[nothingman]

This guide is an attempt to gather a list of N55 M2 custom tuners along with tuner reviews to help others looking for a custom tune.

If you have a custom tune on your N55 M2, please share the following information:

• Name of Tuner
• Contact
• Platform (BM3, MHD, etc.)
• Comments (your experience and review)
• Dyno sheet (optional)

BACKGROUND
In it's simplest form, engines can be described as glorified pumps that combine air and fuel to create a combustion explosion within your cylinders, driving the piston motion downward, which in turn rotates your crankshaft providing power to the wheels through the drivetrain.

Modifying your car with a free flow exhaust, downpipe, turbo inlet, intercooler or other mods allowing the car to flow more air requires tuning adjustment to the computer ECU/DME to provide more fuel to compliment your increased airflow. Tuners make adjustment to your cars computer maps for injection, ignition, VANOS, boost pressure control, and torque monitoring to increase your horsepower. While targeting higher boost pressures typically in the range of 17-19psi over the stock target of 15psi, you can easily find an additional 50-70hp or more over stock with the stock turbo.

*For those wanting more information how tuning works, check out the following introductory guide provided by HP Academy; "what we're trying to do here is tune the fuel, optimize the fuel delivery to suit the amount of air entering the engine, the mass of air entering the engine, and then of course too to optimize the ignition timing. So we're creating the spark at the correct point in order to create maximum cylinder pressure at the optimum point in the engine cycle. You remember, it's typically in the region of about 16 to 18 degrees after top dead center".

TUNING PLATFORM
The first thing you need to choose when tuning your car is either which tuning platform you are going to use or if you plan to go with a custom tuner which platform they use (as shown in the chart below). Tuning platforms such as ProTuning Freaks (PTF) Bootmod3 (BM3) (hereafter referred to simply as BM3) or MHD Tuning provide OTS (Off-the-Shelf) tuning maps meant to cover the most common aftermarket hardware setups. A few tuners also use ECUTek which is a popular solution with the asian car market. I have used and and currently have licenses for both BM3 and MHD, and can provide a good objective comparison. All three platforms have apps you can download to run on either your Android or Apple device and all three are very well laid out. To be continued... Saving space here to continue the platform comparison write-up.

FUEL LIMITATION
Your stock High Pressure Fuel Pump (HPFP) should allow you to use any of the OTS maps or basic custom maps provided on any of the tuning platforms without the pump crashing at high RPM. If your M2 has all of the bolt-ons and you have upgraded your turbo and/or are running an alternate fuel such as 100+ octane race gas, ethanol, or meth, you will exceed the capability for the stock High Pressure Fuel Pump (HPFP) to provide enough fuel. At this point, you will want to consider an aftermarket HPFP solution such as XDi, Dorch, or Spool. Both BM2 and MHD provide a simple check box for XDi and Dorch HPFP options you can simply check off within their app when flashing your OTS or custom tune to activate the necessary fuel parameters. It may be of interest to note that Frank Smith of TTFS wrote all of the fuel maps for the XDi HPFP ans is the exclusive distributor.

CUSTOM TUNING
In order to extract every ounce of power from your M2 and make best use of your modifications, you will want to consider a custom tune. A custom tuner will gather the details of your car including your mods, fuel type, driving style, and personal preferences to customize a tune specific to your car. Custom tuners will typically target higher boost levels of 19-22psi for a stock or hybrid turbo (with heat being the limiting factor) and can dial in even higher boost levels if you have a stage 3 aftermarket turbo kit.

From what I can tell, most BMW custom tuners tend to use WinOLS, TunerPro and/or EcuTek software to create their maps as a .bin file and then import them into apps such as BM3 or MHD to provide end-user functionality to flash their car. The custom map is locked to the VIN of your vehicle, preventing you from sharing it with others. One advantage of BM3 is it has a custom tuning function built-in allowing you to customize your map yourself if you have the skills to do so.

It's also interesting to note which custom tuners built the OTS (Off The Shelf) maps used by MHD and BM3 including the N55 F87 maps. Within MHD, Pure Boost developed the F-series N55 and S55 maps, Wedge built the N54 map, and the E-series N55 map is by Twisted Tuning. It appears Halim Cazimi (HC Performance) wrote most if not all of the BM3 maps. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

TUNER DIRECTORY
This list includes the most well known tuners. I will add custom tuners to this list as people provide their information:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

[nothingman]

Frank Smith of TTFS installed my Pure Stage 2 turbo, Xdi-35 HPHP, and completed my custom tune. Results were 517whp @22psi on 100 octane Sunoco GTX260 race fuel. I'm currently still struggling with an intermittent stutter/hiccup in power around 2-3k rpm when cruising at regular highway speeds. Part of the reason I started this thread is I'm considering a new tuner for both pump gas and race gas tune that resolves my hiccup issue.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by nothingman

This guide is an attempt to gather a list of N55 M2 custom tuners along with tuner reviews to help others looking for a custom tune.

If you have a custom tune on your N55 M2, please share the following information:

• Name of Tuner
• Contact
• Platform (BM3, MHD, etc.)
• Comments (your experience and review)
• Dyno sheet (optional)

For those curious how custom tuning works, check out the following introductory guide provided by HP Academy; "what we're trying to do here is tune the fuel, optimize the fuel delivery to suit the amount of air entering the engine, the mass of air entering the engine, and then of course too to optimize the ignition timing. So we're creating the spark at the correct point in order to create maximum cylinder pressure at the optimum point in the engine cycle. You remember, it's typically in the region of about 16 to 18 degrees after top dead center".

From what I can tell, most custom tuners tend to use WinOLS software to create their maps and then import them into programs such as BM3 or MHD to provide end-user functionality to flash their car. The custom map is locked to the VIN of your vehicle, preventing you from sharing it with others.

It's also interesting to note which custom tuners built the OTS (Off The Shelf) maps used by MHD and BM3 including the N55 F87 maps. Within MHD, Pure Boost developed the F-series N55 and S55 maps, Wedge built the N54 map, and the E series N55 map is by Twisted Tuning. It appears Halim Cazimi (HC Performance) wrote most if not all of the BM3 maps. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I will add custom tuners to this list as people provide their information:

Great idea and nice list!

Also to note, twisted tuning is based in New York.

Wedge performance is also broken down into two tuners: Ken and Steven Braciullius (I probably spelt that completely wrong)

[MWelt]

As usual Charlie
Very thorough & you are headed in the right direction!
; )

[cecaa850]

Ian at Bend Calibration is who I used.

https://bendcalibration.com/

I went with ECUTEC. He offers BM3 as well but prefers ECUTEC and uses it on his vehicles. There are no OTS tunes with ECUTEC. Every tune is customized to your vehicle with your mods and the gas used in your area. Basically you datalog pulls, send to him, he modifies it and you repeat. You can have 4 tunes in your car at once. For example, pump gas, E85, race gas etc. You can toggle between them on the fly with no need to reflash. I think he's been tuning the BMW platform for 15 or 16 years. Highly recommended.

[mike@x-ph.com]

[3t3p]

So with a custom tune done via BM3 you are looking to buy a BM3 license AND pay for the tune on top?

[F87source]

Originally Posted by 3t3p

So with a custom tune done via BM3 you are looking to buy a BM3 license AND pay for the tune on top?

Yes. If you don't want a custom tune you could just use the ots map that is included in the licence fee.

With mhd you can choose if you want to buy the map pack or not and if you choose not to you can save yourself some money to spend on a custom tune. Also mhd has a super license now which includes the datalogger, flasher, and all ots maps of all fuel types including maps for ps2 at a price cheaper than all of the other options.

Ecutek you don't have a choice for an ots map so you just get it custom tuned.

[cecaa850]

Originally Posted by F87source

Ecutek you don't have a choice for an ots map so you just get it custom tuned.

The downside of ECUTEC is that it pretty much renders first and second gear useless.

[F87source]

Originally Posted by cecaa850

The downside of ECUTEC is that it pretty much renders first and second gear useless.

That sounds awesome! I heard race rom had some boost by gear features that will help.

Edit - I was so close to getting ecutek since I used it on all of my other cars (sti, Evo, frs) but at the end of the day I couldn't do it since it was so heavily reliant on a tuner and I prefer having the ability to make small changes on my own (such as fuel pump remapping, coils, burble, map sensor, speed limiter, rev match etc). Otherwise ecutek would clearly have been my second pick, their rnd team is legendary with how they cracked the gtr and their crazy awesome racerom stuff.

[AmuroRay]

Originally Posted by nothingman

Frank Smith of TTFS installed my Pure Stage 2 turbo, Xdi-35 HPHP, and completed my custom tune. Results were 517whp @22psi on 100 octane Sunoco GTX260 race fuel. I'm currently still struggling with an intermittent stutter/hiccup in power around 2-3k rpm when cruising at regular highway speeds. Part of the reason I started this thread is I'm considering a new tuner for both pump gas and race gas tune that resolves my hiccup issue.

100hp lost on 1000rpm. That powerband is not pretty.

[cecaa850]

Originally Posted by F87source

That sounds awesome! I heard race rom had some boost by gear features that will help.

I just use my right foot. There's no way you can use full throttle in first or second gear without wheel spin. 3rd and up seem to be fine.

[nothingman]

Originally Posted by AmuroRay

100hp lost on 1000rpm. That powerband is not pretty.

I know. Also, with my power hiccup/stutter I've been reaching out to TTFS repeatedly but they haven't been responsive. That's the whole point of this thread (for me) to help find a new tuner.

I was hopeful others with custom tunes would post their results for the benefit of everyone looking for a custom tune.