 325i, not an F1 car!

[M5pilot]

The one 325i engine that did actually make stock power and you went and broke it!
Sal

[fowler]

The one 325i engine that did actually make stock power and you went and broke it!
Sal
_________________

best comment of the day!!!

[M5pilot]

my car popped out regular 199-202 runs back to back
Daves M50tu popped 215 back to back
ChrisP's M40T popped 171 back to back
Modded M30 on Cam and Standalone did 260@5200 ( iirc )
Those other figs were posted with the original dyno prints as comparison,

Make your own minds up, the timing map is my business I'm afraid Gunni.

215 bhp from an M50? What's he done to it?

M30 with a cam and some mapping giving 260 bhp? The Alpina engines just about managed that with head work, cam, lightweight pistons etc etc.

Sal

[Andyboy]

Lots of 325i's can make stock power - all they need is strong compressions, correct valve clearances, perfect injectors, plugs, leads, rotor and cap, factory BMW exhaust (a shit one will lose 10 bhp easily). If everything is working to factory spec, it will deliver 171 bhp on 98 octane fuel. But take the average 325i shitter with a Kwik Fit exhaust, 95 Supermarket fuel, dirty injectors, tight valve clearances and 150'000 miles of abuse and it will never make factory power - more like 150 bhp if you're lucky.
The best old wives tale is that E35 M3's don't make 321 bhp. A proper one most certainly will.

[fowler]

sal the M30 was a well worked engine i don't think anything was stock on it a Fritz's bits staff car so you could image all the goodies on it.
M50 was just decatted sal thats all
and Chrisp as you well know was turbo'd

[M5pilot]

So a Decatted M50 goes from 192 bhp to 215 bhp?

That's very questionable.
Sal

[Andyboy]

That cat doesn't really enter the equation although getting rid would free up a few bhp. M50 2.5's are capable of about 210+ bhp with nothing more than a good remap. As standard they run horribly lean to increase catalyst temperature. A good 2.8 M52 with the 325i manifold will do 10 bhp more with the best ones doing about 230 bhp. An old trick used to be to disconnect the Lambda probe on these. This made the ECU go to a default setting with a much more agreeable mixture. I did this on both of my 320i's and the difference was remarkable. They would never pass an MOT like that but were no worse on fuel - go figure!
As for the M30 - well, a standard manual E34 535i with a chip is good for 230 bhp for the same reasons - a very old engine design strangled of fuel to meet some stupid emissions regs. The B10's did about 250 bhp but using that old barn door AFM and some pretty conservative 'warranty' mapping. 260 bhp from a 3.5 with pretty big valves is still only 75 bhp per litre - think of all the 2 litre Golf 8v motors doing over 150 bhp! The racing 635CSi's of the eighties were doing 285-290 brake on standard air flow meters and the Group A 528i E28's did 240 bhp....on L Jet!

You can't really use Alpina as a benchmark - they had so many constraints. It had to have a warranty, be easy to drive, okay on fuel and insurable.

As for those dyno results, I would dare to suggest that the dyno over reads a little - I'd say it was just 5% over. That takes Ants MS 325i back to 190 bhp which is an entirely believeable figure.
All this rolling road power talk is bullshit to me. There is only one way to quantify an improvement and that's to do back to back before and after runs on the same dyno with the same air temperature. Anything else is really just guessing.
One thing is pretty much cast in stone; a good custom remap on a standard plastic bumper (i.e cat prepped) 325i is worth between 8-10 bhp. 180 bhp from a really strong B25 is a reality. A cam will add more, as does an exhaust but you must understand that with only 2 valves per cylinder, the law of diminishing returns applies........and anyone trying to extract the last bhp from a 30 year old 2v motor needs to face the facts - you need a 24v engine - which has exactly 30% more valve area.

[Gunni]

Ant wrote:


clock speed of the CPU is more relavant than anyone would give credit for, and using 2 processors to fiddle the OE system does nothing to help that situation imho.


Which is why I don't like piggy backs either. There is little point in messing around with an old computer when a newer one will do a better job of calculating at speed.
_________________

Agreed toby.

You guys like math?

at 6000rpm every cycle last about 20ms on a 6cyl.
But it will take about 1.5ms to open the injectors. It also will have to allow for about 2ms for ignition coil dwell on the stock coil

So it has and I´m going to be real nice here. 10ms to calculate
what´s needed

10ms is 0.1Hz..
And I´m going to allow for 100 calculations to be done, i.e refrence checking from maps and so on, Wich is WAY more calculations then are done on a Motronic 1.3
That means time per calculation is 0.1ms or 10Hz

So anything with more then 1Mhz (1 million calculations per second)
will have calculated the required injection time and ignition angle
at least 10.000times per cycle.

Now people are saying CPU Speed makes power?

The CPU does the following things on a M20 to make power.
Calculate injector opening time.
Calculate ignition angle.
Charge the coil to make dwell from either a ms. setting or dwell angle.

There is NOTHING else that a ecu does that ends up as horsepower
Claiming elsewise is lying.

One thing I can´t care for is mis-information especially from people that are held in respect on a forum, such as this one.

I think I´d like to hear some reasoning behind those claims.

Here is the reason cpu time does not count.
The ecu might make at the absolute maximum most 1deg decision
error on the ignition, that might be about a HP on a B25.
Hardly a thing even a dyno could pick up.

Also injection from absolute maximum potential once reached via correct opening time might be 0.1ms wich could result in 0hp diffrence and about 0.1AFR diffrence. Nothing a dyno could pick up

Dwell angle could provide some extra power, but with a stock engine like the B25 where 8.8:1 compression is nothing really and only about 85% VE, a dyno could pick up 5hp if it´s not optimum already as stock

[Ant]

Gunni, I have the utmost resect for you , and everything you have posted is relative, Why you have chosen to join the ranks of nay-sayers and doubters is beyond me though, you and Salman asked for facts, I have given you the facts, argue about those, not whats better faster longer stronger( delete as applicable ) Indeed you're understanding is beyond anyones on here, and your post reflects that , however understand one thing, 99.99999% of people reading your posts will understand nothing of what you've posted, so upon occasion I and others will use more simple terms to express what/whay etc, NEVER assume thats a lack of understanding on behalf of the poster.

I SUGGESTED that the MS can extrapolate quicker - again no cast in stone verdict, may I state AGAIN for the record, no-one was more surprised at the output than those present on the day.

I also suggested, by posting data from other vehicles that the dyno is a little optimistic as per Andyboys posting above yours(read between the lines dude.. ), however using dyno data from the same dyno on comparable vehilces has resulted in more pages of flaming, I attempted to add context yet that was ignored until two pages later.

My involvement with this thread ends here,

You ask for facts and figures, they are there for all to see.

Did it make that power ??? only an engine dyno would answer that question- ANY other RR dyno is subject to the same varaibles IMHO so none can provide the definative answer to all the questions.

I hate the fact that everyone use PB wrongness on fully 3D mappable systems, thats pure laziness and a willingness to earn £Â£ over pushing a good product out the door.


To close , no-one came to strip and inspect my car today, nor expressed an interest in doing as such so , to my mind there's a slim chance you believe the figures are closer to the truth than you dare to admit.

Thanks to Andyboy for reading the posts properly and realising the data was open to some interpretation.

[1an]

was down at Ants today and went out for a drive in his car after discussing megasquirt on my car in the not so far future, the car is defintaly mopre powerful than my dads 325 which is believed to be running very healthy, (yet to be proven on a dyno but once it is in my car it will be dyno'd)both cars are running the same diff aswell, not only was it more powerful but the it also had alot better throttle response aswell pulling very very quickly to the limiter in all gears.

and as Ant and Anyboy have said you can give or take a bit either way, but like Ant said before they were runnong the cars on the rollers at 11:45 or around there i believe so the air would of been nice and cold therefore leading to better performance.

another thing i dont understand is why people choose to slate someone and continue to argue about something when it has been proved with a valid graph.

[Demlotcrew]

Ant have you looked at my last question?

There is no 'Band wagon' we (or as you put it 99.999999%) know for a fact that 200 BHP peak is not possible from a M20B25 in stock configuration with MS as the EMS. The reason we know this is because adding COP's and wasted spark and sequential may release 10bhp PEAK (if youre lucky!) and what you are claming is just not possible because of the physical constraints placed on the design of the Factory M20B25 despite all the sales talk you seem to have been handing out (oversized head gasket maybe but at least its not using water or oil ) with regards to faster CPU speeds and more memory and better calculations and finer load site resolutions etc at the end of the day MS is not better than the Bosch motronic system, it has more features and is capable of letting the end user map their own car and is open source but when it comes down to core technologies its far off the capabilities of a 20year old design, as quite a few members on this forum will testify.

I didnt know you had an open day at Atech today as i would have been quite glad to come down and have a look around the 200BHP NA monster.

How's about this, what if i set up an account and every member on here were to deposit £5 of their hard earned to pay for my time to examine the engine and confirm its authenticity and to then run it to a friends Engine dyno for a few runs to establish whither it actually does produce 200bhp peak in standard form running MS? Lets say we collect £3000 and the total costs for the experiment comes to £1800 the difference will be split back up and given back to the users who sent in the initial fee. Sound fair?

[Ant]

Sorry, had not considered it a serious question.

Lets check back:

"So Ant are you telling me that your car is running 440cc injectors at 27% duty cycle with a 5*12 resolution and still keeping constant AFR's after being mapped on the road?"

My car runs to the target AFR's it was mapped to Yes.

Constant Afrs. No, of course not, no 02 sensor is emplyed, data was drawn only from the Dyno displayed afr @ fritz( slow ) or my portable LM-1 as used by your goodself.

As for your suggestion..... I dont thaink thats a good idea TBH.

the facts again.

Dyno sheets as per original post- figures displayed for all to see, no "WOW look at me posts" from myself, and if you wish to strip and inspect, fine- go ahead , just remember to put it back as you found it, oil and water leaks can be as-is if you wish, there are a few


Chalk up another excellent Zone soap Opera, I hope you enjoyed it

[Demlotcrew]

Ant, tell me what are your target AFRs? And how close are have you been able to achieve them with such a large injector running such a low duty cycle?

[1an]

Sal, as you are aware i sit on both sides of the fence,

but didnt you say fit a BTB and you wont loose low end torque (or soming to that nature) and then went on to say in a couple of post later than it needs to be mapped to regain the low end torque again?

[M5pilot]

Excellent post 1an,

we are now back on topic talking about low end torque.

The BTB manifold DOES lose you low end torque. Lot's of it! The before and after dyno graphs clearly show this.

I don't recall saying it needs to be mapped to regain the power. Mapping might help but I haven't tried to find out personally.

Sal

[Demlotcrew]

1an no disrespect but do you even know what 'low end torque' is and how its felt in the car?

Walk before you can run..................

[1an]

Sal i tihnk you typed wrong there, but anyway. By loosing low end torque you are going to loose driveability around town (correct me if i wrong) as in the car isnt going to want to accelerate aswell from say 30mph in 5th compared to having the standard manifold they pull alright from low down inm the revs.

Andrew, i have an idea as to what low end torque is but as you know we all learn somewhere, and one thing i know for a fact i that my car suffers from a lack of low end torque (well torque and poqer full stop to be honest.)

[maxfield]

1an no disrespect but do you even know what 'low end torque' is and how its felt in the car?

Walk before you can run..................

Demlot, do you have fun taking the piss out of younger members?

[1an]

1an no disrespect but do you even know what 'low end torque' is and how its felt in the car?

Walk before you can run..................

Demlot, do you have fun taking the **** out of younger members?

he is the same as alot of people on here to be honest Jamie.

[M5pilot]

Sal i tihnk you typed wrong there, but anyway. By loosing low end torque you are going to loose driveability around town (correct me if i wrong) as in the car isnt going to want to accelerate aswell from say 30mph in 5th compared to having the standard manifold they pull alright from low down inm the revs.

Andrew, i have an idea as to what low end torque is but as you know we all learn somewhere, and one thing i know for a fact i that my car suffers from a lack of low end torque (well torque and poqer full stop to be honest.)

You have a good idea of what's to be lost.

The BTB doesn't really show it's losing you low end torque unless you apply large throttle openings at low rpms. Under light throttle openings at low rpms the difference is not noticeable.

With the short gearing of the M20 cars the loss of low end torque isn't felt as much I'd expected but the gain over 3000 rpm is brilliant and thi si the reason alot of people will go for it.

Sal

[1an]

Sal i tihnk you typed wrong there, but anyway. By loosing low end torque you are going to loose driveability around town (correct me if i wrong) as in the car isnt going to want to accelerate aswell from say 30mph in 5th compared to having the standard manifold they pull alright from low down inm the revs.

Andrew, i have an idea as to what low end torque is but as you know we all learn somewhere, and one thing i know for a fact i that my car suffers from a lack of low end torque (well torque and poqer full stop to be honest.)

You have a good idea of what's to be lost.

The BTB doesn't really show it's losing you low end torque unless you apply large throttle openings at low rpms. Under light throttle openings at low rpms the difference is not noticeable.

With the short gearing of the M20 cars the loss of low end torque isn't felt as much I'd expected but the gain over 3000 rpm is brilliant and thi si the reason alot of people will go for it.

Sal

so if i was to weld my foot to the floor it would be noticeable, but this could go over come by some mapping of the engine mangement ( ill put it like that to save another arguement.)

[randomdave325]

Blimey!!

I've just read all this. i said that would happen Ant init.

As the man running the rollers i feel i should say that i believe there was no error. i've probably done more miles on them this year than i've done on the road. i don't believe they are that far out as they have remained pretty constant in all the time i've known them.

My own cars have always remained fairly much the same throughout and a lot of customers who have run elsewhere haven't seen any outrageous power gains purely from our rollers. you can see when watching the graph when any errors occur.

High powered wrong wheel drives and outrageous TVRs have taught me that.

I'm not into 'doctoring' figures as i'm not interested in the money i only interested in the cars.

In the last 10 years i've spent a lot of time in, around or under E30 325's and in my opinion a well maintained m20 with correct fuelling, no air leaks, compression and a good spark should make 170bhp no question.

My old H26 engine i built with love in my garage made 203 on a set of rollers back in the day. a similar one i rebuilt a few months back made 204 here (already waiting for the no it didn't ).

Ants' car is a credit to him. his experience shows as it's the first time i've seen his car running and i was impressed. we did a lot of 190ish runs and with a while of tweaking 202 was the best run. no one see's the hours and hours of work that goes into it including the hour or or so we were in there at night, freezing, tweaking and laughing at Fowler dancing to electro in front of the fan.

I really don't want to get involved in this debate as i don't have the time but IF there is a mistake i would like to know about it as somewhat feel responsable as i know some people once they've read it on a forum believe it to be gospel and could do without the bad press.

Get it down here in november Ant n we'll do a retest. Chris's cab pulled 6 perfect graphs in a row so i don't believe anything was wrong but obviously there is doubt.

There's now an organised drag racing on the sunday so we can test the power figures that way if you like .

My m50 BTW is running no cats, lambdas unplugged!!! (thanks andy for that info, i was wondering why it was averaging about 203 on the many runs with just a k&n and my development exhaust! 14.7 all the way all the way baby yeah)

It's now got a full Fritz exhaust is well maintained, reliable, thrashed to fook and loves it.

215 isn't that far out and with the omex 710 in my toolbox it should open it out nicely i reckon.
when i get time

[toby]

Considering a stock 325i in good condition will make around 180bhp t

Stock from the factory when new was 170bhp and 99.9% of all engines are 15+ years old ...180?

Yes, thank you Dave, I thought it was 177bhp but it was 170. I stand corrected.

However this was merely a commented in relation to MS giving good gains on stock engine which was built in a different state of tune that is available with standalone engine management.

Personally I don't give any value to high bhp figures since I'm concerned with tuning the engine for a good all round driving ability.

And the thread is about torque anyway...

[oakey]

I had a drive of the car mentioned above the other day. It genuinely feels plenty faster and more torquey than any standard 2.5. I for one genuinely believe that this car could easily be putting out the figures stated in the graphs. I really enjoyed driving it.
Thats my 2 pennies worth