[alexchen86]

Hi everyone, I have been doing a lot of research into aftermarket tuners and I have personally experienced a horror story when my jb4 stage II working fine for over a year one day shut off my motor and killed power steering AND power brake! I was lucky because I had already slowed to about 20 mph at a red light and immediately pulled into a shopping center.

After having 3 BMW dealers examine the problem after I had removed the jb4 unit, they all reported fried DME. I even took it to two well known BMW tuning shops, and they all blamed the jb4 that shorted out the car's DME.

Long story short don't skimp on price for power because you get what you pay for!! Total bill for new DME, new BMW battery, new wiring job, and labor was about $2,800. car only had 20,200 miles.

If I got the MPPK it would have been cheaper, done right and with a warranty!

At this point, the only upgrades in my car is an aFe drop in as well as an MPE. I do want more power and more of a growl. Not sure which to do first...shelling out for the Akraprovic full exhaust or MPPK first? Or MPPK then Dinan then Akroprovic?

[Damon44]

Originally Posted by alexchen86

Hi everyone, I have been doing a lot of research into aftermarket tuners and I have personally experienced a horror story when my jb4 stage II working fine for over a year one day shut off my motor and killed power steering AND power brake! I was lucky because I had already slowed to about 20 mph at a red light and immediately pulled into a shopping center.

After having 3 BMW dealers examine the problem after I had removed the jb4 unit, they all reported fried DME. I even took it to two well known BMW tuning shops, and they all blamed the jb4 that shorted out the car's DME.

Long story short don't skimp on price for power because you get what you pay for!! Total bill for new DME, new BMW battery, new wiring job, and labor was about $2,800. car only had 20,200 miles.


If I got the MPPK it would have been cheaper, done right and with a warranty!

At this point, the only upgrades in my car is an aFe drop in as well as an MPE. I do want more power and more of a growl. Not sure which to do first...shelling out for the Akraprovic full exhaust or MPPK first? Or MPPK then Dinan then Akroprovic?

That is one scary story.
Most of us play with engine tunes like they were insignificant ways to revise horsepower output.
Guess they are not.
You certainly did prove the adage about getting what you pay for.
Having the Dinan warranty and BMw warranty might be the best protection after all.
Not being an engineer I am not sure how all that damage occurred from the jb4.
It fried so much.
The MPPk seems like a safe bet no matter what for those extra. 30 horses.
Thanks for the warning!

[rikwynnpa]

The Dinan stage 1 tune for the 335 is great. No risk at all if installed by the dealer. They take care of any issues with BMW. Worth every penny of the $2K I spent for it. Makes the car much faster. 2nd time I've done Dinan which is the class of the tuning industry IMO.

[pokerface]

that sucks. Any recourse available through Burger Tuning, since it seems like a defect/fault?

[Blubaron79]

That sucks.. Has your warranty been voided all together now?

[mike@x-ph.com]

Sorry to hear that Alex, but is there any proof that the Jb4 caused the fried DME?
Thousands of Jb4 have been sold and have been used for years. Not even one fried DME.
A dealership or shop blaming the Jb4 is not really a proof. I would take pictures and send it to Terry, see what he thinks.


As for your questions, i would get the MPPK only since it keeps your original warranty.

[Mike_L]

Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com

Sorry to hear that Alex, but is there any proof that the Jb4 caused the fried DME?
Thousands of Jb4 have been sold and have been used for years. Not even one fried DME.
A dealership or shop blaming the Jb4 is not really a proof. I would take pictures and send it to Terry, see what he thinks.


As for your questions, i would get the MPPK only since it keeps your original warranty.

I'm thinking the same thing. Thats a load of BS. If in fact it was the JB4, it was most certainly caused by installation or user error.

[TopgearLA]

yeah this screams more anti Burger, especially after i just posted a thread asking about peoples experiences with a Stage 1 tune. I don't get why you'd get a Dinan, more expensive than the PPK, if you are so worried about warranty and such. You obviously want a lot of power output in a car that is not initially meant for it. Some of us are staying conservative and not too concerned especially on a stage 1 level where the increase is modest.

[eric@helix]

^Yep^ I'm going to have to third those points. I'd like to see the evidence that they provided that the DME failure was caused by the tuner. I'd also be interested in why they sold you a wiring harness and battery. Did the tuner also cause those failures? If there was, say, a ground fault in the wiring harness, I think it would more likely be the culprit of the fried DME. Anyway, that's water under the bridge, and your car is fixed.

Also, as an aftermarket parts installer, I'd look very carefully at what you're getting with a warranty, and how it is honored.

[alexchen86]

Basically what 2 very well known Houston BMW only tuner shops found out including one that sells and installs JB4 and various other tuners said there was nothing wrong with my wiring from the JB4 Stage 2 harness. The 2 codes that kept popping up indicated that there was some sort electrical issue where the motor could not maintain boost.

The JB4 Stage 2 box itself was not burnt or shorted out either. Stage 2 requires you to tap into 2 wires that go into the DME in addition to the standard piggy back plugs. I even used better tap ins than the ones provided by BMS to insure against any type of short circuit should the two wires somehow touch. I then wrapped up the connections with electrical tape so nothing was exposed to the elements.

When my car experienced the motor shut off while driving there was some type of freak electrical spike I am assuming which directly affected the DME. There would be no reason why 3 different BMW dealership technicians would say all the same thing as well as 2 aftermarket BMW specialty shops saying all the same thing even after inspecting my install and wiring.

BMS even told me this was because the F series cars have a more sensitive DME than the DME's of the e9x cars. He told me the DME was damaged but not destroyed and the way around it was to make a new ground wire from the DME to a ground point in the engine bay.

I was not going to do all that an have such obvious engine modification clearly visible once any BMW technician does maintenance on my car should I require some warranty claim later down the line and BMW would obviously say the motor has been modified. I just bit the bullet and had it done properly.

A special BMW SA that I took my car to 45 minutes away kept it at the dealership for an entire month fighting with BMW NA trying to get a warranty claim because he also has had very bad experiences with the JB4 on the N55 motors. His last vehicle with a JB4 that had an issue was a brand new 535i that had to be towed in also needing a new DME.

[Mike_L]

The only thing that would require a new grounding point would be if the JB4s USB connector grounded out on the battery rail, which Burger warns you about in the directions.

Sorry not buying it. Whenever a Texas shop says one thing, I lean the other way. I've seen them blame way too many things on aftermarket products only for the problem to be sorted out with a phone call or something simple.

[Earthmaster]

Again this is always the risk we take on mods like this. For every 100 sales theres going to be a couple horror stories where something drastically wrong occurs. However we must not play the fear mongoring game. If this was more common then BMS would probably be out of business. It is clear they are not and doing well as many tuner/parts businesses sell their products. Shit like this happens on stock cars too, it just happens and people have to fight BMW for repairs. Also its very hard for any of us to accurately determine what caused OP problem we can only take his word for it. However, we need to remember every time we get into a car theres a chance we could die, but does this stop any of us from driving? We need to look at real probability of issues and risks in this situation and can't take one bad experience and judge the whole product on that situation. Thats my 2 cents.

[mike@x-ph.com]

Alex im still not convinced that this was caused by the Jb4 since there is no proof just a bunch of mechanics blaming an aftermarket part.

Sounds to me that you had a battery short out and when you removed the Jb4 you damaged the DME TMAP ground.

I also noticed that a while back you were blaming the dealership for this.
Here is the thread:
http://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16950908#post1695090

[Earthmaster]

LoL.

[Dog Face Pony Soldier]

Sucks but that is the risk we take when installing aftermarket equipment. Glad to hear you could afford to self-warranty the repair.

[jjc4scab]

Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com

Alex im still not convinced that this was caused by the Jb4 since there is no proof just a bunch of mechanics blaming an aftermarket part.

Sounds to me that you had a battery short out and when you removed the Jb4 you damaged the DME TMAP ground.

I also noticed that a while back you were blaming the dealership for this.
Here is the thread:
http://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16950908#post1695090

[alexchen86]

Originally Posted by mike@x-ph.com

Alex im still not convinced that this was caused by the Jb4 since there is no proof just a bunch of mechanics blaming an aftermarket part.

Sounds to me that you had a battery short out and when you removed the Jb4 you damaged the DME TMAP ground.

I also noticed that a while back you were blaming the dealership for this.
Here is the thread:
http://f30.bimmerpost.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16950908#post1695090

Yup the technician working on my vehicle had a grand old time vandalizing my wiring not only on the driver side where the DME is but also on the passenger side as well as losing a fucking air box clip?! How does the air box have anything to do with the car's issues I was experiencing?

My service adviser at Advantage BMW of Midtown was so afraid to talk to me he had to bring in his shop manager, chief technician, and the asshole that vandalized my engine bay! They stuck me in a room closed the door like I was some criminal about to get interrogated with the whole hpgood cop bad cop routine.

I am blessed to be my own boss but time is still money...I chewed them out for making an issue I had even worse. I had photo evidence prior to dropping off the car. However their explanation was the mechanic had to do "digging around" to find what the issue was. This was on top of my car ALREADY being over at Woodlands BMW which took an hour to tow there to a service adviser who is mod friendly and very familiar with tuners such as the jb4.

Woodlands BMW gave me a loaner to drive for free an entire MONTH while trying to fix the problem rather than pass the buck or rip out the DME for a new one.

Someone at Advantage BMW about 45 min away called a wrecker to move my car to there from Woodlands BMW without my consent. All I received was a phone call from Advantage asking me what was wrong with my car and who was going to pay the wrecker fee!

Obviously a lot of things had transpired and no one wanted to take blame.this was why I filed a for al compliant to BMW NA on the complete total disregard for professionalism from the day the dickhead Juan Gálvez (head shop manager) and his other two cronies tried to intimidate me.

The two pinhole taps to the DME he purposely took a wire stripper to expose the bare copper to make it appear that the motor had 100% without a shadow of a doubt had been altered.

I was not going to waste any more time on the DME issue. I make more money than that crook makes in a minute. Sometimes you just realize fighting stupid people who bring in two other idiots as intimidators in a true to fashion mob shake down just isn't worth my time.

As soon as I hit near manufacturer warranty, I'm moving onto an European delivery of an M4 to take the wife to Europe to visit the sights.

On a side note I already killed the sales manager when I bought my 2013 335i Sport Line fully loaded. MSRP was $54,500. I negotiated with him and through some tactical plan of attack I was able to get it down to $40,000 including TTL drive out.

To piss him off even more and totally take him down I brought Ina trade at the very last moment so he had to rework ALL the numbers and paper work. Trade in was a 07 Tundra with frame damage, 2 collisions that had been cheaply repaired. But being an automobile enthusiast it was always clean and always looked perfect if you never knew the history.

I actually got another $18,000 in trade in which was the KBB of my truck if it was in mint condition.

That was the happiest fucking day of my life. I thank God that I used to sell high end cars to know the game...now I am in commercial real estate investments and commercial property management.

Just know the battles worth fighting and worth the gain. Never fight an enemy who is not as sharp as you are. Always show indifference when negotiating....never show rage or happiness and never look away from awkward eye contact because you have to continuously read if he's nervous, telling the truth, or if he is an asshole too and doesn't want his commission.

That's is how you buy a ridiculously overpriced new car....lol

[Polo08816]

Originally Posted by alexchen86

Yup the technician working on my vehicle had a grand old time vandalizing my wiring not only on the driver side where the DME is but also on the passenger side as well as losing a fucking air box clip?! How does the air box have anything to do with the car's issues I was experiencing?

My service adviser at Advantage BMW of Midtown was so afraid to talk to me he had to bring in his shop manager, chief technician, and the asshole that vandalized my engine bay! They stuck me in a room closed the door like I was some criminal about to get interrogated with the whole hpgood cop bad cop routine.

I am blessed to be my own boss but time is still money...I chewed them out for making an issue I had even worse. I had photo evidence prior to dropping off the car. However their explanation was the mechanic had to do "digging around" to find what the issue was. This was on top of my car ALREADY being over at Woodlands BMW which took an hour to tow there to a service adviser who is mod friendly and very familiar with tuners such as the jb4.

Woodlands BMW gave me a loaner to drive for free an entire MONTH while trying to fix the problem rather than pass the buck or rip out the DME for a new one.

Someone at Advantage BMW about 45 min away called a wrecker to move my car to there from Woodlands BMW without my consent. All I received was a phone call from Advantage asking me what was wrong with my car and who was going to pay the wrecker fee!

Obviously a lot of things had transpired and no one wanted to take blame.this was why I filed a for al compliant to BMW NA on the complete total disregard for professionalism from the day the dickhead Juan Gálvez (head shop manager) and his other two cronies tried to intimidate me.

The two pinhole taps to the DME he purposely took a wire stripper to expose the bare copper to make it appear that the motor had 100% without a shadow of a doubt had been altered.

I was not going to waste any more time on the DME issue. I make more money than that crook makes in a minute. Sometimes you just realize fighting stupid people who bring in two other idiots as intimidators in a true to fashion mob shake down just isn't worth my time.

As soon as I hit near manufacturer warranty, I'm moving onto an European delivery of an M4 to take the wife to Europe to visit the sights.

On a side note I already killed the sales manager when I bought my 2013 335i Sport Line fully loaded. MSRP was $54,500. I negotiated with him and through some tactical plan of attack I was able to get it down to $40,000 including TTL drive out.

To piss him off even more and totally take him down I brought Ina trade at the very last moment so he had to rework ALL the numbers and paper work. Trade in was a 07 Tundra with frame damage, 2 collisions that had been cheaply repaired. But being an automobile enthusiast it was always clean and always looked perfect if you never knew the history.

I actually got another $18,000 in trade in which was the KBB of my truck if it was in mint condition.

That was the happiest fucking day of my life. I thank God that I used to sell high end cars to know the game...now I am in commercial real estate investments and commercial property management.

Just know the battles worth fighting and worth the gain. Never fight an enemy who is not as sharp as you are. Always show indifference when negotiating....never show rage or happiness and never look away from awkward eye contact because you have to continuously read if he's nervous, telling the truth, or if he is an asshole too and doesn't want his commission.

That's is how you buy a ridiculously overpriced new car....lol

You may be right, but you definitely sound like a nutjob.

[alexchen86]

Wow...I did not expect a fellow BMW enthusiast to call me a nutjob. Why all the negativity? I am just explaining the dangers of any aftermarket product especially one that alters the electronics of a very sophisticated and well designed motor. I went on to say that this particular BMW technician raised his voice at me in the middle of the roundabout in front of several service advisers, valets, and customers waiting for their vehicles.

Talk about some immature comment from a fellow BMW enthusiast who just read some nightmare story that unfortunately happened to me, and then throw in name calling to just brighten my already wonderful end to last year.

We should respect each other and offer stories of what potentially may happen IF it indeed happened first hand in an honest attempt to teach others that tuners no matter how well established and correctly installed could still cause problems and void your motor's warranty unless you shell out whatever that BMW dealer wants you to pay.

Part of my $2,800 bill included a new BMW battery that cost $500. I've never paid that much for a stock battery. The first quote I received was $2,200 which had an itemized price list of the BMW battery being $200 which I suppose was reasonable being that it was a BMW branded part. Magically 2 hours later, I received another email quote, and somehow my service adviser changed the price of the BMW battery another $300 more. If they wanted to get away with another $300 why didn't they just tack it onto labor hours?

My purpose of this post is to share with this community that my vehicle happened to have a damaged DME from the JB4 Stage 2 only. Stage 2 is more complicated than stage 1 but the installation is not that much more difficult. That is my only modification at the time, and it had been functional for at least half a year prior which meant the JB4 harness, plugs, the JB4 board itself, and the use of more secure tap ins rather than the little twist ons supplied by BMS was all installed and done properly and away from the elements.

Every product has a risk associated with it. My point being is since I am new to tuners, I did not fully understand the potential harm it could do to the vehicle. I worked with Terry and Jon of BMS. I did everything in my power as well as BMS.

The last part I threw in there about how much I paid for the car is to inform other future BMW buyers that you can negotiate very good deals even with the #1 most profitable BMW dealership in America owned by Group 1 which is Advantage BMW of Houston in midtown.

I also wanted to express to the general forum members that happen to be in Houston looking into Advantage BMW to be weary of Juan Galvez. There was absolutely no reason why he brought in 3 guys into a meeting with me in a conference room and then close the door behind him as if we were about to get into a heated quarrel.

The other two techs did not even say one word. So you tell me buddy why were they even needed in that room when Juan could have talked to me in his personal office or heck in the circular drive when they brought my car up.

The average markup is 18% on any F30 at Advantage BMW. I want people to know the truth and get a fair and just price for their BMW. Not get swindled by overpaying.

.....and by that you dare call me a nut job when I am clearly exposing the dealership's true colors.

[Shazsta]

For what it's worth I don't think you sound like a nutjob.

[Mike_L]

I've had shop foremen and managers pull that shit with me. Accused me of sabotage. If there wasn't a whole group of people there to hold me back, I would have put both of them in the hospital.