I had the Dinan Stage II Performance Software installed on July 31. The installation went very smoothly from my dealer's perspective and they said that there were far fewer error/trouble messages than they have seen on other installations. I guess that is good news.

Heading into the installation I had pretty high expectations. In my mind the idea of going to 384 HP and 421 lbs/ft meant I was basically getting a new car. In hindsight, maybe I built it up a little too much. First, I think we can all agree that the stock 535 is probably getting closer to 330/330 than 300/300 as noted by BMW. This means the increase is probably closer to 16% HP rather than 28% and the torque increase more like 27% rather than 40%. When I look at the lower percent increase, I am happy, I got that much.

Prior to the Dinan install my feeling of the 535 w/ Sport Auto was that it was sneaky quick. It always accelerated effortlessly with very little drama and incredible smoothness. I think the quick shifts and the broad power curves make for an acceleration that does not have any variance in the rate of acceleration. This removes some of the feeling of speed in my opinion. You never really got the feeling of the speed unless you had other cars or the spedometer to remind you.

After the Dinan install the car is sneaky quicker. It is still absolutely effortless and ultimately smooth. It just goes faster quicker. My seat of the pants dyno definitely notices a change. When I try pure acceleration runs I know that it is accelerating faster. There is a noticeable difference in my 0-60 time. The two most noticeable areas of change are when I am at 3/4 throttle and in my braking time. 3/4 throttle at 60-100 km/h illicits a response the same as full throttle pre-Dinan. However, the difference at full throttle is not 5/4 to 4/4 if that makes sense. The other area is braking distance. Previously if traffic broke on the freeway I could give it a good stab for 2-3 seconds and then coast back to traffic flow. Now that same stab has me braking fairly hard because my acceleration was that much greater.

In the end I am happy. Money well spent, $2100 installed by my dealer. For me that is about 5% more than my car will cost me over my ownership period. The car is certainly more than 5% better. The nagging question I have is: Why does the car not come from the factory this way? So little money, for so much difference. Will the car's owner pay the price in kms 150,000 to 250,000? Well that will be his problem. Other Dinan installers: Do you agree with my assessment?

 

I'm sure Dinan installers and other tuning companies would not be happy if the car came like that from the factory there might be less people looking for their services!

Anyway congratulations on the mod. I like the extra power I got with my ECU software too

 

Did you do a dyno?

 

Reability and pollution.
And service, that should be more frequent and not every 30k km/20k mls.

 

hmmmm....very interesting.

thanks for the review.

 

+1, I'm interested to see what the 0-60 time is with the dinan stage 2, and 1/4 mile for that matter!

 

Does anybody know when the Dinan Stage 2 will be available for MSD v81.0 535i? I thought it was supposed to be ready a couple of weeks ago.

I can't get Dinan to return my calls.

Good performance increase, though maybe not as much as I expected either.

 

No I am sorry I did not do a Dyno. I did check into it, but around here there just not appear to be any Dyno's available for private party testing. Based upon what I have read other places the stock HP/TQ numbers that BMW quotes are low, probably about 10%. Based on this revised starting point the increase offered by Dinan and the other tuners probably has a 'free' 10% to start just by getting the actual stock figures. From there, I would agree with the Dinan numbers that I am about 20% faster.

 

I am going to try to get to our local track. I am interested to see what the 1/4 mile time would be.

 

I am going to try to get to our local track. I am interested to see what the 1/4 mile time would be.