BMW G450X Product Review
Product review shows the performance gains with LeoVince's Slip-On and a Power Commander
The Background
The G450X has a power switch/plug, located on the right side. Insert the "Power plug", and the standard 30kW (40.8hp) "Normal mode" becomes 38kW (51.7hp) "Sport mode" (numbers according to the claimed spec). It should be noted that this is engine power, not wheel power, as measured by the dyno - it is generally accepted that the wheel power is expected to be 10-15% less than the engine power.
Most owners never read the owner's manual and thus probably don't realize that in Sport mode the G450X operates in "open loop", which means it no longer uses the Oxygen (Lambda) sensor to control the Air-Fuel mixture to comply to the Euro-III emission specs. So what? you might ask. Well, your stock exhaust canister contains a 3 way catalytic converter, which will be permanently damaged/degraded when running the engine in Sport mode! This is why you fit a non-cat slip-on (or full system)... Besides not containing a catalytic converter, the slip-on has less flow restriction, and hence allows more air to pass through the heart of your G450X. BMW suggests the Akrapovic system, however as an experiment we decided to give the LeoVince X3 a try - at around 1/3 of the price.
The Process
We purchased a LeoVince X3 as well as a Power Commander V for the G450X. We fitted the Power Commander V with little effort, and the plan was to do a run with the stock exhaust canister, followed by replacing the stock canister with the LeoVince X3 and comparing it to the stock canister. Both of these would be done with a "zero map", which means the Power Commander has a zero net effect on the stock fueling. There after our expert tuner would optimize the Power Commander fueling map and once again compare the results to the previous two.
 
The Results
The results were dramatic, and I believe the screen captures speak a thousand words! The first graph on the right shows the Power (hp) across the rev range for the three test scenarios followed by the torque output. The blue run is with the original canister and stock fueling, the red run is the LeoVince X3 slip-on with stock fueling and the green run is the X3 with modified fueling map. It is quite obvious that addition of the LeoVince X3 has quite a dramatic influence on the power output. However even more dramatic is the power gain once the fueling is fine tuned!
Click to see the full review by Hex Code
|
