[kanuckstuff]

Intro
Hi, I would really appreciate some helpful feedback here as I just spent a $#%#$^& of money on what appears like ~18.5 peak horsepower at the crank when I was expecting somewhere in the 40-60 crank range.

Disclaimer
First off I just want to apologize for any misconceptions I have about dynos and the way they work as I'm not a long-time car guy and this is the first time i'm really seeing or dealing with CRANK dyno figures and not wheel figures. Feel free to correct me if I'm mistaken about something.

Mods
My car is a 2011 128i N52. Over the last few months I have added a 3-stage intake manifold, catless headers, and a mishimoto smooth intake tube.

What happened
I got it tuned today, $600 CAD for an "in-house tune" and +$180 CAD for the dyno results before and after. The tuner said he had done a couple of mine before. I tried to make it as clear as I possibly could in several emails and in person what I had done to my car and what I wanted the tune to accomplish.

I mentioned the fact that I had put in the 3-stage intake manifold several times and the DISAs needed to be turned on, but I suspect this was just never fully understood and he assumed my car had the 3IM in and working? Also when we were talking at the end of the tune, he was convinced my car stock has claimed 215hp and I told him no... it didn't, it's 230 claimed crank.

How he explained to me his dyno worked was that it gave very accurate CRANK results as they do in european dynos, by measuring the drivetrain losses by throwing the car in neutral. This makes it very easy to compare some numbers and show you why I am not convinced that the tune was done properly.

Numbers
Stock claimed 230. My car was never dynoed stock. The headers and intake boot should add some untuned power, but the intake manifold shouldn't add anything since the DISAs are just sitting there, and I remember the day I got the DISAs in, my butt-dyno registered a decrease of like 1 hp. (My tuner was under the impression when I changed the intake manifold my gains would be up before the tune, which is false from what I've learned on the forums, but he was convinced of it, or trying to convince me of it.)

My peak baseline numbers: 235.1 hp crank & 227.7 ft-lbs crank
So this makes sense to me, because we're comparing this to stock 230 hp & 200 ft-lbs (wow that's actually a lot of torque for no tune).

My Issue
I paid for the tune and the increase (at the CRANK) went up a whopping 13.4 peak hp and 4.2 whole entire gobs of torque.
Peak 248.5 hp crank, peak 231.9 torque crank

Conclusion
Ok sure the curve is smoother. but just turning on the DISAs should +30 peak hp for ONLY THE INTAKE MANIFOLD IF I HAD DONE NOTHING ELSE. This is further cemented in my mind by the fact that he was saying his dyno provided very close to stock claimed numbers, and he showed me examples. Indeed they were close. Then I started bringing up a stock 330 has claimed 255 or 260 hp, not including the fact my car has headers and a tune it is making 7-12 less? this was met with something like "variations in dyno runs you know not all cars at the same, for example some other cars were making 340 on this dyno when they're claimed 355."

Ok sure, maybe your dyno missed a stock 330i reading by 12 horsepower due to variations in the readings. But what about my headers and my tune? Those won't make up at least 12 hp???

And yes I know dyno readings and variations are large and I shouldn't focus on numbers too much. Am I being unreasonable? It really feels to me like he just tuned my car and left the DISAs in their state of hibernation. My peak crank hp numbers should be 270-290 range not 248.5.

I asked him if he could monitor the DISAs and check that they were working, he said yes he could track that they were doing something....what that may have been I'm not quite sure. Not sure if he explained that he could track them actually moving or just if he could track maybe that they existed or something like that. Now I have a question for the forum gurus here. Is there any way myself or my proficient mechanic can verify the DISAs are working as they should be as though they were in a stock 330?

Anyway I'm out a lot of money. If I can prove the DISAs weren't activated I'll show him the proof and try to get him to activate them for me.
Otherwise I might have to go a different route.. After spending the money on getting the hardware in, as much as I would hate to have to do it, it's worth it to me to spend another ~1k to get the missing 30 crank hp. I'm pot-committed as frick right now.

Oh but yeah also am I just wrong about how I'm reading the graph because it's "crank" and DIN adjusted and everything's fine (well it can't be because +13hp on the tune crank or otherwise doesn't make sense)