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Originally Posted by Michael9218
A long overdue update on my experience with working with Joshua at Severn Tuning.
An outcome of the no start issue I had last spring (turned out to be the instrument cluster) was that the tuner I was using (the guy from Miami) didn’t care to be of much help. So I asked Joshua if he would tune and support my car. This car, as many know by now, is not a once and done type car/project. So I need someone I can work with that is responsive, interested, and flexible. In Sept our schedules aligned and he was going to be in the Atlanta area so we met at a local dyno shop for a live dyno tune. Tuning the MSS70 is a real pain in the ass. Uploads can take up to an hour for each iteration, so pack a lunch! I think we ended up with about 6 or 7 iterations. The final outcome was a solid 336 hp with a very smooth power curve.
Video of a pull. We used 5th gear so those wheels are literally spinning to 150 mph!
How do I get sound?
Josh also wanted me to stay with a MAF based tune for better reliability, but I had just installed my Turner CSL intake. So I decided to modify the CSL intake to accept the MAF. Why? Because that’s how I roll…and I like the shape of the trumpets on the Turner box and it weighed about 5 lbs less. We tested both and the Turner box in this configuration made all of a few more ponies.
To make this work, I needed to fabricate an interface. So out comes the carbon fiber supplies. I used some modeling clay and shaped the cone.
Once on track, he had me do some data logging to make final adjustments to fuel trims and such (maybe he can elaborate). Motor was running strong but I was getting a slight hesitation accelerating through 65 mph in 3rd gear. Weird…. Nothing we tried would make it go away. It was acting like I was lifting. We suspected it might be the brake vacuum control valve so I ordered the CSL specific part which of course was backordered for 4 months (hence this late post on the tuning). Well, this didn’t solve the issue either.
After much patience and perseverance, Joshua had an epiphany. I’ll quote him to best explain:
Tune14 attached. Please make sure it loads correctly and the car starts like it should prior to your track day this weekend.
I spent several hours reconstructing your original file’s firmware based on the read from the Epic file. This wasn’t easy, because your ECU has had its firmware info modified by one of its previous tuners or flash tools. I went parameter by parameter to see what changed, and had to consciously decide which of the 15000 bytes of data differences to transfer over. If I had access to the original firmware info (what BMW calls “software number” or ZUSB), I could have rebuilt the tuned file off of an original BMW file in about 15 minutes.
When I initially unlocked your ECU, I had to copy a stock BMW file over the data sections of the ECU which were locked. I’m thinking the stock file I used didn’t 100% match (it was maybe a 98% match), and the slight differences are causing the weird behavior.
Joshua Bettis, P.E.
Founder and Lead Tuner
www.severntuning.com
Success! I ran the car this weekend and the hesitation appears to be gone!
Previous tuners had done something to the ecu.
You’re just not going to get from other tuners the level of support and passion you get with Joshua. I mean, at one point I texted him at the end of a track day on a Saturday thinking he would get back to me Monday. He called me that evening and by morning I had a new tune to try.  |
Hi Michael,
As you may know, Karbonius ended up making a carbon plenum similar to yours. However, a lot (all?) of the people who have installed it have found that the factory rubber elbow slips off the inlet to the plenum. Some people (including me) have wrapped the plenum inlet in tape to get a better grip, but this seems like a short-term solution at best.
When you made yours, did you do anything special to stop this happening?