I have an addiction..

[nando]

Left: MSS52, MSS54, MSS54, MSS54HP, MSS54HP, MS45
Right: MSS65, MSV70, MSV70, MSV80, MSD80

These - these are my toys... do I have enough yet? lol (no). This isn't even all that I've had in my posession.

My E30 has been seemingly quiet - but I've been very busy. Some guys buy star wars figurines, hookers, or drugs; I buy used BMW computers and reverse eningeer them for fun... I watch ebay constantly for new DMEs to play with. I hoard CPU datasheets and obscure binary files.

MSS54/52 was the genesis of it all (and before that, Megasquirt), when I really wanted to do an S54 swap but couldnt swallow the $3000 pricetag for an EWS delete - I didn't invent the MSS54 EWS delete, but I've been part of that community and have learned a ton from it. Its been a long road, but worthwhile.

Since then I've switched from wanting an S54 (weight matters IMO), and developed (as far as I know) the only EWS deletes for MS45, MSS70, and MSV70. I've been working with a friend to disassemble the code of multiple DMEs, including mapping out tens of thousands of parameters (with my own custom software), developing methods to get around the RSA encryption, and of course developing standalone flashes for swaps.

Currently working on MSV80 and MSD80 - which runs the popular N54 platform. There is no EWS4 delete for this platform - making swaps difficult and costly. The only option at the moment is to swap basically the entire electrical system, harness and modules - not a trivial task. I expect to have a working concept by summer.

And lets face it - M50 swaps are getting very tired; even the newest motor is 22 years old now - the M52 and S52 arent much newer. Finding low miles examples is getting harder, and in retrospect the performance isnt a huge leap anyway. Despite the electronics cost of the S54 dropping to basically free, the engine itself remains costly just due to the nature of a high strung M engine (its still a great swap of course!).

Basically, the older BMW platforms need more options to remain relevant. The M54 is already a great choice and swapping it has made huge leaps recently - and soon, lightweight turbo BMW 6cyls will be a realistic option. It used to be people junked M20s for the M50nv, now M20s are having a resurgence and people with old M50s may be thinking of ditching them for something newer (and faster!).

So far this remains a hobby for me - for whatever reason, I'd rather slog through 2mb of assembly code than binge watch shows on Netflix. I just got the MSV80 and MSD80 this week (they are the same architecture, Infineon Tricore), and realized I had a mountain of DMEs to play with, thought it would be fun to share. Too bad I killed most of the MSS54s while learning, though! :)

[Appleseason]

Wow that's insane, I would love for there to be a simple ECU solution to swapping a newer engine in.

[Kershaw]

And we all appreciate your enthusiasm for your hobby. :up:

[ForcedFirebird]

Glad you enjoy it! It's refreshing to see the BMW community finally come around and the software become more of an open community. Just a few years ago, people kept secrets and tuning was a "dark art". In the GM community (specially OBD1), people helped each other find maps, and crack software, and now it's to the point that a '727 or '730 ECM's can do anything a stand alone can. From auto tune to 3 bar MAP to completely running all new calculations, addition of maps etc. They can have wbo2, launch control, wasted spark (when they came with a distributor), and much more. Best part is, you just have to plug your laptop into a chip emulator and leave all the wiring alone.

Against my normal grain, I am far behind on BMW OBD2, and only just started paging through dumps and bin's - but then again when I was messing around with GM (or early BMW) stuff, it was as a hobby. Now I just want to be able to tune the cars we build in house.

Curious to know more about your "own custom" software lol. I have only used winOLS or TunerPro for manipulating/finding maps/parameters.

[nando]

...there's way too much information to decode the Matrix. You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead.

no seriously.. you get used to it. I can tell what is likely to be program and what is data just by the structure of the hex code.

you see this:


I see this:


(ok, software helps a little)

[nando]

Glad you enjoy it! It's refreshing to see the BMW community finally come around and the software become more of an open community. Just a few years ago, people kept secrets and tuning was a "dark art". In the GM community (specially OBD1), people helped each other find maps, and crack software, and now it's to the point that a '727 or '730 ECM's can do anything a stand alone can. From auto tune to 3 bar MAP to completely running all new calculations, addition of maps etc. They can have wbo2, launch control, wasted spark (when they came with a distributor), and much more. Best part is, you just have to plug your laptop into a chip emulator and leave all the wiring alone.

Against my normal grain, I am far behind on BMW OBD2, and only just started paging through dumps and bin's - but then again when I was messing around with GM (or early BMW) stuff, it was as a hobby. Now I just want to be able to tune the cars we build in house.

Curious to know more about your "own custom" software lol. I have only used winOLS or TunerPro for manipulating/finding maps/parameters.

I just find the standard stuff lacking. WinOLS is ok, but unless you're willing to invest thousands of dollars you're forced to use pirated software (honestly, I only use the demo version - as I don't really find it very useful) and you are stuck with their proprietary file format. The capabilities I've developed are much more powerful than a lot of what WinOLS can do anyway.

TunerPro is useful, but it has a lot of bugs and development is slow (what do you expect for free?). There's also a lot of stuff it just can't do. I still use it, but I look forward to the day when I can ditch it and use my own tools instead. :)

So I started thinking about what I would want - one thing is when you look at a family of DME's (such as basically all of the Siemens models), there are a lot of similarities that can be leveraged to make tuning easier. Currently, there's nothing to realize that leverage into something useful. Everything is isolated into it's own silo.

Also, "map finding" is pretty terrible even in WinOLS - even if you find it, do you know what it is? how does WinOLS know what the conversion factor is? It doesn't. Doing it by hand is slow and tedious. It's a perfect application for better software. :)

I'll have to be honest - I'm not necessarily giving away everything free - it's taken serious effort to do any of this stuff. I think there is value in it and people are willing to pay *something*. But I still want to make things at least more accessible for more people than they are now - many tunes you buy from the "big name" tuners are basically a black box - you have no idea what they did, or if they did anything at all (which in many cases, is nothing). It would nice to at least know what you're paying for, right?

Oh, I'm also thinking about guys like you - I mean, you don't want to spend your day in WinOLS searching for maps and making your own XDF files. It's a waste of your time - you have a shop to run and cars to tune. At the same time, the cost of "tuning modules" (if they're available) borders on extortion, and even the flashing software isn't all that great and isn't tailored well to BMWs anyway.

[Kershaw]

There's definitely a market. I think m54 swaps would be done a lot more if the electronics side of it weren't such an issue. Everyone does m50/m52 swaps because they are basically plug and play at this point. There's nothing to figure out anymore.

[nando]

The electronics aren't an issue at all though. MS43 has had a free EWS delete for at least a year. I developed an MS45 EWS delete last year. It's really not any harder than an M52 swap - and you get a better, lighter engine, a decade newer, and probably lower miles. I can also do the N52, but no E30s have done that one yet (the oil pan remains an issue).

[ForcedFirebird]

I wasn't implying "free", I was implying that people are more willing to work together these days.

And yes, I actually deleted a statement I started about the "black box" companies and them making a killing on "credits" or "vin number only" tunes. Or how about the ones that just save your OEM file to itself and loads a pre-made tune in exchange. Makes me want to take a peek into the late GM stuff :P Again, though, when it was a hobby, it was easier to spend an evening playing with engine management, now when it's done all day, maybe I want to binge on netflix haha.

[nando]

oh yeah. I get spammed by one of those services all the time - they promise a custom tune for any car in ~20 minutes. Uhhh.. ok. Maybe they have contracts with all the DME manufacturers, or guys on the inside who can leak documents to them, because for a lot of these engines they just don't exist outside the manufacturers. So what exactly are they tuning?

The problem is if you don't know (and most people don't, why would they?) you assume they're giving you a good tune but they could just be sending you a stock file back with no changes..

[ForcedFirebird]

..or a stock file with +2° added across the board lol. People would be surprised at just how many of those there are out there, and charging $100's for them.

[nando]

I know a big name BMW tuner that does exactly that..

[flyboyx]

wanna play with an s62 dme?

[nando]

it's MSS52, I can do it, although MSS52 is more of a pain (it's similar, although not completely identical, to MSS54). I'm still working on RobertK's (its in the bottom of that stack). I had nrubenstein's for way too long but I've basically got that flash worked out now. There were "ghost errors" that wouldn't go away (common issue with MSS52/54) - it turns out, as soon as you actually run an engine with the DME, they disappear. It was just haunted on my bench setup..

[stonea]

Although I know nothing about this stuff I've always thought it was really cool that you were able to do all of this in your garage.