I know that there was a trick for advancing cams on the US engines to gain some hp.
Can the same thing be done with the S50B32 and stock management? If so, what kind of gains can be expected? Is it even worth doing. If so, is there info on how it's done and to what degree?

US engines can get better mid-range by advancing the exhaust cam (to a certain degree), and advancing the intake cam when the VANOS engages also boosts mid-range torque. Retarding the cams at higher RPMs is where the power is made.

With our S50B32 set at 107 intake and ~100 exhaust, mid range was excellent (just had this conversation w/ Barry earlier in the afternoon) but top end was nil (no VANOS on our car, yet). Power peak was at a dismal 7000 RPM. The engine was originally tuned at these cam settings because we were out of time. Further retarding of the exhaust cam (didn't touch intake) and retuning later provided that missing top-end power (peak closer to 7800) but definitely traded a lot in midrange torque. The two low-speed turns 4 and 5 at Roebling is where Barry said he noticed it the worst.

I believe Mark D'Sylva is working on cracking the Siemens MSS50 ECU and playing around with it, but I haven't seen anything final, yet. Alex Lipowich may be the person to contact regarding performance tunes from our fellow European gearheads. He takes his B32 to 8k regularly.

US engines can get better mid-range by advancing the exhaust cam (to a certain degree), and advancing the intake cam when the VANOS engages also boosts mid-range torque. Retarding the cams at higher RPMs is where the power is made.

With our S50B32 set at 107 intake and ~100 exhaust, mid range was excellent (just had this conversation w/ Barry earlier in the afternoon) but top end was nil (no VANOS on our car, yet). Power peak was at a dismal 7000 RPM. The engine was originally tuned at these cam settings because we were out of time. Further retarding of the exhaust cam (didn't touch intake) and retuning later provided that missing top-end power (peak closer to 7800) but definitely traded a lot in midrange torque. The two low-speed turns 4 and 5 at Roebling is where Barry said he noticed it the worst.

I believe Mark D'Sylva is working on cracking the Siemens MSS50 ECU and playing around with it, but I haven't seen anything final, yet. Alex Lipowich may be the person to contact regarding performance tunes from our fellow European gearheads. He takes his B32 to 8k regularly.


Hey James. Thanks for the response. So, advancing the intake and retarding the exhaust on a vanos engine is what guys are doing? Is this done with stock management...or does someone like Mark D. have to "tune" our ecu?

With a vanos engine...what kind of gains do you think can be seen? Is it a costly proposition to mess with cam timing? I'm obviously clueless with this stuff. Does something like this need to be done while on a dyno or are there some set values proven to work?

We are running the Autronic SM4. The new v1.09 chip coming (next week) will allow us to put the BMW VANOS unit back on and have fully variable VANOS control again.

Yes, it is very time consuming and costly to 'play' with cam timing and do hours of dyno pulls. If you're already running factory programming, there isn't too much to be gained from cam timing changes. Going from no VANOS to fully variable is another story, though.