Isn't this what people want? The platform has been stagnant
I give up, you win...
VAC Motorsports - Billet Oil Filter Lid w/Sensor Ports for BMW N54/N55/S55
- Thread starter Jeffman
- Start date
Why no response about who is actually building vs machining the VTT/Rebello motors? Seems odd that Chris would ridicule others for not answering every question he posed, but then ignores questions himself...
Because that's not Chris that's Tony.
Mans was banned, claims it's "water under the bridge" then hops on his customer service rep's account to talk more shit. Clearly not "water under the bridge".
PS Tony, the more people you block on Facebook for calling you out the more haters you'll get.
high probability, it's happened before.
The fb blocking is 100% true tho I've been blocked by Tony for like 2 years lmao
A grade school reading of the writing style tells you pretty clearly who it is. Fake news.
Filippo
Calling this platform stagnant is not accurate. New useful products, like the one this thread was created to discuss, are released monthly for the almost 14+ year old N54 platform, that is rare. Please see: M18 valve cover, 3-4 new HPFP solutions coming to the market, tons of twin turbo solutions, the Xclutch, plasaman intake manifold, Hydra twins, N53 head for hybrid turbos, RB GameFinishers, the list goes on. That is all new this year in 6 months. How in the hell is that stagnant? Maybe your sales are and that is why you have so much time to post on the forums?
Again, you act very unprofessional posting memes and calling people ignorant, stupid, unintelligent etc. No one has been insulting you or calling you names in this thread, you are the 1st one to cast shade. As opposed to posting in this thread why don't you fix your CS issues? Every review is either 1 star or 5 that is SUPER fishy: https://www.yelp.com/biz/vargas-hi-performance-hayward same on google reviews etc. all very negative. I don't see your direct CA competition Pure Turbo having these negative reviews and customer service issues made public. Very weird! I wonder what the difference is? It's surprising you have any negative reviews with your policy of helping customers less if they make or disclose product issues online and by mass banning people on Facebook who say anything negative. Not exactly the practices of a stand up company with nothing to hide
Honestly, why not try and keep the thread on tract instead of throwing shade, insults, and continuing to going off topic on literally every post you have made in this thread? If you wanted to start a 'Why VTT likes VAC' thread you can do so and post in it to your heart's delight.
Any chance we can just get this thread back on topic and discuss things in a professional manner without lowering ourselves to petty insults?
- Ported for temperature or pressure sensors so you can monitor vital oil condition on the track or street.
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I believe the issue others are bringing up about location is not the aesthetic issue, but about the oil pressure in the filter area not representing the oil pressure seen in more critical areas of the engine.Calling this platform stagnant is not accurate. New useful products, like the one this thread was created to discuss, are released monthly for the almost 14+ year old N54 platform, that is rare. Please see: M18 valve cover, 3-4 new HPFP solutions coming to the market, tons of twin turbo solutions, the Xclutch, plasaman intake manifold, Hydra twins, N53 head for hybrid turbos, RB GameFinishers, the list goes on. That is all new this year in 6 months. How in the hell is that stagnant? Maybe your sales are and that is why you have so much time to post on the forums?
Again, you act very unprofessional posting memes and calling people ignorant, stupid, unintelligent etc. No one has been insulting you or calling you names in this thread, you are the 1st one to cast shade. As opposed to posting in this thread why don't you fix your CS issues? Every review is either 1 star or 5 that is SUPER fishy: https://www.yelp.com/biz/vargas-hi-performance-hayward same on google reviews etc. all very negative. I don't see your direct CA competition Pure Turbo having these negative reviews and customer service issues made public. Very weird! I wonder what the difference is? It's surprising you have any negative reviews with your policy of helping customers less if they make or disclose product issues online and by mass banning people on Facebook who say anything negative. Not exactly the practices of a stand up company with nothing to hide
Honestly, why not try and keep the thread on tract instead of throwing shade, insults, and continuing to going off topic on literally every post you have made in this thread? If you wanted to start a 'Why VTT likes VAC' thread you can do so and post in it to your heart's delight.
Any chance we can just get this thread back on topic and discuss things in a professional manner without lowering ourselves to petty insults?
I don't see how this would be a negative as far as the location goes for the sensors. I mean you just unscrew the NPT threaded sensor when do you your oil filter change. Should take all of 1 minute. Less expensive and less of a hassle vs. drilling & tapping in other locations just to get the same data. Now if you are concerned about looks, sure, better places to put the sensors. But honestly if you are running those sensors wtf do you care about your engine bay's aesthetics. You are not stopping at Cars & Coffee or popping your hood open at your local Dennys car meet on Wednesday night. Of all the metal oil filter caps this one seems to be the best thought out. No silly useless cooling fins etc.
- Ported for temperature or pressure sensors so you can monitor vital oil condition on the track or street.
Where would be a better location for the N54 / where are aftermarket pressure gauge ports normally located? I know there's things like external oil cooler sandwich plates for other platforms that have a spot fit in, but what about on more modern performance vehicles? Especially similarly set up engines? Like others have mentioned, this is the one oil cap that actually has useful functions so it's at least a step in the right direction - I'll leave my other comments regarding my thought process for the end of the post to stay as on topic as possible.
I'm not entirely sure on the flow path of oil through the N54 engine off the top of my head, though I do have some slight recall of the flow process through the OFH from installing my PSP oil cooler and may still have the photo saved. If anyone has some type of flow path picture of how it flows through the engine, they should post it up so we can judge better.
As I said before and like @fmorelli , @Chris@VargasTurboTech and some others pointed out, VAC has a ton of experience withs lots of different gens of BMWs and lots of high-tech machinery, plus the means to test things properly and on a large variety of cars to boot. Whether you think that VAC is super supportive of the N54 community or not doesn't matter, the statements above are facts and this OFH/oil cap is not used solely on the N54. As I said before I'm not 100% certain on the oil flow path throughout the entire engine, but I feel like a directly post-filter port on our car - one that has the OFH mounted on top of the engine and right on the side of the block - that it may be pretty damn accurate as it is. I know that would possibly place it squarely between the filter and oil cooler so theres possibly a slight pressure drop, but at least the oil coolers are typically below the OFH so gravity may help keep the pressure consistant? Theres probably not many other spots where you can entirely PnP install two different oil sensors anyway. Would most other locations not at least require some form of physical modification to the block or another component? Considering changing an oil cap takes 2 minutes and most likely all but the most die-hard road course people arent willing to drill into something as sensitive as part of the oiling system I think its a good idea no matter what. I just have a feeling that they likely tested this enough to at least realize the pressure and temp readings from the fittings in the cap are either accurate or at least close enough, and probably much better than our car's built-in calculation-based system for such things.
Just read through the last few pages. Others have posted examples of previous BMW engines and people doing tests that show the ofh is not the best place for reasosns that they posted. I don’t remember specifically what they said and it’s in this thread.
The vast majority of posts are people talking about whether VAC is good on the N54 platform, with only one post saying people had "used other spots and found inaccurate readings" but that doesn't say much. If they put a sensor right after the fuel pump, that's not what the engine is going to be seeing. Really if they put it anywhere pre-oil filter it isnt going to be accurate to what the engine sees, but itll read higher and people will be happier about that.
Going back to the "plug and play, 2 minute part swap" thing in combination with it needing to be after the oil filter, I still think this will be a good product for anyone looking for more accurate readings than the DME calculation.
Why ask me? Ask the person that posted about the location for more information or a link to the original post/video/whatever...
You quoted me saying there were examples posted in this thread and it came across like you knew too, so I replied to your post. Isn't that how forums are supposed to work?
Edit: I didn't realize you were one of the biggest anti-VAC proponents in this thread (lol) so my mistake, I'll go ahead and tag him and maybe we'll both learn something. @Bnks334 do you care to enlighten us on what other platforms an oil cap with ports was used and why it was found to be inaccurate? What spot(s) were found to be the best to use on said engines? I'm still having a hard time seeing how anything pre-filter could be accurate and understand that the oil cooler may slightly effect the pressure the engine sees, but since we dont have any sensors built into the block for such purposes I'm having a hard time thinking of anything other than drilling and tapping into the return port on the OFH which is a big no thanks for me.
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I’m not specifically anti-VAC. I’m anti any company that doesn’t provide any sort of data for their products and expect people to assume they’re high quality/worth purchasing because of what they may have done on other platforms. If VAC came in and said here are all the data for this, that, and the other and showed they could meet reasonable build schedules, I would happily change my opinion of them.
I think the funny things is - when vendors do what you suggest - then the couch engineering gang shows up and bench engineers everything and decides what just possibly might be less than desirable, which then leads to "that other time that someone, somewhere else on the internet had a problem" ... and so on. Times 1000.
Said another way zero sum game. Q.E.D.
Filippo
p.s. On VAC, I don't think they've ever really been forum folks. They are more old school. VAC Motorsports sponsored my groups for years - whatever posts Tony made, where more as a participant. Product discussions seem to happen more one-on-one. Anyway I've never really seen VAC guys on forums.
Said another way zero sum game. Q.E.D.
Filippo
p.s. On VAC, I don't think they've ever really been forum folks. They are more old school. VAC Motorsports sponsored my groups for years - whatever posts Tony made, where more as a participant. Product discussions seem to happen more one-on-one. Anyway I've never really seen VAC guys on forums.
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[sarcasm]That’s a great approach to take. We should just start buying all of our performance parts from companies that offer no data on the parts we’re buying from now on. What could possibly go wrong?[/sarcasm]
Nah, my point was ... there are two sides to the story. I don't know what I find more amateur hour - engineers that talk about how much more testing should be done (but are too cheap to pay for it) or the hypothetical coulda woulda shoulda product variants. Build something and sell it - that's what separates the men from the boys.
Filippo
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Take a peep through this thread: https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/...nder-Adaptor-for-oil-pressure-sender-question
E46 generation used a VDO sensor that retained a 7psi switch signal for the CEL but also had 0-150psi signal for an aftermarket gauge. Bavauto offered a retrofit kit.
A sensor off the oil cap would be pre-filter lol... the first thing oil does is fill the filter chamber. Obviously I would say the factory location is the most accurate location as it is ported into the chamber of the oil filter housing that feeds the main oil galley.
These oil filter caps and block off plates are just expensive bling. Peopel made them for the E46 too. Someone drew it up in CAD and sent it to the CNC machine. Minimal effort and sells for a big profit... but VAC is selling it so it must be the best and most R&D, right? Or, you can just buy something like the vdo sensor and run it off the oil filter housing from the factory location with the right adapter... clearance might be the only issue I can see. After seeing the above sensor and setup do you still think having the sensors plumbed into the oil cap is still more convenient and "best?"
I am not sure about the oil pressure itself measuring different at the various locations. Even is pressure reading is the same, I still think tapping into the factory port is the easiest, cheapest, and cleanest solution. Just gotta find the right fittings and sending unit. Why re-create the wheel?
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