M2 / M2c / M3 / M4 F8x/G8x/F97

We have been tuning BMW’s for street and race for 20 years and are passionate about BMW performance.

Our BMW calibration experience began with E30’s, S50, M50 and then S54 engines for circuit, drag, and hill climb events.

This evolved into endurance racing, and we leaned heavily into S54 and then S65 based racing series. From these years, we learned the unique operation of BMW engines, hardware, and software.

From there, we moved heavily into S54 turbocharging and modernizing the S54 Turbo platform which was using extremely antiquated techniques applied to a very good engine/chassis combo. These are the videos from the mid 2000’s you saw of Turbocharged M3’s shooting black smoke with loosely built, low compression motors, injector resistors under the driver’s seat, and methanol injection. They were great for their time, but entirely stalled by lack of competition or outside the BMW box thinking.

We brought flex fuel, knock sensing per cylinder, E throttle, and turbine housing based wastegating to the platform, among many other developments.

We got into the N54 tuning scene when it first became popular and were some of the first to do single turbo and nitrous equipped N54s. We also did sequential port injection that was staged and integrated in the late 2000’s. The N54 racing scene devolved to a “race to the bottom”, and we now only support properly built race builds with Syvecs engine management.

With the introduction of the F Series cars, BMW had a modern, turbocharged, direct injection straight 6 which is something we have a lot of experience with. At the time, the high volume tuners were tuning these cars with very low level software and then augmenting fueling with an entirely disconnected port injection controller that was popularized in the late 90’s by Mitsubishi Starion and DSM folks. In the last 20 years, all of these other platforms (including DSMs) have come a long way, but the popular BMW tuners were going backwards. We asked, “why”?

We purchased several cars and began testing. We found out that what other tuning shops were doing was entirely incorrect and that isn’t a matter of opinion. They were chasing fueling misfires with spark plug gap and purple coils from Temu. They were not balancing direct and port injection duties. The port injection had no idea what the direct injection was doing, and visa versa. Torque targets were sent to the moon and they were using boost control to drive the delivery strategy. That is putting the cart before the horse, as they say. Users were also running E85 without flex fuel sensors, measuring with archaic devices and then setting up their tuning to be “kinda close” most of the time. Lastly, they were running ethanol based fuels with no fuel filtering, constantly clogging injectors and hurting engines.

Limitations are a real thing, but the above limitations were a matter of choosing regress, and not acceptable on an expensive, modern, sophisticated BMW.

We knew there was room in the market, but we also knew this was going to face a lot of pushback from those who were taking advantage of the lack of education in this client space. Because there was nobody pushing the scene forward, it was going backward. We planned to educate the clientele to make smarter decisions and ask for a better product.

We started by developing a plug and play flex fuel kit with no chopping of wires, fuel lines, etc. This evolved into a fuel filter setup that incorporated the only fuel filter that is approved by Bosch for the injectors. What’s remarkable is it is STILL the only fuel filter that meets OE injector specifications.

Then we worked with various resources to acquire the BMW functional documents at a cost. These documents explain, in German, how the calibration structure works for various control systems within the DME. By studying, translating, testing, and hundreds of hours on the dyno, we started to develop our own calibrations. What we found was that the calibration platforms we and others were using were greatly lacking in critical tables needed to properly calibration the vehicle. Why wasn’t anyone else asking for these changes?

Following a lot of harassment of the software platform manufacturers, and despite the pushback, we started to get the tools we need to do our job correctly. We had to essentially “prove” why we needed what we were asking for. Simultaneously we worked hand in hand with Motiv to test the Reflex which integrated additional input, output, and port injection fueling. This was a “game changer” for us. While I know that is an overused term, in this case, having the DME, which is the brains of the operation, control both the direct and port fuel injection is absolutely critical. This was the beginning of the end of the “back to future experiment” that tuning houses were performing on their clientele.

We first managed a complete and total understanding of S55/N55 via the Ecutek platform. At the time, the Ecutek software was the most developed, advanced, and professional. We then thoroughly worked through B58 calibrations to gain a complete grasp of their operation with great success. From there, we brought our understanding of the hardware to BM3 and MHD and developed well honed BM3 and MHD tuning options for our clients.

At this point, we understood the plus’ and minus’ of each platform and were no longer tied to one platform. We tune all three platforms every day. We recommend the best fit for your hardware, period. There are some circumstances when we will request you use a different software platform that gives us the tools to do our best work on your car. The clients that are a good fit generally are agreeable to this and enjoy the right software + ideal calibration we bring to the table. If you find that the brand of your software is more important than the quality of the data in the calibration, we may not be the best fit.

Fast forward to today; today, with the release of the S58 in 2019, a large percentage of our work has shifted this way. We were first to market with many of the most advanced tuning techniques for this platform. Unlike the F8x platform, starting at the same time as other tuners showed where we stacked up; we did and do hold many records from stock turbo to high trap speeds and dyno numbers. At this point, our reputation speaks for itself and you are welcome to poke around to see what the feedback is like for our work on this platform. Make sure to check out our blog for lots of useful information.

Remote tuning through Bend Calibration is a tailored process designed to carefully and systematically deliver strong performance with considerations for the OEM DME strategies that we carefully have studied over the years. We are neither conservative or overly aggressive, rather each calibration is tailored to the task at hand. We work with shops as well as private parties; anyone who want’s the best for their car.

If this sounds like something you are interested in, contact us for pricing and additional information: tuning@bendcalibration.com