BMW Z4 G29 - Powerbox Vs Custom Stage 1 | Dyno Test

Hi all, welcome to another episode of Berg Performance. And this time we have a great cool convertible in the shop. So before anything else let's start with the hardware upgrades on this BMW Z4. Like this? Well there are not many to be honest. So only an intake system has been fitted to this vehicle as well for the charge pipe. Other than that the exhaust is bone stock with regards to the downpipe and the OPF. The only difference that the owner has made is to change the back box of the vehicle so that it has some bigger tips and a more deep sound that is being generated. But nothing that should benefit the flow of the exhaust because the filtering and the catalytic converter is still in place. Other than that this car came into the shop fitted with this thing. This is a power box or a piggyback ECU or an external ECU or whatever naming convention you can think of to name this thing. So a little explanation, what does it do? This is an external ECU which simply manipulates the data that is coming from the sensors of the vehicle and is being sent to the engine ECU and sent back again to deliver some kind of performance. So if it's regarding boost, temperatures, fueling, those kind of data are being manipulated and in that way the car is able to achieve more horsepower. And this is the cable that is connected to this external ECU. You can see that there are six connectors. So two for each sensor that is being manipulated at that moment. I just want to tell you a little background story about an external ECU. In the old days if you have, for example, what was it? It was a Nissan Patrol, Nissan X-Trail, something like a diesel pickup truck that I once did a long time ago. Those ECUs you could not modify any data on those ECUs. So for those kind of basic ECUs with some little parameters we were using external ECUs to change data. You could literally dial in boost, fueling, those kind of variables. You could just dial in perfectly. But for this platform with the newer generation Bosch MG1 ECUs which are incredibly smart, well smarter than I am probably and faster than I am. These kind of things, they don't work good often. If you're looking purely at horsepower and torque numbers they can enable more power out of the vehicle. That is completely true. The client has been promised 317 horsepower, 475 newton meters of torque. We tested it on our dyno. You can see the results during the dyno run. But I made several dyno runs and the car was producing 284 horsepower and let's say 460 newton meters of torque. Compared to the 258 horsepower and 400 newton meter stock that is a delta. So there is a significant change in power output indeed. So in that way you should say like okay yes it does bring some extra performance but not what has been claimed by the manufacturer of this device. Other than that, only peak power numbers. That doesn't matter that much. I mean when we are calibrating a car you already know it from other videos we are calibrating things to absolute perfection in a sense or in a way that the car not only delivers more power but it delivers it more safely as well regarding temperature limiters. The weather outside can influence those kind of things of course. Knock control, so what kind of fueling is in the car that the ignition timing is set to that specifically. Boost control, what kind of back pressure is being generated by all the filtering in the exhaust. Or if there's any filtering in the exhaust then we can raise it up until a certain point where it doesn't become efficient anymore in raising the boost. Driveability perspective, the performance gauges that you can adjust. The radiator flap that you can open on these vehicles. The transmission that you can tune. The speed limiter that you can delete. There are a lot of things that you can do with a proper custom tuning but which you cannot do with an external power box because it just influences three sensors. So in this video I will show you the results of this power box. I will show you the results of the custom tuning and I will show you also the results with the stock software on the vehicle. As said, no hardware upgrades whatsoever that make significant changes to the actual exhaust. So we can extract more power out of this vehicle but in the end it will be a perfect driving B48, B20D engine again and in such a configuration like this in this weather. So yeah, stay tuned. Let's hop onto the dyno and see what this car does. What I just did, as you can see, is disconnect all of these cables and the power box is disconnected. I will reset all adaptations on the vehicle first and then I will make a run when fully stuck and then we can see what the gain has been compared to the stock values of this vehicle. Because looking only at these numbers doesn't give you any idea of where this car stands right now. So let's now do the stock measurements and see what this car was all about. Okay, so the power box was doing something. That's quite good. Well, looking at the numbers it is quite good. So if you look at the delta between stock line and the power box it is doing quite an okay job. But with regards to the data logs it's nowhere near as good as a proper tuning or even the base one. Well, I already did one run but I will just do another one because I missed it while calibrating. So let's do it. Well, this is exactly what you can expect with a proper stage 1, 98 run fueling with the OPF and the downpipe still in place. A very respectable result. 302 horsepower, 415 newton meters of torque which makes perfect sense and also the lines are way better. I will show them later on in a close-up. I made another adjustment to the software. So we started at 302 horsepower, 448 newton meters and now we're at 317 horsepower, 462 newton meters. I'll just do one more pull just to dial in one little extra change that I made. But I think the car is already heat soaking to be honest. So let's start the run. 314 horsepower, 461 newton meters. The drop in power in mid-range is just because of the temperatures. I mean, it's getting hot here. It is, as you can see, it's 32 degrees inside here and the car is doing back-to-back pulls and the intake air temperature now in rest is 48 degrees. So yeah, if these temperatures will be a little bit lower that will hit 320 horsepower even but I think like 310 horsepower is respectable for a stage 1 and around 460 newton meters. So I'm really happy with the results. I will explain the dyno graph later on especially in comparison with the power box so you can see the difference. Let's dive into the results. So as explained, the car is on a stock exhaust setup except for the rear muffler. The rear muffler has been adjusted just for sound but no performance gains whatsoever because the downpipe is still stock and the OPF is still in the mid-pipe of the vehicle. The car is running on 98 RON Belgium fuel. Belgium, right? Belgium fuel, yes. And I found out already for a couple of weeks that the Belgium 98 fueling is way better than what we have in the Netherlands. So it is or Belgium has a real 98 octane fuel and in the Netherlands they are screwing us or the other way around. They have a better rating and we have the normal 98 octane. To be honest, I think Belgium has a real 98 octane because the fueling in the Netherlands was the same as this one as well. But now lately, I don't know what it is in the Netherlands but the 98 fueling is just crap. Let's start with the stock numbers. You already saw when I was dynoing the car the live measurements that I made but I will start anyway with the stock numbers. The car is producing 400 newton meters flat torque. This is the blue line. It has a little peak here but I will not count that in but it is doing 400 newton meters, 396 newton meters and peak power here at the end stock of 257... Well, that's 257.91 horsepower. That is exactly 258 horsepower which is also the factory claim for this vehicle. So it does make sense. As for the power box is the black line. So I just want to point out with regards to the power output I think the power box is doing quite a well job. The problem is that the power box should have been delivering 317 horsepower and 475 newton meters of torque. That was the promise. It was not doing that. Actually, it was performing 283 horsepower or let's say 290 horsepower because I made two measurements. One of them was higher but the settings were not okay and the other one, this one was lower. Let's have the middle. So 290 horsepower and 460 newton meters of torque. So as for the numbers I think it is doing actually a pretty good job especially when you're comparing it to the OEM numbers but the promise was more so in that sense it doesn't fulfill its job and also I'm not talking about any internal data for the engine. So the data logging, the boost control, the timing and everything. I did not check it yet. If I have time I will check it and I will tell something about that as well. So my findings about that section but a power box is just fooling the ECU. I mean these ECUs are really smart. The way it is producing the power I know how it does it but it is not the correct way in any way because you know your power gauges are still stock. The speed limiter of the car is still in place. The drivability of the car so the throttle response will be worse and also this bulge of torque that you can see here at the top end so it has nothing, nothing, nothing. Then a lot of torque comes in and then it flows down. Well you can see here in the red line that is our mapping that we did. Still pretty conservative to be honest because we can extract more power out of this vehicle but the exhaust setup is not giving me that kind of confidence to do it. So I rather have safe than sorry in the end. It is producing again 460 newton meters of torque peak power 314 horsepower. Besides the fact that they are producing the same peak torque so only one peak number it is completely different. So it has more power low down. It has from this point already more power until red line. You can see it here. So this section you can see it is gaining power, gaining power, gaining power all until the red line. It is doing a pretty awesome job and I think I recommend it also to at least delete the opf of the vehicle but the problem is that this car is from Belgium and in Belgium they are very strict on those kind of rules but at least you know we can make a simple setup for the exhaust. So for the opf delete and then we can just simply remove it if a inspection is coming up for example or the owner can just switch it around. I think for the flow it will already generate more horsepower automatically when you're removing the opf without even changing the software. Of course you need to change the software again because the back pressure and the flow of the turbine will change. So the throttle will respond also in a different way with regards to over boost or under boost or whatsoever. So we will adjust the software accordingly if the opf is going to be deleted but in general it's a very sleek result and exactly what you should expect from a B48 B20D D, not B, D engine. So the same applies for the 330i and for the 430i and for the 530i by the way. I think it's a pretty awesome result whatsoever. So talking about this platform, this is the BMW Z4 G29. In base this is the same as a No, no, not that car. A Toyota Supra A90. 90, 90, 9, 0. So the wheelbase 2.47 meters. 2, 4, 7, 0 millimeters long. The wheelbase is exactly the same as a Toyota Supra. The engine, you also can find the 2 liter engine in the Supra but also the B58 of course. The 6-cylinder engine. But yeah, if you had to choose between the Supra or this car I mean I'm already driving a BMW M2 which is a coupe car of course with a closed roof. I don't see any reason to buy a Supra besides the fact that it's also a very cool car. I like the Supra but if I have the option to open the roof of the vehicle in such a configuration with these kind of brilliant engines I would definitely choose the BMW Z4. So besides tuning we also do some gardening because Oleg wants to film from this side and that means that we need to remove this crap out of here. So thank you all very much for watching again. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Bear Performance again regarding this B48 engine as we do a lot of times already lately. But for now I will close off this video by driving away with this Z4 and check if I'm also going to buy one because I think it looks absolutely stunning. So you have the choice between the Supra and the Z4 and I think I will choose the comfortable one. So see ya! Don't forget your seatbelt! It takes time now. It doesn't come. It's stuck. Oh no, it's here.