This car began life as a 1996 328ic. The owner had Tunerworks installed an ERT supercharger onto the stock 2.8L motor, but was not happy with the power. Tunerworks ordered and replaced the 2.8L motor with a 1999 3.2L M3 motor. Along with the transplant, the engine was converted to OBD1 specs, and the drivetrain was beefed up. ERT OBD1 software rounded out the package.

Driven daily by the owner, the car performed quite well, mostly because the ECU ran part throttle at closed loop, ensuring proper air fuel ratios. At WOT, he trusted the tuned ERT chips and assumed that they were safe, and working well. Wide open throttle runs on the street was fine, mainly due to very little time spent making full boost to cause any damage if there was anything wrong. Since the car ran well, it was taken to a track day.

At the track, the car performed well, the owner coping with the new found power, and taking it easy on the straights. By the end of the day, the headgasket went on the motor. Alpine Autowerks strengthened the motor with a BMP head gasket, Raceware headbolts, PWR Aluminum Rad, and a Porsche 968 Coolant Tank. The block was also o-ring'd to improve head gasket clamping. A trip on the dyno showed why the headgasket went so early. Below is the dyno sheet:

The engine went extremely lean at around 5900rpm. The A/F ratio was also generally running on the lean side, which led to light detonation and high exhaust gas temperatures, and ultimately, demise of the head gasket. My guess was that the ERT software just wasn't a match for this motor. It's tough enough tuning on site, imagine trying to nail an A/F curve 3000 miles away! Also, we had no idea where the timing was sitting, as there was no diagnostics readings that we can gather from the stock ECU. And if the owner decided to modify something, we'd have to get another chip burnt. Not exactly easy, nor practical. Something needed to be done quick to address the problem, as the dyno charts and air fuel graph shows that this tune is not safe for the motor.

At this point, I suggested that I would tune this car using some sort of a standalone system. After some research, we found out that Sias Tuning, owned by Vic Sias, had created a true plug and play system for OBD1 BMW's. Installation was once again carried out by Alpine Autowerks, and after about 2 hours, the car was up and running, with a fairly rich base map that TEC3 created using the engine parameters that I've punched in. The car was now drivable, ready for the dyno for the final tune. Some tweaks were made on the way to the dyno to get a basemap that was within 10-15% of optimal. Running too rich isn't exactly safe for the motor either, so the quicker the adjustments were made, the better it was for the life of the motor.

We headed over to Dynomotive to begin work on the car. After about 2 hours on the dyno, we had completely mapped the engine, from idle, cruise part throttle, heavy foot part throttle, as well as wide open throttle. Even though the TEC3 software was "challenging", it does the job well, as shown by the dyno charts.

The first chart shows the torque, power, and A/F ratio curve. The A/F was dialed in at 12.2. Timing was set fairly agressively for 92 octane fuel, within 5-10% of knock limits. The second chart shows how much was gained from the ERT software dyno. There were average gains of 18ft-lbs at all rpm ranges. The leaning out/detonation at 5900rpm is totally gone, and power restored. Peak gains were 17ft-lbs of torque, and 53.0hp at the wheels. All this at a very conservative 5.8psi of boost!

To be able to compare horsepower with other Forced Induction BMW M3's, we ran the car on a Dynojet dyno. The numbers speaks for itself. 337.4whp and 271.1ft-lbs of torque. Imagine what this car is capable of with an aftercooler, topped off with higher boost!

The car drives awesome. It pulls hard at every rpm, and the power band is buttery smooth. Finally, the power is there to back up its incredible looks. Speaking of looks, this car has already won several trophies at shows in both Calgary and Edmonton. Hopefully, the owner has more future plans for this car, such as breaking the 400whp barrier on pump gas.

Update June 27th, 2004 - A lot of work has been done since the last update. New iForged 18" wheels were installed, and Alpine Autowerks once again pulled through, and installed the new aftercooler, Spec Stage2 clutch, and higher boost pulleys in record time for Bimmerfest yesterday. The work was well rewarded, the car picked up the Ultimate Bimmer award at the show. Today, we dyno tuned the setup, and was even more impressed. At only 7.5psi of boost, the car laid down 369.8whp on the mustang dyno. The fuel maps were worked over slightly, and timing was set more agressive without detonation thanks to the cooler charged air. We did notice an increase in blowby, which means we're really pushing the limits of the stock pistons and rings. Here's the dynochart for the big run:

Update July 23rd, 2004 - To cure the blowby issue, it looks like it's time for yet another upgrade. Once again, Alpine Autowerks took on the job of pulling the motor, and installing a set of Weisco stock bore (86.4mm) pistons. The head gasket showed signs of early fatigue, so it was also replaced, this time with a Cometic Multi-Layer Steel headgasket. I'm using this headgasket on my 944 turbo with great success, so it was tested on this motor. On the dynojet, it put down 415whp at the same 7.5psi of boost... this works out to a whopping 480hp at the flywheel! To my knowledge, this is now the most powerful supercharged S52 M3 motor, and it's running a lot less boost than the next runner up (404whp@11psi). Remember, this is all on pump gas, and the car is driven daily. Below are the latest specs for the car: