rsr911

UH Oh.... do I feel the need for an intervention coming on.

I know I need one!! see below: STOP ME SOMEBODY, PLEASE!!!!!

Chappy

Troublemaker!

StealthAuto

Sounds very promising!~!~

Have any before/after dynos?

ashutt

Just spoke with Oliver. The ECU was received today, programed and shipped back to me. The ECU was programed for the following:
(1) Redline moved from 6,000 to 6,400 (may only be valuable in lower gears)
(2) Performance increase based on 93-94 octane
(3) VMAX speed limitation of 155 removed (this will have to be tested)

The ECU will arrive tomorrow and will be reinstalled by me tomorrow night. I will take it for a test run on 91 octane gas for a seat-of-the-pants dyno but don't expect to much until I raise the octane to 94. I will do this by mixing 91 and 99 octane (unleaded). I will then test with 94 octane on the weekend!

I will run it for 200 miles or so on 94 octane and then have it dynoed for results. I didn't have my car dynoed before the ECU reprogram [sorry- jumped the gun for my birthday and couldn't wait], so I will use as a base-line Chappy (appears to be a strong car) and rsr911's numbers (very close to Chappy's numbers), or anyone else's stock dyno numbers, of:
Chappy
WHP: 304
TQ: 321 lbs

rsr911
WHP: 301.5
TQ: 318 lbs

I will post my reviews along the way. I agree that a before dyno would have been the best test method, but since I didn't do that, we will have to generalize somewhat. I am at a high altitude in Salt Lake City, Utah so I admit it may be harder to determine actual power increase, since altitude affects performance. That being said, CLK owners will just have to evaluate the numbers and factors associated with the dyno in order to determine if the ECU reprogram makes sense for them.

blackbenzz

Nice work, I really wish you would have done a baseline dyno though. Numbers can differ from dyno to dyno and car to car.

ashutt

Hey StealthAuto,

I see that you sell PowerChip (another ECU Reprogram chip with excellent claimed results), if you would like to test the Powerchip in my car after I post results for the Speed Tuning USA chip, I would be happy to test it using my car and the same dyno.

This would be a good comparison as it would be apples to apples. Let me know.

ashutt

I will be dynoing the CLK with my cousin's 2005 Porsche Carrera S (997). I believe they make 355 HP and 295 TQ stock. Should be interesting to see the actual numbers for both cars.

We will run the cars at the track together as well. Should be fun. He has 295s on the rear of his car and I have 265 but other than that they are similar. Real world track time will tell however, how different the cars really are? No flames please.

DirtyVegasMB

Please post the outcome of that little match up!

I am very seriously considering an '05 997S for my next vehicle. I drove the 997 C4S and it was a beast... so impressive that N/A 3.8!

ashutt

Received ECU back Tuesday night and installed in 3 minutes. Fired the car up on 91 octane (programmed for 93-94) and it ran as normal. Opened the garage to take it out for a "high spirited" run and it was raining. Car was clean and spirited runs don't work well in the rain so I closed the garage door and went back in. Later that night it snowed- of course after weeks of 60 to 70 degree weather. It snowed Wednesday and alittle this morning again but I will try and take it out tonight for a seat of the pants review before I put 93.5 octane in the car. 93 octane will provide more performance, which is the key.

The car will be at the motor park track for a Lapping Day on April 19 and Dynoed on or about April 20th.

Keep you posted.

rsatmans

I cant wait for the dyno just a few thoughts i had. I have read that some say you need to drive a few miles for the car to adapt also you may need to try the sneaky transmission reset. Just a few thoughts keep us posted

ashutt

I was able to finally test the new SpeedTuningUSA ECU reprogram last night. Temperatures were in the 40's and the roads clear.

The car is running 91 octane gas right now but the ECU was reprogrammed to make maximum power at 93-94 octane. My analysis is based on 91 octane. First, the car ran very well on 91 octane. I didn't notice any knocking or pinging- but that doesn't mean it wasn't there. The car pulled very hard and I would say was noticeably stronger but I will wait for the Dyno to confirm that seat of the pants feeling.

What I did notice was that with the redline raised 400 RPM, the car would pull very hard to redline in 1st, 2nd and 3rd gear. In automatic mode the car at first still shifted the car in these gears around 6,000 RPM, which is the original ECU redline. However, in manual mode I was able to take the car to the new redline of 6,400 RPM. 1st gear maximum speed was 50 mph at 6,400 RPM. 2nd gear maximum speed was 80 mph at 6,400 RPM. 3rd gear maximum speed was 124 at around 6,100 RPM, which I couldn't continue to redline as I ran out of road. I estimate it would be between 124 and 130 at 6,400 RPM.

By the end of my run the car in automatic mode was starting to shift after the original 6,000 RPM limit- which is good. This will be part of the learning process for the ECU.

This was fantastic, although I wish again that I had tested the car for these numbers before the ECU program. I apologize for this mistake. Can someone else with a CLK 55 AMG run the same tests for a comparison? My feeling is that in gears between 1st and 3rd, the car benefits from a raised redline as opposed to 4th and 5th gear, where HP and TQ drop off around 5,500 RPM. In the first 3 gears the car felt exceptionally strong all the way to the new redline- there was never a feeling that the car was maxed in power even though I was increasing the RPM. It made me feel like I wanted to raise the redline even more.

I will be adding 93.5 octane gas tonight and driving the car over the next few weeks to accumulate 200 plus miles before I dyno the car on or around April 21st. I will keep you posted.

As a summary, the car feels really strong on 91 octane and I assume will be even more on 93 but even if there was no change in HP and TQ, just raising the redline to 6,400 RPM was worth the $325.

ashutt

Update: I drove the car almost 200 miles this weekend on 93-94 octane gas. The car is strong. When I floor it, it feels like turbo boost for those who have driven turbo cars in the past. However, I will defer to the dyno on April 21st for emperical numbers. What I can say is that the car likes higher octane.

I have been trying to notate the mph at the new redline of 6,400 RPM. Here is the update for manual mode shifting: 1st gear maximum speed was 50 mph at 6,400 RPM. 2nd gear maximum speed was 80 mph at 6,400 RPM. 3rd gear maximum speed was 122 at around 6,400 RPM. 4th gear speed was 141 at around 5,500 RPM, I was unable to continue on the open and safe road with no one around. However, I estimate that with another 900 RPM available, the maximum speed would probably be 150+. I will still need test 5th gear with the VMAX (155 speed limiter) removed.

A shift light would be great for manual mode as you could program it to light at around 6,000 PRM in order to miss the 6,400 redline bump. I am looking into this. For the track, it would be very useful.

In automatic mode, the car is shifting at 6,100 RPM, which is up 100 RPM from my initial test.

CLKCLK

I can understand the part that you have your red line move up to 6400rpm to pull out all the potential power for those gears in order to obtain the max speed on these gear.
However, can you tell me why you pick 6400rpm not 6500 or 7000rpm? Is there a reason?

How much more power do you get from this ECU upgrade? and have you done something like 0-60mph or 1/4 mile to see the improvement?

Thanks,

ashutt

CLK,

I decided on a 400 RPM increase to be on the safe side. 400 should not be a problem with the proper octane levels. However, a high bump my be different. I do not have emperical numbers to support this so I am on my own in this area.

The car passes the old redline fine. When it hits the new 6,400 redline, it will trigger the injector shut-off. Is like hitting an off switch. Most cars are like this as it protects the car. In automatic mode the car is currently shifting at 6,100 RPM. I am hoping it learns to go higher as the time goes on.

I do not have 0-60 or 1/4 mile times but a dyno of HP and TQ will be used to indicate possible times. As you know, driver skill, tires, temperature and altitude all affect 0-60 or 1/4 mile times. You can see the claimed HP and TQ numbers in my first post on this thread, however, we all want to see actual numbers, so that is what I will do on the 21st. Keep you posted.

ashutt

I will be adding the Autometer Digital Pro Shift System found here:
http://www.autometer.com/dpss/index.html.

This shift system (Level 2) allows for 4 programmable shift points with differnt colors up to the shift point to indicate the shift is coming (yellow), when it arrives (green) and when you have passed it (red). This is not only great for the drag strip but also for the road track as you pretty much use 2,3 and 4th gear. Not having to look when you manually shift is key!

I will hook it up next week and once running and tested- post some pictures.

ashutt

This morning my cousin and I dynoed our cars using a Dynapack 5000 load bearing dyno machine. It hooks to the hubs of the rear weels. It doesn't use a roller system like the dynoJet. I have no knowledge of either system but the shop indicates that a load bearing dyno is more accurate than a system like the dynoJet. The temp was about 52 degrees, Bar. was 25.26 and is the altitude is around 4500 ft.

2005 997 Porsche Carrera S
My cousin went first. He has a 2005 997 Porsche Carrera S (stock it is rated at 355 HP & 295 TQ). He has a six speed manual. After his best run, he was putting about 278 to 280 HP SAE to the wheels. That would be about 333 hp at the crank (using a 20% calculation for drive train loss). That means on this dyno with the high altitude and other factors, he was about 22 hp under the Porsche claims (however, there are numerous east coast dynos showing this car at 355 actual sea level testing). All of his pulls (5) were consistent within 5 HP.

2001 CLK55 AMG
I went second. I have a 2001 CLK55 AMG with a SpeedTunningUSA chip upgrade. It is configured for 93-94 octane. Let me just start by saying that the shop had a much harder time configuring my car to run correctly on the dyno since it is an automatic and the ESP can't be fully shut-off.

Even after I turned off the ESP using the switch inside the car, it still cut in and wouldn't let the car perform correctly on this load bearing dyno (hooked directly to rear wheel hubs). So we pulled fuse 24 and 37 (for ESP) in the engine bay on the drivers side- which triggered the ESP, BAS and ABS warnings. However, this allowed the car to rev up smoother to redline of 6,400. Please note that according to the user manual on page 216, that with these three malfunction indicators "only partial engine output will be available." I am not sure this was the case for me but it is possible I experienced some power loss- I wouldn't think so but I didn't see the timing map either.

Regardless, we went forward with the dyno runs. We manually shifted using 3rd and 4th gear to reach the highest dyno numbers. The best pull came on run 3 which was 303 Hp SAE to the wheels at around 5,2000 RPM. The shop indicated that this would be about 364.3 to the crank (using a calculation of 20% for drive train loss). My other runs varied from about 290 to the 303 to the wheels but admittedly it was hard for them to get consistent linear graphs because of the downshifting of the car under load. They were not happy with this issue, so they didn't charge me.

The shop thought the car was very strong and a 302 in that area was pretty good. The air/fuel ratio was about 13.0 (which I believe is on the leaner side). They also thought it would pull higher numbers if we could figure out how to not allow the car to downshift under load. If anyone knows how to avoid this, please let me know so I can have it retested.

So, it appears that the car has at least a 22 hp gain over the stock MB numbers [342 hp stock to crank vs 364 now] with the addition of the Green Filters and the SpeedTuningUSA chip and possibly more if we can get the car to function properly on the dyno.

I see that Chappy has stock 304 to the wheels at a lower altitude- that is great! I wonder what a chip upgrade would test for you at sea level?