Hi Guys,
Thanks for your kind words Kenny. Meth kit is here!!
Andrew just installed one, and the car is a beast. Can't wait to try it out.
I also can't speak highly enough of Andrew. You Melbourne guys are very lucky to have the most knowledgable and passionate N54 workshop in Australia, and I would high recommend people in other states contact him when considering mods, as he can probably arrange to get parts to you and recommend a local fitter that can do a great job with his support. He also know the Procede better than anyone else in Australia (bad me!!
) and we talk often.
Raz0s, my backround is WRXs and EVOs. My other car is a fully track prepped 98 WRX. I have tuned many EVOs including the quickest local club sprint EVO9 of a few years ago. I know these cars backwards, and if anything I have a bit to go in my N54 knowledge compared to them as I have done everything you can do with the EVO/WRXs.
The ECU platform is very different in the BMW. For a start, flash tuning is very time consuming in the BMW. Currently it can only be done by specialist workshops who pay alot for the capability. Each time you reflash takes a long time (30+ minutes), so custom tuning (which requires alot of trial and error) is time consuming and expensive. So that leaves only off the shelf solutions. Off the shelf solutions seem OK for people looking for a mild increase in performance, but generally the piggy back tunes have proven to be of higher performance as proven by dyno, ET results and seat of the pants. Alot of the algorithms in the stock ECU are just not up to high boost levels, so just retuning the flash does not provide great results. I would recommend that anyone after a no fuss low to medium power upgrade consider flash tunes and piggybacks, but anyone looking for medium to high level upgrades can really only consider the piggyback.
I can also say that atleast in the case of the product I peddle, it is far more advanced than what you have seen in piggybacks on the EVO/WRX platform. Piggybacks from those platforms date back 10+ years, and since the free flash tuning (rom raider etc.) became available for that platform, piggybacks stopped progressing. The Procede does so much more and has so much more integration with the stock DME (ECU) in the N54 platform that it can achive alot more in terms of tuning. With the Procede we achieve great tunability to be able to provide great performance with excellent engine safety. It is always evolving with more and more features and improving drivability and performance.
Cheers,
Adrian