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      01-15-2012, 08:19 AM   #9
CIWS
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Drives: F98 X4M Competition
Join Date: Sep 2011
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Another factor to keep in mind is the Dinan tune is designed to keep the parameters at "safe" levels to help with reliability. Because in theory they will have to cover a repair cost if BMW attributes the failure to something Dinan related. In reality what that means is their tune isn't going to be peaked to what can be produced by the powertrain, it will be something less. So it is likely that other tunes out there will actually make the vehicle perform better than Dinan's. (faster 0-60 and 1/4 mile times). But the reason it is like that is to keep from over stressing parts that could fail and put the owner and their vehicle at the service department.

As far as warranty coverage is concerned it is pretty common for the car maker to use an opportunity to deny a warranty claim when anything aftermarket is there that could have affected it, especially ECM tunes. ANY car company out there will void powertrain warranty if a tune other than ones sanctioned by them are discovered as being in the vehicle. That makes perfect sense because a bad tune or one that pushes things to their limits can cause failures that normally should not have occurred and ANY vehicle manufacturer isn't going to want to pay for other people's/company's changes.

So an owner (potential owner) has the choices of leaving things stock, or only utilizing the tunes and improvements offered by BMW in order to ensure full warranty coverage without question (in theory). Secondly you can go the route of choosing to use Dinan and their improvements and if something goes wrong then those two have to work out the details of who's paying for it.

On a side note here this would probably work best if the work and tune flashing is done by a Dinan authorized BMW dealership. They would have a relationship with each other already in cases of warranty related items and a dealership who has sold you modifications for your vehicle and installed them shouldn't be the one saying "sorry there's no warranty coverage for our work"
Any owner who has had to deal with warranty issues several times has probably learned that a lot of this has to do with the dealerships themselves. Whether an owner has a pleasant ownership experience or a real pain in the azz headache of one comes down to how their local dealership functions and treats their customers. It can vary greatly between the various dealerships and with the internet today it's not hard to look through forums and online ratings to get an idea of what's what. Also calling Dinan and asking them which dealerships they have good working relationships with could be very helpful down the road. Then if a situation did occur and both are pointing fingers about who's responsible, in a worst case scenario you really are still going to be filing against the dealership to ultimately solve it one way or another, they sold it to you and installed it.


The ESS and others are cheaper, comes with a tuner, and I'm betting gets a higher performance from the vehicle. The questions are how much more stress is being put on the powertrain and will you be able to reflash before giving it to the dealership for service. 90% of the time you probably will, but if the vehicle just dies/fails on you and has to be towed to the dealership for service you may not get that opportunity. Although rare they do happen and once again are chronicled in the internet forums. I won't even get into the discussion about the dealership's ability to detect if an ECM has been flashed multiple times due a handheld tuner. There's lots of claims both ways and really that's just an owner's choice to potentially deal with or not.
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2020 X4M Comp. (currently stock) - Was 2015 335 MSport -MPPK -Borla ATAK -Dinan Sport+ - E.R. Charge pipe / 2013 X1 35i Sport - Dinan tune / 2009 X6 50i Dinan badged
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