<E36><M3><ALL><LONG> JC/Dinan, etc.

["Franklin W. Nelson" <fnelson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Just got my car back w/new JC chip, euro hfm, cold air intake and UUC ss kit
installed.  VERY happy with the results. Many posts on this before, so I
won't bore you with yet another testimonial.  What I want to talk about is
my experience with Dinan.

After a lot of research, both here and elsewhere, I had decided a long time
ago that one of the first performance mods to my car ('95 M3) was going to
be a JC chip w/euro HFM.  On April 1st, I got rear-ended which meant 1) my
car was going into the dealer anyway and 2) I was getting a free rental car
for the duration - a prime upgrade opportunity.

My local BMW dealer (Assael BMW in Monrovia, CA) is a Dinan distributor so I
decided to investigate what Dinan had to offer. I really liked the clean
"factory" looking appearance of their cold air intake but I was leary of
their chip - I had put a Dinan chip in my '93 325is and I was not impressed.
In contrast, the effectiveness of Jim Conforti's software is legendary. I
figured combining these two would give me the best of both worlds.  This is
where my troubles began.

Dinan also offers a "High Flow-Air Flow Meter" package that I suspected used
the larger European air flow meter.  If this was correct, I could have the
dealer install all the hardware and I would only have to install the chip.
I called Dinan and, after some hedging, they confirmed that their package
used the euro hfm and that it was "probably" unmodified.  However, they said
that this particular combination caused fuel starvation in the upper rpm
ranges so they included a high-pressure fuel regulator in their package that
required their "stage III" software.  I called Turner Motorsport (who has
been selling the JC chip/euro HFM for quite a while) and asked them if they
had ever heard of such a problem.  They said "no" which was enough for me,
so I ordered my chip from Turner and everything else from Dinan.

Unfortunately, there seemed to be some sort of shipping problem.  According
to Assael (specifically Brad Watson, their Assistant Service Manager - a
great guy and a big help. Highly recommended) they had ordered the parts,
but had received only the cold air intake.  They had not received the HFM or
the installation kit. Assael called Dinan again, who gave assurances that
the parts were coming, but they never arrived.  This part of the process
took about 5-6 business days.  Finally, Brad called Dinan personally and
discovered that Dinan was refusing to deliver the parts without the chip,
claiming that their HFM would not work without their chip.  I called Dinan
directly to confirm this and they said they weren't refusing to ship the
parts, but I had failed to order their "stage III" software with their fuel
regulator. I told them I hadn't forgotten, I had decided it wasn't
necessary.  When I wouldn't budge on this issue, they tried to scare my by
saying they wouldn't warranty the installation because it didn't use their
software.  I said "fine" which left them with no more excuses so they
finally had to agree to ship the parts. Personally, I think they did, in
fact, refuse to ship the parts without the chip. Brad was pretty definite
when he told me about it and I tend to believe Brad.  I think they may have
"revised" their position when they returned my call and discovered they were
calling a law office.

After I agreed that Dinan would not be responsible for any problems
resulting from not using their chip, they agreed to ship the parts to
Assael, the parts finally got installed and I got my car back.  It runs
great.

I know this post is really long, but I'm still leaving a lot out.  I
probably called Dinan half a dozen times with questions about their hardware
and/or compatibility issues and they almost always tried to evade my
questions, trying to sell me their software instead.  They were very
reluctant to tell me their HFM was the euro HFM and even more reluctant to
tell me that it was unmodified.  In fact, they never did completely concede
this.  The best that I got from their rep was "I'm 85% certain that it's
unmodified."

I also don't like the fact that the dyno numbers posted on their website for
the "High Flow-Air Flow Meter" package are from a car that ALSO had their
high-flow exhaust manifold and high-flow exhaust (with software to match).
This prevented me from doing a straight "apples to apples" comparison and I
think this was intentional.

I really like the result I got.  The car runs and sounds great and Dinan's
cold-air intake tube (carbon fiber instead of the powder-coated aluminum I
was shown, but that's another story) looks great under the hood, just as I
thought it would.  However, I thought fellow Digesters should know that 1)
this combination works and 2) at least according to my experience, Dinan
cannot be trusted to give you straight answers.  They want to sell you THEIR
equipment and the REALLY don't want you to use anyone else's.  I think this
attitude is both unprofessional and a disservice to the BMW community.

Frank Nelson
'95 Avus Blue M3
BL/SS'd, Sharked, etc.

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End of bmw-digest V9 #1461
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