Sorting through tuner BS - Mission Performance vs. HC Tuning on S63TU V8 tuning in the F10 M5 & F13 M6
Pretty much every BMW blog or website will stay away from commenting on tuner wars. This one doesn't. It does a disservice to the community to sit back while collecting vendor dollars and allow tuners to make whatever claims they want to without backing them up or providing proof which could potentially put your engine in jeopardy if using their product.
A dyno graph is often considered proof. The problem is that dyno graphs can be self-serving when coming from tuners. Let's take an example from HC Tuning aka BimmerBoost member @lfelunden:
Quote:
Originally Posted by HC Tuning
BMW M6 HCP STG3+ 721WHP/748WTQ (RED LINE) OLD TUNE (BLUE LINE - PPP) tuned in Bahrain. No piggyback, pure flash tune!! Mods are FBO, meth and upgrade clutches - same setup on both tunes!
Customer satisfaction went to the skies!!
721 wheel horsepower and 748 lb-ft of torque at the wheels from a bolt on S63TU on meth are very strong numbers. You will also notice it is stated that HC Tuning is making another 100+ wheel horsepower over PP-Performance which previously tuned the car.
A 100 whp spread over another tune? Over 100 lb-ft of torque to boot? Tunes can vary but that level of variance is suspect. Was it a canned PP-P tune? Was it a Stage 1 file? Was it even custom dyno tuned on meth?
Leaving these aspects out implies that HC Tuning on the same car with the same tuning is getting huge gains making it seem like HC Tuning is far better than PP-P. Maybe that's the case but BimmerBoost would bet money that if you got both Jimmy Pelka of PP-P and Halim of HC Tuning on the same dyno with this same car to do a custom dyno tune the main area of variance would be how far each would be willing to push to get higher peak figures for bragging rights.
Now this is where things get interesting. Halim of HC Tuning was puffing his chest out to anyone including Mission Performance on the forums who wrote this in response:
Mission states HC Tuning disabled the CEL to hit these figures, lifted one of their files from a car that was later modified, and basically was unsafe in the manner tuned to hit these figures.
Now Mission states they re-tuned that car that made the figures 'unsafely' and it resulted in even higher figures:
Is it true the tune was unsafe? Probably. Is it true a Mission tune was lifted? Probably. Tuners steal tunes all the time. ALL THE TIME. Some of the most reputable guys in the business have gotten code from others. It's just how it is. Protecting tunes is difficult if not impossible.
Now HC tuning says Mission stole his file and worked from that file to hit the numbers they did. So, he said she said nonsense:
What is the truth? What tuner do you trust?
The answer is, none of them. They are all interested in self-promotion. Mission Performance came to BimmerBoost early on asking to be a vendor and for some help in a tuning situation involving a dispute with GSR Performance/Technik: http://www.bimmerboost.com/content.p...17-rwhp&page=2
BimmerBoost helped get the info out there and once we did suddenly Mission Performance became difficult to contact. @lfelunden has been pushing his products on forums (including this one) for free for years.
The bottom line is this. Both are opportunists trying to use the forums to convince you to give them money. Don't trust any tuner but trust independent results posted of their tuning.
The truth in this instance is left up for you to decide.
