jon dee

So I measured this... centre of hub to lip of wheel arch directly above; from the floor to the lip of the arch directly above the hub; and from the bottom of the jack pads to the floor. Because the wheel arch is curved and these are not the easiest things to measure, they are plus or minus a mm but otherwise pretty close. Looks like the rear is not bad for level but the the front right is about 10mm lower than the front left. Note that the bottom row has measurements from the bottom rim of the wheel to the arch lip directly above the hub. This is much easier to measure and I found that BMW actually does (or did) provide this measurement for ride height on some cars. I found the measurements on another forum, said to be for an E92 M3 with 18" wheels and they were given as F: 610mm +/- 10mm and R: 594mm +/- 10mm. So it seems that my car is not unusually low... maybe I am just getting old Any ways... if you have a stock E92 coupe with 18" wheels I would like to get some comparisons. For the record I recently replaced the jacking pads so the measurements are from the floor to the lowest point of a fresh jacking pad. Cheers...

Been killing time by researching a few suspension options just is case I get lucky and can afford to freshen mine up. The Eibach/Bilstein B12 Pro-Kit looks like something that would work for me, so I am trying to figure how far down that will put me from stock. The car is already what I would estimate in my professional capacity to be... kind of low and I don't really see the need to go any lower. I believe 100mm from the road surface to the lowest structural part of the car is the legal minimum, and if the Pro-Kit does lower the car by something over 25mm, that could get a bit dodgy come WOF time. So, does anyone know what the wheel centre to fender lip measurements (front and rear) are for a bog stock E92 on factory rims and tyres ?? An equivalent off the floor measurement to the jacking pads or some other identifiable undercar point would do as well. Car doesn't actually look that low going by the wheel gap but it could be leaning into the kerb. I'll do a bit of measuring tomorrow just in case I'm being old fashioned Cheers...

All dyno graphs use smoothing to reduce the visual impact of fluctuations due to wheel slip and engine resonances. VD allows you to change the smoothing level to get the curves looking... how shall I put it... more in line with your expectations And as all computed power and torque dynos are calculated from from RPM vs TIME without the inertial smoothing of heavy steel rollers, some graph based smoothing is reasonable. The attached graphs show the difference between zero smoothing and level 5 smoothing. Cheers...

Being a crap kind of a day I was playing with my log files... as you do Found a short 3rd gear pull I did a few weeks ago, graphed it and then loaded it onto Virtual Dyno. Tried it (actually a different file) on Datazap and I think my logviewer does a better job. Anyway, have attached the log file and the VD for the same run. I did this on a short level but not overly smooth bit of public road with a bend at the end. So I had to back off before reaching terminal velocity for fear of leaving the road and ending up in the creek. The 335i E92 is already characterised in VD so all I had to do was add 100kg for driver and spare wheel in the boot. Back in the day when I first used VD you could select which of the major US dyno brands you wanted to emulate. That meant if you had done a real dyno run on a Dynojet, you could adjust the VD dyno to get closer to a typical Dynojet result. Only useful for arguments about which dynos read high and which read low. That feature has gone from the current version., so now you just get the basic VD dyno and that is good enough for comparing tunes if you have a decent test track. Cheers...

Since the purpose of the "linear throttle" function is to smooth out the high initial torque rise of the turbo engine, I would expect that the DME controls the throttle opening to produce a more gradual rise in torque through the lower rpm range. And if that is the case, then it will have the same effect in softening the initial torque rise as boost by gear or torque by gear. Whether the linear throttle effect is achieved by controlling the throttle opening, wastegates and/or a combination of these and ignition timing is something only MHD would know. However, when you stomp the gas pedal to the floor, you are signalling the DME that you don't care about linear throttle, so in theory it should go straight to full noise If it doesn't do that and you get less slip, the settings must still introduce a bit of "lag" into the torque rise. Did you measure any difference in 0-100 times between linear throttle on and off ? Cheers...

60km/hr ? I'd guess that demonstrates the benefit of your boost by gear setup... allowing you to get away in first gear with without excessive wheelspin. I'll be having a play with boost (or toque) by gear when I get keen. Reality is that I only ever do full throttle starts at events, so for normal driving first gear starts are fine. Cheers...

As I said before... I'm a bit of a wheel whore and I know what I like So I bought these without tyres and they will go under the bench until I find a use for them. They cleaned up OK... bit of kerbing but nothing that bothers me. I've never owned a set of wheels without a some kerbing, and if the thought of accidentally kerbing a wheel gives you nightmares, then better leave your car in the garage ? Cheers...

Just to follow up on my previous post... yes, the RE003's worked well. They surprised me by how much grip they had in the wet and they also worked well in the dry. For someone like me who is over trying to stuff a spare set of wheels and a jack in the car for short sprint events, I like a tyre that I can drive to the event, compete and then drive home Sure there are better tyres out there and semi-slicks would shave a few seconds. But when a sprint event usually only provides a total of about 6 or7 minutes of actual racing time, RE003's are plenty good enough for a bit of all weather fun. Nice road tyre as well. Cheers...

Yusss.... those are the ones. Never picked them up as they are listed in a kind of strange place. I already bought some other wheels and have them on the car, but I still have some interest in the Style 216 so I will contact the seller and see if I can work a deal. Thanks for the heads up Cheers...

Yusss.... I have a Datazap account and when I get the chance to make the recommended clean 3rd gear pull under ideal conditions I will post it up for analysis In the meantime I am using the logs I made during "racing" to get a better idea of what is going on under the hood and look for any obvious problem areas. When you are going hard out there isn't time to look at gauges or even watch the rev counter, so it's nice to be able to see how RPM, IAT and ccolant temps etc were going when you were busy driving Cheers...

Crappy kind of day so I thought I would generate a few more of these... I find them very useful in helping me to understand what is actually going on inside the engine. Seeing as the DME runs things as if there were two 3-cylinder engines under the hood it makes the logs a bit messy, and I have just selected a few different parameters for each graph for clarity. I discover that for reasons unknown, the TPS is pegged at 80% even though the pedal position runs to 100% ?? Is this because there is no worthwhile performance gain above 80% TPS ?? Gear changes have interesting effects on boost and timing and while wheelspin under acceleration results in power being reduced, wheel lockup under braking gets a little dab of the TPS without the gas pedal being touched Being able to isolate sections of the log and display only the parameters that you are interested in comparing often makes it easy to see the cause and effect relationship when you are chasing a particular problem. Logs were very useful when I was chasing an ignition problem on my supercharged 4AGE as I could see where in the rpm range the engine was having difficulty in igniting the fuel. Cheers...

LOL Yeah, I watched that video on cleaning with chemicals a few weeks ago. Got to hand to the guy, he got covered in sh*t blowing the chemicals out and they didn't work worth a damn, but he stuck with it long after I would given up . When he eventually got his walnut blasting under control it worked better and quicker without the mess. I discovered a while back that CRC gasket stripper did a pretty good job of removing carbon from the combustion chambers of a head I was cleaning, but less than impressed with their stuff that was used for trying to clean the ports. The Wurth stuff might be more serious though. I'm going to do a bit of looking around to see who does a cleaning service in Wellington, what they use and how much it costs. Cheers...

Second gear starts in a manual are brutal on the clutch unless you have enough torque to spin the wheels for long enough to get the car up to a speed where the engine does not drop out of its power band when the tyres stop slipping. So basically if you can smoke the tyres in second you're good On the other hand, second gear starts in an auto don't have any ill effect on the torque converter (a type of fluid coupling) as there is no mechanical connection, just oil getting flung from one half of the coupling to the other. The torque converter actually has the ability to multiply input torque when the speed of the driven (output) shaft is low. XHP have written a response to this question and without looking it up, the essence of what they wrote was that second gear starts don't harm the transmission. And I had the chance to test a bit of this theory at the street sprint today. Did two runs under similar conditions, one run in Sport with a 2nd gear start, and one run in Manual with a 2nd gear start. Sport mode 97.33sec versus Manual at 97.79sec. So in this highly unscientific test the car shifted gears better that I did !!! That being said the driver made a few mistakes in both runs so not really a true comparison. For the manual run I actually brake boosted the start (DTC on) and after the run a pretty knowledgeable competitor and friend of mine commented... that car of yours gets off the line quickly !!!! Potenza RE003's worked well in the wet under braking and acceleration. Predictable in the dry as well when giving it heaps Cheers...

Interesting... my car is coming up on 89,000km and I don't know if it has ever had the inlets cleaned. I'll look into that. Who did you get to do yours (assuming walnut blasting) and what sort of money involved ? I actually have a BMS catchcan but after installing the BMS DCI cone filters there is no space left to install it. What's the deal on the upgraded PCV... is that a factory upgrade or aftermarket part ? Any way to inspect the inlets (or even one inlet) without removing the inlet manifold ? Probably worth getting the inlets cleaned every 50,000km or so just as preventative maintenance. Cheers...

I'm just in the process of getting some decent logs. Today was just a half pull in 3rd to test that the MHD logging feature was actually working after having a few setup problems. The attached files show the same section of the log with different parameters graphed as this logviewer can only display eight values on a screen. In general things seem to be doing more or less what I would expect, but there is apparently a problem with cylinder one. Towards the end of the pull the DME pulls 3deg of timing, and I imagine this means that some detonation has been detected for that cylinder. To keep the log size down I only logged timing on cylinders two and four, so I don;t know at this time if any other cylinders pulled timing. Question is... how significant is cutting timing by 3deg on just one cylinder ? Just a bit of carbon buildup or something more sinister ? Car is running MHD Ver.9 Stage 1+ tune on BP98. No codes. Would appreciate it if anyone who had had first hand experience with this issue could post up a bit of information on cause, importance and if need be, the cure General comment welcome also. Cheers...

Probably will be for me, but primarily I just wanted the option of starting in 2nd and using sports mode to shift gears. Hopefully, that plus DTC should eliminate the HUGE stumble caused by DSC intervention when starting in 1st and giving it a big shoeful. Sports mode in xHP stage 3 is pretty damn good and I want to see how it stacks up against Manual, and of course I would be starting in M2 if I was changing gears myself I believe that some BM models have the option of always starting in 2nd gear unless the car is doing a hill start or towing. Second gear starts are said to improve the driving experience (talking about 8-speed AT in drive mode here). Eliminating an unnecessary gear shift and making full use of the torque converter makes good sense to me. So I will play with that and see how it works before I start looking at Torque or Boost by gear to make 1st gear starts more civilized at club events. Cheers...

As it happens, I chanced upon some information that shows a method of making this work. Start the engine >>> move the shifter to the left >>> pull the shifter back one click and the dash will show that you are now in M2. Release the brake and accelerate. While the engine is building revs in M2, quickly slap the shifter to the right and then back to the left.... BAM... you are now accelerating in S2 Tried this under modest acceleration and it does work. Didn't notice any hesitation or other side effects, and I don't think there should be any as the trans never leaves 2nd, but I will try it a few more times to be sure... to be shure Cheers...

LIMIT TORQUE BY GEAR Thought I would tag this on here.... apologies if there is already a separate thread. Since there does not appear to be any way of getting the trans to start in 2nd gear when in Sports mode, I am wondering if using xHP's "limit torque by gear" would be a good way to allow starting in 1st without the engine falling in a hole when the wheels start to spin. My thinking is that it would do much the same thing as MHD's "boost by gear" mode, but may be a better solution due to more recent development. I also like the fact that xHP includes a few presets. Anyway, if anyone has tried the xHP solution I would appreciate any comments / impressions / comparisons. Cheers...

Yeah... I could have gone for a higher rating tyre but I'm not a good enough driver to justify $500 a corner. And getting a good deal on the RE003's made it an easy decision I'll be giving them a run at Port Road next weekend and that should give me a better idea of how they perform. Cheers...

Just put these on and I quite like them. I think they suit the car better than the 189's that were on from the factory. Got a new set of Potenza RE003's in the OEM 225/40-18 and 255/35-18 sizes and was out for a drive this afternoon to scrub them in a bit New tyres are always better than old tyres but these surprised me by being almost totally silent on hotmix. Other than that they seem to do pretty much what it says on the box. I'll update this post when they have a couple of 1000kms on them. Cheers...

True that The CRC stuff works just the same as the more expensive brands promoted on youtube. Spray it on, wait a couple of minutes until you have purple tinted gunk sliding down, and then hose off. Needs a bit of aggravation with a bush for heavy brake dust deposits but nothing major. After a few nights spent researching PS4 vs Eagle F1 vs RE003 I ended up getting a wicked deal on a set of RE003 in OEM sizes. Never noticed that they were not directional until they were on the rims so possible to swap them side to side if needed. Also never noticed that the rears that were on the car were 265's until the wheels were off the car, so it will be interesting to drive the car on factory spec tyre sizes to see if BMW got it right Cheers...

As my dear old mother always said.... "The proof of the pudding is in the eating" So like all subjective opinions on new modifications, I will need to revisit this topic after a few months of driving with this version. The 335i has a great thirst for BP98 at $2.35 a litre when pedaled hard in Sports mode, so I spend most of my time in Drive and only drop into Sports when there is a chance to exploit the extra performance. Manual mode is there if required, but to be honest, the car does such a good job of changing gears and keeping the engine on the boil that the only reason I use manual is to be able to start in second gear. Cheers... PS: If anyone has a technique for getting the 335i N54 to start in second gear in Sports mode, I would love to hear about it.

OK... so I flashed the Stage 1+ ver 9 beta tune this afternoon so I could make a back to back comparison with the ver 8 tune I have been driving on for the last week. Based on a short outing over part of my "test track" I have to say that the ver 9 feels more sophisticated than the ver 8. In Drive the trans is not so twitchy... not so keen to go down a gear when it is not needed and making better use of the low end torque by shifting up a little earlier and then holding gears down to a slightly lower rpm. Not a radical change from ver 8 but smoother and a little reminiscent of the factory stock tune with a lot less dawdling to get moving In Sports mode the same thoughts apply... ver 9 makes better use of the low end torque by not jumping between gears unnecessarily and revving out when taking a higher gear would be a better choice.. While not at race pace (narrow, twisty public road) I did give it a bit of a tickle up and I think gear management has improved and the power also seems to have been improved thru the mid range. All totally subjective of course, but I definitely think the ver 9 tune can deliver the improvements in 1/4 mile times that Herbmeister has measured. Stands to reason really... MHD is not going to release a new version of a tune unless it offers an improvement over the previous version. So no reason to upgrade to ver 8 now, just go straight to ver 9 and be happy Cheers...

Got these in the garage now and apart from a bit of rash on one of the fronts, they are in really good nick. I can tidy up the rash until it is not noticeable, but they need some serious cleaning on the inside to remove a thick coating of brake dust. Anyone got a recommendation for a chemical that will help remove all or most of the brake dust without wrecking the paint ? Concentrated Simple Green perhaps ? EDIT: I see CRC Mag Monster getting a good rep in the Detailing section, so I will grab a couple of cans and see how it goes. Cheers...

I've been jumping around smiddy Currently I am on MHD 1+ ver 8 without linear throttle because I changed too many things in one hit which makes it hard to say what changes are due to each item changed. After I've run ver 8 for a bit longer I will swap back to ver 9 as Herb recommends. Then I can make a proper comparison without any possibility of linear throttle interfering. The reason I like feeling the torque roll in is that I spent too long driving 2 litre N.A. sales rep specials... either change down to overtake or get a decent run up At that time my toy was a little 1600 twincam Corolla and that had the same problem. Trying to overtake anything in 5th gear was a high risk operation as the car barely responded when the throttle was floored. After I bolted on a twinscrew supercharger I got the kind of response shown in the attached graph. The difference was night and day... with boost the Corolla was ALIVE !!!! I could overtake safely in 5th with just a gentle increase in pressure on the throttle. And now that I have shaken a few extra hp loose from the 335i I have that same kind of throttle response... torque on tap with just a gentle push on the throttle. There is no way that I can give feeling up now... I'm addicted I know that linear throttle works and the power is still there on tap, but it is soooooooo satisfying to be able to get that push in the back with just a nudge on the gas pedal and know that there is more on tap if needed. Cheers...