Nowack Tuning Report, The Truth (Long Version) - Page 2

Rave E55 · 27th January 2002, 21:02

Quote:

that wouldn't be right...i don't believe in "dooping" people for my personal gain...maybe that's a sentiment shared by few

If the car has been repaired and is working fine is it really dooping? I'm just saying get out of it before more problems happen the buyer knows it is a Nowack conversion and thus is accepting a Nowack modified car. Sounds good to me.

JohnH · 27th January 2002, 21:05

Charles, Sorry to hear about your experience which should not be what you expect after spending 50K USD. I hope you get it sorted out and it has certainly sent a shiver of reality through this board regarding major projects undertaken with so called expert tuners.

greg · 27th January 2002, 21:29

WOW! What a saga. My blood pressure went up 10 points just reading it.

Thank you so much for writing it all up in so much detail for us. I think there are many valuable lessons to be learned.

You were a victim of both bad luck and poor engineering. Shame on Nowack for using you as a guinea pig; they very clearly didn't understand a great deal about the interrelated systems of the M5, and they learned a lot on your car. Worse, they led you to believe they were experts. They screwed up badly on many, many different levels, from misetting your expectations, through poor engineering, all the way to just-pain-shoddy workmanship - mis-installed parts, baling-wired bits - that is just terrible.

You were amazingly patient - I don't know what else you could have done, but I think I would have blown my own head gasket long before. I hope you end up with a car that meets all your expectations with a minimum of additional hassle.

Its a good thing there's more to life than cars.

droid42 · 27th January 2002, 22:39

Charles,

Sorry to hear about your bad experiences. 100bhp increase at the wheels is bloody impressive though.

Gustav,

"I just did a little check, I compared the drivetrain loss after and before tuning, and it 10,2% vs. 10,5%. Seems consistent."

Actually, the losses are 9.5% (before) and 9.2% (after).

These figures are impossibly low (IMHO) and typical of rolling roads where you may as well roll a dice to guess the transmission losses rather than rely on their appalling so-called estimates.

The rolling road obviously got it wrong because the "after" figure should have been larger than the "before" figure, especially with the torque and rpm raise. And they should also have been well over 10% in both cases.

That aside, 452bhp at the wheels is very, very powerful and probably equivalent to well over 500bhp at the flywheel.

Ian.

johann · 27th January 2002, 23:55

Charles,

What a sad story.

I hope everything get solved as good as i can be.

Cheers,
/Johan

blue max · 27th January 2002, 23:58

After I read your post, I immediately dug out my copy of Bimmer Magazine's April 2001 issue. They had an article about the Nowack conversion that pretty much praised the car without any mention of the downside.

I also noticed that the 0 - 60 time is 4.5 sec and a top speed just under 200mph. That seems like a modest improvement over the stock car for all that cash & 100 additional ponies.

Am I missing something

You have far more patience than most of us.

Best wishes,

Max

Black M5 · 28th January 2002, 00:04

This is really really bad and i feel bad and sorry that you went through this CharlesW. I was consdidering Nowack at one point and thank God i didnt choose to do so. I have picked the other alternative which is to go with a supercharger and by a well known company who has been in the business for a long time. I have been given a 2 year warranty for the engine and supercharger and secondly it didn't cost me anywhere close to Nowack's converstion leave alone the extra bills you paid.

From my experience and experience of others who have tuned cars, i can say that 70% of tunning companies' claims is not true. Company's reputation and history is very important. It doesn't matter if they are a specialist in your car's brand because it is no guarentee thay will do a good job!

Lastly, I have the same wheels you have on your M5 and i don't have any of the problems you mentioned. I would suggest you try Dinan stage II becuase the ride quality is ALOT better. If you think London's roads are bad wait till you see Boston's with its put holes. I can inform you just like the rest of M5 owners can tell you that it is alot better than stock and it is in my opinion a must for the M5.

I hope the dealer fixes your car and hopefully you won't run into any more problems becuase you have had a enough share already. Best of luck!

MAVERICK · 28th January 2002, 00:50

Thank you for sharing your experience, Charles. I, too, was led to believe that Nowack was the best when it comes to tuning the M5. Their sloppy workmanship has now given them a bad reputation. I hope you can get that knock sensor problem fixed. What's the point of spending $50,000 or a car that you can't even take to redline whenever you want? Sheesh!

I think Apples and anyone else better think twice about using Nowack to modify their M5.

This story only goes to prove the classic saying that once you heavily modify a stock car, all bets on reliability are off.

tfung · 28th January 2002, 00:58

Quote:

Originally posted by Gustav
But I think one thing is important regarding M5 Tuners. AC Scnitzer doesn't have any engine tuning. Hartge and Kelleners have 450 HP kits but no one have the knowledge / enthusiasm / spirit to develop the full potential of the M5 as Nowack do.

Gustav,
I have thought about this for a bit before, and the conclusion that I came to is that those companies cannot come up with any solution to get any reasonable HP gains, and yet have a reliable engine. When I was at Schnitzer, I talked to a few people there, and they all say that it was not reliable to tune to M5 engine, thus they never did anything to it except remove the limiter. Since there hasn't been any long term tests on the N500, I'm not sure how reliable their conversion is in the long run. And now after reading about their workmanship, I don't even want to imagine how long their cars last without major rework....
tfung

Bart Carter · 28th January 2002, 01:09

"I think Apples and anyone else better think twice about using Nowack to modify their M5. "

I think it is a little late for Apples.

From some of the last Apples posts, there was trouble with the ECU and he was talking about using the stock one until the problem was fixed. Also the brakes weren't fitting. There was no mention of disabling the knock sensor. Bad idea if I ever heard one. One tank of bad gas = bad things to an engine.

What is the latest?

Apples, can you comment?