M3 by Nowack Tuning 404hp/8,300rpm

[m_fan]

MEAT EATER

 

 

Lock up your hatchbacks: Nowack's 400bhp M3 on the loose

 

On the German autobahns, the new M3 is a top predator. With 343 rampant horses galloping away under its bonnet bulge, its outstanding all-round performance puts it near the top of the food chain.

 

Snapping at the heels of a Porsche 911 for just two thirds the price, the M3 also offers four real seats and a reasonable boot. The only area of performance where the M3 is noticeably deficient is top speed, thanks to the electronic limiter, which calls a halt to the proceedings at 155mph. But this is the first thing all the afterrnarket tuners edit out of the ECU, even if the engine remains otherwise standard.

 

But what if you had an de-limited M3 with even more power? This was the first question asked by BMW tuning specialist, Nowack, whose rocketship 500bhp M5 N500 we drove to nearly 190 mph last year.

 

While many so-called 'tuners' often only offer wheels and body kits, Nowack is primarily an engine development specialist whose mission statement is to design, develop and build the most powerful and reliable, uprated, normally aspirated BMW engines on the planet. So, the message is clear: don't be fooled by the relatively standard appearance of this car.

 

 

Company owner, Oliver Nowack, has a good working knowledge of everything needed to make such engines. He also has a very talented electronics engineer who looks after the ECU programming as well as a father whose vast pool of knowledge of BMW road and race tuning is almost unsurpassed in the world.

 

In his race mechanic days, Hans Nowack built the Chevron race car for Paul Rosche and the Brabham BT52 for Nelson Piquet. Now 71 years old, Hans was one of the pioneers of chip tuning in Germany.

 

His experience with the Koepchen race team in the late 1960s also enabled him to solve the crankshaft problems BMW had with the M3 engine.'The problem was not with the crankshaft itself,' Hans explained, 'but with the big-end bearings.

A very high-rewing engine puts immense stresses on the bearings, so we use very special ones designed to sustain high revs for long periods. We also lighten the con-rods by 15 per cent, shot peen and balance them and use stronger big-end bolts. This is vital as the piston speeds at 8,600 rpm are as high if not higher than those in an F1 engine.'

 

 

The engine also received new lightweight pistons. These are not just stronger and lighter than the standard items, they also have deeper valve pockets in their tops for valve clearance, because of the high-lift cams that Nowack use. These cams have 304 degrees of overlap compared to the 272 degrees of overlap of the stock cams.

 

'We also do a 320-degree race cam for the M3,' Oliver Nowack told us. 'Along with other mods, the race cams will deliver 445bhp, but they have a maximum life expectancy of just five hours!' :blink:

 

Stronger valve springs are needed to cope with the extra lift and higher engine speeds and the valves are made from a more durable material. The six ' throttle bodies are machined to a 52mm inner diameter, up 2mm from stock. The plastic ram pipes are a single unit and the walls of the pipes are quite thin, so we could only gain an extra 1mm in diameter by reaming out the insides’.

 

As good as modem cylinder-head casting Methods are, especially on a BMW M motor, Hans Nowack knows how to find the last few bhp. So the cylinder heads were gas flowed. 'In the old days, we could pick up as much as 20bhp with good porting and polishing,' he explained. 'Gains on the -eads are much smaller, perhaps five even or seven bhp at most, which shows just far BMW stretched to get its 343bhp, but as one of our objectives was to extract the ultimate reliable power and torque from this engine, we needed to push the whole envelope to the limit. Whether a client would want to pay a significant labour charge for just four or five more horsepower is another question.'

 

Together with the balanced combustion chambers, the new pistons raise the compression ratio to an amazing 13. 1: 1 :) , necessitating the use of 98 Octane fuel for optimum performance. In the UK where the fuel companies seem only able (or willing) to provide 97 Octane Super Unleaded, the knock sensors will feed the relevant information to the ECU and retard the ignition timing accordingly.

 

Nowack says it will provide suitable ignition mapping for export markets according to local fuel quality, but expect 'On the European M3, the walls of the to lose a few bhp. 'We have tested the engine on our dyno with the whole spectrum of fuel grades available in Europe,' Oliver Nowack explained. 'The spread between the worst and the best pump fuel we tested was 385 and 404bhp which is quite significant.

 

The highest figure was obtained with Shell Optimax, which we found to be the most suitable fuel for this engine commercially available in Germany.' The Siemens MSS 54 ECU is comprehensively remapped, ending up with fuelling, ignition and knock sensor maps unique to this car. The top-speed limiter is removed and the rev limiter moved up to an amazing 8,600 rpm! :)

'When we were developing the M5 motor last year, we found the factory exhaust manifold was a big impediment to power,' Oliver Nowack told us. 'The factory M3 system is pretty good out of the box. It is like a race system, and because the catalytic converters are under the car, there is enough room for a decent set of equal length headers, which BMW kindly provided.

 

 

‘On the European M3, the walls of the headers are 1cm thick to retain heat and bring up the gas temperatures quickly. As a major manufacturer, BMW has t comply with this quick-up regulation, but aftermarket tuners only need to pass the warm engine emission limits, which are the same as for the standard car.

 

'We looked for a company which could work with a thinner version of the material the standard manifold is made from. This is special high-pressure formed stainless steel tubing whereby the steel is beaten and 800 bar of pressure is used to balloon it out.

 

Normally, pipe sections have to be joined by welding to get complex curves, but using this method, you can make the material do a 90-degree turn without joints' Oliver Nowack was also impressed with the way the factory headers are attached to the cylinder heads. 'Normally, you use a square or rectangular flange with four bolts per pipe,' he told us. 'The M3 manifold uses a triangular flange with three bolts.

This means the flange can simply be set at different angles according to how much room you have. It solves many problems of access and geometry and is so simple you wonder why other manufacturers have not used it before' The centre section of the exhaust is left alone, but the large transverse rear silencer with its distinctive quadruple square outlets is an all-new stainless steel unit. The diameter of the pipes also gets larger towards the rear. internal diameter starts at 55mm, ending up at 64mm.

 

 

In the end, the big numbers are 404bhp at 8,30orpm with 300 lb ft (407Nm) of torque at 5,200pm :) . That is 135bhp/litre, outstanding for a normally aspirated road legal engine. The 30mm lowered ride height is achieved with uprated springs and dampers and the anfi-roll bar sizes are up from 27mm (front) and 21 mm (rear) diameter to 30mm and 24mm respectively. A strut brace joins the tops of the suspension towers. The Speediine multi-spoke alloys are 8.0J and 9.0j x 19-inch with 235/35 ZR19 and 265/30 ZR 19 Yokohama AVS Sport tyres.

 

The interior is fairly standard apart from shift kit for the gear lever and a short-shift kit for the gear lever and recalibrated instruments with Nowack logos, with the speedo now reading to 340km/h. The orange and red lights which BMW use in the rev counter have also been recalibrated to take the higher rev limit into account.

 

As we head out through the industrial estate towards the autobahn, the low-speed docility of this 400bhp M3 is apparent. It drives like the standard car on normal roads, but when you get to the open road, watch out! The slightly modified chassis and stock well up brake system with uprated pads is to handling the modest power boost of 61 bhp, a mere 18 per cent more. Nowack offer uprated brakes, but admit to not selling many sets, except to track day enthusiasts.

On a clear stretch of autobahn, we open the floodgates in third gear, and experience the full potential of the Nowack-enhanced motor for the first time. In sport mode, throttle response of the standard car is fabulous. The N400's is truly electric. Unlike a turbocharged engine, there is no dramatic change in the character of the M3 engine. In fact, up to a point, the power builds very much like the standard unit. But once past 5,000rpm, the vigour with which it accelerates increases, and you feel the positive effect of the light reciprocating components.

 

 

If you thought the stock M3 engine was a high revver, then the closeness of the Nowack engine to a full race car engine is something to behold. At 7,500rpm, where it is time to upshift on the stock M3, the floodgates are wide open and the revs are still building. Only at 8,300rpm, with the first red-sector on the tacho just lit, does it become obvious that is time to shift up.

 

By this time, the scenery is whizzing by at a great rate of knots, and with monumental revs showing in fourth and two gears to go, we suddenly realise we have been holding our breath! Exhaling and taking on a new lungful of air accompanies a shift into fifth. Only then does the charge towards the horizon begin to abate.

 

The lowered ride height and uprated suspension helps stability at the 185mph we managed to achieve, and to Nowacks credit, the car has not been lowered or widened enough to cause bump steer or camber chasing. Ultimately though, the ride is compromised by the 19-inch footwear which looks great but is marginal even on German roads - we still think 18-inchers are the practical choice for UK roads.

 

We did not have enough clear autobahn to achieve the 196mph (313km/h) top speed Nowack claim for the M3 N400, but we did see over 180mph a couple of times with seemingly little effort before traffic conditions caused us to throw out the anchor. On the other hand, if we had slightly lower gearing, we would have reached top speed faster. 'The factory fifth is 1 : 1 and sixth is 0.87, so we are looking for a rear differential that will give us 1 : 1 in top,' Oliver said afterwards. 'That would certainly help high-speed acceleration'.

 

One generation ago, BMW was criticised for making an M3 that did not inspire as much as the E30 original. They have fully redeemed themselves with the latest M3, but there are always those who are never satisfied. For those restless souls, consider the Nowack conversion as some pretty icing on a very rich cake.

 

404hp/8,300rpm

407nm/5,200rpm

0-100km/h: 4,8

0-200km/h: 15,7

0-1000m: 21,19s

v.max: 313

 

http://www.m3-tuning.de/de/1024/home.htm

 

Astept comentariile voastre cu privire la preferintele voastre in materie de motoare sport: normal aspirat sau supraalimentat?!?!

[COObra]

sincer nu am avut timp inca sa citesc tot ce ai pus aici. dar la ultima intrebare...

daca am 2 motoare de 400 de cai unul aspirat si unul turbo......aspirat.

de ce?

1 - fara turbo....posibilitate mai mica de a aparea probleme

2 - daca apar probleme...un motor turbo cu turbina stricata nu face 2 bani.

3 - fara turbo lag

4 - daca chiar vrei sa mai storci ceva si posibilitate de turbo sau compresor. la unul deja dopat poti doar sa te risti sa fortezi cu o turbina mai mare.

 

Pe de alta parte daca am de ales intre un motor aspirat de 200 de cai si unul turbo de 350-400.....aleg puterea mai mare :blink:

[CRISTIAN]

 

404hp/8,300rpm

407nm/5,200rpm

0-100km/h: 4,8

0-200km/h: 15,7

0-1000m: 21,19s

v.max: 313

 

http://www.m3-tuning.de/de/1024/home.htm

 

Astept comentariile voastre cu privire la preferintele voastre in materie de motoare sport: normal aspirat sau supraalimentat?!?!

13800[/snapback]

 

Salut m_fan :blink:

ce mai faci ? ce mai zici ? frumoasa lucrare Nowack-ul asta :)

 

despre valoarea de 21,19s pentru 0-1000m cred ca ai gasit-o scrisa gresit pe undeva... valorea asta de 21,19s este atinsa de masini de 550hp... O valoare reala pentru o masina de 400hp cred ca este 23,19s... si s-a scris gresit 1 in loc de 3...

 

Uite un comentariu despre Ferrari Modena de 400hp http://www.ferrariofatlanta.com/360sp.htm , unde spune ca accelereaza 0-100Km/h in 4,6s si 0-1000m in 23,1s.

 

Dealtfel si M-ul meu accelereaza cam tot la fel in jurul valorii de 23,2s - 23,8s in functie de start, foarte greu de obtinut aceeasi valoare de doua ori la rand.

 

dar... 21,19s este SF... :)

[m_fan]

Salut m_fan  :blink:

ce mai faci ? ce mai zici ? frumoasa lucrare Nowack-ul asta :)

 

despre valoarea de 21,19s pentru 0-1000m cred ca ai gasit-o scrisa gresit pe undeva... valorea asta de 21,19s este atinsa de masini de 550hp... O valoare reala pentru o masina de 400hp cred ca este 23,19s... si s-a scris gresit 1 in loc de 3...

 

Uite un comentariu despre Ferrari Modena de 400hp  http://www.ferrariofatlanta.com/360sp.htm , unde spune ca accelereaza 0-100Km/h in 4,6s si 0-1000m in 23,1s.

 

Dealtfel si M-ul meu accelereaza cam tot la fel in jurul valorii de 23,2s - 23,8s in functie de start, foarte greu de obtinut aceeasi valoare de doua ori la rand.

 

dar... 21,19s este SF... :)

13921[/snapback]

 

 

 

In nici un caz nu vreau sa te contrazic cu privire la valoarea de 21,19s pentru 0-1000m :), evident e luata dintr-o revista!!!

Dar totusi sunt si masini NA care accelereaza la fel de bine sau mai bine decat un SC sau T si asta cu mai putini cai, eu cred ca, conteaza si conceptia masinii.

Vezi GT3 RS vs 911 turbo http://www.track-challenge.com/

[CRISTIAN]

In nici un caz nu vreau sa te contrazic cu privire la valoarea de 21,19s pentru 0-1000m :), evident e luata dintr-o revista!!!

Dar totusi sunt si masini NA care accelereaza la fel de bine sau mai bine decat un SC sau T si asta cu mai putini cai, eu cred ca, conteaza si conceptia masinii.

Vezi GT3 RS vs 911 turbo http://www.track-challenge.com/

13967[/snapback]

 

de fapt numai conceptia masinii conteaza... aceasta face diferenta clara... iar in cazul Porsche-ului GTR RS de 380hp NA, acesta are o latime frontala cu 6 cm mai mica si o inaltime cu 2cm mai scurta... asta genereaza o suprafata frontala cu 5% mai mica deci taie aerul mult mai bine, si mai are si un minus de 200kg comparativ cu Porsche Turbo... astfel ca 200km/h pentru Turbo este 14,6 iar pentru GTR este 13,5s. :blink: