DuracellTTU Build: 280/288 Cams, Lang Head, CSL Airbox, Full SS w/ Dyno Results

[thegenius46m]

So couple things here as I just did an extensive topend build and sorted every possible thing you can think of while in there including redoing things that were “done” already…

Build consists of:

-Lang stage 3 head with supertech single keeper groove valves and upgraded springs
-schrick 280/272 cams with dlc followers
-bosch ev14 550cc injectors with radium fuel rail
-karbonius csl airbox with map sensor and csl dme conversion
-spal 2049 electric fan with custom Zionville shroud


Big one is the injectors, you are 100% out of fuel with that setup because I hilariously ran out with milder cams all across the board but still made 348whp on a mustang dyno. And the freshly rebuilt stock injectors were out of fuel all across the revband so my tuner had to dial back everything to keep the car safe, robbing power. Drivability wasn’t great outside of wot but the car was safe.

Upgrading the injectors to 550cc was CRUCIAL imho. Stock is basically maxed out and are a literal waste of time if you have any engine work done.

The equation is really simple… if you add more air into the engine via cams, airbox, porting, etc, you need more fuel and stock injectors aren’t going to cut it clearly.

My car stopped making power at 8200 with stock injectors and moving to 550 the car pulls CONSIDERABLY harder and smoother all across the rev band and I’m still making power at 8600rpm. Could go higher but for a car that constantly sees redline, not sure it’s worth it to me.

Also I’d pressure test your vanos if you changed oil pump disks as that is a bad idea (idc what people say) because the tolerances of the disk and vanos unit wear together and if you get a higher mileage disk the pressure will drop considerably and drastically limit the system from working. Happened to me and I had to get an entire replacement vanos unit.

I’d also leakdown test the engine because Lang’s machinist isn’t as good as he’s hyped to be. I got my head back with three leaking valves and had my local guy redo the valve seating. Don’t assume it’s good because it’s Lang. He’s a pos and doesn’t hold up to his claims.






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[Tbonem3]

There have been some recent threads about upgrading injectors. Do a quick search and you should see some recent results. MIght try keyword EV14, that was a part number iirc.

[duracellttu]

Matt at HD Tuning is overrated, E39 M5 guys are out of touch as usual. He dialed the tune back because the injectors have to be jerry-rigged to work when they're running past 100% injector duty cycle. Your injectors are too small and are holding your car back. Period. I have no idea why E46 M3 guys think these small stock injectors can handle an extra +70whp over stock. Hit up HTE asap and have him retune the car.

Just to give you an idea of how hamstrung your car is... assuming that dynojet is running similar #'s to EAS's dyno jet, you're making roughly the same power I am and my head is stock, stock cams, Euro header, non-oversized exhaust, Eventuri intake on E85. You should be making about 30-40 whp more than me.

People really need to stop going to Lang, Matt etc. Lang is a price gouging predator, Matt is so strung out from partying and tuning exotics he doesn't really put effort into old cars like E39 M5's and E46 M3's.

I appreciate the confirmation on the injectors and I’ll be reaching out to Hassan. Being in LA, I plan to use EAS for my next dyno day. For the inexperienced, it’s hard to tell if a a builder or tuner is “over-rated”. Back 4 years ago when I started this build, nobody had bad things to say about Lang (or it wasn’t advertised) and people were moving away from FSTT and raving about Paul. Hassan wasn’t formally tuning cars as a business yet either. Live and learn I guess. Just good to see the community and platform continuing to grow and evolve.

Any recommendations on injectors I should consider? Can the stock fuel pump handle any larger injectors I upgrade to? Can I also use the stock FPR?

Thanks in advance for the help!

[EthanolTurbo]

It's been a while since I have updated this post so here is some new data and area I am trying to figure out.

First, I will respond to your questions:
1) When Lang was doing my head work I asked about porting the intake, but Andrew advised that it wasnt necessary with stock diameter TBs. He did suggest porting the exhaust which we did. Not knowing any better, I took his advice on both.
2) My VANOS has been rebuilt, so not sure what else to say here. Yes the dyno flat lines, but not sure why.
3) Agreed, from all the other dyno posts I've seen. Not sure if others are reporting SAE or STD numbers, but I did expect bigger numbers.
4) Keep in mind these dyno progression graphs span across almost 15 years of ownership. The engine aged quite a bit, but it was always very well maintained.

-- I have performed both a leak down and compression check earlier this year (much after getting it back from Lang). All cylinders are showing between 97-99% on leak down and 154/152/152/152/148/158 psi compression across all cylinders, which from what I understand is nominal for 288/280 cams.
-- Unfortunately I don't have any adaptation screenshots and none were provided by the tuners.

Yes, as a few of you have mentioned with this setup I expected power 350+ rwhp. I am not achieving that and I cant figure out why. The last couple tuners haven't been much help in providing feedback for areas to investigate. My first tuner was Paul Claudes and this past May I used Matt from HD tuning. For those not familiar with HD tuning, Matt is the go-to tuner for the e39 M5 and tunes many super cars. Since I was originally planning to just tune the M5, I used HD tuning and asked Matt to take a look at the M3 since I was already going to be at the dyno. I brought both cars and here is what happened.

Since my original tune from Paul, I have been chasing where the lost power was coming from. After performing the compression and leak down tests I started looking at the fuel system. My fuel pump, FPR, and injectors are all original to the car so I replaced the pump and FPR, then got the injectors cleaned at RC Injectors which is local to me in Torrance, CA. The injectors were in pretty bad shape from the pre-cleaning flow rate, so I though that might have been an issue.



Once I got the car all back together I hit the dyno with Matt in a remote tuning session. AFRs were giving us issues the entire day at the dyno, so I wasn't confident that we were going to make much progress. The initial baseline pulls were really low on power, which I expected with all the changes to the fuel system. Matt slowly dialed it back in. The biggest issue I wanted to address was the hesitation at WOT in low RPMs. After Matt was adjusting the tune he commented that he wanted to make the tune "safer" and that would result in slightly lower numbers from what I originally achieved with Paul. He told me that he raised the minimum timing to eliminate the hesitation. I dont know much about tuning, so that is as much feedback as I received.

I'm trying to be as transparent as I can with the work Ive done to try and get this figured out. I was assuming 91 octane is hold me back slightly, but not enough to lose 20+ rwhp. My plan is to find another DynoJet and get time with Hassan. I want to get some advice from Hassan to see if my fuel injectors need to be upgraded. Neither Paul nor Matt made any comments that my fuel injectors were maxed out or holding me back. Unsure if that will address my issues.

Any and all advice is appreciated!

Matt at HD Tuning is overrated, E39 M5 guys are out of touch as usual. He dialed the tune back because the injectors have to be jerry-rigged to work when they're running past 100% injector duty cycle. Your injectors are too small and are holding your car back. Period. I have no idea why E46 M3 guys think these small stock injectors can handle an extra +70whp over stock. Hit up HTE asap and have him retune the car.

Just to give you an idea of how hamstrung your car is... assuming that dynojet is running similar #'s to EAS's dyno jet, you're making roughly the same power I am and my head is stock, stock cams, Euro header, non-oversized exhaust, Eventuri intake on E85. You should be making about 30-40 whp more than me.

People really need to stop going to Lang, Matt etc. Lang is a price gouging predator, Matt is so strung out from partying and tuning exotics he doesn't really put effort into old cars like E39 M5's and E46 M3's.

[duracellttu]

I wasn't going to say anything earlier, but since someone broached the subject-

1. OP says exhaust side porting - shouldn't it have been intake? And then you need bigger injectors as the engine is sucking in way more air with cams/airbox.
2. Look at the 3 graphs, you can see the car is making peak power at at 7500rpm and then just flatlines from there. I believe, over the years, we've determined that to be a slow vanos? If he's making 340 at 7500, he should be well over 360whp at 8200+ no?
3. If you're doing headwork, and cams and springs/valves, surely you'd be disappointed to see no more appreciable power past ~7500? You can get to 340whp with just 2.5" exhaust and an airbox/tune, @ 8k
4. At first I thought, with only 340whp all the way past 8k rpm, he maybe had a low baseline - S54s generally do 265-280whp stock. But it looks like his baseline was fairly healthy, though that borla midpipe was 2.5" iirc, so that could help.

If I were OP, I'd do another comp or leak down test AFTER Lang touched my motor.

It'd be helpful if OP had a screenshot of his adaptations around the time of his 3rd dyno run.

It's been a while since I have updated this post so here is some new data and area I am trying to figure out.

First, I will respond to your questions:
1) When Lang was doing my head work I asked about porting the intake, but Andrew advised that it wasnt necessary with stock diameter TBs. He did suggest porting the exhaust which we did. Not knowing any better, I took his advice on both.
2) My VANOS has been rebuilt, so not sure what else to say here. Yes the dyno flat lines, but not sure why.
3) Agreed, from all the other dyno posts I've seen. Not sure if others are reporting SAE or STD numbers, but I did expect bigger numbers.
4) Keep in mind these dyno progression graphs span across almost 15 years of ownership. The engine aged quite a bit, but it was always very well maintained.

-- I have performed both a leak down and compression check earlier this year (much after getting it back from Lang). All cylinders are showing between 97-99% on leak down and 154/152/152/152/148/158 psi compression across all cylinders, which from what I understand is nominal for 288/280 cams.
-- Unfortunately I don't have any adaptation screenshots and none were provided by the tuners.

Yes, as a few of you have mentioned with this setup I expected power 350+ rwhp. I am not achieving that and I cant figure out why. The last couple tuners haven't been much help in providing feedback for areas to investigate. My first tuner was Paul Claudes and this past May I used Matt from HD tuning. For those not familiar with HD tuning, Matt is the go-to tuner for the e39 M5 and tunes many super cars. Since I was originally planning to just tune the M5, I used HD tuning and asked Matt to take a look at the M3 since I was already going to be at the dyno. I brought both cars and here is what happened.

Since my original tune from Paul, I have been chasing where the lost power was coming from. After performing the compression and leak down tests I started looking at the fuel system. My fuel pump, FPR, and injectors are all original to the car so I replaced the pump and FPR, then got the injectors cleaned at RC Injectors which is local to me in Torrance, CA. The injectors were in pretty bad shape from the pre-cleaning flow rate, so I though that might have been an issue.



Once I got the car all back together I hit the dyno with Matt in a remote tuning session. AFRs were giving us issues the entire day at the dyno, so I wasn't confident that we were going to make much progress. The initial baseline pulls were really low on power, which I expected with all the changes to the fuel system. Matt slowly dialed it back in. The biggest issue I wanted to address was the hesitation at WOT in low RPMs. After Matt was adjusting the tune he commented that he wanted to make the tune "safer" and that would result in slightly lower numbers from what I originally achieved with Paul. He told me that he raised the minimum timing to eliminate the hesitation. I dont know much about tuning, so that is as much feedback as I received.

I'm trying to be as transparent as I can with the work Ive done to try and get this figured out. I was assuming 91 octane is hold me back slightly, but not enough to lose 20+ rwhp. My plan is to find another DynoJet and get time with Hassan. I want to get some advice from Hassan to see if my fuel injectors need to be upgraded. Neither Paul nor Matt made any comments that my fuel injectors were maxed out or holding me back. Unsure if that will address my issues.

Any and all advice is appreciated!

[Tbonem3]

I wasn't going to say anything earlier, but since someone broached the subject-

1. OP says exhaust side porting - shouldn't it have been intake? And then you need bigger injectors as the engine is sucking in way more air with cams/airbox.
2. Look at the 3 graphs, you can see the car is making peak power at at 7500rpm and then just flatlines from there. I believe, over the years, we've determined that to be a slow vanos? If he's making 340 at 7500, he should be well over 360whp at 8200+ no?
3. If you're doing headwork, and cams and springs/valves, surely you'd be disappointed to see no more appreciable power past ~7500? You can get to 340whp with just 2.5" exhaust and an airbox/tune, @ 8k
4. At first I thought, with only 340whp all the way past 8k rpm, he maybe had a low baseline - S54s generally do 265-280whp stock. But it looks like his baseline was fairly healthy, though that borla midpipe was 2.5" iirc, so that could help.

If I were OP, I'd do another comp or leak down test AFTER Lang touched my motor.

It'd be helpful if OP had a screenshot of his adaptations around the time of his 3rd dyno run.

[tlow98]

I thought that will the list of upgrades, the whp rating would be around 360whp especially with cams and upgraded cylinder head?

Is the 91octane the reason for the lower whp figures?

Would 93octane make a substantial increase in power?

that and any other dyno on any other day could be the reason, as well. The delta is important bit. If the % increase is relative, then it should be completely fine.

[bmw m3 s50]

I thought that will the list of upgrades, the whp rating would be around 360whp especially with cams and upgraded cylinder head?

Is the 91octane the reason for the lower whp figures?

Would 93octane make a substantial increase in power?

[EthanolTurbo]

Ok no worries, I spoke with some folks at Lang racing and decided to skip on the springs after all.

thanks for the response tho.

oh and nice build man!!

Please don't go with Lang, they are overpriced and not even top grade.

[Hamilton]

Hey - Unfortunately I don’t have any of the Supertech valve or spring part numbers. I ordered the Stage 2.5 head and Andrew had all the required parts.

Ok no worries, I spoke with some folks at Lang racing and decided to skip on the springs after all.

thanks for the response tho.

oh and nice build man!!

[S54B32]

I asked Paul Claudes to share the details of the tune modifications, but he he was very reluctant to do so. This is his trade and he didn't want to share his secrets. What I did notice from the dyno charts is that the AFRs post hardware mods, but pre-tune were running very lean. This setup was providing a lot more air to the engine, the gains came as we added more fuel across the RPM band.



Wow, those are impressive numbers. I was also running 91 octane. Do you attribute the ~23 rwhp difference between our two setups strictly to the compression differences?? Stock compression at 11.5:1 vs your 12.3:1??

The „green“ plot in the starting post, was this pre or post final tuning from Paul Claude? I don’t know what conditions (Sunday „meeting car“ or track use) this car see‘s but I think AFR 13,xx is not the safest way. At least if you use it on track.
It‘s been a while since you done all this, how happy are you with the results and have you every meet a dyno again?

[duracellttu]

I know this thread is 2 years old now but I just wanted ask OP if you by chance had the part numbers for the valve and valve spring kits that Lang Racing uses in their head service.

Mainly the valve spring kit. I've got a good idea on which valves I want to run but I haven't had any luck figuring out which springs work well with a set of 288/280 and/or 280/272 cams.

Was kind of leaning towards just the Supertech valves and leaving the stock springs until I came across this thread.

Thanks in advance.

Hey - Unfortunately I don’t have any of the Supertech valve or spring part numbers. I ordered the Stage 2.5 head and Andrew had all the required parts.

[Hamilton]

Here is a summary of the mods:

2005 ZCP w/ 155k miles at the time of the build.

Karbonius CSL Airbox (OEM trumpets) w/ OEM Snorkel and operational flap
Lang Stage 2.5 head w/ Supertech valves and springs
Schrick 280/288 cams, 12.5mm lift w/ DLC rockers
Port exhaust side of head
SS V1 stepped headers
SS catted section 1
SS resonated twin pipe section 2
SS race mufflers
Kassel Performance CSL ECU conversion
Kassel Performance MAP sensor
TMS underpower pulles, water pump and power steering
SPAL electric fan conversion
Turbo Toys V3 exhaust hub
Custom tune by Paul Claudes
91 octane pump gas

I know this thread is 2 years old now but I just wanted ask OP if you by chance had the part numbers for the valve and valve spring kits that Lang Racing uses in their head service.

Mainly the valve spring kit. I've got a good idea on which valves I want to run but I haven't had any luck figuring out which springs work well with a set of 288/280 and/or 280/272 cams.

Was kind of leaning towards just the Supertech valves and leaving the stock springs until I came across this thread.

Thanks in advance.

[stash1]

You should post that dyno in this thread: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...s-280-272-cams

,,,and also in our 'Official Dyno Fread here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...-dyno-database

Speaking of which, can we please make the database a 'Sticky'?

[Jickel180]

Awesome stuff. Your story sounds similar to mine. Had mine for 11 years before getting a GT3. Decided to keep the M3 also as I've spent a lot of time tinkering with it and made it "mine". It still makes me smile every time I drive it!