HOLLY CRAP!! 230 degree water temp?? Are you freaking kidding me?? OMG why arnt the fans comming on!!!

 

As do I... Now I know why people blow $15k before getting a clue and talking to you...

 

Not really. If you have the stock box and you are cruising down the road, the temp in the MAF sensor should read about ambient (if its calibrated correctly). In an intake like ours that removes the scoop and pushes air right to the filter, when moving down the road its should also be ambient. But at a stand still, the temps will go up a little. Also if you have a filter stuck on your MAF housing (like the DIY intakes) you may see an increase in temp because its not getting a fresh stream of ambient air.

I only brought it up because of the first comment.

I completely understand that you keep saying its not scientific, but you keep saying "How can my testing be wrong", and i was trying to explain how things work..................

Up until this last one, we having an informative conversation about things, but this comment is not really not sitting well with me. "Common Knowledge" that our results are skewed? How is that? We have lots of data backing up our claims, multiple cars, even events where 20 people are standing around watching the Intake HP numbers change while we on on the dyno (R53 esspeically). We have even backed up the data on an Auto R56 and the gains are almost exactly the same as the manual(although lower numbers overall). If i do a search, i only find one guy who didn't see the same HP gains we did on our turboback exhaust. But they tested it differently than we did (start RPM's and other things) But that is a whole other thread.

Tone in emails is very hard to show, and in my last posts, i was not being a butt head at all. I was seriously trying to help you and others reading, with why your temps are the way they are. Please keep that in mind with your future responses/pokes.......

 

I am pretty sure my engine prolly gets hottest... but the only thing that I really wanna know is what are my IATs... sure I wanna know what the temps before the IC are, but being that I know what temps turbos and SCs tend to run... I know it's damn hot... and I know if the approach is good, then, well it's working!

now I will say that if the temp was 67 and the IATs were around 100 that's an approach of 33... in my mind that does leave some to be desired... an approach of 20 is what is usually "good"... and as far as boost drop... let's not get me going on that...

Replacing the IC isnt just about going bigger... it's about going more efficient... I have a HUGE IC right now... but I could get one the same size that is also more efficient... I just got what I needed at the time... I look forward to seeing what I get with a BETTER core of the same size



the fans in the MINI do not kick on till 240 :D at least on the R53

 

In the end you are right, for the normal guy who might have some gauges in the car, who cares what the pre, post, ambient temps are, or boost before and after, or ambient air flow. Its the temps coming out of the IC. This only doesn't work in a situation like our first prototype core, where it cooled really well but had a slightly high pressure drop. We have to know the other things to show that our core works, and also to prove that the calculations from the air flow software are close. And its funny, our IC print out almost matches the results exactly.

For rustyboy155, if he feels that his stock IC is fine and that it doesn't get hotter than 105F, using the tools he has, then so be it.

 

Well, It's relative to what we are all doing... obviously in my case... I left out that I went from the top mount... to a HUGE front mount... LOL that was amazing...

I also did allot of Dyno testing of the ICs.. cause if they work on the dyno... you KNOW they work on the street

I think Rustboy is just saying that he is amazing at by the stock IC on the R56 as many of us were with the R53...

Doesnt it mean with upgrades it shouldnt be upgraded too... that's relative...

everyone has their "style" of "tuning"... hell to this day there are OTHER (not you guys Alta) "tuners" who still say what I am doing is unpossible... LOL... but I am not a "tuner" I am just a Mad Modder :D

 

Not ANY discredit (not in the slightest) to Jan, but are you saying we have no idea what we are talking about? So we are just here making things up so people buy them? Currently in the R56 world, we were the first to market with pretty much every part you can buy for the R56. Along the way we proved that they worked. We were the first with a bigger turbo on the R56, and still to this day have the highest HP R56 at 270WHP. Its hard to make those kinds of things up.

 

Usually doesn't click on until just after 230. I've seen it come on at 231-235.... They never *stay* on though, so you'll see a 10-15 degree drop, then it'll go back up. Really not a concern unless it starts creeping up past 240. Most modern cooling systems are good until 260+.

 

That is funny... THere sure are alot of the older generation guys out there still thinking "how can these little cars go so fast". I get a kick out of that also.

I also think you are correct about Rustyboy. And that was my point to why we even responded. I don't think the testing is correct, or the sensors are slow, or something. But again (like i said) using the data he gather, i would also come to that same conclusion. But at the same time understand that there are variables and that they might play a factor in why results are the way they are.

FMIC's rule! Esspecially on R53's, that is bitchen!

 

We've measured intake temps in a variety of ways on the R53, including testing Water to Air setups that don't really do a thing on the street (My intake temps are usually right around where a comparable car with a W2A is at on the street). On the track, things start to heat up quite a bit, since I don't know of any tracks in Marina Del Ray that you can just drive to, do a few hard laps, and leave, That testing will have to wait until we can find someone with an R56 that has some time.

My POINT about dyno testing is that you're not going to obtain real numbers on IAT's that simulate hard track driving from a dyno. The dyno that we normally go to has a fan that would recirculate all the air in the 15k square foot building in under 3 minutes. It's STILL not going to replicate real world driving.

I also mentioned several times that this testing was done on a STOCK CAR. Pushing 20+ lbs of boost through that tiny turbo on the R56 with your Unichip, I wouldn't doubt the need for a new intercooler.

No doubt you guys have done a lot of R&D work, but it's pretty hard to gain 10-15 HP from installing a cold air intake on any modern car. You could pull the intake OFF the car and it wouldn't make that much power.

Yes, I'm well aware of your larger turbo. I think the main reason that you guys are monopolizing the market in power parts on the R56 is because a lot of the other vendors are still focused on the R53. It's a much larger market, and at this point, it's a lot easier to make power.

I'm not taking stabs at Alta or anything you produce. I have one of your pulley's on my car, and it works fine. I never mentioned Alta or any of your products in my original post (I honestly didn't even know that you made an IC, I don't keep up on R56 parts). I just don't like when vendors come into a thread and start shooting down independent testing because they've done testing of their own. I'm well aware that OBDII testing isn't the most accurate, but it's certainly not going to be off by a factor of 10 or more.

When I buy things, I look for INDEPENDENT test results, I don't care if you guys (Or Jan, or Helix, or anyone else for that matter) ran a dyno that said your exhaust made 100 HP. Show someone that took their car to an independent dyno and made that kind of power and I'll believe it. I've seen what you can do on a dyno with correction factors, improper use, ice, or just "Forgetting" to put a fan in front of the stock IC during that test run. You can make dyno numbers do whatever you want. I'm not insinuating that you did, and frankly I don't care. You guys are in business to make parts, and sell them, It's not my business how you do that. That doesn't mean I'm not going to post my own results though.

As for your exhaust, I only mentioned that because 20+ HP is quite a bit (And certainly not gained from the cat back, the majority of that I'm sure comes from a downpipe). I don't doubt that it makes power, as it should.

I'm not even going to touch the "Vendors making parts that don't do anything" comment. I think we all know there are plenty of parts out for the R53 and R56 that don't do a thing, there are probably quite a few that actually LOSE power.

Lets just move on and let people take the information for what it is, rather than trying to discredit each other's work.

 

Indeed, upgrading parts is all relative, some people think it's nuts to spend the amount of money that we've spent on our cars. It's a hobby for me, and I enjoy it. I still haven't seen any Air to Air that cools and recovers as fast as the stock IC (Besides the GP IC) that I care to spend the money on at this point (Not going to go FMIC, too much to fabricate something like that).

On the street my intake temps rarely elevate above 15-20 above ambient, and that works fine for me. On the track, Water to Air really shines (Intake temps 15-20 above ambient pushing 15 lbs of boost?), and since I spend a lot of time there, if and when I decide to upgrade my IC, I'll be going with a Laminova W2A (Unless something better comes along).

 

The you was directed towards Jan by the way, not directed towards Alta (As many of his customers are people who have been unhappy with the results of other tuners and speed shops playing with their cars.) After re-reading that I can see how it looks like I'm directing my statement towards Alta.

 

As a former employee of GM Europe in Marketing and design I can tell you that unless the dyno is located in an actual wind tunnel you will not get the same results as real work usage.

Depending on what you are testing your results may be close but those relating to airflow and cooling will vary somewhat. I personally saw this when I was at GM and got to see some of the early turbo developemnt back in the late 90's that led to the turbo's you see on the ECOTEC engines.

Anyway, basically you dont get the true airflow around all the front of the car orunderside on over the hood which are all designed with both aerodynamics and cooling in mind.

On a second note I had some experience with modifying a 2002 GTI including intake, exhaust and chip upgrade (14psi to 19psi) and all of that was done on the "pathetic" wheel well mounted IC in front of the right front wheel and fed by an opening no bigger than 5" x 5". Not many people mounted an FMIC on those models if I remember but I am sure it would have helped as Audi put a 2nd one in front of the left front wheel in the 225 Audi TT which used the same engine (slightly bigger turbo)
From our experience an FMIC helps when you live in a hot climate and do a lot of stop start driving in an urban setting (just like SoCA where I use to live)

As you can see from my sig I have some mods and a few are from ALTA and I must say that after doing the boost tubes and intake tube (CAI had been on for a month already) that the engine was noticeably smoother and seemed a little better all around and like to rev more (ambient temps mostly in low/mid 60s and no stop & go traffic)

There is a separate thread on a request for stock v ALTA FMIC dyno.
It was brought about because ALTA doesn't have one on their website and the only ones they have are a little confusing as they show stock FMIC v Proto FMIC and then Proto FMIC v final version FMIC, and all of this was on a car that had every ALTA mod (intake, tubes, pipes, exhaust) except the chip. They did this because "we have dynoed the FMIC with parts we feel 99% of the customers are going to have" which may well be true assuming they have sold 3-400 as more than 3 or 4 people didn't have those mods and were asking about it. Adam assurred us that he will get some stock FMIC dyno's up for those on the fence, although I think the delay lost a few to Forge.

All interesting reading though, just WTF did Mini place the FMIC so low down and hide 1/2 of it .... if they hadn't we wouldn't probably have 1/2 the thread discussions on this that we do.

Oh, and one final point which may or may not be relevant but there was a magazine article with an interview with the chief engineer on the Mini Cooper S project and he did say that the FMIC was either the weakest point or the first thing he would change if he could (not sure which he said but I got the impression he lost out on a how the FMIC is in the Cooper S and had to compromise which I had experience of at GM Europe)

 

Hey Nick,
Check out my introductory datalogging thread I did back in March last year when I had my R56, it's interestingly similar to what you found

Cheers,
Ryan

 

Great info as always Ryan! Glad to see I'm not completely crazy *Despite what all the people who WANT their car to be inefficient say*.

Do you have the air fuel map for that baseline? I'm curious to see what it looks like compared to the Unichip "Tuned" dyno I saw recently.

Thanks!

 

Thanks for that Ryan...it was an interesting read and definitely goes along with what Nick and I found!

 

It's worth repeating that the stock IC is very effective at maintaining good low IAT's in the real world. On the dyno, I saw IAT's of ~125F after a pull, however it would quickly [30 seconds or so] recover to a handful within ambient. On the racetrack, the IC kept IAT's very reasonable, maybe +20 degrees ambient; it may have some pressure drop, but it works out on the track. I wouldn't expect it to work as well on the dyno or autocross, because obviously you're lacking airflow. The front-mount I had on my turbo R53 was monstrous enough it kept IAT's on 300wHP+ runs under 100F [of course it helped I had my high-speed cooling fan pulling through it too along with a drum fan and two carpet-dryers].

I do have the AFR charts back on my home PC, however I'm away from home on business. If I remember when I get back I'll come back and post them here. I don't think I ever posted them before mainly as it would confuse most, the AFR's definitely confused some "tuners".

A direct injection [DI] engine doesn't have the same "rules of thumb" [and I hate using that term because it allows for the excuse of incompetence] as port injection [PFI] engines. The main differences are the level of air/fuel homogenization and the injection timing. For DI versus PFI, the time it takes for the mixture to burn decreases, combustion chamber hot spots minimize, and the mixture burns more uniformly; there's less of a wavefront and more of a simultaneous "boom", though not as absolute as an HCCI engine. All this means ignition timing and AFR will be radically different from a PFI setup. No longer do we run 40 degrees of advance or 11.0:1 on 100% gasoline. Now, something along the lines of 13.0:1 and 10 degrees advance are safe and normal. I can't give exact figures because I haven't done the hard research; I simply don't have the funding for that sort of thing. Too much ignition advance and you'll finish combustion even before the piston hits TDC! No more snooze-combustion like port injection, that's for sure.

How the R56 MCS's AFR looks from the factory, as read from the on-board Bosch LSU sensor [and from my quickly fading memory], starts off at about 16.0:1 at low RPM and stays there for a while until it ramps down to approx 12.5:1. From there, it'll spike back up to about stoich, then ramp back down to 12.5:1. It'll "sawtooth" a few cycles, and how many cycles will depend on the dyno pull and perhaps the revision of ECU software, I'm not completely sure. The ECU, even with it's closed loop wideband setup, very oddly controls AFR.

The ignition is just as off-the-wall for a person used to PFI. At WOT, it'll start about 4 degrees advance at 2k RPM and just ramp up to about 9 degrees at 6500 RPM. It will wiggle around depending on the boost [which depends on the intake and exhaust fitted], but no more than about 2 degrees, which will make a noticeable impact to the dyno pull.

Cheers for now,
Ryan

 

Great info, guys!

 

Good to know the IC works as well on the track as it does on the street!

DFI is still pretty knew and sometimes I think it confuses even the people that were responsible for designing it. .

When you say "Sawtooth" does it look similar to the graph I posted?

I can only hope that within the next few years there will be a better understanding of exactly how it works and what's "Safe". If I had the money to fund your research I'd gladly donate something Ryan .

 

Nick: could you repost that graph with AFR here in this thread for me? I can't find it right now. Thanks!

 

Here ya go Ryan!

 

Thanks Nick! Yuppers that looks pretty normal for the R56 MCS; even though it looks pretty odd to me. I can guess they're keeping it lean at lower RPM to spike the EGT to spool the turbo quicker without pulling timing. Apparently with GDI you can get away with that more than port injection. The sawtoothing at higher RPM however, I can't explain logically.

 

Interesting...

We can only assume BMW knows what they're doing...

 

that explains why all of the cars are popping head gaskets on the race track

 

Probably why they lowered compression for JCW. One of those "Oops" moments.

"Hey... shouldn't we rethink the whole 10.5:1 thing with air fuels of 14 and 18 lbs of boost?"

"Shhh"

*Head gasket blows again*

"Damnit! Fine... we do it your way... lower it to *Mortal* levels"

*Maniacal Laughter Ensues*