Exhaust Recommendations

We get asked all the time about exhausts/headers, etc. So were going to give you our thoughts and recommendations.

Audi/VW = Milltek

BMW = Supersprint

Exotics = Capristo or Quicksilver

Above is a picture of Supersprint headers for the BMW M5. You can see the excellent build quality and these give you real power gains, that's why they're used and recommended by the best BMW tuners in the world.

With Supersprint headers, you'll never get a check engine light. Even though the 02 sensors can be disabled, it's not recommended. Every sensor in a car has a purpose.

Forum Politics?

Forum administrators allow the promotion of products that don’t necessarily work purely because the company providing the product is a sponsor. Forum subscribers are like sheep that follow the flock; they take these forums as gospel. They assume that the administrators and other members have their best interests at heart but in reality it’s all a numbers game. The administrators cater to their sponsors and the subscribers are kept in line by deletion of new and innovative companies and products if they are not directly sponsoring the forum. The reason why companies such as ours do not support forums is it’s not an open board for discussion as it is promoted to be. It’s only an open discussion for those who put money in the forum administrator’s pocket. This is a purely political domain - if you play the game then you get the recognition. We believe as a company that there is a lot of false advertising in this industry that gives this industry a bad name. Forums will help sell their contributors products with full knowledge that they do not work. These people have only their wallets on their minds not their subscriber’s vehicle’s performance.

Sometimes it surprises us how these ‘tuners’ have time to even be involved in a forum discussion? Don’t they have work to do? We barely get time to respond to emails let alone discuss the weight of the lug nuts on a BMW.

Live Tuning?

We’ve always found this a hilarious subject. You’ll find a lot of tuners who offer ‘Live Tuning’ (they’ll offer to tune your car on a dyno).
We just want to explain something without getting too technical. If you’ve had or are considering getting your car tuned on a dyno, make sure the person tuning the car also has your vehicles factory diagnostic computer.

We’ve come across too many ‘Muppets’ in my time who will ‘rant and rave’ about their knowledge, or how they know how tune a car a dyno. Ok, first of all we just want to clarify that every car has to be tested on a dyno before a tuned file can created.

So many dyno's out here are incorrect so, if your dyno isn’t measuring correctly and your tuner has tuned your car on that dyno knowing very well that the dyno is incorrect then guess what?? Your car isn’t tuned properly. What starts off on the wrong foot, you know where were going with this. The correct way to create a file is to use a dyno which measures correctly. If your not happy with the results, delete the adaptation values using the factory diagnostic computer (BMW = GT1, Mercedes = Mercedes Star Diagnosis, Ferrari SD2/3, etc) and start again. For example we were like with many cars in North America the first company to programme the BMW M5 E60. After programming the car we then connected the GT1 to see how long it would take for the car to go through its adaptation period, the result was 105.4 miles. What this means is once your M5 has been programmed it will take that many miles for the file to fully adapt, even though you’ll feel the gain right away (the car will get faster and faster as it goes through this stage).

Some tuners will swear that the car adapts right away, we all know that’s nonsense. When we create a file for a car, yes we do use a dyno but we also road test it too. Different climate and weather conditions are important factors to consider, you don’t want a car that shows high numbers on the dyno but yet drives very poorly on the road.

Piggyback systems/Handheld programmers/Flux capacitors

We receive a lot of inquiries regarding piggyback systems/handheld devices; so we will gladly address that topic.

First of all, we would like to state that any self-respecting European car owner would never use a piggyback/handheld programming device. To use such a contraption is the equivalent to taking a “stab in the dark”. More often than not, they can be found and purchased on eBay, an online car forum or your local flea market. These piggyback units only trick the sensors in the car.

Companies that manufacture such devices have very limited or next to no knowledge of what tuning really entails. Owners of such units will scream and shout that they can take their car to a dealership, and by removing the device; no one will know it was ever installed; wrong! Normal telltale signs are blown engines, injectors and turbo’s.

Companies like BMW are now fully aware, and are able to check the vehicles shadow memory. The suppliers of such boxes blame the manufacture’s components. A typical response is: “BMW parts are poorly made blah blah blah”. No, perhaps it’s the contraption that you installed. Why do the manufactures of these units include OBD2 readers so you can delete engine codes? Owners of such contraptions will argue that if BMW updated the vehicle, the tuned file would be overwritten. Having updated software in your BMW isn’t a bad thing, and if the tuner can make the car run better after the update --then why not?

When tuning a car the “proper” way, you can raise the RPM, remove the speed limiter/hesitation/flat spots, adjust shifting, switch off the 02 sensors and much more. Someone who can tune the car correctly can offer these options to a customer.

Do you ever stop and wonder why the best tuners in world don’t offer these units? In fact, why don’t dealerships sell such units? If gaining power from a car was as easy as plugging in a little device, then life would be much easier… or maybe… just maybe some of the best engineers in the world know more than the boys at the car meets or forums.

Some boxes have something like 100 different files inside (relax were exaggerating); in this industry we refer to that as guess work, and as we mentioned earlier, “a stab in the dark”. Tuning the car via OBD2 or bench flashing the ECU is the safest way.

How safe is it? Our California location Singh Autosport works very closely with a lot of dealerships, ranging from Aston Martin, Bugatti, and Lamborghini. Having been in this industry for nearly twenty years. Our organisation knows what they are talking about.