ECU tune options and reviews?

[jayjpl]

Hey everyone,

I've been thinking of doing the Active Autowerke tune on my M3, but currently not sure what tunes are comparable? I wanted to keep NA.

Any experience with the AA tune, or other tunes?

Thanks in advance

[COVID-19]

Never had a AA tune but highly recommend Hassan w/ HTE Performance

[Tbonem3]

Have you tried the sport button yet?

[eacmen]

Never had a AA tune but highly recommend Hassan w/ HTE Performance

I have not used Hassan yet but I plan to in the future. Car we have right now came with an Epic tune and I have no issues with it other than the rough idle on warm start.

[cbean]

For all the Cali peeps . . . Tunes & Smog Cert . . . Now that its primarily all ECU reading, does any reflashing fo the ECU generate automatic failures?

[Tbonem3]

any sort of flashing or reset of adaptations will clear the emissions monitors which would then need to be reset before smog test. Otherwise, pretty much anything can be manipulated through coding to pass the "all digital" smog test now well except the visual hardware part ofc

[maw1124]

I used OETuning and TTFS, have been happy with both. OETuning woke up some low and midrange torque. Feels otherwise stock. I’m pretty sure all most of these things do is advance timing a hair and maybe run a hair richer. So at idle you shouldn’t notice anything different. No one wants to be driving a NASCAR M3.

https://www.oetuning.com/bmw-m3-e46

They’re not as aggressive as some other tunes out there, which I like. It’s also the only one my mechanic / former racing pit crew boss will sell or use on his cars. He’s a tough grader so when he raved about it on his wife’s MB 550 cars and his SL55, then became a dealer, I paid attention and followed suit. All FWIW.

maw

[Carbonvert]

I have the Evolve-R tune and am very happy with it. Evolve has been around this platform for a very long time and their tune is known to be less aggressive than others - this is a plus for me.

I noticed positive improvements in all aspects of engine operation. Even with USA headers I notice the car pulls harder. Eventually I plan on adding the Eventuri intake- I like that the intake and tune will be from the same company.

If you use Martyn's tool to flash it yourself the price is extremely reasonable- I paid 275GBP

https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/s...on-tool-update

[CrisSilberGrau]

HTE Performance

[eacmen]

I have the Evolve-R tune and am very happy with it. Evolve has been around this platform for a very long time and their tune is known to be less aggressive than others - this is a plus for me.

I noticed positive improvements in all aspects of engine operation. Even with USA headers I notice the car pulls harder. Eventually I plan on adding the Eventuri intake- I like that the intake and tune will be from the same company.

If you use Martyn's tool to flash it yourself the price is extremely reasonable- I paid 275GBP

https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/s...on-tool-update

I had evolve MAF tune on our old car. Didn't really care for it. Seemed like most of the perceived gains were because they made the throttle map more agressive. Idled like crap. Went back to stock and never went back.


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[e46mpwrd]

I had evolve MAF tune on our old car. Didn't really care for it. Seemed like most of the perceived gains were because they made the throttle map more agressive. Idled like crap. Went back to stock and never went back.


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Same here for me. Had evolve, also did not notice a difference. When my ECU was giving me problems, they were not much help. It was just convenient to have things changed back then that I couldn't (fan tweeks, sap delete, etc).

[repoman89]

I had evolve MAF tune on our old car. Didn't really care for it. Seemed like most of the perceived gains were because they made the throttle map more agressive. Idled like crap. Went back to stock and never went back.


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My car came with it when I bought it. The aggressive throttle map was indeed annoying, but more annoying was the fact that it wouldn’t pass inspection due to monitors that wouldn’t go ready. Flashed to stock and they were all ready in five minutes. Also, not sure if this is still the case, but back then it was locked so you can’t read it. No way I’m running something that locks me out of seeing what they did and doesn’t allow me to make my own changes.

I run Paul Claude’s canned non-dyno CSL-based tune now for stock cams, CSL intake and SSv1 headers/cats. Runs and idles perfectly and I’ve gotten surprised reactions from local shops that see hundreds of these cars and dozens of conversions at how well it runs. I made a few of my own changes to it as well, such as putting knock parameters back closer to stock, throttle mapping to suit my tastes, and the usual simple changes like sport mode memory, top speed delete etc.

[Carbonvert]

I had evolve MAF tune on our old car. Didn't really care for it. Seemed like most of the perceived gains were because they made the throttle map more agressive. Idled like crap. Went back to stock and never went back.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

My car came with it when I bought it. The aggressive throttle map was indeed annoying, but more annoying was the fact that it wouldn’t pass inspection due to monitors that wouldn’t go ready. Flashed to stock and they were all ready in five minutes. Also, not sure if this is still the case, but back then it was locked so you can’t read it. No way I’m running something that locks me out of seeing what they did and doesn’t allow me to make my own changes.

I run Paul Claude’s canned non-dyno CSL-based tune now for stock cams, CSL intake and SSv1 headers/cats. Runs and idles perfectly and I’ve gotten surprised reactions from local shops that see hundreds of these cars and dozens of conversions at how well it runs. I made a few of my own changes to it as well, such as putting knock parameters back closer to stock, throttle mapping to suit my tastes, and the usual simple changes like sport mode memory, top speed delete etc.

Same here for me. Had evolve, also did not notice a difference. When my ECU was giving me problems, they were not much help. It was just convenient to have things changed back then that I couldn't (fan tweeks, sap delete, etc).

Interesting that you all had bad experiences. When I first applied the tune I had some idle issues when the AC was on. I then cleaned the MAF and it has been very smooth since.

At the time of tuning I used Martyn’s tool to apply my own throttle mapping so I can’t speak to the default evolve throttle map.

Using a tool like FlexHex one can view the exact changes. I compared an evolve tuned DME file exported from Martyn’s tool vs an unmodified version and saw there were ~800 differences in the code.


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[Rudbari]

I had epic tune with csl intake for 5 to 6 years and never had an issue with the tune but now I run ess tune ( supercharger)

[DiscoWagon]

My car came with it when I bought it. The aggressive throttle map was indeed annoying, but more annoying was the fact that it wouldn’t pass inspection due to monitors that wouldn’t go ready. Flashed to stock and they were all ready in five minutes. Also, not sure if this is still the case, but back then it was locked so you can’t read it. No way I’m running something that locks me out of seeing what they did and doesn’t allow me to make my own changes.

I run Paul Claude’s canned non-dyno CSL-based tune now for stock cams, CSL intake and SSv1 headers/cats. Runs and idles perfectly and I’ve gotten surprised reactions from local shops that see hundreds of these cars and dozens of conversions at how well it runs. I made a few of my own changes to it as well, such as putting knock parameters back closer to stock, throttle mapping to suit my tastes, and the usual simple changes like sport mode memory, top speed delete etc.

I experienced the same readiness issues with the Evolve tune, the file was locked and wouldn't allow me to flash to any other map. No luck getting any support from them, so my only option was to go to EAS and have them completely wipe the ECU back to stock. Ended up getting retuned by HTE, the drivability is much better now, idle no longer bounces, so glad I switched!