Damian's BMW 330Ci

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Quick Run: 11/09/2004

Today Damian's 330 was nice and clean after some body work due to high winds and falling tools in his garage - argh! - so we took it out to get a couple nice pictures for the website. I took along my G-Tech gear because I wanted to see how the RPMs looked with the new beta G-Tech firmware, since his 330 had some pretty funky RPMs before (see the previous RPMs). The answer was quite good! The RPM detection was much better, although we took the precaution of having the headlights and rear defrogger on to put as much load as possible on the alternator. Of course, since we were already out there with the G-Tech we decided on a quick run... :)

Acceleration:

Well, today was quick 'n dirty: one run, one direction, on a different road (not "Test Site North") so there won't be as much supporting data to cancel out winds, etc. I didn't employ all my doodads for weather correction, either, so I'm using ambient data from Weather.com from Pewaukee during the same time period.

However, the single acceleration run that Damian performed was nice and quick: 0-60mph in 6.9 seconds, with the quarter mile coming in 14.8 seconds @ 95mph. For comparison I've put up his best run from the last session. The trap speed is almost identical to his earlier runs, but the ET is a couple tenths lower. You can see the launch is pretty much identical to the earlier one, but at every point the 330 is accelerating harder. This is due to the colder air giving better power, less crap in his car, and also possibly his motor having some more miles on it and letting it loosen up more. Nice job!

Power:

Although the power and torque graph shows a maximum of 186 bhp in third gear (normally less due to aero drag), the full power graph recorded today shows that the third-gear peak was probably due to a dip in the road allowing momentarily faster acceleration. Accordingly, I'm using the second gear total for 180bhp @ 5500rpm, and his torque peak was about 182lb-ft @ 4400rpm. Using my correction worksheet, that calculates to about 221-224bhp. This is very close to the 225bhp rated power, and as you can see by looking at the shift points Damian was shifting short at about 5500-5600rpm in second and third so was missing out on the top of his powerband. Naughty, naughty...

Technique:

As I mentioned earlier, Damian shifted short in his 2nd-3rd and 3rd-4th shift, so that probably added a tenth to his time. His launch was nice and clean compared to the last time, which gave him better acceleration out of the hole. This could be due to the road, since the one we were using seemed a bit newer and stickier than "Test Site North", but we can give Damian some credit too!

Corrections and Other Factors:

Although I did not plug in my CarChip, I did use Weather.com to get some ambient info so I have a corrected set of data for the runs. Here is the data from the best run in original and corrected form:

Recorded Data Corrected Data
Best Run 0-1/4 mile in 14.8 secs @ 95mph 0-1/4 mile in 14.6 secs @ 96mph

So, in this case my weight was offset by the lower temperature and increased power (5.2% according to my calculations), so his recorded and corrected data end up being nearly identical.