[Dj_Quik]

Originally Posted by F87source

Tell me about it lol, I had an sti too and if you looked at it weird it would blow up. But it taught me so much about modifying and taking care of you car. So I honestly feel like everyone should have some form of car progression that really teaches you good habits before moving onto something more expensive. Especially when I see people not doing any research, not knowing what they're getting themselves into, and only wanting big power without spending any money on supporting mods or time learning anything.

Maintenance is a huge issue on this platform too, I see people not even wanting to shell out some money to change their oil more frequently. That's going to be fantastic having dirty old oil that can cause more carbon build up on pistons which can inturn cause more issues with LSPI down the road.

lol i got so anal with the subaru that i had compression tests done on the regular and once they went down a little bit i traded that bish in so fast for an e92 m3.
yeah, LSPI scares me on these cars. gotta play to play though in order to prevent engine failure as best as we can. I gotta say though, the ecus on these modern bmws are so good with their failsafes. maybe that why people set and forget their tunes coz the car is pretty good at correcting shortcomings in the tune in the short term.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by Dj_Quik

lol i got so anal with the subaru that i had compression tests done on the regular and once they went down a little bit i traded that bish in so fast for an e92 m3.
yeah, LSPI scares me on these cars. gotta play to play though in order to prevent engine failure as best as we can. I gotta say though, the ecus on these modern bmws are so good with their failsafes. maybe that why people set and forget their tunes coz the car is pretty good at correcting shortcomings in the tune in the short term.

Lol tell me about it! The amount of compression tests were insane. The good thing is that ring land failure occurs so frequently subaru doesn't even hassle you with replacing engines.

But yes these cars are so smart people get too comfortable and let their guard down.

[PackPride85]

Originally Posted by NBE23M2

Add another blown M2 engine running bootmod3 to the list.

Details:
2018 M2 -23,000 miles
FBO but factory cat
PTF OTS stage 1 93 tune
Shell 93 fuel from southwest Ohio
No Logs - full send

Engine running WOT on highway and went into Limp mode on a 3rd gear pull near red line. Tell-tale white smoke from exhaust and oil on top of engine near cylinder 1.

Diagnosis - detonation melted piston 1. Machine shop replaced piston - for reference, it is not a N55 or S55 piston but rather some variation between. Had to order it from Germany - took 2 months to get it.

Car has been sitting since August 2020 and I still don't have it back.

Dealership told me to kick rocks. All in this will cost me $9,000 plus the engine builder in TX recommends draining fuel tank and installing new injectors to the tune of an additional $1800.

My recommendation and takeaway from all this is only custom tune the M2. BOOTMOD3 OTS maps, at least for 3 owners so far on the M2 aren't safe.

One other thing to note:
If you are new to tuning or BMW engines, don't take a limp mode incident lightly. You need to get the codes on what is going on that causes it. I had several limp modes over the year of ownership, one under factory tune that corrected itself but this could be an indicator that something else was wrong - and now because of the tune BMW is off the hook for owning their issue.

The car going into limp mode 3 times is not normal. Have had mine for 5 years, probably 2 with bm3 and have never seen limp mode. The tune didn't blow your engine. You also didn't mention here, but did in your original blown motor thread, you had the dinan sport tuner on it prior to bm3.

[NBE23M2]

Originally Posted by PackPride85

The car going into limp mode 3 times is not normal. Have had mine for 5 years, probably 2 with bm3 and have never seen limp mode. The tune didn't blow your engine. You also didn't mention here, but did in your original blown motor thread, you had the dinan sport tuner on it prior to bm3.

The Dinan tuner has nothing to do with this engine failure. It’s either bad gas or a faulty fuel injector. Just prior to running this tune with my supporting mods I ran the car on a different tank of gas with the stock tune. It ran fine. My belief is that I got a bad tank of gas and now I’m paying the price for something out of my control other than logging. My question is if it’s bad gas would this have happened with the stock tune?

[F87source]

Originally Posted by NBE23M2

The Dinan tuner has nothing to do with this engine failure. It’s either bad gas or a faulty fuel injector. Just prior to running this tune with my supporting mods I ran the car on a different tank of gas with the stock tune. It ran fine. My belief is that I got a bad tank of gas and now I’m paying the price for something out of my control other than logging. My question is if it’s bad gas would this have happened with the stock tune?

Well it depends, like how many check engine lights did you get prior to this and ignore? Because that all adds up to how bad you engine was beaten up. Think about an egg being your pistons, every time you get a heavy case of knock like LSPI it is like a spoon hitting that egg, you get a check engine light telling you to check what was going on. If you ignore that check engine light and keep going the spoon keeps hitting the egg. The more you ignore the more cracks build up on the egg, and eventually no matter what tune you are on that egg will crack.

If you were on the stock tune there are heavy measures to stop LSPI that gets weakened with an OTS map because of how differently the OTS tune targets load. High load low rpm = high chance of LSPI. I too started to get a little bit off my guard with how to tune these cars, but now reading more on LSPI I am starting to go back to my subaru roots aka no low down torque move it to mid range and up to prolong engine life and prevent LSPI. Thus, I will never ever use an OTS map on my car, despite what people may believe there is no comparison with a custom tune in terms of performance and safety.


So in summary on a healthy motor and stock tune I believe there would be no issue the ecu would save the motor despite the bad gas - if the driver stops right away in the event of a CEL. If you keep going egg theory will still apply and engine failure will occur.


If you had a beaten up motor with a stock tune engine failure could occur.


This is also why maintenance is key.

[cookiesowns]

Originally Posted by F87source

Well it depends, like how many check engine lights did you get prior to this and ignore? Because that all adds up to how bad you engine was beaten up. Think about an egg being your pistons, every time you get a heavy case of knock like LSPI it is like a spoon hitting that egg, you get a check engine light telling you to check what was going on. If you ignore that check engine light and keep going the spoon keeps hitting the egg. The more you ignore the more cracks build up on the egg, and eventually no matter what tune you are on that egg will crack.

If you were on the stock tune there are heavy measures to stop LSPI that gets weakened with an OTS map because of how differently the OTS tune targets load. High load low rpm = high chance of LSPI. I too started to get a little bit off my guard with how to tune these cars, but now reading more on LSPI I am starting to go back to my subaru roots aka no low down torque move it to mid range and up to prolong engine life and prevent LSPI. Thus, I will never ever use an OTS map on my car, despite what people may believe there is no comparison with a custom tune in terms of performance and safety.


So in summary on a healthy motor and stock tune I believe there would be no issue the ecu would save the motor despite the bad gas - if the driver stops right away in the event of a CEL. If you keep going egg theory will still apply and engine failure will occur.


If you had a beaten up motor with a stock tune engine failure could occur.


This is also why maintenance is key.

Exactly! Torque is what kills things. You can make more HP by simply keeping your torque up at higher RPMs, yes more torque down low, makes more low end HP.. there's also quite a bit more cylinder pressures as your cylinder speeds are slower.

Remember a motor is a combination of many moving parts.. if you strain one end of it, you're also inevitably straining other things.... example the turbo. It's funny how no one monitors exhaust backpressures when tuning a $20K motor from BMW... especially going with a "hybrid" turbo. It's also why just by changing to a more efficient turbo setup can net you a significant amount of power with 0 tuning changes.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by cookiesowns

Exactly! Torque is what kills things. You can make more HP by simply keeping your torque up at higher RPMs, yes more torque down low, makes more low end HP.. there's also quite a bit more cylinder pressures as your cylinder speeds are slower.

Remember a motor is a combination of many moving parts.. if you strain one end of it, you're also inevitably straining other things.... example the turbo. It's funny how no one monitors exhaust backpressures when tuning a $20K motor from BMW... especially going with a "hybrid" turbo. It's also why just by changing to a more efficient turbo setup can net you a significant amount of power with 0 tuning changes.

Well I guess it's back to my Subaru tuning mentality again lol, no big deal I'm used to it.


I would love to log back pressure but no easy way to do it without alot of hardware and tapping the exhaust manifold, so that's probably why not many people do it. Now that reflex is here it could be a more feasible possible.


I know you're a real big fan of efr turbos (me too I had them on my sti's and evo's which were big power builds) but there's a new turbo in the works for us track guys who are fighting temps so huge power is out of the question and just can't justify the cost of an efr for 400 whp. It's the shuenk n55+ turbo being developed by franken turbo. It has a fully revamped exhaust housing just like vtt's GC for the n55 but paired with a stage 1 turbo. The difference is the compressor side is 1 mm larger than dinan stage 1, and the exhaust side is like 4+ mm larger than dinan stage 1. The overall result of a ported exhaust side + a higher flowing exhaust manifold than any stock turbo fold hybrid turbo should lower egts and back pressure which in turn will help LSPI issues. The spool should be equal to ps2 if not faster according to testing logs that I've seen, and the price is between ps2 and stage 1 so a really good deal for us track guys.

So overall I think this turbo + a custom tune will be really beneficial to us track us like ZM2 and myself (in the near future when I can hit the track again).

[cookiesowns]

Originally Posted by F87source

Well I guess it's back to my Subaru tuning mentality again lol, no big deal I'm used to it.


I would love to log back pressure but no easy way to do it without alot of hardware and tapping the exhaust manifold, so that's probably why not many people do it. Now that reflex is here it could be a more feasible possible.


I know you're a real big fan of efr turbos (me too I had them on my sti's and evo's which were big power builds) but there's a new turbo in the works for us track guys who are fighting temps so huge power is out of the question and just can't justify the cost of an efr for 400 whp. It's the shuenk n55+ turbo being developed by franken turbo. It has a fully revamped exhaust housing just like vtt's GC for the n55 but paired with a stage 1 turbo. The difference is the compressor side is 1 mm larger than dinan stage 1, and the exhaust side is like 4+ mm larger than dinan stage 1. The overall result of a ported exhaust side + a higher flowing exhaust manifold than any stock turbo fold hybrid turbo should lower egts and back pressure which in turn will help LSPI issues. The spool should be equal to ps2 if not faster according to testing logs that I've seen, and the price is between ps2 and stage 1 so a really good deal for us track guys.

So overall I think this turbo + a custom tune will be really beneficial to us track us like ZM2 and myself (in the near future when I can hit the track again).

I'd still go with the EFR. 7670 is a perfect size for the N55. With access to ethanol, run the car on the street at 500/500... drop it down to comfortable levels to whatever you want with on the fly map switching/torque control for track days

The shuenk group I'm in.. still have not seen good data on it.... PS2 spools slow IMO. 7670 on Edios's car spools like stock turbo.. and that's with a fabspeed cat on a custom downpipe.

[ZM2]

My first power mod four years ago was the Dinan tuner. It was fun enough around town, even tho it made the DCT shifting quite a bit worse bc the car didn’t know what it was doing.

After my first time on track with the tuner, it came off that day. Even with good 93 octane and Spring weather, you could feel the car cracking up on the straightaway. I got limp mode once and immediately ripped it off the car.

Full Dinantronics worked better, but still wasn’t nearly as good BM3 OTS, which I have the live dashboard up and log every track session. Our cars are so susceptible to high IATs on track that it really only takes two out of three items to create a very bad day—not good enough hardware, not the right tune, or poor gas. Logging showed me the importance of this.

Someday will be a fully dialed in custom tune from a reputable tuner, like F87source said. I tried Cary, but the results were terrible.

[NBE23M2]

Originally Posted by F87source

Well it depends, like how many check engine lights did you get prior to this and ignore? Because that all adds up to how bad you engine was beaten up. Think about an egg being your pistons, every time you get a heavy case of knock like LSPI it is like a spoon hitting that egg, you get a check engine light telling you to check what was going on. If you ignore that check engine light and keep going the spoon keeps hitting the egg. The more you ignore the more cracks build up on the egg, and eventually no matter what tune you are on that egg will crack.

If you were on the stock tune there are heavy measures to stop LSPI that gets weakened with an OTS map because of how differently the OTS tune targets load. High load low rpm = high chance of LSPI. I too started to get a little bit off my guard with how to tune these cars, but now reading more on LSPI I am starting to go back to my subaru roots aka no low down torque move it to mid range and up to prolong engine life and prevent LSPI. Thus, I will never ever use an OTS map on my car, despite what people may believe there is no comparison with a custom tune in terms of performance and safety.


So in summary on a healthy motor and stock tune I believe there would be no issue the ecu would save the motor despite the bad gas - if the driver stops right away in the event of a CEL. If you keep going egg theory will still apply and engine failure will occur.


If you had a beaten up motor with a stock tune engine failure could occur.


This is also why maintenance is key.

My engine isn’t beaten up. It has 23,000 miles on it and I’ve seen every part inside the engine with my own eyes at this point. There’s no guessing what it looks like in there. All the pistons minus 1 look normal and so do the rods. If an OTS map removes safety features for bad gas then this is an expensive lesson for me to learn. Hopefully someone else is reading this and learns from these 2 mistakes. My beliefs were that all safety algorithms were left in place. If that’s not the case then it’s stock or custom tuning from here on out and should be for anyone else driving an OG M2.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by NBE23M2

My engine isn’t beaten up. It has 23,000 miles on it and I’ve seen every part inside the engine with my own eyes at this point. There’s no guessing what it looks like in there. All the pistons minus 1 look normal and so do the rods. If an OTS map removes safety features for bad gas then this is an expensive lesson for me to learn. Hopefully someone else is reading this and learns from these 2 mistakes. My beliefs were that all safety algorithms were left in place. If that’s not the case then it’s stock or custom tuning from here on out and should be for anyone else driving an OG M2.

Visual looks don't mean much, because your pistons could have micro fractures from repetitive knock events. Like my STI's pistons some of them would look normal and some would be fully cracked, but depending on how long they have been in use you may or may not see microfractures forming.


OTS maps do not remove safety features, it is a matter of pushing the car harder than it was designed to be pushed. For example if you have a phone case rated to protect a phone from a 1m drop and now you are dropping it at 10m. The protection is still there but now the forces are so much greater because you are dropping the phone case from a height it was not desgined to withstand. The same goes with the engine when you tune you are pushing it beyond factory design, so it is so important to log to make sure you are not experiencing any abnormalities that could cause damage. Also if your tune is running on the ragged edge the chances it blows up due to bad gas is higher than if there was head room in the tune.


Also you never logged it at all so you don't know how long it has been knocking before it failed (aka the abuse to the engine if it was knocking for a long time before the failure). So that is where the huge issue is, it is not the tune it is the fact you never logged it.


Driving style is a factor too, did you lug the engine, did you let it warm up etc.

[XutvJet]

Limp mode is certainly something that needs to be investigated, especially if it happens more than once.

The N55 in the M235 and M2 uses a forged crank and S55 rods. The pistons are hypereutectic in the all N55 and S55 motors. The pistons, while very strong, are the weak link. The M2 N55 pistons are more similar to the S55's than the M235's (I believe it's the normal N55 pistons with S55 rings).

It doesn't matter if your car is running an OTS tune or a custom tune. All it takes is one really bad knock event to fracture piston or ringland. Super knock or heavy knocking is usually the culmination of a number of issues occurring at one specific moment in time. It doesn't matter how good your tune in when something like this happens.

High load/low rpm situations should be avoided, especially in turbo motors. Turbos love heavy load and can over-boost quickly because of it. Tuning/logging runs where people go full throttle at 2000-2500rpms in a tall gear like 3rd and above are only asking for trouble in a tuned turbo motor, even a strong one like an N54, N55, S55, or B58. It's downright hell on the motor. When you're racing, you never start at this low of an rpm except with an automatic. And even so, you're in 1st which doesn't create much load or boost. All upshifts land at above 4,000rpms. Think about what you're asking of the motor.

BMW has made it very clear that they got as much out of the M2 N55 as they could while meeting their reliability requirements. We're all playing fire when tuning these already factory tuned N55 motors. The motors are strong, but when you push them outside their design limits, you take away some of the safeguards BMW implemented to keep the motor in check. More power = more heat = more risk.

In NBE23M2's case, it could have very well been a bad injector or fuel, but it wasn't just that. It was a number of things and we'll never know for certain. There a plenty of lightly and heavily tuned N54, N55, and S55 motors that have lost one or more pistons over the years.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by XutvJet

Limp mode is certainly something that needs to be investigated, especially if it happens more than once.

The N55 in the M235 and M2 uses a forged crank and S55 rods. The pistons are hypereutectic in the all N55 and S55 motors. The pistons, while very strong, are the weak link. The M2 N55 pistons are more similar to the S55's than the M235's (I believe it's the normal N55 pistons with S55 rings).

It doesn't matter if your car is running an OTS tune or a custom tune. All it takes is one really bad knock event to fracture piston or ringland. Super knock or heavy knocking is usually the culmination of a number of issues occurring at one specific moment in time. It doesn't matter how good your tune in when something like this happens.

High load/low rpm situations should be avoided, especially in turbo motors. Turbos love heavy load and can over-boost quickly because of it. Tuning/logging runs where people go full throttle at 2000-2500rpms in a tall gear like 3rd and above are only asking for trouble in a tuned turbo motor, even a strong one like an N54, N55, S55, or B58. It's downright hell on the motor. When you're racing, you never start at this low of an rpm except with an automatic. And even so, you're in 1st which doesn't create much load or boost. All upshifts land at above 4,000rpms. Think about what you're asking of the motor.

BMW has made it very clear that they got as much out of the M2 N55 as they could while meeting their reliability requirements. We're all playing fire when tuning these already factory tuned N55 motors. The motors are strong, but when you push them outside their design limits, you take away some of the safeguards BMW implemented to keep the motor in check. More power = more heat = more risk.

In NBE23M2's case, it could have very well been a bad injector or fuel, but it wasn't just that. It was a number of things and we'll never know for certain. There a plenty of lightly and heavily tuned N54, N55, and S55 motors that have lost one or more pistons over the years.

With a custom tune you can move load demand upwards in the RPM band and target richer afrs and higher timing (to the limit of the fuel) which all culminates in lower loads at low rpm and cooler combustion chamber temps preventing LSPI (super knock) from ever occuring. This is not done on OTS maps where they try to go as agressive as possible.

The next thing you can do with with a custom tune is to perfectly tune it so there is no knock anywhere in the RPM band - something that cannot be done via OTS maps. This will prevent any heavy knock events from occuring due to a map that is too agressive and already causing knock.


It is unlikely to be fuel injectors as it would have caused misfires and stumbles on the stock tune, and the N55 injectors are much more reliable than the older pizeo style injectors in the n54. That is why logging is important because you could have seen those stumbling misfires in the log, and codes would pop up for injector issues. you don't just full send a car with an OTS map and expect nothing but the best.

[XutvJet]

Unless you're tuning for all load and ambient conditions like automakers do, custom tunes won't be fool proof. Custom tines can be better than OTS tunes, but often times the tuners are aiming for more power than the OTS tune, not less.

I agree that BM3 OTS tunes can be pretty aggressive. I certainly won't run it. Maybe MHD as they are more conservative and they're German (makes be believe they might know more than BM3), but I'm actually quite happy with my conservative Dinantronics Stage 2 piggyback.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by XutvJet

Unless you're tuning for all load and ambient conditions like automakers do, custom tunes won't be fool proof. Custom tines can be better than OTS tunes, but often times the tuners are aiming for more power than the OTS tune, not less.

I agree that BM3 OTS tunes can be pretty aggressive. I certainly won't run it. Maybe MHD as they are more conservative and they're German (makes be believe they might know more than BM3), but I'm actually quite happy with my conservative Dinantronics Stage 2 piggyback.

There's a difference, you can make more power than an ots and safer if you tailor it to how the car reacts to the load. For instance you can put more timing in certain spots without any knock compared to an ots and smooth out the entire power band in essence making more power and smoother power than an ots map.


If you get a good tuner there is zero instance where an ots map will be better.

[cookiesowns]

Originally Posted by XutvJet

Unless you're tuning for all load and ambient conditions like automakers do, custom tunes won't be fool proof. Custom tines can be better than OTS tunes, but often times the tuners are aiming for more power than the OTS tune, not less.

I agree that BM3 OTS tunes can be pretty aggressive. I certainly won't run it. Maybe MHD as they are more conservative and they're German (makes be believe they might know more than BM3), but I'm actually quite happy with my conservative Dinantronics Stage 2 piggyback.

That's the thing.. a good tuner will be setting up compensations and leveraging factory logic to account for scenarios, like hot ambients, altitude, etc.

In this case, it's more of a end-user thing to communicate with the tuner what they are going for.

lol piggy back... you realize a piggy can't control fueling right? The dinan is more sophisticated than most as it does boost by RPM, and fuel rail pressure spoofing by RPM too.. but that won't beat a true DME flash as it cannot change AFR targets & Ignition timing targets.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by cookiesowns

That's the thing.. a good tuner will be setting up compensations and leveraging factory logic to account for scenarios, like hot ambients, altitude, etc.

In this case, it's more of a end-user thing to communicate with the tuner what they are going for.

lol piggy back... you realize a piggy can't control fueling right? The dinan is more sophisticated than most as it does boost by RPM, and fuel rail pressure spoofing by RPM too.. but that won't beat a true DME flash as it cannot change AFR targets & Ignition timing targets.

And that's why you should tune with MHD

Come onnnnnn lol, don't leave me hanging when its time for me to get a tune in the future.

[cookiesowns]

Originally Posted by F87source

And that's why you should tune with MHD

Come onnnnnn lol, don't leave me hanging when its time for me to get a tune in the future.

This may change once MHD map switching is available.. but the XDF's haven't been updated in awhile and frankly with ECUTek and now BM3's new editor.. it's just not worth it for us to spend all that time reverse engineering different ROM's and creating custom XDF's when we could be spending time tuning.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by cookiesowns

This may change once MHD map switching is available.. but the XDF's haven't been updated in awhile and frankly with ECUTek and now BM3's new editor.. it's just not worth it for us to spend all that time reverse engineering different ROM's and creating custom XDF's when we could be spending time tuning.

Understandable, hopefully newer xdf's come with on the fly map changing.

[XutvJet]

Originally Posted by cookiesowns

lol piggy back... you realize a piggy can't control fueling right? The dinan is more sophisticated than most as it does boost by RPM, and fuel rail pressure spoofing by RPM too.. but that won't beat a true DME flash as it cannot change AFR targets & Ignition timing targets.

I'm fully aware of the limitations of the old school piggyback It's conservative too. But it's damn easy to install and fire and forget. It's been great and without a hiccup over 1.5 years of use (bought used). I do wish I could see wastegate duty cycle and real boost numbers to help troubleshoot if I ever have a boost leak issue.