This past weekend we took Jesse Langston’s 2016 W212 E63S up to Ennis Texas to participate in a test and tune ¼ mile event.

This was the second planned event for this car as we prove the viability, performance and durability of the BoostedBenz Stage 5 build.

For more background on the car and the involved parties who are responsible for the build, more info can be found here: https://mbworld.org/forums/w212-amg/...201-3-mph.html

When we built this car we had certain target performance metrics we wanted to attain.

· Reach 200 in the Mile and be fastest W212 in the Mile. We reached the 200 mph threshold a few weeks ago at the Texas Mile… we were successful in that regard, and the first W212 to do so. This box is checked…

· Metric number 2 was we wanted to repeatedly hit 9’s in the quarter mile, and hopefully garner a record there for fastest w212 as well….

· Finally, we want to get the engine on a dynojet dyno to see what the BB950 turbos can do when paired with ECC Slavs tuning prowess. We have a dyno planned for December 9th so we will report on that following final tuning for the car. We are hoping we can enter the #4didgithorserpower club. That may be a little optimistic but you have to have goals. J

This thread is to chronicle our results from this past weekend's ¼ mile test and tune session.

A synopsis of the event is as follows:

We were fortunate enough to get invited to a private event at https://texasmotorplex.com/ in Ennis Tx this past Saturday. It was us and 14 other vehicles at a closed event. We were one of the slower ones in the group! Lol.

We were proud of the fact that we drove up to the track, ran 10 passes, and then drove back to Houston. No trailer queen here. No stripped interior either, as poor Jesse would have frozen to death, and as a passenger, I needed somewhere to sit.

Junk in Trunk – no trailer queen here…




It was cold…. Track temps where in the low 40’s, but the DA was excellent. The RWD cars were struggling for traction… we weren’t affected as much.

We loaded a new tune on the car in preparation for the ¼ mile event. It was a spicier tune then the record winning 1 mile tune we ran in Beeville. This tune had more torque everywhere. On the drive in to the track, Jesse had the opportunity to take a quick 60-130 hit.

We were very happy with the results as this netted Jesse a new Personal Best time of 5.56 60-130. I believe this is also the current W212 E63S 60-130 record but am willing to be proven wrong….


Impromptu draggy 60-130 run…


We were very happy with that run and we went into the track feeling pretty optimistic and pleased with ourselves…

Jesse lined up and staged for the first pass… and took off! And proceeded to turn a 10.2 in the quarter… no faster than we ran on the street with a soft launch. What gives???

What followed for the remainder of the day went something like this….. load a new Slav tune into the car, stage, then run and log, forward the log to Slav whereby he reviewed it and made changes to the tune… upload a new version of the tune, readapt, stage and run again. Rinse repeat.

We did this over ten different runs. The best we saw on the day was a 10.1 quarter with a bunch of 10.2’s. It turns out that when we loaded the spicier ECU tune on the car, we exceeded the TCU torque management limits for the car. No matter what we did, when we hit around 138 mph the car would shut down momentarily at the request of the TCU. While we had the luxury of Slav on speed dial, and the means to remote log and tune the ECU, we were two blocked with the TCU. Up until that moment, we never had a tune that exceeded the TCU limits. Because we didn’t have the ability to reflash the TCU on site we were stuck with trying to adapt the ECU to overcome the limitation. Short story long, there is only so much Slav could do in the ECU to compensate for the TCU and we didn’t have a lot of options available to us. We were still looking for a 9 second run, and our Texas Mile tune wasn’t going to get us the 9 second record we were looking for. Slav may be a miracle worker, but the TCU tune has its own mind. I’ve subsequently named her Karen.

I’ve included a couple of videos of the 10.1 pass here, as well as two draggy’s.

10.1 time slip




Notice the 1.68 60ft and 1/8 mile trap and time. The car was headed to a 9 second pass…

Then notice the draggy run below…. We had a 5.6 60-130 from a dead stop. Notice when the TCU chaperone decided we were having too much fun at the dance and separated us…

10.1 draggy run




You can hear when the TCU shut us down just prior to the end of the quarter. So close! LOL.

Outside view ¼ mile


Inside view ¼ mile


Here’s another 10.2 run with the same outcome…




We ended the day with a much deeper understanding of the interrelationship between the ECU and TCU… it wasn’t until we really started to stretch the cars legs with the more aggressive tune that we started to come up against the TCU limits.

While we didn’t have a smug look on our faces on the 2.5hr drive back to Houston, we definitely had a satisfied one. We identified the issue and Blackboost have already talked with EDOK and we will be loading a new TCU tune to Slavs specifications in the very near future. We are now in uncharted territory, but exciting times are ahead as our confidence is high.

We have a dyno scheduled for December 9th and we’ve been invited to another ¼ mile event Dec 12th… this time a Texas Quick 30 event. We are fortunate to have the support of the local drag community... these people are serious.

Maybe Santa will come early this year and net us the multiple 9 second passes we are looking for and hopefully another record to sit next to the Texas Mile one.

Our heartfelt thanks to Dave and Adam for track support, ECCtuned Slav for sticking with us for the entire event to remote tune the car and to redefine what customer support really means, and to BoostedBenz/Black Boost for once again providing us with world class hardware and support. We truly have the best team supporting us in the industry.

Other tuners can claim what they want and one hit wonders don’t mean much to me, especially after they disappear after making their runs… this car is daily driven and a testament to the hardware and software behind the build. We will do another post in the following weeks after we’ve hit the dyno and track again.

 

Well done, guys - no doubt that 9 second quarter mile is well within reach once the TCU is sorted.

 

Thanks Brian! It's a heck of a fun ride hanging with Jesse and reaching for these performance. milestones.

 

I can imagine you and Jesse are having a blast, Brett! Can’t wait to see the next update.

 

Nice runs and great power! I wish my car was AWD. Was that the BOV we heard during the run from torque management?

Is that 60-130 overlay in the 1/4 dragy runs a dragy setting?

The normal 1/8 to 1/4 conversion is * 1.55, so the 6.63 in the 1/8 is normally around a 10.28, which of course the car ran better than despite the TCU issue. The TCU issue likely hurt the trap speed a lot more than the ET.

It's difficult to tell from the dragy graph, but I'm guessing it averaged about 134mph over that last section with the TCU issue (from the chart about 1.3s). If we bump the trap speed to 145, and say that last section now averaged about 140mph, the ET savings is less than most people would guess. It "only" reduces ET by about 0.04s.

 

Hey Bill...

Yeah, it was the Renntech BOV you were hearing. In testing before throwing the "full meal deal" tune on it, we were trapping north of 140, and we were looking for 143'ish with the new tune.
The torque management really interfered with that.
The car was sluggish coming out of the hole as well.... if a 1.70 can be considered sluggish. It was a great learning experience for us and we now have the information we need to tweak the TCU tune further.
Fingers are crossed this latest TCU revision will allow us to repeatedly get those nines we are looking for.