Does anyone have experience diagnosing problems with the ESS supercharger system for the M54 (3.0L) manual? I have had the supercharger on my 2005 530i for several years but never had a chance to get it sorted out. It was installed by a BMW dealer. I had it dyno'ed a couple of weeks ago. Basically at 5000 RPM the HP drops off like crazy resulting in power numbers that are far less than ESS's advertised output of 340hp.

I have the car at a Dallas shop who is an authorized agent installer for ESS. Thus far, they have charged me $1000 for a vanos replacement, which showed no improvements based on dyno results. Now the shop is recommending a spark plug replacement, which really does not make sense to me (from the standpoint of how it will fix the big drop in HP at 5k).

I will post a copy of the dyno results later. Please let me know if anyone has seen something similar.

Thanks.

 

Not a ton of experience in this, but it sounds more to me like the ECU tune needs to be tweaked. With the tune they can change the spark advance, and tweak timing and fuel/air mix to get better results - or at least closer to what has been advertised. Have you talked to ESS yet? What did they say?

 

The car is at a place in Dallas called Stett Performance. Does anyone here have any experiences with this shop that they can share?

Thus far they have charged me like $1000 for a vanos replacement, $500 for spark plug replacement, and $200 for dyno. The car has been there 1 month and still no resolution to my problem. I have asked ESS to step in and provide some advice. The car is still showing a big HP drop at 5000 RPM and not meeting ESS's horsepower claims on the kit (off by at least 40 hp).

Please let me know if you have any feedback on Stett. I am starting to loose faith as they don't return calls, send requested dyno data, and don't seem to able to resolve this issue after 1 month.

Thanks for your help.

Mike

 

I think the valvles-not sure if your car has variable valve timing--I dont think it does so it would in general be the ecu if not the vanos componenents

 

Sounds like it just needs a good tune.