vac or dinan throttle bodies?

[Chrisyphus]

Lol at the romance. Or Bromance? IDK.

I agree that we have left the E46 out a little bit compared to the others, but to be honest, We just arent terribly sure there's a lot that needs to be done in this market- Sure the lightened OEM flywheel is a great option, and we are discussing it internally since it was brought up to us, anAd barring any unexpected complications it is almost certainly coming.

Having said that, everyone and their brother makes parts for the E46 M3. And those parts come in every tier of quality from pure chinesium to ultra premium (looking at you, Arrow Cranks).


A key tenet of our philosophy is that if we can't do something in a way that materially improves on the best existing options, we will not do it.

We aren't interested in being another company hawking their various wares and hustling the community. That would be really easy to do if we wanted to, and honestly, we would probably be way better off financially lol, but the fact of the matter is Thats not why we are in this industry. Almost all of us come from adjacent industries where we were making more money and had more secure careers. We love what we do, and because of that, we are unwilling to do anything that we arent interested in.

Unfortunately, the upshot is that there isn't a lot of room in the S54 community. we do have several projects planned in the medium future, and they will net some overlap that we arent terribly keen on, but that overlap will be the result of us creating a solution to specific pain points and then building a complete package around that solution because wo do not want to force our customers to cobble together a suspension system from 3-5 different vendors, for example.

Having said all of that, it should be noted that we produce nearly as many S54s as we do S62s. The S62 builds do tend to get the limelight, but that is more a result of the E39 community than our effort to do so. As I type this, there are 3 fully assembled S54 strokers (3.5L) in the room nest to my office- they will each generate 390-410 Wheel Horsepower. There are also two club sports builds in progress.

[Obioban]

Should probably :cough: post about them.

s62 gets the limelight because Peter posts about them on M5board.

[siamkazi]

Lol at the romance. Or Bromance? IDK.

I agree that we have left the E46 out a little bit compared to the others, but to be honest, We just arent terribly sure there's a lot that needs to be done in this market- Sure the lightened OEM flywheel is a great option, and we are discussing it internally since it was brought up to us, anAd barring any unexpected complications it is almost certainly coming.

Having said that, everyone and their brother makes parts for the E46 M3. And those parts come in every tier of quality from pure chinesium to ultra premium (looking at you, Arrow Cranks).


A key tenet of our philosophy is that if we can't do something in a way that materially improves on the best existing options, we will not do it.

We aren't interested in being another company hawking their various wares and hustling the community. That would be really easy to do if we wanted to, and honestly, we would probably be way better off financially lol, but the fact of the matter is Thats not why we are in this industry. Almost all of us come from adjacent industries where we were making more money and had more secure careers. We love what we do, and because of that, we are unwilling to do anything that we arent interested in.

Unfortunately, the upshot is that there isn't a lot of room in the S54 community. we do have several projects planned in the medium future, and they will net some overlap that we arent terribly keen on, but that overlap will be the result of us creating a solution to specific pain points and then building a complete package around that solution because wo do not want to force our customers to cobble together a suspension system from 3-5 different vendors, for example.

Having said all of that, it should be noted that we produce nearly as many S54s as we do S62s. The S62 builds do tend to get the limelight, but that is more a result of the E39 community than our effort to do so. As I type this, there are 3 fully assembled S54 strokers (3.5L) in the room nest to my office- they will each generate 390-410 Wheel Horsepower. There are also two club sports builds in progress.

S54 Stroker you say? Reliable and Streetable?

[Chrisyphus]

Should probably :cough: post about them.

s62 gets the limelight because Peter posts about them on M5board.

Listen, man, we know what we're bad at, lol. We are bad at marketing. We're trying to do better, haha.

We have an Astoral Blue E46 M3 that is coming together now- its an incredible car and the owner has excellent taste and spares no expense. It is the second car he has had done with us, his first being a full "street car" build that leaves as close to nothing on the table as you can without making it uncomfortable to drive. The E39 got a full MCS 3 way suspension and every single bushing in the chassis upgraded or brand new at least, AP racing brake kit (designed for an F8x, then retrofit by us because AP refused to make a kit for the E39), forgeline wheels, header back exhaust, our HO S62 making about 460 wheel, fully reupholstered interior done in Ferrari leather, and every part we make for the S62. His E46 is getting the same treatment, except it is meant for more of a trackday/canyon spec- full spherical suspension system, every single are brand new OEM or adjustable aftermarket where available, MCS 3 ways, AP brake kit, S54 stroker, header back exhaust, Leather (heated and airbag) Recaro sportsters (and interestingly, the owner did not like the idea of the black Recaro leather not matching the OEM BMW leather perfectly, so we ordered 3 hides of Recaro leather directly from them and had the entire interior re-uppholstered to match the seats), and a ton of other mods that I am sure I am forgetting. Point being, I think we are going to have a lot of E46 content in the near future.

S54 Stroker you say? Reliable and Streetable?

Yeah, we have multiple street cars and race cars out on the road, each putting tens of thousands of miles on them (or more, we dont keep track, but customers do like to tell us about their cars lol), and we have never had a single failure. In all honesty, they're pretty easy to get right. It's a pretty extreme build by NA standards, but compared to how aggressive you have to be when building high-horsepower FI motors, the stroker builds are fairly mild in that regard- theyre not super loose and sloppy because they dont need to deal with such insane forces and heat- that's not to say they're not built with the highest quality components- they are. We use Arrow precision cranks and rods (because they are the best you can buy- we internally verify and QC every component we get. The rejection rate from even premium and trusted brands is far higher than you would expect. It is at least a quarterly occurrence that we have to send a $2500-$3000 set of pistons back to one of our suppliers because they failed to meet the critical tolerance that we demand (and pay for) by multiple grams. Arrow has never sent us anything that was out of spec, and their cranks are the most consistently perfectly straight (within .0002") we have ever seen. We pair that with custom spec JE pistons, all balanced to within one gram of each other, then we balance the entire rotating assembly to within one gram of itself. IIRC, BMW's acceptable tolerance is within 3 grams. Then the heads get a full port and polish job, we usually use Schrick cams as part of this package- 280/272 or 288.280 high lift, depending on customer preference regarding the car's manners. I think the 288/280 idles fine and behaves perfectly normal at low RPM, but some people are concerned it would be too spicy, or they are more interested in mid-range than top-end power.

Upshot, yeah, it's a reliable build. We use nothing but the best in them, and the S54 is extremely robust to begin with. The one thing that annoys me is that it only makes around 400 Wheel horsepower. Peter is a bit of a boomer in that he was a little unaware of the growing prevalence of E85 and just how significant the benefits of it are. It will not make as big a difference here as it would on an FI car, of course, but because we are octane limited before MBT, if we were to do one of these builds with a flex fuel system and the capacity for E85, I expect there is at least 20 more horsepower on the table, conservatively. I have been known to be wrong, though, lol.

[davidinnyc]

Listen, man, we know what we're bad at, lol. We are bad at marketing. We're trying to do better, haha.

We have an Astoral Blue E46 M3 that is coming together now- its an incredible car and the owner has excellent taste and spares no expense. It is the second car he has had done with us, his first being a full "street car" build that leaves as close to nothing on the table as you can without making it uncomfortable to drive. The E39 got a full MCS 3 way suspension and every single bushing in the chassis upgraded or brand new at least, AP racing brake kit (designed for an F8x, then retrofit by us because AP refused to make a kit for the E39), forgeline wheels, header back exhaust, our HO S62 making about 460 wheel, fully reupholstered interior done in Ferrari leather, and every part we make for the S62. His E46 is getting the same treatment, except it is meant for more of a trackday/canyon spec- full spherical suspension system, every single are brand new OEM or adjustable aftermarket where available, MCS 3 ways, AP brake kit, S54 stroker, header back exhaust, Leather (heated and airbag) Recaro sportsters (and interestingly, the owner did not like the idea of the black Recaro leather not matching the OEM BMW leather perfectly, so we ordered 3 hides of Recaro leather directly from them and had the entire interior re-uppholstered to match the seats), and a ton of other mods that I am sure I am forgetting. Point being, I think we are going to have a lot of E46 content in the near future.




Yeah, we have multiple street cars and race cars out on the road, each putting tens of thousands of miles on them (or more, we dont keep track, but customers do like to tell us about their cars lol), and we have never had a single failure. In all honesty, they're pretty easy to get right. It's a pretty extreme build by NA standards, but compared to how aggressive you have to be when building high-horsepower FI motors, the stroker builds are fairly mild in that regard- theyre not super loose and sloppy because they dont need to deal with such insane forces and heat- that's not to say they're not built with the highest quality components- they are. We use Arrow precision cranks and rods (because they are the best you can buy- we internally verify and QC every component we get. The rejection rate from even premium and trusted brands is far higher than you would expect. It is at least a quarterly occurrence that we have to send a $2500-$3000 set of pistons back to one of our suppliers because they failed to meet the critical tolerance that we demand (and pay for) by multiple grams. Arrow has never sent us anything that was out of spec, and their cranks are the most consistently perfectly straight (within .0002") we have ever seen. We pair that with custom spec JE pistons, all balanced to within one gram of each other, then we balance the entire rotating assembly to within one gram of itself. IIRC, BMW's acceptable tolerance is within 3 grams. Then the heads get a full port and polish job, we usually use Schrick cams as part of this package- 280/272 or 288.280 high lift, depending on customer preference regarding the car's manners. I think the 288/280 idles fine and behaves perfectly normal at low RPM, but some people are concerned it would be too spicy, or they are more interested in mid-range than top-end power.

Upshot, yeah, it's a reliable build. We use nothing but the best in them, and the S54 is extremely robust to begin with. The one thing that annoys me is that it only makes around 400 Wheel horsepower. Peter is a bit of a boomer in that he was a little unaware of the growing prevalence of E85 and just how significant the benefits of it are. It will not make as big a difference here as it would on an FI car, of course, but because we are octane limited before MBT, if we were to do one of these builds with a flex fuel system and the capacity for E85, I expect there is at least 20 more horsepower on the table, conservatively. I have been known to be wrong, though, lol.

Only 16 posts and I've already read enough to have me contemplate another M3 with a 3.5L alongside the current supercharger build... thanks alot.

[Chrisyphus]

Only 16 posts and I've already read enough to have me contemplate another M3 with a 3.5L alongside the current supercharger build... thanks alot.

I really appreciate you saying this. Sometimes I feel like the time I spend on forums is wasted, but feedback like this reminds me the value of engaging in this way.

Thank you!

[siamkazi]

I really appreciate you saying this. Sometimes I feel like the time I spend on forums is wasted, but feedback like this reminds me the value of engaging in this way.

Thank you!

Same as David, I was planning cams in the coming months but this might be the ultimate S54, did you have videos etc? Is the price a big delta from buying a full engine from you vs building upon what what we already have i.e. airbox, headers etc?

[9kracing]

I really appreciate you saying this. Sometimes I feel like the time I spend on forums is wasted, but feedback like this reminds me the value of engaging in this way.

Thank you!

I only needed to read this - "we internally verify and QC every component we get. The rejection rate from even premium and trusted brands is far higher than you would expect. It is at least a quarterly occurrence that we have to send a $2500-$3000 set of pistons back to one of our suppliers because they failed to meet the critical tolerance that we demand (and pay for) by multiple grams. " to know you're exactly the type of person I want working on my car.

There's far too many people who half-ass everything nowadays

[Chrisyphus]

Same as David, I was planning cams in the coming months but this might be the ultimate S54, did you have videos etc? Is the price a big delta from buying a full engine from you vs building upon what what we already have i.e. airbox, headers etc?

Simply put, it would be as much or as little as you want. Peter will have his recommendations of what he knows to be the best options to pair with our build, but if you already have an intake and headers and want to use them on the new motor, that is entirely acceptable. We definitely try to accommodate our customers as much as possible! At the end of the day, it is your build, we just get to be a part of it.

The coolest thing about our S54 stroker, IMO, is that nothing is left on the table- you still rev to 8000 RPM and get to have all the fun there, you just have more torque everywhere. I'm sure we do have videos somewhere. I personally do not... Of all of us, I am the worst about remembering to get my phone out and catch content.

I only needed to read this - "we internally verify and QC every component we get. The rejection rate from even premium and trusted brands is far higher than you would expect. It is at least a quarterly occurrence that we have to send a $2500-$3000 set of pistons back to one of our suppliers because they failed to meet the critical tolerance that we demand (and pay for) by multiple grams. " to know you're exactly the type of person I want working on my car.

There's far too many people who half-ass everything nowadays

We stand behind everything we do, and we know our builds are quite expensive. We could not imagine selling someone an engine if there were any unknowns. The anxiety would drive me insane.

Having said that, yeah... Since I became a part of this industry, I have learned that it is almost entirely smoke and mirrors. Over and over and over again, people I deal with show me just how inept they are. All of these guys who claim to know what's what based on their experience and background are full of shit and have no idea what they're talking about. They stand behind whichever brands give them the deepest cut or the most clout. In all honesty, it has been nothing but disappointing. Exceedingly few are the real deal.

[siamkazi]

Simply put, it would be as much or as little as you want. Peter will have his recommendations of what he knows to be the best options to pair with our build, but if you already have an intake and headers and want to use them on the new motor, that is entirely acceptable. We definitely try to accommodate our customers as much as possible! At the end of the day, it is your build, we just get to be a part of it.

The coolest thing about our S54 stroker, IMO, is that nothing is left on the table- you still rev to 8000 RPM and get to have all the fun there, you just have more torque everywhere. I'm sure we do have videos somewhere. I personally do not... Of all of us, I am the worst about remembering to get my phone out and catch content.


We stand behind everything we do, and we know our builds are quite expensive. We could not imagine selling someone an engine if there were any unknowns. The anxiety would drive me insane.

Having said that, yeah... Since I became a part of this industry, I have learned that it is almost entirely smoke and mirrors. Over and over and over again, people I deal with show me just how inept they are. All of these guys who claim to know what's what based on their experience and background are full of shit and have no idea what they're talking about. They stand behind whichever brands give them the deepest cut or the most clout. In all honesty, it has been nothing but disappointing. Exceedingly few are the real deal.

This is so cool, I was just on the Dyno numbers sticky (page 19 post 281 onwards) talking about shops that were doing these types of builds (carbahn/dinan, lang etc) that weren't exactly giving a peace of mind when going through their work and based purely on 'street cred', really great to see that there is a viable option out there!

[9kracing]

Chrisy what do these big motors run for intake and exhaust?

Do you port the factory throttle bodies?

Is there anything better than the Supersprint V1 that you've found?

[0-60motorsports]

Having said that, yeah... Since I became a part of this industry, I have learned that it is almost entirely smoke and mirrors. Over and over and over again, people I deal with show me just how inept they are. All of these guys who claim to know what's what based on their experience and background are full of shit and have no idea what they're talking about. They stand behind whichever brands give them the deepest cut or the most clout. In all honesty, it has been nothing but disappointing. Exceedingly few are the real deal.

Well Said. Maybe I'll jump start 0-60 Motorsports (Internationally) again one day when i feel like messing with those turds

[Chrisyphus]

Same as David, I was planning cams in the coming months but this might be the ultimate S54, did you have videos etc? Is the price a big delta from buying a full engine from you vs building upon what what we already have i.e. airbox, headers etc?

Good timing, our videographer posted this short to our YouTube channel today. If Peter looks a little flustered, this was like... take five because I was standing behind the camera, making fun of him the whole time hahaha.

https://youtube.com/shorts/KRVo9zO8lq0?si=cVjE7o7n9mpJD-Tn

That also reminded me of this video from Sreten's stay with us, where he borrowed Brian Marks' car for the weekend, and had some impressions. Early in the video, Brian is walking through the build and revs the motor up a bit, then at around 10:20, Sreten takes it and records his drive up here to Danville from Raleigh- it was really cool of Brian to lend his car to Sreten for the weekend. He's a good dude with great taste in cars (I am very jealous of his new Technoviolet M2 Comp) and was an excellent client to work with. At around 13:43, Sreten gets on the throttle a little more, as well as some spicy downshifts.

Sreten has no obligations to say nice things about us. We have not given him anything; we have simply collaborated on an S62 build- there was no out-of-pocket cost whatsoever to us.

https://youtu.be/lv6waaB-aks?si=xbo7RI_1ubdPG5T4

The video then transitions into Sreten walking through the shop with Peter and a pretty casual conversation about the facility and a few projects in progress. (peep my car @ 24:21 getting some love on the lift lol)

My favorite part of the video is at 34:23, when he starts absolutely ROASTING our tech, James' M5... it was so mercilous that James got texts from nearly everyone in the local car clubs saying "bro check Sretens video, he LOVES your car." We laughed and laughed. Since this video was posted, James has replaced every single part that Sreten made fun of 😆.

[siamkazi]

Good timing, our videographer posted this short to our YouTube channel today. If Peter looks a little flustered, this was like... take five because I was standing behind the camera, making fun of him the whole time hahaha.

https://youtube.com/shorts/KRVo9zO8lq0?si=cVjE7o7n9mpJD-Tn

That also reminded me of this video from Sreten's stay with us, where he borrowed Brian Marks' car for the weekend, and had some impressions. Early in the video, Brian is walking through the build and revs the motor up a bit, then at around 10:20, Sreten takes it and records his drive up here to Danville from Raleigh- it was really cool of Brian to lend his car to Sreten for the weekend. He's a good dude with great taste in cars (I am very jealous of his new Technoviolet M2 Comp) and was an excellent client to work with. At around 13:43, Sreten gets on the throttle a little more, as well as some spicy downshifts.

Sreten has no obligations to say nice things about us. We have not given him anything; we have simply collaborated on an S62 build- there was no out-of-pocket cost whatsoever to us.

https://youtu.be/lv6waaB-aks?si=xbo7RI_1ubdPG5T4

The video then transitions into Sreten walking through the shop with Peter and a pretty casual conversation about the facility and a few projects in progress. (peep my car @ 24:21 getting some love on the lift lol)

My favorite part of the video is at 34:23, when he starts absolutely ROASTING our tech, James' M5... it was so mercilous that James got texts from nearly everyone in the local car clubs saying "bro check Sretens video, he LOVES your car." We laughed and laughed. Since this video was posted, James has replaced every single part that Sreten made fun of 😆.

these videos are amazing! The attention to detail in both are insane, to piggy back off of 9kracing: what are you guys using for intake and exhaust for these bigger motors? In the red wagon, looks like a custom CSL type box but a bit larger? (Peter also mentions a MAP sensor) Seems to retain the CSL grumble as well

Really appreciate the detailed responses, I'm sure others and taking away a lot of great info!

[Chrisyphus]

This is so cool, I was just on the Dyno numbers sticky (page 19 post 281 onwards) talking about shops that were doing these types of builds (carbahn/dinan, lang etc) that weren't exactly giving a peace of mind when going through their work and based purely on 'street cred', really great to see that there is a viable option out there!

Yeah, honestly, the whole forum/street cred thing has been the bane of my existence. Actually, 9K's post immediately after this is the perfect segue into this topic.

Chrisy what do these big motors run for intake and exhaust?

I'll answer your question in just a second, but first- Just Chris is fine 😁. To continue my response to Siam, the reason my username is Chrisyphus is that trying to debate the forum hive-mind is a less productive way to spend your day than Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the mountain lol.

It has legitimately been the bane of my existence, arguing for dozens of pages on M3post with people whose opinions amount to nothing more than support for whichever brand of parts they have bought for their car. I am not sure what the psychological basis of this phenomenon is, but it is insidious. People will spend hours of their day arguing with you on behalf of whatever brand they are loyal to, and for no reason more than it is what they spent their money on, and I guess, if you say there is a better option (or even one just as good), they react as if that is a direct indictment of their intelligence.

Finally, after years of engaging in these conversations, I have gained enough respect as a result of showing my work to the world, so it is finally getting easier to have these conversations without it getting turned into a pissing contest.

Do you port the factory throttle bodies?

Is there anything better than the Supersprint V1 that you've found?

Back to the original topic- the dyno conversation.. I read a bit of that page and they were all arguing over which dynos are more accurate and the things that can make a difference. DynoJets aren't the industry standard because of clout or anything like that, they are the standard because the way they measure power is so simple. The drums are a known mass. They measure horsepower by the acceleration rate of that drum. That is it. The manufacturer calibrates the formula to the exact weight of that drum, and that is job done. It is just a simple drum built on a train axle. Atmospheric correction factors are based upon known standards, and the only way to fudge the result is to cheat the interpreted gear ratio (if you are not reading the RPM signal from the car) or to put a hot cup of coffee under the atmospheric sensor.

Having said that, my own car on our in-house 424-XLC has read more than 30 Hp different over the countless dyno pulls I have done. The only fair comparison is the same car, same day, same dyno. Anything else is comparing apples to oranges.

9K, you asked about what intake/exhaust differences we run for our strokers vs. stock displacement- at the moment, nothing. For our long block orders, we ship a long block with whichever accessories the customer requests. What they plumb them with is up to them, and sometimes they have us tune them, sometimes they have their preferred tuner. So far, for our in-house builds, the cars usually arrive with an aftermarket header and intake already installed. Unless otherwise requested, we reuse those in the build. At the very least, Peter recommends SSV1, then Epic (if you can find them, and even more unobtainium- Genuine BMW Motorsport headers. That said, I believe they are all suboptimal. Some of you may have seen that I am collaborating with Alec on an S54 header project, and we are learning a lot at the moment. There's a ton of work to do that I do not believe many non-OEM exhaust manufacturers are doing at the moment. What I know for sure is that the header options on the market are not optimal for a stroker engine, and we do intend to build profiles to allow us to rapidly and inexpensively (relatively speaking) manufacture headers bespoke to each engine build- tailored for displacement, cam profile, compression, and the end user's desired power curve. Eventually, I am sure we will be doing the same for intakes.

As far as throttle bodies and the heads themselves, this is why we invested in ANSYS's entire suite of simulation software- the price of this is obscene, but it is the only way to make educated decisions on geometry changes to optimise airflow. In addition to this, I am consulting with Darrin Morgan (Darrin is a legend in the drag racing community for his ability to optimise naturally aspirated racing engines- he is able to achieve greater than 140% VE in naturally aspirated engines) on how to optimise our exhaust and intake systems best.

For intakes, Turner's CSL rep box is a great value that breathes well enough, and if you want something that looks better, you cannot go wrong with Karbonius.

I am continuing to develop pulsatile flow profiles for intake and exhaust systems across all platforms we work with to ensure we can create the very best parts possible, but that takes time.