znod

And, possibly more insult to injury: Are you still in warranty and counting on it to take care of you in the case of BMW parts failures--especially those that might be easily associated with chippinig or extra power.? If so, then think carefully about the chipping.

SKK

Such claims from tuners always strike me as strange. If you could so easily get a bhp boost with an improvement in fuel economy without any downsides why wouldnt BMW have done it in the first place. I mean if a tuner can do it, BMW should certainly be able to - so why didnt they ??

I wouldnt let any such company touch my new car with a barge pole. No chance.

BetterMakeWay

Such claims from tuners always strike me as strange. If you could so easily get a bhp boost with an improvement in fuel economy without any downsides why wouldnt BMW have done it in the first place. I mean if a tuner can do it, BMW should certainly be able to - so why didnt they ??

I wouldnt let any such company touch my new car with a barge pole. No chance.
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I dunno much about the fuel economy...but for real who cares? I mean even if it doesn't drop as they say at least it will stay the same or rise a bit but insignificantly!
About the bhp figure well all i can say is that manufacurers are in general conservative. Each engine can produce alot more hp then the company's output but then again they have to think about the engine to keep without too much problems say 300-400k. Things like theese you know....they have to think also about the emissions and all other stuff. Then it may come the marketink "problem" into the ecuation: for eg. the engines in vw passat/golf are TDI from 90bhp-to 150bhp as far as i know. Now the engines are not that different, they are still 1.9 diesels with the same type of turbos. With a little help of ecu "remapping" and air filters and so on...they can vary the hp models thus making a bigger offer.

znod

Such claims from tuners always strike me as strange. If you could so easily get a bhp boost with an improvement in fuel economy without any downsides why wouldnt BMW have done it in the first place. I mean if a tuner can do it, BMW should certainly be able to - so why didnt they ??

I wouldnt let any such company touch my new car with a barge pole. No chance.
[/quote]Auto manufacturers what their cars to be bullet proof. Turning up the boost is problematic to bullet proofness.

Salespunk

Take a look at the VAG cars. They have been turning up the boost for years on the 1.8T motors without any real issues. There are several 1.8T cars that are faster than M3's out there over 80K miles. That is a highly tuned car (chipped, exhaust, intake, etc.) that is producing close to 200 HP/LTR.

Overall I would not worry too much about this mod. Upsolute has a great reputation.

EuroCarFan

I agree whole heartedly. There are a lot of chipped VWs and Audis out there that pump out a healthy dose of power and are daily drivers. I think chip tuning has come a long way much as turbos have. Pretty much every car tuner in the world complements their tuning packages with some form of software reprogramming.

I wouldn't worry about it at all. However, the only caution I'd have would be, just as you would for anything else you'd buy, get it from a reknown and reputable vendor. I discovered Upsolute a few months back and there were several discussions about them on this board. One thing I found was that there are a lot of Porsche Turbo owners using Upsolute, some with over 20K miles on their chipped engine, and it seems that most of them are extremely happy with the upgrade.

znod

Welcome. Whether up boosting has an immediate consequence depends on how much up boosting and how hard the car is driven. The wrong combination ultimately is likely to have an OEM part consequence that might be attributed reasonably to the up boosting. Unfortunately, I have had the experience of loosing an engine from a tad too much extra boost.

abs

upsolute now provide a small remote to switch on and off the tuned setting. there are no wires involved. wonder anyone heard of this before

znod

Not me. Interesting though. I can't imagine how that would work unless upsolute adds something piggyback rather than actually reprogramming the chip.

Wlodek

Here is real life story for you!

I had a December 2004 530d. I have it tuned by AC Schnitzer in Germany. They put a discreet box in the car. What this particular mod does is to increase the duration of injection time by a fraction. When in Germany for the fitting, I had the car checked on the dyno and it shown 260 BHP after the mod. The sytem is DEFINITELY not recognized by the BMW diagnostic test. My UK dealer has confirmed that for shure! You can.t see it BMW computer does not see it. That is it. The particular upgrade is very clever on the safety side, it will not kick in if the engine temp is to low, and will switch of if the temp is to high. AC Schinitzer are so confident of the system that they offer a full warranty on all the oarts that may be damaged as a consequence of the increase of power! The milage (MPG) has indeed been improved. It stands to reason: the system kicks in only when requested to give more power, and becouse you are getting to the required speed that much faster the fuel consumption improves. It did in my case byanything upto 15%!, with a huge increase in power and torque. So far so good!

Now the bad thing!
My turbo charger started to make more of a whistling noise than I was expecting. It started well before the modification. I went to my dealer, and they agreed that this is not right. Please note that my dealer new about the upgrade and promised to keep it to themself as the orignal BMW diagnostic did not see it. BTW. they loved to drive my car! They did looked and found loose bearing on the main turbo charger, and as they said to me I was not the only one with pre mature turbo "dead". It seem that the turbochargers are not the most reliable part of the E60 diesels, something that has been confirmed by AC Schnitzer. AC Schitzer btw is a part of one of the biggest BMW franchised dealers in Germany, and they confirmed the problem BMW has with the turbo's reliability. So, my dealer agreed that the turbo has to be replaced under warranty (hey, they have seen this puppy failing on multiple new cars!). Of they go to BMW for authorization for the warranty job.

The BMW warranty computer say "Warning, modyfied/tunned car, sytems and/or parts affected by such modification are not covered by warranty" and declines my warranty claim! Warning thsi stays on the BMW record for ever even if frachised dealer takes the mod out! Since I had the original AC Schnitzer 3 years warranty, they simply asked me to submit to them a bill for the turbo replacement (1600 pounds sterling), and within a week transferd the whole sum to me. I must say that AC Schnitzer acted superbly by honouring their warranty, and that the warranty is stiil in place after the claim. I spoken to alot of people about, and the one taht "know" confirmed that modification like the one I had (just injection time increase and NOT turbo preasure increase), can not damage the turbo. Please find a thread somewhere on this group re; turbo failures.

BTW. It was not my dealer that informed BMW about my tunning, it was AC Schnitzer, who as afranchised BMW dealer have an obligation to inform Munich about any mods they do to their customer cars. It is OK if you live in Germany and your dealer is AC Schnitzer as they do warrant their work. If I got the upgrade by post and had it fitted in UK, nobody would know. After the replacement of the turbo unit, I had my dealer toremove the upgrade, send it back to AC Schnitzer and had full refund for it! Again, prise to AC Schnitzer here! I did not want to remove it, nor I needed to remove it as my original AC Schnitzer warranty was still in force. I did it becouse I exchanged my 530d for a 535d at my dealer! So now I have a car with all the power I "need/like" without the potential warranty worries. No, I will not tune my 535d as really does not need it.

The morale of my story is:

1. Check if your potential mod will be detected by BMW diagnostic system. Most of the will not be detected!
2. Make sure that the mod DOES not in any way increase the turbo preasure. Again most of them do not!
3. If do go for one, make sure it is fitted by yourself (resonably easy and undetectable), or have it fitted by non BMW dealer. Most of them can be easily disabled when needed (before service, if you do not trust your dealer)
4. Make sure that you get similar warranty to the one AC Schnitzer offers.

It has to be said that the new 530d has increased power to 231 BHP. So, the engine and transmition etc. can easily take more power, and that generally most of the cars are "detunned" from what they are really capable.As to why BMW did not do it themselves, it is purely commercial. Would you buy 535d if the 530d was close to it in performance. They just increased the power in the current 530d, so all of you who want more out of their beloved cars will go and buy a new one!!!! They will do it, I'm sure to 535d at some stage. Look at the 545i, was it slow to start with? No, but they lauche 550i just be able to sell you a new "faster" car. I can;t really blame them, it is commerce at the end of the day.

Well, that is my 5 cent worth, it is a "bit" long but I hope it is useful for the one that need more info on the disel tunning,

Happy 535d driver,



Such claims from tuners always strike me as strange. If you could so easily get a bhp boost with an improvement in fuel economy without any downsides why wouldnt BMW have done it in the first place. I mean if a tuner can do it, BMW should certainly be able to - so why didnt they ??

I wouldnt let any such company touch my new car with a barge pole. No chance.
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