m30 turbo

[peat]

Has anybody seen this set up?What do you think? I did a search and couldnt find anything.Sorry I dont know how to add a link.www.millerperformancecars.com/m30turbonews.html

[clevertd]

No numbers, no updates within a few months. Sometimes hard to see through the marketing BS. That said, I have the MAF conversion offered by them.

[Incantation]

yea those guys do good work.. i have a buddy who has had work done on his ride there. and less than an hour from where i live :)

[clevertd]

Just wanted to add on, Dan was down here in Charlotte at Eurowerkz doing some tuning, so I'm sure him and Brody are great when it comes to cars, just a little hard sometimes to find out information about a company in another country on the opposite coast that doesn't have a huge website, other than calling them. A well-done website goes miles for a company.

[Qube]

No numbers, no updates within a few months. Sometimes hard to see through the marketing BS. That said, I have the MAF conversion offered by them.

and...? Did you have it chipped before? Any gains thereafter? :)

[Jon K]

Miller has received much criticism and I have to agree with it. Their parts are horribly expensive. I think $7,000 was the ballpark on their M30 "kit". The recircularion setup utilizes a throttle body - very awkward. Their tuning is also whacked out - they claim they like to use staged injection because they want to maintain the factory characteristics of drivability yet need the fuel for turbo, so the manifold has seperate ports for extra injectors... where I come from we call that "piggyback" and that's quite ghetto. No reason to do that.

Staged injection on a car using 1600cc injectors for decent duty cycle under boost is one thing, since 1600cc do not idle well in bank fire scenarios, and I have seen RX7s run 1600 and 720cc staged injection to help their drivability. But on a 3.5L motor setup to make ~300 - 350hp staged injection is really an around-the-bush way of saying "well we didn't know how to.."

With the staged injectors placed so far from the intake valve, the atomization of fuel spray must be lost and is more like "drooling" down the plenum runners. They are like 10" from the intake valve and the M30 manifold has twists and turns. Not efficient IMHO.

[Robin-535im]

... Their parts are horribly expensive. ...

$300 - $500 for a MAF kit with chip is a very competitive price.

[Jon K]

$300 - $500 for a MAF kit with chip is a very competitive price.

We are talking about their turbo kit for $7,000

[Robin-535im]

We are talking about their turbo kit for $7,000
Perhaps that's what you intended, but that's not how it comes across.

Bad mouthing a company is not limited to one single product, especially when you say things like "Miller has received much criticism" and that they don't know how to do things. Public, unsubstantiated castigations often denote poor character, or at least youthful arrogance.

Starting and running a successful business is a lot harder than RTV'ing some parts on your car and running it around until it breaks. Having a cast of armchair mechanics go half cocked and cast unsubstantiated criticisms does not mean the company doesn't know what they are doing. At the most it means that there might be multiple ways to do things... but to assume that the guys at Miller aren't at least as competent as a backyard mechanic is unsupportable by fact.

These guys have the balls to stand behind their engineering ideas and make a living out of it. That's a lot more challenging than being a bulletin board dude (not talking about you in particular, just people in general) with a little piece of experience to stand on, talking like you know everything there is to know.

Negative marketing, promoting rumors, all that does is make you look like a jerk and give bad info to those people who are looking for real, true information.

Just my 2 cents, of course. :) No personal offense intended really, just chaps my hide to have this type of thing said about guys who are out there trying to make a living. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Just don't spread nasty rumors that they "don't know what they're doing", are "horribly expensive", "ghetto", etc.

[Kalevera]

Perhaps that's what you intended, but that's not how it comes across.

Bad mouthing a company is not limited to one single product, especially when you say things like "Miller has received much criticism" and that they don't know how to do things. Public, unsubstantiated castigations often denote poor character, or at least youthful arrogance.

Starting and running a successful business is a lot harder than RTV'ing some parts on your car and running it around until it breaks. Having a cast of armchair mechanics go half cocked and cast unsubstantiated criticisms does not mean the company doesn't know what they are doing. At the most it means that there might be multiple ways to do things... but to assume that the guys at Miller aren't at least as competent as a backyard mechanic is unsupportable by fact.

These guys have the balls to stand behind their engineering ideas and make a living out of it. That's a lot more challenging than being a bulletin board dude (not talking about you in particular, just people in general) with a little piece of experience to stand on, talking like you know everything there is to know.

Negative marketing, promoting rumors, all that does is make you look like a jerk and give bad info to those people who are looking for real, true information.

Just my 2 cents, of course. :) No personal offense intended really, just chaps my hide to have this type of thing said about guys who are out there trying to make a living. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Just don't spread nasty rumors that they "don't know what they're doing", are "horribly expensive", "ghetto", etc.
Robin, I tend to agree with what you're saying, but there is evidence. Start with the falsified dyno graphs and how quickly that scandal was censored. These are the facts, accessible with a little research on other forums. Groupthink is a @#%^(! when it comes to message boards.

[clevertd]

and...? Did you have it chipped before? Any gains thereafter? :)

When I bought the car, it had an EAT chip (which I didn't discover until about 2 months later). I did not have a dyno done pre-MAF.

The install thread is here:
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=652734&highlight=miller+maf

The dyno thread is here:
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=686399

They created some weird dyno graphs based on 3 others with a time vs. power scale. It was especially interesting when the HP and Torque curves for pre- and post- intersected at different points on the graph. Nowhere near 5252rpm. I spent an hour trying to figure it out, but gave up on it. I'd love to get access to their website and rewrite the entire thing so it'd make more sense in a lot of places.

[genphreak]

I'd love to get some time and test my AFM. Then go and do a few dyno runs. Then swap to the AFM and do them over. I don't have time enough or inclination- but to me the throttle is much more responsive and the car has heaps more power. Something is still not right during warm up but perhaps I'll clean my old injectors out and then give them a shot instead of the Ford 19lb drop ins I am running atm- but then again, if I had the time for this I'd be putting the megasquirt in... <cries> getting back on topic, Whit, aren't you tempted to go twin turbo on that big old M73? :) That one in Germany demonstrated it was possible in the e32 bay... with intercoolers (and vents in the bonnet for them). :) Nick

[clevertd]

Something is still not right during warm up

Details please?

[RockJock]

thread revival time:


---snip---Miller has received much criticism and I have to agree with it.---snip---


---snip---Start with the falsified dyno graphs and how quickly that scandal was censored. These are the facts, accessible with a little research on other forums. Groupthink is a @#%^(! when it comes to message boards.

Could someone expand on this please? Dyno graphs...etc (i.e., for those looking for real, true information.). If you don't want to address this in a public thread just PM me. TIA.

[clevertd]

I'm a firm believer that the good and bad of a company should be public. The graph they originally posted was created by them to show the gains. However, the intersection points of HP and Torque did not occur at 5252 RPM and for that matter, the before/after gains didn't have the same intersection point. After this came under criticism, they posted the original graphs that were done on a time scale, but I still could not figure out a RPM/time scale to convert the graphs to. I posted an actual dyno for what my motor did after the conversion. Any more questions, feel free to ask.

[Bin_jammin]

Perhaps that's what you intended, but that's not how it comes across.

Bad mouthing a company is not limited to one single product, especially when you say things like "Miller has received much criticism" and that they don't know how to do things. Public, unsubstantiated castigations often denote poor character, or at least youthful arrogance.

Starting and running a successful business is a lot harder than RTV'ing some parts on your car and running it around until it breaks. Having a cast of armchair mechanics go half cocked and cast unsubstantiated criticisms does not mean the company doesn't know what they are doing. At the most it means that there might be multiple ways to do things... but to assume that the guys at Miller aren't at least as competent as a backyard mechanic is unsupportable by fact.

These guys have the balls to stand behind their engineering ideas and make a living out of it. That's a lot more challenging than being a bulletin board dude (not talking about you in particular, just people in general) with a little piece of experience to stand on, talking like you know everything there is to know.

Negative marketing, promoting rumors, all that does is make you look like a jerk and give bad info to those people who are looking for real, true information.

Just my 2 cents, of course. :) No personal offense intended really, just chaps my hide to have this type of thing said about guys who are out there trying to make a living. If you don't like it, don't buy it. Just don't spread nasty rumors that they "don't know what they're doing", are "horribly expensive", "ghetto", etc.


I'd have to agree with JonK on this one. I don't know if I'd use the same words, but a setup like he's describing is certainly not efficient. Even using a piggyback setup like that, they could certainly have added Injector bungs on the underside of the intake, that would have been much more efficient. $7k for a turbo setup seems to be a bit excessive for something that makes less than 450hp. You want power like that? Bring me your car, I'll swap in an SR20DET or RB26DET for equivalent money, and you'll be posting much bigger numbers after, with better mileage to boot.

[RockJock]

I'm a firm believer that the good and bad of a company should be public. The graph they originally posted was created by them to show the gains. However, the intersection points of HP and Torque did not occur at 5252 RPM and for that matter, the before/after gains didn't have the same intersection point. After this came under criticism, they posted the original graphs that were done on a time scale, but I still could not figure out a RPM/time scale to convert the graphs to. I posted an actual dyno for what my motor did after the conversion. Any more questions, feel free to ask.


Thanks clevertd, I just did some reading and thought it was odd that their marketing guy, in his posts at bf.c, put Miller in the same league as Alpina; youthful naivety perhaps. If anything, outlandish claims like that could be detrimental to a startup company. On another note, there was a guy on mye28.com that said he owned a couple of Miller modified cars, offering his testimonials. He sounded exactly like Miller Performance's marketing guy(s), with the identical cheesy sort of style and informational content. Weird!?! :confused:

[genphreak]

Details please?Ooh, sorry- I never saw your query clevertd. I had an intermittent problem prior to the installing the MAF where the car had trouble starting, after running at temp on a warm/hot day, if I left it for 20mins and came back to start it again, it would flood the engine. I initially thought it was the MAF, but realised it wasn't as this problem happened prior (it isn't that often that it occurs). When it does happen, the only way I can start the car (you know as it is hot and the car doesn't fire within a second of cranking the engine) is to keep cranking for something like 20s (no letting the starter off). It always seems longer than it actually is, but I've learnt that no matter- on a hot day if this happens I just have to keep cranking else it wont' fire at all. When it does fire up as I said after 20s odd, you can't help but smell the unburnt fuel from the tailpipes.

I don't know if this is partly the classsic hard hot start problem- I ahve a valve kitI have definately diagnosed a minor fuel pressure problem- and there might be something else too, so I would be really surprised if it was anything to do with the MAF.

BTW, I have done an M20 MAF conversion also, and it works a treat too. Beware, a lot of poeple seem to think Miller are cowboys but their product is excellent and there are many schools of thought on 'charging M20s and M30s- starting with the mad Germans and the factory KKKs setups (pretty decent tech for a production car at the time as most fatory turbs would go wrong pretty quickly. Bear in mind that some of those 745 turbo setups from 1982 on manage to last for 20 years!)

What Miller have done with their turbo setup is ceratinly strange to modern thinking but the heat exchanger is damn neat as it solves all those traditional M20/M30 problems of having to route big fat intake pipes past hot exhausts. I would really like to see one of those setups running before making any judgments.

I might sound biased, but we found the product was excellent and the support great.

Anyhow, and regardless of one's opinion on this technology, it is really nice to see someone making decent FI and turbo products for these old motors. So I think that Miller deserve a far better rap on .info.

I don't have an opinion on dyno graphs as I know they can be very subjective, and the conjecture surrounding them always gets be pretty rampant people compare graphs online, no matter which forum you might be reading... from ricers or oil-burners.

Just my 2c!

[clevertd]

The only problems I've had with my MAF are when it got dirty and ran like crap once warmed up, just sprayed some cleaner in there and it's been fine since and the sensing wire takes a while to warm up so until my coolant gauge is out of the blue, it will run poorly. I definitely appreciate Miller bringing these products to the market, the MAF conversion has let me have a lot of fun with my old roommate's Mustang GT and various other cars. As soon as they get their cars out, with pictures and dyno results, I think they'll be in a lot better shape. They made the mistake of introducing the kit when it wasn't ready for production. To contrast, TCD has a kit for the M50-based motors, but the new website has been having issues getting running. They've already got dyno results and pictures posted on mye28 for it, so I'm sure once they put it out on the internet for many to see, it'll be a huge hit.