Whoa, been caught up with not-forum work, you guys have been busy!
No one is doing advertising fluff. The right product for the right job. POD is a great way to stick with factory control/DI only but remember we sell PI too, and PI kits outsell PODs probably about 4:1. Just like the shotgun or anything else that changes hpfp output -either from overspeeding or changing plunger throw- tune changes are necessary for maximizing performance, but usually not required right out of the box. This really shouldn't be a shocker to any of you guys, do a full reset on fueling related adaptations and most of the time that seems to be sufficient. Sufficient, and optimized are not the same thing, and we state that right on the webpage. Anyone that can tune the spool version, or a VTT shotgun, can easily tune the POD as it's going to look about the same as far as the DME is concerned (lots more fuel, control valve will be more sensitive).
As far as helical gears vs. straight cut vs me never opening up a competitor product vs. me saying "we don't use straight cut gears" I did not paint myself into a corner, as there is a way to connect all those dots and still not paint the picture you're imagining. PFS is a small company, I'm a mechanical engineer but a good enough one to reach out and build a remote team for larger projects like this one. Set up criteria, existing details on envelope and real estate available, milestones and essentially be a project engineer with a team of gearbox experts then be a liason for the manufacturing effort. I'm not whittling these gears out myself guys. During the manufacturing effort collecting bids I was approached by one vendor with an offer to build significantly less expensive version that looked pretty damn similar and was in production already. No names were shared. A perusal of this offer showed that straight cut gears were being employed. So there you have it. I've both never touched a competing product, but also seen some details about it. Hey, maybe it's just a dead product someone tried to pawn off on a small guy, I don't know. It wasn't a
bad design, it just wasn't going to be quiet and/or well balanced. I showed the cutaway to my gearbox team and they were amused. Wasn't thinking this would turn into allegations of falsifying marketing claims, especially so heatedly.
As far as POD or oversped anything vs. PI, my opinion is that you choose your poison. As the platform ages the cars typically get driven less and less, power levels increase, reliability decreases -this is part of the game of aging platforms but pragmatically speaking the changing needs gives you some elbow room for designs that might not make it onto showroom floors. PI has control issues that are getting better with time (reflex/etc.) but it's still a bunch of extra injectors and not perfectly controlled when things go wrong, not like the factory does on modern PI/DI engines anyway. POD has spinning parts to wear out, we put a lot of effort into making it last but it's not like BMW made the damned thing (not 100% if that's good or bad, ha!). In general as a fueling company we haven't seen much in the way of HPFP failures, or in customers reporting that they had a HPFP kick the bucket. To be specific, other than one guy who had an old one right from the start that didn't seem to flow too well, I haven't heard of one pooting out yet (yes, it's still early as far as mechanical life expectancy goes). Seems the HPFP's have come a long way from the early days, but at the same time I seriously doubt you'll see an oversped one go 100k. May not see a stock one go 100k either but that's a different story. Mine is more than 40k old but I no longer use the N54 as a daily, it maybe gets a couple thousand miles per year, most of which is at full boost. Mine is 14 years old now, which is old enough to expect to replace a bunch of things fairly regularly. Now if you asked me about about injectors... yeah, plenty of people on the edge put POD on and learned that they do not, in fact, have healthy enough injectors to add another hundred or two
Want to stick with DI for the benefits? There are some significant ones. Right now, overspeed that sucka. Don't like DI, want your valves sort of cleaned, and accept the fun issues that PI can, but doesn't usually have? Slap a plate on there with a simple PI adapter and you're golden. Worried about vacuum pump cracking? Either don't run the POD, or pick up the cover solution from spool that addresses the concerns their engineering team found, but I cannot speak to. Those that ask me "POD vs. PI" I almost always tell them up to 600whp, DI. Between 6-700 either. 700+ PI. More isn't better, I honestly don't even like the platform much over 600 whp, as it is still fun but takes a lot more "help" from your local wrench collection and auto parts provider, and at some point it stops being as much fun. Still love my N54 though.
Flex fuel is a different subject and a great upgrade to the platform, as described it's really just 2 maps with several levels of interpolation. It's not perfect but it's pretty damned good and if you can run it, we recommend it.
I think that covers most of the things. Back to making fuel pumps.