[Neema]

So, so far we have:

1)one of, or both of, this member's turbo's "failed" all of a sudden

a. Dealer claims it's his muffler's fault for creating the wrong type of back pressure and wants 14k for the total bill

b.Shiv, as well as others, claim it could be from something making it's way into the intake during the member's intake install, which would have hit the turbo blades and caused the sudden failure, rather then a gradual failure which would make more sense if it really was due to a tune or other modification

2) People are speculating what boost levels are appropriate/considered safe for the N54

a. Under 15 PSI seems to be the general consensus

b. . . . .

[stressdoc]

Wow, lot of off-topic teeth gnashing. Let's chill a bit and stick to the [lack of] facts on this case. Until we get data we are pissing in the wind.

I confess to being a very cautious nervous ninny when it comes to modding my engine. This is my first turbo car. I love it. I am also, however, drawn to the possibility of having even more power, once I get the chassis & drivetrain set up properly to handle it. But not at the cost of reliability.

Unfortunately reliability at this stage of the game is mostly uncharted territory. Not many 335s with more than 100k miles on them yet, nor much racing experience. A few engines have blown, and some of these incidents have been linked to mods. But there have been extenuating circumstances, and some un-modded engines have also blown, albeit at a very low rate, suggesting that overall the N54 is a great engine (HPFP and overheating while extreme racing the notable Achilles heel for some).

Regardless, there seems little point to dragging out the verbal swords over this. The turbo modding community has been doing this stuff for quite awhile, and some outfits like Vishnu, Dinan, & AA seem to have a depth of experience and long term reputations at stake. They are clearly motivated to bring a quality product to market, with reliability a high priority.

[jdink]

Originally Posted by E82tt6

Increased boost=less reliability. You'll never see a tuner do the kind of testing you want, it just isn't possible. No one knows what it will take to pop engines, and the only way to find out is to see several go. No tuner for any manufacturer ever has, or ever will do this testing. BMW does not conduct this level of testing!

I don't mean to sound like a smartass, but what you're suggesting isn't possible. I'd suggest sticking with a completely stock car if you're adamnt about it being 100% backed up. Even BMW doesn't know when something will go wrong, but they're betting big bucks that it will be after the warranty runs out

Originally Posted by e.n335

Thanks a lot for your feedback, I read quite some very interesting information from you already. My intention has not been to be 100% backed up, it was to know why tuners still speculate what can be done and what should be avoided. I did not drive a car stock I owned since 8-10 years and I don't plan to do it know . I just expected more R&D, that's all.

Cheers,
Eugen

What kind of R&D do you suggest?

This is what springs to mind...

Buy 2 cars, keep one stock, and put the procede in the other. then run them (like that oil commercial... one with the "leading" oil brand and one with the other..) until a turbo blows.

That could probably be done (cost would probably be around 100k?), except what would that tell us? Sample size is to small and as we all know, different things can blow in the same car at totally different times.

Even if they did 5 of each cars the chances of getting any statisticly significant result would be very slim.

I'm guessing such a test in which you basically run 10 cars into the ground and have 0 resale value would cost a good $1,000,0000 once you figure in everything. So if we do the math again, lets say we have 1000 customers... we are looking at an increased cost of $1000. And what would we gain? A test result on 1% of the population of proceded cars?

[stressdoc]

Originally Posted by e.n335

I have not been told but I am well aware about this since quite a while, so it's time for me to stop buying such products. Spending money for a product which might cause a 15k - 30k US$ repair bill is simply crazy. A part of the tuners revenues should be re-invested in load and stress testing. When somebody earns 500k net profit with a tuning product it's nothing more than normal to test the system limits until something breaks. The 30k this test may be is just a part of the total research costs.

I figured that is what Shiv has been trying to do with his 335. He just hasn't been able to find the limits at which it will break yet []. Darn thing is just too tough.

More seriously, some of the info in the web circuit suggests that there is a fair bit of behind the scenes information transfer in regard to failure analysis testing. I don't think the big players here are flying blind. But I do wish that BMW performance would release their own tune...

[O-cha]

Originally Posted by e.n335

When somebody earns 500k net profit with a tuning product it's nothing more than normal to buy a lambo.

Who ever quoted me and edited this BS should be baned immediately - Eugen.

[kitw]

Originally Posted by e.n335

Sorry, I can't argee. This is true when I would tune the piggyback by myself but it clearly is not when I buy a configured product for the 335i from a tuning company. They should have sorted out and solved the issues already ( that's why I pay them ) and I expect to get a perfect working and reliable solution from such a company - like your "old" JB2 is. This "you have to pay to play" and "only time will tell" is completely BS. A tuner has to know his business or stop to offer tunings for customers. I would not buy any product from a tuner telling me that.

Cheers,
Eugen

You are taking the risk that the tuning company did their homework. I can tell definitively that no tuner company has done the level of testing that BMW has. Because of that, their products carry a greater amount of risk. I've made that choice and I've decided that I want a faster car.

If you are fooling yourself into thinking your tune is "safe" then you go right ahead, but chances are your car WILL fail before a bone stock one would. It's possible that failure won't occur until much later in the cars life, or it might be in a secondary component, but stressing your car more will eventually cause things to fail sooner.

Any tuner telling you that they have tested their product to OEM standards is simply lying to you.

[kenni243]

Originally Posted by stressdoc

Wow, lot of off-topic teeth gnashing. Let's chill a bit and stick to the [lack of] facts on this case. Until we get data we are pissing in the wind.

I confess to being a very cautious nervous ninny when it comes to modding my engine. This is my first turbo car. I love it. I am also, however, drawn to the possibility of having even more power, once I get the chassis & drivetrain set up properly to handle it. But not at the cost of reliability.

Unfortunately reliability at this stage of the game is mostly uncharted territory. Not many 335s with more than 100k miles on them yet, nor much racing experience. A few engines have blown, and some of these incidents have been linked to mods. But there have been extenuating circumstances, and some un-modded engines have also blown, albeit at a very low rate, suggesting that overall the N54 is a great engine (HPFP and overheating while extreme racing the notable Achilles heel for some).

Regardless, there seems little point to dragging out the verbal swords over this. The turbo modding community has been doing this stuff for quite awhile, and some outfits like Vishnu, Dinan, & AA seem to have a depth of experience and long term reputations at stake. They are clearly motivated to bring a quality product to market, with reliability a high priority.

+1 totally agreed! These tuners (Vishnu, Dinan, & AA) know what they are doing...if they set bar around 13-15 PSI then we have to trust that. You must be nuts to ask for EXTEND FULL R&D on a fairly new product to give you 100% reliability...If that your case then keep the car stock and wait for 5 years then beging the MOD, I'm sure you will have more reliability MOD data.

[kptaylor]

You're also forgetting the reason the later(est) tunes from Shiv are user adjustable - clients asked for this feature. There is really no way to tune for all of the after market pieces someone can install on their car. By allowing the user to change settings, this is a way to compromise on that point and make them happy. However, this introduces the potential for people without sufficient knowledge to change settings and dramatically increase the load and stress on their engines.

You can never factor in people's ignorance. If you're unwilling to take this risk then all you end up with is a single tune/map and people complaining you haven't come out with a DP map, an intake map, an intake & DP map, a catless map, etc.

[Dascamel]

Originally Posted by SP335

If I was in this guys shoes, I would put on a full fire proof race suit, get the best helmet money can buy, then I would proceed to find a wall to run my car straight in to, totaling the car, taking my bill from $14k to $500 for my insurance deductable.

Hahahahaha, you so have my sense of humor/logic. Just awesome.

[E82tt6]

Originally Posted by e.n335

Thanks a lot for your feedback, I read quite some very interesting information from you already. My intention has not been to be 100% backed up, it was to know why tuners still speculate what can be done and what should be avoided. I did not drive a car stock I owned since 8-10 years and I don't plan to do it know . I just expected more R&D, that's all.

Cheers,
Eugen

I understand. It would be easier if we had compressor maps available for the turbos. At that point we could at least GUESS how much extra stress they were under from the increased boost, and how much they were limiting flow. I know Shiv, and other tuning company owners have been FLOGGING their cars. I get the impression they're almost trying to do a "worst case scenario".

I suppose one could take apart an N54 completely, analyze each part, calculate the stresses it could take both from heat and pressure, and go from there, but even that is more than I've ever seen a tuner do.

Personally, when I set out to tune a new car, especially a turbo car, I EXPECT that 3-24 months down the road, I'm going to blow up SOMETHING, and replace it with something stronger. Maybe the diff, mayve the clutch, maybe a half-shaft, or maybe an engine component. As I've said before, I view blowing things up as finding the weak-spots, and taking the opportunity to strengthen then.

Given how unpredictable all this is, it'd be tough for the tuners to give us much more piece of mind. New engine with mostly new internals, DI, new turbos, new ecu. No one has much experience blowing up these motors before.

In the case of the car being reffered to, I personally think it's VERY likely that something was ingested by the intake, given how sudden the failure was. The likelyhood of BOTH turbos dying at the same time from wear and tear is tiny. Even something so simple as a couple small nuts would destroy a turbo instantly. The rumored "peanut" might even do it!

[Panoz]

Originally Posted by hotrod182

How noisey are they?
Here is a sample of what some of the 335i failed turbos initially sound like:

The thing about the turbos as they begin to fail is the risk of taking out other very expensive components.

Well...it took me almost 30-40 minutes to read all these pages. Going back to the above "video" i believe that this means nothing. My turbos sounds like that since the very first moment I've installed the catless DPs.
Cats are working as silencers and when removed its expected the car to be more noisy. I dont find this sound to be neccesary the "prophet of future turbo failure"...but this is my opinion.

In regards to this thread in general...iI believe that a modded 335-driven agressively- is likely to face tech-issues more easily than a stock car. You need to drive wisely when you mess up boost pressure in stock turbos...

[adc]

Originally Posted by stillclaimndp

We have no way of telling if 11psi is too much, let alone 13psi, or 15psi...

Yes we can, sort of.

If the factory program can boost 11psi in certain conditions (like high altitude) then we can assume 11psi is pretty safe. BMW would certainly make a car that functions at 5,000 or 10,000ft just as well as at 0ft.

[stressdoc]

Originally Posted by adc

Yes we can, sort of.

If the factory program can boost 11psi in certain conditions (like high altitude) then we can assume 11psi is pretty safe. BMW would certainly make a car that functions at 5,000 or 10,000ft just as well as at 0ft.

Well, sort of... the higher boost at higher altitude just compensates for the lower atmospheric pressure to provide more oxygen. But the WHP stays the same. So we do not really know what BMW thinks about amping boost to increase power to 340+ whp. Well, except for those privy to the different versions of the N54 that AG had in their skunkwerks...

There has been a fair bit of conjecture on this list regarding why BMW chose the particular state of tune for the N54 that they did. Rumors from AG regarding emissions, not stealing the M3's thunder, gentleman's car, retaining NA-like power curve, bla bla bla. But reliability has never been touted as the reason for keeping the tune at 300/300 (aka 310/312 or 326/330 for the hot version in reality) with boost at 8. They tested higher output versions, using the sort of failure analysis techniques us peons can only dream about. And near as I can tell from the behind the scenes industrial rumor mill, the N54 was up to it, albeit with concerns regarding overheating in cyl 5 & 6.

There are a ton of complex issues in sorting out a multifactorial model in regard to engine choice. Drivetrain, chassis, brakes, cooling, ... all run higher stresses with higher engine output. There are costs associated with stresses. And so we get the 300/300 version.

You tune yours to 350/370 and you will induce higher stresses on many components. Higher stresses -> higher risk of failure. The big Q is how much is the risk? My general experience with BMWs is that they are engineered extremely well. Hence not much of an increase in risk. I think Dinan came to the same conclusion.

That said, I am surrounded by a family of physics and engineering Ph.Ds that completely agree with Eugen's perspective. R & D, R & D, R & D... Although IMO, which is not a very informed one, the JBs were the real risky tunes, with Vishnu being more controlled. But clearly there were/are extremes in all tunes that individuals can push.

[stressdoc]

Originally Posted by O-cha

Who ever quoted me and edited this BS should be baned immediately - Eugen.

Ouch. I did laugh at first though. But changing a quote is absolutely verbotten. Red card in the air.

[O-cha]

Originally Posted by stressdoc

Well, sort of... the higher boost at higher altitude just compensates for the lower atmospheric pressure to provide more oxygen. But the WHP stays the same. So we do not really know what BMW thinks about amping boost to increase power to 340+ whp. Well, except for those privy to the different versions of the N54 that AG had in their skunkwerks...

There has been a fair bit of conjecture on this list regarding why BMW chose the particular state of tune for the N54 that they did. Rumors from AG regarding emissions, not stealing the M3's thunder, gentleman's car, retaining NA-like power curve, bla bla bla. But reliability has never been touted as the reason for keeping the tune at 300/300 (aka 310/312 or 326/330 for the hot version in reality) with boost at 8. They tested higher output versions, using the sort of failure analysis techniques us peons can only dream about. And near as I can tell from the behind the scenes industrial rumormill, the N54 was up to it, albeit with concerns regarding overheating in cyl 5 & 6.

There are a ton of complex issues in sorting out a multifactorial model in regard to engine choice. Drivetrain, chassis, brakes, cooling, ... all run higher stresses with higher engine output. There are costs associated with stresses. And so we get the 300/300 version.

You tune yours to 350/370 and you will induce higher stresses on many components. Higher stresses -> higher risk of failure. The big Q is how much is the risk? My general experience with BMWs is that they are engineered extremely well. Hence not much of an increase in risk. I think Dinan came to the same conclusion.

The thread is about turbo failures though not engine failures from to much torque. And in this context altitude is a direct representation of the turbos being engineered for higher than stock (as sea level) boost pressures.

And at this point you might be thinking higher HP = higher CFM, but that also applies at higher altitude, the turbo will have yo push more CFM to maintain the boost pressure.

[scalbert]

Originally Posted by O-cha

And at this point you might be thinking higher HP = higher CFM, but that also applies at higher altitude, the turbo will have yo push more CFM to maintain the boost pressure.

The shaft speeds required to generate 11 PSI at, say, 8000 feet would be much more than just a 25% increase. That same shaft speed at sea level might equate to 13 - 14 PSI at sea level. So, the shaft speed is within normal operating ranges when generating 13 - 14 PSI at sea level.

So there is everyones defense with the dealer and regional when all of these turbos grenade in the next few days.

[e.n335]

Originally Posted by stressdoc

Ouch. I did laugh at first though. But changing a quote is absolutely verbotten. Red card in the air.

I did laugh as well. But I cannot accept this. Red card.

[O-cha]

Originally Posted by stressdoc

Ouch. I did laugh at first though. But changing a quote is absolutely verbotten. Red card in the air.

I forgot the "fixed", but eugens reaction of PMing me absolutely furious that I "Changed what he said" and "Did I think that was funny" was too funny of a reaction that I decided I would just leave it the way it was. lol.

[O-cha]

Originally Posted by scalbert

The shaft speeds required to generate 11 PSI at, say, 8000 feet would be much more than just a 25% increase. That same shaft speed at sea level might equate to 13 - 14 PSI at sea level. So, the shaft speed is within normal operating ranges when generating 13 - 14 PSI at sea level.

So there is everyones defense with the dealer and regional when all of these turbos grenade in the next few days.

Yea that's the whole point I was bringing up.

Like the dinan users attack the procede all the time talking about how it uses such high boost and how it's going to blow the turbos and how dinan did so much research to decide 13psi was a safe lvl. And it's just funny because at sea level anyway it's still within the safety margins of what dinan has decided.

[stressdoc]

Originally Posted by O-cha

The thread is about turbo failures though not engine failures from to much torque. And in this context altitude is a direct representation of the turbos being engineered for higher than stock (as sea level) boost pressures.

And at this point you might be thinking higher HP = higher CFM, but that also applies at higher altitude, the turbo will have yo push more CFM to maintain the boost pressure.

I mostly agree. The high altitude bump does require higher turbo output. Indicating that the turbos are within safe limits at those demands.

[Orb]

Originally Posted by scalbert

The shaft speeds required to generate 11 PSI at, say, 8000 feet would be much more than just a 25% increase. That same shaft speed at sea level might equate to 13 - 14 PSI at sea level. So, the shaft speed is within normal operating ranges when generating 13 - 14 PSI at sea level.

So there is everyones defense with the dealer and regional when all of these turbos grenade in the next few days.

We can’t dismiss the change in the fluid properties at altitude and thus difference in pressure drop for the whole system. I don’t think the turbo will see the same pressure or shaft speed as you said.

Orb

[stressdoc]

Originally Posted by O-cha

I forgot the "fixed", but eugens reaction of PMing me absolutely furious that I "Changed what he said" and "Did I think that was funny" was too funny of a reaction that I decided I would just leave it the way it was. lol.

Eugen is a heck of a good guy. Why don't you buy him a cold litre stein.