What system are you using? N53 head? My dillema is, i sold my foxbody because i wanted something with more creature comforts, while having a metric fuckton of power. If i can manage 900+ while having my heated seats, a/c, cruise, abs, traction control, then hell yeah im all for it. Nothing like shitting on little jimmys firebird while hes sweating his ass off, stuck to his leather seat. But you get rid of that with standalone. Then here i am back again in the same position as the foxbody. And thats not something i wanna do.
all of the high end stand alones are going to have a variety of traction control methods more advanced/flexible than bmw imo. if you are using a stand alone competitively then managing engine power in your control is why you made the purchase so they have to be effective at doing that.... most of the other functions you mention aren't handled by the dme nor does the dme have any input over CAN to talk to those things as far as I know (except cruise). I understand what your saying, but really most creature comforts are not handled by the dme. the only thing I would say is your likely to end up with a longer crank and rougher cold running operation without spending a lot of tuning time, this is where oem's spend a lot of time dialling in cold running behaviour and your general tooner is more interested in your headline dyno number.
if you didnt use syvecs for instance, the only things i can think of would be re-wiring the low pressure fuel pumps (currently integrated over CAN), your dash display (which you could replace the whole lot really if you wanted to), and the direct injectors. but yeah - better ask one of the LS swap guys what else was a head f8k.
i have the stock n54 head, I've machined DI port plugs to fill the holes and a blanking plate for the vacuum pump. i havent used them yet as I may yet keep the DI - will test it one last time perhaps - dont know, one more thing to go wrong and takes extra tuning time.
not sure I see 900whp (even dynojet numbers) out a of 3L displacement as a goal worth aspiring to for reliability. cant you sh8t on jimmy's firebird with 600whp twins and a simple MHD flash? or does jimmy run a big block??
