Fixing my biggest complaint with my 335i, proper trans tuning now available

typedRew

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Feb 25, 2019
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Quit trolling dude, it's silly. The issue he has is with XHP ots maps, not the app itself, it's a clear difference to everyone reading this except you.

I'm in the SE MI area at least once a week, would love to compare the shift feel. Not a fan of RFP tunes, but I've heard of sutphin, cool you got him to do this.
Whenever works, just let me know.

I know a lot of people dislike RFP, but my car loves his maps. And i've tried quite a few.
 

Tiron

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Maybe I'm alone on this, but I like having timing pulled during a shift. The GM world calls this "torque management", which I usually turn up in my vehicles because the shifts happen so much faster and crisper with it on. Ever since I owned a VW GTI w/ DCT, which had a huge shift spark cut (commonly called DSG fart) and would sometimes completely cut fuel during a shift, I've liked the crisper shifts this style of tuning generally delivers.

My dumb 2500 chevy truck with a 4L80 shifts just under 200ms at full throttle on a stock trans, without the timing pulls it feels old-school where the shift gives a long sliding feeling. With timing pulls its a nice quick shift, currently at WOT timing drops to -25 ATDC, which is as low as that ECU will allow. This is all adjustable on that vehicle using HP Tuners, maybe I'll grab some comparison videos to post up.

With that said, I owned a 335i 6AT for about 2 months before I sold it for a 6MT 135i. My racecars have always been manual, can not stand to have my fast car be an auto. The DCT in the GTI was the only auto I ever even liked a little bit in a sporty car, and I drove it in manual mode with paddles 90% of the time. I completely understand someone being disappointed in the way a stock 6AT shifts on this platform -- I know I was (really really wish xHP was available at the time).
 

typedRew

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Feb 25, 2019
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Maybe I'm alone on this, but I like having timing pulled during a shift. The GM world calls this "torque management", which I usually turn up in my vehicles because the shifts happen so much faster and crisper with it on. Ever since I owned a VW GTI w/ DCT, which had a huge shift spark cut (commonly called DSG fart) and would sometimes completely cut fuel during a shift, I've liked the crisper shifts this style of tuning generally delivers.

My dumb 2500 chevy truck with a 4L80 shifts just under 200ms at full throttle on a stock trans, without the timing pulls it feels old-school where the shift gives a long sliding feeling. With timing pulls its a nice quick shift, currently at WOT timing drops to -25 ATDC, which is as low as that ECU will allow. This is all adjustable on that vehicle using HP Tuners, maybe I'll grab some comparison videos to post up.

With that said, I owned a 335i 6AT for about 2 months before I sold it for a 6MT 135i. My racecars have always been manual, can not stand to have my fast car be an auto. The DCT in the GTI was the only auto I ever even liked a little bit in a sporty car, and I drove it in manual mode with paddles 90% of the time. I completely understand someone being disappointed in the way a stock 6AT shifts on this platform -- I know I was (really really wish xHP was available at the time).

Yeah we had a few iterations of this tune where the gears 'slid' into next gear and we got past it. Completely different now.

Now it feels just like XHPs rock hard shifts, but without the pause in power in between.

I know a lot of cars will pull timing and this is fairly common, but its not what I want in a car. So I looked for a solution. For people who do, XHP Stage 3 will be fine.
 

Milan

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Quit trolling dude, it's silly. The issue he has is with XHP ots maps, not the app itself, it's a clear difference to everyone reading this except you.

I'm in the SE MI area at least once a week, would love to compare the shift feel. Not a fan of RFP tunes, but I've heard of sutphin, cool you got him to do this.

Not trolling dude. This guy comes in here like it's e90post sucking this dude's dick who tuned his FBO car and doesn't like that I'm voicing a contrarian opinion. Maybe next time don't put click bait in the title, the XDF to do this has been out almost 3 years

Maybe his next post can be out MMP inlets and how amazing they are lol
 

typedRew

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Feb 25, 2019
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Not trolling dude. This guy comes in here like it's e90post sucking this dude's dick who tuned his FBO car and doesn't like that I'm voicing a contrarian opinion. Maybe next time don't put click bait in the title, the XDF to do this has been out almost 3 years

Maybe his next post can be out MMP inlets and how amazing they are lol
You literally didnt even know what I posted until 1 comment ago. You can't be contrarian when you don't even know what the post is about. Do your best to get off your high horse without injuring your keyboard fingers.

XDF been out for three years? Thats cool, huge piece of news. Do you have a custom file built from that XDF? No? Tuning with it yourself? No?

lmfao, sucking this dudes dick? I paid him for a service and i'm happy I did. Not only that but its literally the first time its been done, why wouldn't I want to help further the platform? I'm sorry for helping? Feel free to fuck off if you don't want to use any of this information.

And again, proving you dont read. My car isn't full bolt on, it has an intercooler and thats it.

I wouldn't post about MMP inlets because THEYVE BEEN DONE BEFORE. And this hasnt. Is it that hard to understand? I mean, dont answer, clearly it is for you.
 

carabuser

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V8Bait is right, it's just a toggle to disable the torque intervention during shift. I thought it was used exclusively for the DCT, didn't realise the AT used it too.

I've never tried it on the DCT because I always assumed it would wreck the transmission. The dip in timing should only be for 1 scan of the loggin at most but your logs it goes on for much longer so it's no wonder you could feel the power loss. There's two tables that control that behaviour, an enable/disable toggle and a timer that lets you alter the duration. I personally would try and keep the function active and just lower the max duration down from 2 seconds.

I just checked and the duration timer was added to the public XDF a while ago. It's labelled as "Max Duration of Torque Reduction During Gear Shift"
 
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typedRew

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V8Bait is right, it's just a toggle to disable the torque intervention during shift. I thought it was used exclusively for the DCT, didn't realise the AT used it too.

I've never tried it on the DCT because I always assumed it would wreck the transmission. The dip in timing should only be for 1 scan of the loggin at most but your logs it goes on for much longer so it's no wonder you could feel the power loss. There's two tables that control that behaviour, an enable/disable toggle and a timer that lets you alter the duration. I personally would try and keep the function active and just lower the max duration down from 2 seconds.

I just checked and the duration timer was added to the public XDF a while ago. It's labelled as "Max Duration of Torque Reduction During Gear Shift"
Okay, i don't tune stuff myself so i dont know, feel free to click it.

But this tune is way more than just a torque reduction toggle in the dme, everything transmission related has been touched. We only touched the dme towards the very end to see if it would improve where we were at.
 

typedRew

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You went 11.7 with just an intercooler and a tunes on DME and TCU ? If so that’s really impressive.
11.6 as of last night. Thank you.

Yeah, intercooler and fuel pump is basically it.

And thats with my fat ass in it, i'm 370lbs. Get someone under 200 in there and itll pick up a couple tenths and mph.
 
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V8bait

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I didn't mean to degrade the impact of the custom tcu work but the big cut I just wanted to point out was a setting in the dme, not the tcu. There's actually quite a bit in the dme related to how the car shifts and reacts, there's torque request tables based on throttle angle (which are also defined and heavily adjustable), load request AND boost limit multipliers by gear, rpm and airflow, load to torque tables based on rpm and load which effect line pressure based on the tcu calibration, and many other tables you'll find in the WIP folder in the public dme xdf related to maximum torque at clutch in the 6at and dct for various conditions.

I've toyed with the 6at xdf and done a few customs but I've just not found much utility, maybe because I don't own a 6at. I'm curious, what things do you not like about the 6at? Namely in stock form, alpina (if you've tried it), and xHP?

What I've found is factory non-sport 6at cal drives decent but has many limiters and doesn't allow full line pressures. Sport at cars were similar but a more aggressive shift mapping. Alpina raises torque limits a bit which helps run higher line pressure, but is overly aggressive in normal driving modes at moving into the next gear- although tuning on the dme torque tables can help this. XHP in my experience has fine shift points in different scenarios and removes all the known torque limiters. Again I don't own one so just curious what things you have found significantly improved from the xhp stage 3? Lastly, did you ever run a custom tune with xhp or just the ots tunes and rfp? Wondering if I should look into it more based on what you're expressing on the improvements so just wondering if you can describe them better than the timing drops (which aren't an issue on any custom tune with xhp or alpina for the most part).

Also, great time! And if he's changing up the tcu he's likely going to need to discuss the dme side with other tuners or use some sort if checkbox... but on the dme side there's a lot of hysteresis between tables in what is essentially considered a neutral network (multiple 2d and 3d tables contributing to outputs).
 
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Tiron

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Yeah we had a few iterations of this tune where the gears 'slid' into next gear and we got past it. Completely different now.

Now it feels just like XHPs rock hard shifts, but without the pause in power in between.

I got rid of my 6AT so fast I don't really remember it very well (except that I could not stand it). But I've tuned several of my daily vehicles like this and have never had a "pause" in power unless I just took it way too far during part throttle or low load situations. The truck for sure had a pause when it dropped to -25° at 20% throttle lol. During my tuning when the pause was happening it was extremely annoying. When its done correctly the timing pull improves the shift feel in my opinion.

It took me some time, but I smoothed out the max -25° WOT pulls down into the lower load areas so it all feels natural. My idea was that the timing pull would subtract the exact amount of torque that the engine inertia would add to the shift, which obviously changes the timing drop based on load and rpm. Shifts are very very smooth and very quick, you almost cannot feel them unless WOT. Its a (somewhat) similar feeling that the GTI DCT gave, a fast nice shift but one that was smooth and would not upset the car even mid corner. You just shift and continue on your way. Honestly it sounds similar to how you want yours to feel, just accomplished in a different way (I imagine your tuner turned up the line pressure instead), some people like the "kick" that happens from the engine inertia with a firm shift and no pull. To each their own I guess, all that matters is that you are happy with the way your own car feels.

I've heard that the newer transmissions like the ZF 8AT use a torque handoff method that requires a torque reduction during the shift in order to maintain longevity. I assumed the ZF6 needed this as well. I'm not sure to what extent this is true, but I know the Ram/Dodge ZF8 implementations seem to have longer "sliding" type shifts with less timing pull, where in the new M5 it looks like they have a significant amount of timing drop. The Ram shifts make me cringe when I see it on video, when I know the trans is capable of so much better/faster. M5 shifts look nice to me, never felt them in person though.

Ram 1500 ZF 8:

M5 ZF 8:


V8Bait is right, it's just a toggle to disable the torque intervention during shift. I thought it was used exclusively for the DCT, didn't realise the AT used it too.

I do not think its a good idea to just turn this off without changing settings in the trans tune as well. If the TCM is expecting torque to be pulled, and it doesn't get pulled, it'll probably have sloppy shifts. I'm sure you need to increase the line pressure during the shift to compensate for the extra torque throughout the duration of the shift. Would need to do like OP and get the trans set up for this correctly. Seems to me you could just zero the torque reduction tables in the TCM and get the timing pulls to go away without touching the ECM at all.
 

fmorelli

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This diesel guy pops up out of the wood work and is the second coming for the 6AT?
Superlatives are not a substitute for reality. Rod Sutphin is well-regarded in the diesel BMW world, and has been tuning auto transmissions for a while.

Filippo
 
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typedRew

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This thread is kind of rubbish without details.
You can read my OP and posts thereafter and claim I didn't post any details?

I'm not the tuner. I dont tune cars. Im not going to release the details of my tuners changes, because thats not what im doing. I'm just stating that I hated something about my car and I found someone who could fix it. Just so happens nobody took this to task before so its a new option. It took us half a year almost to get this worked out and he deserves to hold that info until he decides if he wants to release it as public domain.

Im letting you know if you want to change how your automatic drives, contact Rod Sutphin. If you like how it is now, then you're all set and keep enjoying your car.
 

V8bait

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@typedRew can you be specific in what you didn't like and what is different? Shift timing is one, did he change the behavior for gear selection during normal driving or anything else? Just interested what places you felt needed help.