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Question: What do you do when your car does this?
Answer: You take it to ACE.
While ACE built the car in early 2009, last week saw the "tuning" part of their name in action. Serious thanks to Tom, Nick and Baer for the time and patience necessary to not only deal with my primadonna idiocy, but also work their expertise on a car that sorely needed the attention.
There is an interesting story to the above graph beyond that of the hard data. There is no way to know that the above values were taken after well over 20 passes on the dyno, in conditions where the engine was suffocated by the kind of hot air that compromises ultimate maximum output. While the new tune "only" put out the same 261 whp / 231 TQ as the old laughable pig-rich tune, swapping back to that old tune in the same overbearing conditions yielded the lower power numbers.
New SMT 6 tune: 261 whp / 230 TQ, A/F ratio = word
The delta between the two is important as it shows a healthy overall change with the much-needed piece of mind that the engine is not suffering from cylinder wash. The car no longer reeks so badly to following drivers that they are forced to hit the Air Recirculation button on the dash just to breathe. Power and throttle response is far more immediate, and while the 5500 RPM wallop from the Sunbelt cams still comes on somewhat like a big turbo, it no longer feels like I'm waiting to get there. In fact the response feels nicely similar to the setup in my old, totaled E36 M3, where this same drive train once lived albeit in a different configuration.
Operation De-Aggressify the car is in effect. The black LTW5 wheels have been removed for silver versions, and the tint is coming off either this weekend or the next. I plan to have the only aspect of the that betrays its true nature to be the engine and exhaust note, otherwise it will look like any other old worthless BMW that isn't new enough to get any attention, and isn't old enough to be considered "classic" or "vintage."
With the way I drive, I need to fly as far under the radar as possible.
