*** VR550 for M113 55 Kompressor ***
Jangy do you have any proof that all the other tuners have sub par tunes?
Especially for 06 models? (what do you base your finds on?)
I don't disagree with your stock claim. A baseline is a baseline. You are in Kuwait, so comparing dyno numbers from there to somewhere else is not gonna tell you much.
I have been saying this about the '06 built in '06 since BEFORE the cars were released. My cousin was working for IBM at the time and he was on a team working to move the maps for MBUSA. At the time, a member here attempted a build up of an '06 E55 and ran into some tuning issues, so I got involved. I contacted my friends at MBUSA Finance and they got word that MB has begun a campaign to make it harder for the tuners to do their thing. More specifically, he said that MB was worried mostly about tranny issues and that they had been forced to warranty a number of failures that they felt were due to tunes. Do a search, I have said this all along. I have also challenged ANYONE to post dynos, so that you can see the drop on the top end. It happens to every single one. RennTech thought it was a cooling issue. Others worry about belt slip. But, I think it is the car. There is always a fine balance between adding more boost and adding more drag to the engine.
How much power did those two E55 put out before and after the upgrade? And what was wrong with them?
Last edited by MB_Forever; Jan 13, 2008 at 09:48 PM.
It isn't the peak horsepower that is the real issue. The issue is at the top end, where the boost is highest. Now, if you go to an extreme and get that top end to dip enough, the max will also drop. All you need to do is look at the dynos. Pay attention to the A/F, the smoothness of the HP and TQ curves, and the flatness after peak of each.
A stock E55 has a pretty flat TQ curve and a steadily climbing HP curve all the way to redline. The TQ basically jumpst to just under 400 and peaks at around 450 and drops back to about 400. The A/F line basically goes from about 15:1 all the way down to 10:1 at redline. If you look close, it is very smooth but has some slight steps in it.
Then, you add a pulley. The added power comes from the pulley. Both cars ended up adding about 40HP and maybe even an added 10 from the tune (if any), but the driveability of the car went to ****. One car never got the top end thing fixed and so in my mind he paid just to raise the speed limiter. The other just had a really rough band and never got that worked out. There was always a dead spot in the curve. We also had an '04 take the bait and that one worked out (ok at best).
Now, another thing to keep in mind is that we are pushing it with the size of these pulleys. It goes back to a question that I asked months ago regarding the weight of the pulley. I am leaning towards thinking that a lighter weight pulley would help alleviate the lag, but then again it has to be strong.
Like I've said from day one. Lets see some data.
Jon
A stock E55 has a pretty flat TQ curve and a steadily climbing HP curve all the way to redline. The TQ basically jumpst to just under 400 and peaks at around 450 and drops back to about 400. The A/F line basically goes from about 15:1 all the way down to 10:1 at redline. If you look close, it is very smooth but has some slight steps in it.
Then, you add a pulley. The added power comes from the pulley. Both cars ended up adding about 40HP and maybe even an added 10 from the tune (if any), but the driveability of the car went to ****. One car never got the top end thing fixed and so in my mind he paid just to raise the speed limiter. The other just had a really rough band and never got that worked out. There was always a dead spot in the curve. We also had an '04 take the bait and that one worked out (ok at best).
Now, another thing to keep in mind is that we are pushing it with the size of these pulleys. It goes back to a question that I asked months ago regarding the weight of the pulley. I am leaning towards thinking that a lighter weight pulley would help alleviate the lag, but then again it has to be strong.
Like I've said from day one. Lets see some data.
Last edited by MB_Forever; Jan 13, 2008 at 09:39 PM.
The Best of Mercedes & AMG
In many regards, you are on the right track. BUT, the tuners do not have a need to develop a better tune. they are happy with the one that was developed for the '03 in '02. They are selling, so why worry. You think they are doing so much behind the scenes, but i haven't seen anything inovative out of teh big guys in a while. They are simply not in tune to us. I am sure they make great bank selling bling to customers at dealerships, though.
We finally were able find TQ limiting maps and raise their limits.
Blue graph is stock car.
Red graph is with 175 mm pulley. On the street, rolling into the throttle we see a peak of 14.8 psi (11.6 stock) before opening bypass valve cuts it down to 12 psi. On the dyno going WOT right away results in loss of over 30HP, with TQ limiting cutting the boost down to stock levels an adding a lot of fuel to keep engine from making power.
Green graph is with TQ limiting maps raised. This corresponds to earlier gains from just a pulley with pre-2006 air pump recall software.
Next we are going to add tuning and I will be back on the dyno tomorrow for further tuning.
Now that we are getting some data to support what i have been saying, the real interest lies in what the others tuners will be willing to do for their clients? Do they continue to deny that it exists? Or, do they take one of your cars in and get the tune right?
The main point here is that the 2006 cars do exhibit the load limiters and if other tuners are just putting a standard tune on those cars, they are not going to show any power.
Meaning, if tuners are basing their flash on a pre 'secondary air pump flash' prior to the date of the addition of the load limiting features and replacing the entire program, they wouldn't run into this problem on any car, but they also wouldn't get the benefit of whatever else was added to the program by MB?
Or does the flash *just* replace the various maps (fueling, timing, etc.) which would mean they would hit the issue if they tried to flash a car with the load limiting in place?
If the whole program is being replaced, I would think that those older tunes might still work, albeit on older code that might have other issues fixed by MB in later flashes ...
just curious ... edumacate me please ;-)
Last edited by joshd; Jan 18, 2008 at 12:57 PM.
Now, saying all this, when the ECU is to be flashed by a tuner, they will typically read out the current ECU file, apply the changes and flash it back. They look for the offsets where the maps exist and then modify just those maps and then write it back to the ECU.
Meaning, if tuners are basing their flash on a pre 'secondary air pump flash' prior to the date of the addition of the load limiting features, they wouldn't run into this problem on any car, but they also wouldn't get the benefit of whatever else was added to the program by MB?
Or does the flash *just* replace the various maps (fueling, timing, etc.) which would mean they would hit the issue if they tried to flash a car with the load limiting in place?
If the whole program is being replaced, I would think that those older tunes might still work, albeit on older code that might have other issues fixed by MB in later flashes ...
just curious ... edumacate me please ;-)
Now finish up the tune and then implement a flash loader with different maps so I can send you some money
Now, saying all this, when the ECU is to be flashed by a tuner, they will typically read out the current ECU file, apply the changes and flash it back. They look for the offsets where the maps exist and then modify just those maps and then write it back to the ECU.
The graph above illustrates the importance of tuning.
Green is what happened when we installed 175 mm pulley on a stock car with air-pump recall software. As you can see TQ limiting software did not want to tolerate any additional boost and even went beyong, by losing addition 30HP.
Blue is when TQ limiting is raised with stock sofware parameters.
Red is with tuning - additional timing and less fuel.
In the end, after more than four weeks of tuning, we have reached our goal.

That's a nice 565hp, 625tq at the crank (18% driveline loss).. so I guess instead of calling it VR550 its going to be a VR565.
Last edited by vrus; Jan 21, 2008 at 04:17 PM.






