I have been researching long and hard to find the perfect setup for my car. To start I had VS Motorsports update my car to the BMW 231E software after reading many reviews about how the car had dramatically changed. I went ahead and did so. I had several other bolts on modifications to the car such as intake and exhaust. It increased the overall sound, but really did not feel a difference in power that I was expecting.
I was always have been a skeptic about tunes and what they actually did and achieve) I would see threads about how great each tune would make the car feel, but never any dyno graphs to show exactly what kind of power or different the tune made. After researching and talking to several members, I finally decided to make my plunge and this is where Evolve comes to play.
I had spoken with Evolve several times before making the plunge to the Evolve Stage II. I have been following their E-Tronic development thread for some time and when Evolve offered me this unit I could not resist. You can read my full write up here:
http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthr...evolve+etronic
I went over to Dean's Performance to have my car dyno'd. The car was equipped with the stock elbow with a K&N Filter, and the full Evolve Exhaust (x-pipe with 200cpsi cats) I wanted the IAT to be as low as possible and ECT to be at around normal running temperature. When the results were consistent (with no heat soak) We started to run the car to the point where the car would not make anymore power. So I knew for a fact this was the best power my car could make under these conditions.
During the Dyno Session:
We keep going and the car made 354.63whp and 269.78tq. After some adjustments were made by Evolve l I uploaded the tune and let the car idle. During idle, you can hear the change in engine sound. It was a much deeper sound then it was before.
1st Pull – There was hardly any gains on this pull. I was told by Evolve that the car would need to have about 3-4 pulls for the dyno to adapt. Evolve also told me that during the downtime of uploading the tune the engine would heatsoak, but once the car had a few more pulls the IAT will come down and the car once started would replace the hot air with the cool air from outside of the car.
2nd Pull – This is where things started to get exciting, the power started to climb up ever so slightly.
3rd Pull – It made more power especially after 4000RPM to redline
4th Pull – Pretty much I jizzed myself the car had made more power on a few modifications.
5th and final Pull – This is when the numbers were the same as the 4th Pull and we decided to stop.
I was very happy with the gains that I was able to get with the Evolve tune. While the peak hp was what Evolve stated, I was more impressed with how power started to build from 4000rpm to redline.
I was well aware that there would not be much gain before 4000rpm. If I did see gains below that it would most likely not be from the tune but from the DME resetting the adaptations, which told me that the pull would not be accurate.
Here is my Dyno Chart.
Uncorrected
SAE
Video from the dyno
Driving After Tune:
The weather is pretty cold in Chicago (+19 degrees) but driving the car has changed drastically. There is no hesitation in how the power comes on and the power feels really smooth all through out the gears.
Don’t get me wrong the stock car is nice, but the response when stepping on the gas pedal is very sedated and very rough.
After installing the tune, the E-Tronic exhaust had a different note to it (very hard to explain) And I know I might sound crazy, but that made me feel like something had changed for the better.