Hi, for those of you who don't know I am Edd from Bluespark. We have been getting a lot of interest from this forum and have recently arranged to become a forum sponsor.
I appreciate everyone's comments in this thread, but thought it would be useful to explain (at least from our point of view) some of the points that members have raised.
• Dyno testing
In May this year we developed our unit for the Mx40i. We always go to the Performance Centre Sunderland for dyno testing. They are very knowledgeable guys with absolutely top spec kit. They are also the official UK distributor for Burger Motorsports products, so results on their dyno should give a very good comparison with the most widely used existing products out there for this car. Their dyno operator also has absolutely no incentive to make our product look better than it is.
To establish baseline figures the dyno is always warmed up with a couple of runs. This is only fair as the first run always gives (relatively significantly) lower figures, as the car is not warmed up, and neither are the bearings in the dyno etc. This effect is shown quite well in this video, also of an M140i: This car "gains" 9bhp from the first to the second run.
Our first run gave horsepower somewhere in the low 360's, with the car settling at around 370 bhp after a few stock runs. We know this is high compared with BMW's figures, however it is what it produced on a known good dyno once warmed up. It is also very consistent with other Mx40i's tested on this dyno with and without JB4's. We could have shown the first run of the day as our stock figure, but we didn't as this would not be comparing like with like, and to my mind would give us less credibility.
Regardless of opinion, according to this dyno, this car made 415bhp with our box fitted.
• Marketing
I also understand the comments made by some members regarding the figures shown on our website. We have not in any circumstances tried to mislead anyone. Our website displays the manufacturer's figure under the "BEFORE" title. This is linked to a database which holds the vehicle data for the hundreds of vehicles that we cover. It matches the data that you select when searching for your vehicle. We can't change this to say "BMW M140i 370bhp", as no such model exists.
This isn't normally any issue as cars usually output fairly near their factory figure. I accept that we could correct our "AFTER" figure to stock power plus the gains over measured stock. However, there are a few reasons we haven't done that:
1. None of our competitors would, or do.
2. It wouldn't be the power output that was actually measured.
3. It would then not be remotely comparable with runs done on the same dyno for the JB4 and JB+ products, which is really what any prospective purchaser wants to see.
I apologise if anyone found our site misleading. To hopefully help clarify things I have had a statement added to the product page specifying that the "before" figure relates to the manufacturer's quoted figure.
• Product issues
Our products are, and have always been designed and made here in the UK. This is a proper British made product, not something 95% made in China, then finished off here and sold as "British made".
As with any product new to the market, our Mx40i unit had a couple of teething issues which we have worked with our customers to overcome.
The first few wiring looms were made here by hand in a very small batch and didn't have the cut-out for the boost tang added. This was picked up immediately and resolved.
A small proportion of customers were seeing an error code due to barometric pressure mis-match. This was resolved with a firmware update over a month ago, which has been rolled out onto all new units for this model.
• In Summary
It is important not to get too hung up on absolute bhp figures. Only a 10% difference on a car of this power output is 34hp. Personally I think that stating peak bhp gains, rather than peak bhp numbers makes most sense, as any error between dynos is not compounded. Unfortunately "what horsepower will it make?" is what the majority of cutomers want to know.
Since our testing, another forum member has independently tested our unit on his car and seen gains of +51hp and +126Nm.
If any members have any questions or comments about anything to do with our boxes, I would like to extend an open inviation to call us or come and see us. We will happily answer your questions, sort you out a cup of tea and biscuits and show you how everything is put together.
Best Regards,
Edd