[CuriousVibes]

Hi All,

I am new here and am considering flashing my 330i's ECU. How has your car held up from a maintenance perspective? I am assuming that increasing the horsepower and torque would put additional pressure on all the corresponding parts (engine, transmission etc.) How has this affected your maintenance? Are there parts that need to also proactively changed? I am new to this and am curious before taking the plunge.

[BmwDriverStockholm]

Get ready for the following:
- changing oil every 5k miles or so
- changing spark plugs (and upgrading it) every 10k miles
- changing ignition coils every 20k miles
- if your tune is good, very likely you need to change engine mounts (don't know how often, mine broke almost immediately after I did stage 2)
- changing transmission oil every 30k miles or so
- brake pads will be consumed much faster (if you like to push the car - it will use ESP more often)
- get ready to carry with you extra oil - you will see "low oil warning" from time to time if you like to push the car
The list above comes from my personal experience. Good luck with the tuning! =)

[CuriousVibes]

Thank you so much for the comprehensive list! I haven’t had such an awesome car in a long time. These are highly tuned machines and I want to know what I’m in for and to make sure I’m taking care of it. So I’ve seen some things about changing my down pipe on these engines. Do you know if that was fixed with the g20?

[BmwDriverStockholm]

I'd recommend you do more research, like watching some YouTube videos and reading some forums like this one before tuning your car. A lot of guy claim "it is easy and safe to make XX horsepower with just a few hundred bucks" - but I personally don't agree with that.

Tuning requires at least some intuition about how the engine, turbo, and related systems work on a car. It is really easy to cause permanent damage to the car if you tune it and ignore some extras you need to do (like good fuel or extra maintenance).

I'm making a small series about my tuning experience, I'm very slow on producing new episodes =) But check this out

[CuriousVibes]

Yeah, I’ve tuned cars enough in the past to know that when you increase the capabilities of your car, you also increase stress on whatever OEM parts are still there. Some cars have more headroom for that than others, like the old Supra, but I can’t seem to get an idea of the extra headroom on this car for upgrades. I have been looking around, and I have been a bit curious about the lack of conversation about the risks and things that you also need to upgrade around the increase in power from these kits. I appreciate all of the candid information.

[Glashutte]

I've gone one step further. Running custom tune, big turbo, ~400whp and its still running strong. Did a few months of 30-90 mph pulls to get the engine tuned. If you're just doing a remap chances are it's adding a few psi of boost, ~300whp or so. I wouldn't say that's enough to significantly introduce more wear into your engine/trans.

[CuriousVibes]

Ok, so this chassis and the car is built to absorb significantly more power without reinforcement?

[BmwDriverStockholm]

Originally Posted by Glashutte

I've gone one step further. Running custom tune, big turbo, ~400whp and its still running strong. Did a few months of 30-90 mph pulls to get the engine tuned. If you're just doing a remap chances are it's adding a few psi of boost, ~300whp or so. I wouldn't say that's enough to significantly introduce more wear into your engine/trans.

Could you please share your dyno graph and 1/4 mile times? I'm thinking about going beyond my pretty simple stage 2, but I am not sure.

[ztech]

Almost 60k miles (from 32K to 92k) of custom tunes (93 and E85), pushing over 300WHP, and fairly aggressive driving on a daily (light-by-light) basis. No issues. Compression is 180 even across all cylinders. I do oil changes every 3K miles, and spark changes every 8K miles - coils changed at 78K miles.

[CuriousVibes]

Thanks for letting me know. I found a DIY channel on YouTube where someone is pushing over 500 horsepower with a mostly stock set up. Seems like an insane amount of headroom with this car.

[hellokitty]

My Mini GP3 is holding up well.

1) BM3 with Cary Jordan custom tune (91, E30 and full E85)
2) Stock intake with BMC air filter
3) Remus race exhaust
4) Powerflex engine inserts (upper and lower) to keep wheel spin at bay due to FWD.
5) NGK 94201 spark plugs gapped to .020.
6) Wagner competition intercooler

This is good for roughly ~335whp @ 23-24 psi of boost on E30/E85. Plenty of power for a 2700lb car