Lomag

Holy sh*t, it's like a brand new car!! Am I allowed to say that?

So where do I start.. I guess first with the tires. BMW replaced my old runflat tires due to the noise issue, especially when comming to a stop. BMW covered 100% via a PUMA case and they also covered the mounting and balancing. The dealer recommended an alignment since I got 4 new tires and they discounted it from $249.99 to $100 for me because BMW wouldn't cover it and they really recommended it so I went ahead and told them to just do it. The new tires are awesome, still a rough ride however not noisey!! Silence!! Sooo.. if you're driving on old noisey tires, complain, and complain before you reach 10,000 miles!! A deciding factor is the 10,000 mile mark and if your car has different speed rated tires. I believe before I had Y in the front and W in the rear or vise versa I don't remember.. but they were different. Now all 4 tires are speed rated W, all the same as they should have been to begin with. I think the tread design is very slightly different on the new tires and the dealer claims there's a new rubber compound Dunlop uses now and some other stuff so the tires shouldn't get noisey again. We'll see!!

A second note about the tires is in terms of proper air pressure. A few months ago we discussed this here on the forum but I don't know whatever happeend from it. There was a brand new, recent production, MY2005 545 in the dealers showroom and I took a look at the door jam. The recommended pressure sticker is different than our older cars and the recommended pressure is:
36 psi front, 44 psi rear

Now, the old recommendations were:
32 psi front, 35 psi rear (light load)
38 psi front, 42 psi rear (max load)

As you can see, the new recommendation is a bit different. BMW went through the trouble of replacing the door jam sticker on the newer model and there must have been a very good reason for it. Since we've had this noise problem, I'm following the new recommendation. I suggest you 545i sport owners do the same.

Next.. the CIP 16.2 software update. First of all I previously had 13.2 and now going to 16.2 cleared out all my settings. The A/C status in the bottom left is gone too. I assume that is to make more room for RDS output which I think still doesn't work for us with NAV? Ofcourse the perspective view is there which is highly useless IMO, but it's cool. I personally wish that new left menu bar was never added or would disappear after a while to free up more map space. Another new NAV featue I didn't see mentioned here is that you can move the map around any which way you want which wasnt possible before. That's pretty good if you want to stay in a close up street view like 800ft and see what's up ahead without zooming out to a 1 mile view and shrinking everything.

Those are the basic things, now here is the real kicker I didn't see mentioned. The car accelerates SOO much better. From 0 to whatever is awesome but more importantly from say 50 to whatever is much better. The car seems to hold higher RPM's especially when on the highway in both normal drive mode and even higher in sport mode so when you hit the gas it's right near peak HP/Torque on the curve and it really takes off. Am I the only one who noticed this? The car does seem faster but that might be because I had a 325ci loaner for a week however the RPM thing I mentioned is a definite fact. I must recommend a software update to 16.2 to any 545 owners (although I assume this applies to the 525/530 aswell).

I couldn't believe it, it's like a brand new car. Going from the 325 also made me appreciate how fast the car really is. I had gotten used to the quick acceleration and thought it was slow but... heck no! LOL

And finally.. the M-Aerodynamic kit.. WOOOOWWWWW incredible. I love it. I had never seen it in real life, only in pictures. It's awesome. I will post pictures as soon as I can clean the car up. The rims are very dirty from the mounting and they couldn't clean them properly. The car is also quite green now from pollen and other spring type tree garbage. I'm also waiting to get my new longer lug nuts back from the powder coating shop to install the new spacers I got.

Boy... I've never been so happy to get my car back from service before. This is incredible, you can't believe how happy I am. If you read this far and have had these upgrades done, you know the feeling. If you haven't gotten the new software or new tires go in and get them and you'll feel it too!

That's all for now, you may not see me online as often anymore....

bmw525i

I have seen a big change in my 525 pick up too. Not as fast as your 545 but still better than before
Please post your pictures soon.

UUronL

Great to hear that you and your car are getting along better. I was going to query the forum about tire pressures, it seems that the manual has about 3 different PSI recommendations depending on the driving speed and loads. The lowest of these is for speeds of over 100mph. They are specific to the model also of course. I'll post what is printed in the 2006 manual when I get home tonight.

JDN

Mark, is there just one front and one rear tire pressure for the 545 Sport now? The door post calls for loaded and empty pressures to be different.

530iii

Lomag, congrats

When we have the NJ meet maybe we can drag race some E500's


16.2 or 17.0 (when it comes out) here i come!

Sans

You can say whatever you want - it's yer baby ferchrisakes!

Seriously, sounds great. My dealer just called me back - they need to see my car to verfiy the tires but it sounds like a done deal. Enjoy Lomag!

stream

Sounds like a worthwhile service trip! Can't wait to see pix--I'm seriously considering the M-Aerodynamic kit.

My '05 545i has the sticker with 36F/44R recommended tire pressure, which I've followed, and so far, so good, no noisy tires.

jsal

Lomag,

Thanks for all of the info and congrats on the upgrades.

Regarding tire pressure. Usually the ride engineers tune the suspensions (springs, shock valving and tire pressure) for the desired ride and handling that they are trying to achieve. It may not be set for overall wear.

Did BMW change any suspension components for the newer models such as shock valving?

I thought BMW switched the new cars to Bridgestones. Would this have any impact on the tire pressure? Are the bridgestones run flats?

I have not see tire wear on mine that would indicate under/over inflation, so I am a little skeptical about wheter the change is retro-active to older models. I may be wrong, but it just seems odd that such a dramatic change in tire pressures would occur without other suspension changes.

Was there a service bulletin from BMW regarding this?

These higher tire pressures will also contribute to your noticed rough ride.

Lomag

JDN: There's only that one group of pressures listed. No table, no nothing, just the front pressure and rear pressure.

Why the change was made, that's what we really need to determine. As far as I know nothing changed technically about the car. BMW is still using Dunlop as the primary tire supplier.. I think I'm going to give them a call tommorrow when I get a chance. We have a trickle charger issue too that after 15 minutes when the car goes to sleep it will no longer charge the battery which stinks!

Rudy

Glad you got your baby back Lomag. I know the feeling -- you do get used to the loaner and tend to forget how fast the 545 is until you get it back.

I'm wondering if the new software did something to the Steptronic programming -- we'll have to have others chime in with more data on this one.

I can't believe your dealer didn't clean the wheels after mounting the new tires. I saw what a mess my wheels were after the wrath of mounting them but they took the time to clean them up to perfection before giving me the car (and I was waiting for it...)

Do try to fing some time to stop by and visit us a little -- please?