CodyBigdog

You can be as “tad weary” about Dinan as you want, but for quite a few years, they have been a leader in automotive tuning. Their record speaks for itself, and I am one of their happy customers…for about 5 years.

If the tune really does make a significant performance difference, then why not post some results? I don’t necessarily expect owners, who got their cars tuned, to test it on the track, or from draggy…but if it were me, and the performance improvements were significant, I most certainly would be posting. I’d be elated that it was money well spent….and the performance improvement show that. But that’s me.

However, what I am more surprised by is that the tuners, themselves, don’t have numbers. Just good business sense if you have a great product, you would want to advertise it? Maybe not?

As I read the various issues/problems with these tunes, from various posters…in addition, I’ve gotten a few PM’s from people who don’t want to openly complain…I am left with the impression that the increases in HP, as measured on a dyno, really doesn’t translate to significant improvements on the drag/track? It would appear that the C&D article I posted, confirms that suspicion. If that is, in fact, the case…then that would be good info to know, in helping the consumer make an informed purchase. Don’t ya think??

Just sayin’

AlterZgo

This is so ironic. You want people to post actual time improvements then immediately cite your experiece with Dinan tunes on your M4 when so many experiences about Dinan tuned cars in the M3/4 forums indicate the cars make nowhere near the claimed power and produce mild performance gains, if any.

Almost every single Dinan tuned car I've seen tested by Car and Driver, Road & Track or whoever produces very disappointing measured test results. Case in point... this M4 tuned by Dinan. Here's the relevant quote from C&D: "The problem was that we couldn’t verify the performance claims on the test track. The S1 M4 ran from zero to 60 mph in 3.8 seconds, a tenth slower than a stock M4 with the DCT automatic we tested last year. The Dinan turned a 12.0-second quarter-mile at 122 mph—again, pretty much what we got with the stocker."

This is not cherry picking test results either. I don't remember ever reading a Dinan tuned car that performed significantly better than stock. Even C&D's test on the bored and stroked E92 M3 built by Dinan had results that were just slightly better than stock.

As a person who does not track my car, I have no interest in running instrumented performance tests on public roads. While it would be nice if there were people who could post actual real world test results, it is what it is and none of us regular folks are here to convince you to buy anything.

CodyBigdog

Really? Cool. Ur point is?

I have no dyno results on my Dinan tuned M4, but I did my own before and after time runs…and depending on the particular metric, it dropped times between 0.2sec-0.4sec. So this consumer was happy with my expenditure.


Is that suppose to be a link?

Great…then move along. Nothing to see here. 😎

tez2013

Yes, stock car with exception of Soul cats and filters which is straight down the fairway for stage 2 tune.

tez2013

I'm ready to go Charles as soon as we nail down this tune!

I specifically locked down a 9.14s 60 - 130 run a day before flashing the tune.

reddsektor

curious, how did you do this run and what were the conditions (what starting speed, sports or sports+ mode, sports response button pressed, etc)? 9.1 is a really good time! I’ve seen stock mostly around 9.3-9.4s, which is what I got with my C2S pdk.

After stg2 93 tune (filters, catless downpipes, PSE) my best 60-130 was/is 7.1s, starting around 50mph in sports+ and sports response button

tez2013

Sure, I also have C2S pdk without rws so I'm sure that counted for an extra tenth or so haha. Downshifted to 2nd, sports+ mode, sports response button pressed and WOT starting at 55 or so. Pretty optimal conditions with temps in the low 60s. Now that's with high flow cats and filters, but I doubt it adds much without the tune.

That's a great improvement after the tune! I'm hoping for a similar jump once my tune gets ironed out.

I have to say, the customer service has been top notch thus far. Scott/Mitch have been making additional tweaks to my tune and I'll be logging v7 this weekend.. fingers crossed!

surquhar

Most tuners don't post their own numbers because as soon as they do they get slammed with keyboard warriors calling BS on those times for whatever reason they can come up with. It's pointless.... You sound like a tuning expert and should part with $2500, get a tune and tell us your 0-60, 60-130, 1/8 mile, 1/4 mile, and 1/2 mile numbers pre and post tune you keep asking everyone else for. I am very happy with my M-Engineering tune - its a noticeable difference in power/fun factor.

fstezaws

Had my stage 1 tune for about 2 weeks now. On my first drive with it the increase in torque was very noticeable. I've e-tuned (send mod list to tuner, they build map catered to your car, you do about 30-50 revisions until it's done) about 7 different turbo cars over the last 10 years so I've got a bit of experience with this kind of process. The car feels very solid without any changes in throttle responsiveness or general driveability of car...just a lot more power. I'm tempted to try the E85 tune but probably won't.

I'm on 91 octane and was able to pull these results. This is just their V100 file so I haven't done any revisions really. I plan on going to a proper dragstrip and validating there, too.

Their team has been very responsive since purchase and I'm very pleased with the product so far!

tez2013

The latest revision to the tune did not go well. Did 3 pulls last night and on each pull mid-way through the rpm band received a transmission failure warning with pdk kicking out of 3rd gear. Mitch/ team have the logs so we'll see what they say.

Literally could not sleep last night, wondering about potential transmission issues.

Thankfully, this appears to have been caused by the incremental changes to the latest tune; flashed back to the prior version and the car runs fine and holds gears without a problem.

I was very hesitant to post this but decided to do so for the following reason: if I were a potential customer I'd want to be well-informed of what I may be getting myself into and some of the caveats that are there to running at the advertised specs/output.

Had a quick chance to do a 60 - 130 run which resulted in 8.2s - less than a second faster than my stock time and well off from the low 7s this car should be running on stage 2 93 octane.

surquhar

Tell us more. What tune? 91? 93? E85? Mods?

My tune is running awesome- no worries at all. The M E guys will get you right for sure.

tez2013

I really hope so. Stage 2 93 octane tune. Stock car with exception of soul cats and filters.

I have E85 readily available so initially was also planning to get a map set up for that. At this rate, I would be more than happy to just get the 93 map ironed out.

Tupper

I dealt with the transmission failure warning for a long time. We’ve discussed that problem in this thread before.

I wouldn’t lose sleep over it. I think it’s a software tuning thingy and it doesn’t ACTUALLY mean that your PDK is failing. I got a couple of revisions to iron that out.

The Porsche PDK is finicky

PorscheObsessed

Thanks for sharing your experience. Different folks get different things out of this thread. Some see a green light for their own ‘I live my life quarter mile at a time’ dreams, others are going to stay 100 miles away from a tune. The consistent theme here is that M Engineering is a reputable outfit with responsive customer service. The number of customers blown away by the tune are very much either on the low end OR are a quiet group. Methinks, its the latter.
Here’s what I have taken away so far: Reduce ~45 lbs with lightweight wheels, another 30 plus lbs with Lithium batteries, remove the backseats, 30 plus lbs reduction there, and improve the performance of the quarter mile from 11.3 to 11 and boost handling. That would check my boxes and increase the possibility of passing the car down to the next generation.
I might change my mind next week and call Charles, who knows.

M Engineering

Thanks for all of the feedback and support guys (and gals). We are always here for this community, including chiming in on holiday weekends with family.

I'd like to please keep this thread on-track with M-Engineering and our product M-Tuner and soon to come PDK2. We started this thread to promote our product and answer questions about it. It's also turned out to be a great platform for feedback and results.

When comparing ourselves to other tuning companies, we always like to stay in our own lane and do our own thing the best we can. I have personally met a number of other calibrators of other tuning companies and there are lots of folks doing great work to their dedicated platforms. Our bread and butter is Porsches and McLarens and those out there wanting the best possible OEM ECU tuning solution come to us for them. Our tuning efforts throughout the many years including our other years at that other tuning company have yielded many world records and brought us to cool projects like even doing the calibration work for Porsche Motorsport for events like Pike's Peak on multiple occasions. If we weren't the best we wouldn't be where we are or had these unique opportunities.

As you may or may not know, Porsche generates new CALIDs/Calibration IDs/ROMs/BoxCodes quite frequently. In fact, most models of their cars contain dozens and dozens of these. As time passes, Porsche has small updates that they perform and these are implemented into the ECU's. It's Porsches way of tweaking the tune. Each time a new ROM is released, the compiling of code and tables must be generated. It's a game of keep-up and is hit or miss when releases come out as they are never announced. When this happens there may be some time it takes to tweak some small things out but our powerful software allows for us to datalog and safely dial in these cars. Other tuning companies simply do not have this ability. Some of those "server" tunes have knock thresholds turned way up so while they are making seemingly good power they are actually causing harm in the long run and ignoring safe limits. Our priority when we tune cars is safety, power always comes second. It happens to be that when you do these together you can get some amazing results.

The reason we do not post or advertise Dragy times frequently is due to customer expectations. There are countless variables as to why a car may have run so well and when a client sees that their car isn't quite making that threshold, we get held accountable for not making those times, when in reality there could be a simple explanation. What was the DA that day? Was there a slope? What brand of tires were you running? What was the tire pressure? How many heat cycles have the tires seen? Was traction control on? Was the surface prepped? Was it wet out? Is the intercooler heat soaked? Do you have a bad batch of gas? How much ethanol are you running? What about meth? What about the alignment? What about your spoilers, are they up or down? Do you have heavy wheels? Do you have a passenger? The list goes on and on.

We will be sure to share our customer Dragy results in the future as it's highly demanded metric, but keep in mind everyone's car and situation will be different and will yield different results.

Looking forward to continuing on with this platform. Let's please keep this thread alive and well.

Have a fantastic Memorial weekend everyone and please remember why we celebrate it.

-Charles@M


Speaking of Dragy's, here is a recent C4S on Stage 1 running on pump gas. Enjoy!