Banks Power

The Leader in Diesel Performance

Banks Insider iDash iDash on the Road 

Chris Nelson (BMW racer)

Owner of Energetic Motorsports, and a former engineer at ATS, Chris Nelson is a one-man tuning army. Chris tunes on all types of vehicles (gas or diesel) and works on custom wire harnesses, electronic components, and CNC parts. One of his fastest diesel tunes saw the vehicle running a 4.11 time in the 1/8 mile. 

Chris is also an avid rally racer in the American Rally Association running his 1992 BMW equipped with an M50 motor from Europe and controlling it with a MegaSquirt 3 aftermarket ECU. “The engine is a 2.9-liter, which keeps us in the class rules for rally racing. I’m one cc away from having to go into another class. It’s pretty stock other than cams and headers. The Rans is stock and the rear end is stock, too. We’re very competitive. In our last race, we were two minutes ahead of our competition.

“The iDash DataMonster works amazing with the MegaSquirt,” said Chris, “it picks up over 90 parameters or so off of the CAN network. We get a good selection of options. We also can set up warnings and data log our races. As for the Sensor Module, I’m reading fuel level, fuel pressure, oil pressure, and oil temp with it. And boy, it’s built tough. It holds up to some pretty hard hits. The car has landed pretty hard many times. We’ve broken the dashboard on landing, the fuel gauge went dead… broken in the dash another time, and the coolant quit reading. So, it was nice having the iDash still working and reporting its info.” 

What about the AirMouse Ambient Air Density Module that he has installed? Well, he’s actually used it to find the optimum area for his air inlet location. “Once we’re out on stage we were hitting temps of 140 degrees, so we needed to find out how to get ambient air in at least at that temperature. Using the AirMouse and setting it in different locations we were able to find the best place for our inlet.”

Chris ended by saying, “The whole Banks suite of electronics are pretty awesome and extremely rugged and useful!” Check out his FaceBook page at Energetic Motorsports for more info on his work.

For Examples on how you could use the iDash, AirMouse, and Banks Sensor Modules check out these sample setups.