Mike Benvo Tune Review

[AWE90M3]

I’ve been a long time lurker and finally made an account over a year ago when I finally purchased my sedan. I haven’t contributed much (post wise) but would like to thank everyone on this forum for sharing the seemingly endless amount of knowledge about our vehicles of choice.

I just returned to the states after being stationed in Germany for 6 years. Contacted The Tech about getting some coding done the day after I picked the car up from the Port. He got in touch with Mike and they were able to work with my last minute schedule, no issues. I flew out to California, broke my car out of Port prison, and headed to Mike’s place the next morning for what I thought was just gonna be some quick coding. (I’ll post another review for that portion) He finished the coding that I initially requested and I still had some questions about BMW Live/Internet/Apps. That option just became available when I ordered my car back in Feb 11, but I didn’t select it for my build. Mike took me for a spin in his car for a full demonstration, and that’s when I noticed the difference in power compared to my car. Granted he does have a full Akra system vs my full cats/stock X-pipe and Eisenmann Race exhaust, but I was still sold. We got back from the demo and he was able to code the BMW Live/Internet/Apps into my car as we waited for the USPS mailman to deliver the engine tuning cable he was expecting back by noon. Well, noon came and no sign of any mailman, I guess “guaranteed by noon” on the package actually means “whenever we feel like showing up”. After a quick trip to the post office for some questioning, and actually stopping a mail truck in the area to see if he had the cable (no luck), we got back to his place and they finally showed up around 1400. Mike went to work again and read my ECU. I wanted to keep the stock redline, along with the cold start, and top speed limit. (I had the car in Germany for a year and didn’t see myself needing to go much faster on these wonderful stateside roads) He lowered the cold engine rev limit to 4500 as well, and then loaded up the “Stage 1” tune. We cranked it up and went for a spin, everything worked as advertised. I was a bit nervous about speed limits, cops, and the area was a bit too congested for me to really let it rip, but everything seemed to be smoother, quicker, better. I still had an 8 hour drive to Tucson that night, so we squared up on the payment and I was on my way. And yes, traffic in LA at rush hour on a Friday sucks….. who knew right? After 2 hours of idling out of town, I finally got to some open road and was able to get on the throttle a bit. Needless to say, I’m quite impressed. Obviously you’ll get more out of the car by removing the cats/stock x-pipe, which is next on my list once I get settled into my new home.

To anybody on the fence about getting a tune or coding done, I highly recommend letting Mike take care of you. He’s a stand up guy and answered all my questions, concerns, he knows his sh*t. Thanks to The Tech for getting my appointment setup as well. Much appreciated.

[E90Spacegrey]

Thanks for the review and welcome back!