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      03-22-2012, 07:36 AM   #1
bgpman
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Drives: Red 2012 X6M
Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: Philadelphia

iTrader: (0)

Review of ESS tune for X6M

Just thought I'd give everyone a review...

I picked up a new X6M last week (traded a 2012 Jeep SRT8 I had bought a week earlier after I finally got a chance to drive an X6M).

When I was looking at tuning options, I settled on:

- ESS
- Evolve
- Renntech

I deselected Renntech because it required shipping the ECU back and forth (even in the future for taking the car in for service).

Evolve looked reputable and had nice, defined, customer-friendly business terms for upgrades and trailing the tune, but I couldn't find any reviews of it for the X5/6M.

All 3 companies were responsive to questions, and ESS made it easy to work with them as well. I decided to go with ESS mostly because of reviews and the evidence of continued good customer support.

I got my flasher the day after I ordered. Had a bit of trouble installing the driver on my main Windows machine so I pulled out an old small netbook out and installed on it with no problem. Now I keep that in the car in case I need to reverse the tune.

It took a bit over an hour to read the base 2MB-ish from the ECU. I sent it off in the early afternoon and got the tune back at about 11pm.

Took about 20 minutes to do the upload and then I went for 15 miles of mostly gentle driving.

After 5 power cycles the check engine light cleared, but the car never threw any ECU errors that needed clearing.

The way I'd describe the car after tune (about 80 miles later) is that it is the same car - just a little more. I wouldn't say it's at 'the next level', but it's definitely faster, and I enjoy it even more now. I wasn't expecting a completely different car (looking at the dyno graphs), so I'm happy.

That said, the car started out being faster than it felt anyway. Between weight and the subdued exhaust, seeing how far back everyone at the stoplight is only a few seconds later is one of the only true ways one has of gauging speed.

So far, I'd say it's a great investment and everything is as expected, and ESS was great to work with.
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