I'd highly recommend going for the 7" FMIC and Fuel-It! Stage 2 pump. Being able to add more E85 and keep IATs down will be a must for me here come summer. I have an E85 station about 30 minutes from me that I pass a few times a week, but I bring some 5 gallon containers on me every once a while that I keep full at home just in case. Having 10 gallons on hand at all times is much easier than loading different backend flashes often.

yea the intercooler is a must have but i am gonna do M5 body panels with wheels and springs first, since the car was hit and needs a new front bumper.

and i have a. E85 gas station 15 min from my house and i RARELY pass by it so i have to make a trip out there to fill up. I bought a couple jugs for the E85 but it got annoying quick.

I also have now 130k miles and i hope this thing will last a couple more years with a lot of oil changes and basic maintenance.

Now that i have catless DPs, the turbos should last longer because of less heat

Exactly my thinking. And I've replaced injectors, plugs, coils and fuel pump so hopefully all my potential issues with misfires will be on their way out. I still need to do an intake valve cleaning at some point.

I rarely redline my car and always wait until the car is fully warmed before accelerating harder than absolutely necessary. I've also followed all maintenance issues on time and repaired everything that's malfunctioned quickly. I've heard of turbo failures at half the miles mine have, but mine have worked flawlessly since introducing performance mods. They spool quick, hold 18-19psi, pull all the way to redline, and produce no strange noises or wastegate rattle. Probably a mixture of luck and careful driving.

Once I passed 100,000 miles, I also started changing my oil every 6,000 miles for peace of mind.

Also, you'll love how the FMIC looks behind the M5 bumper. You have to look a little closer to notice on the standard bumper, but it still enhances the front end look immensely!

i want to get a Blow Off Valve (BOV) also

but first i need to negotiate the price for the M5 bumpers, fenders and mirrors from my friend

and then i need to see how much insurance is giving me for the front bumper. I really dont feel like spending another $3k-4k on making this car look pretty.

funny thing is that i was planning on doing that before a cop hit my car, so i would have had to cover out of pocket 100%. Now that's insurance gonna be paying for some of it, i really dont want to spend money on it.

So what was once a small oil leak seems to be getting more aggressive. It appears to be the oil filter housing gasket that is either coupled with a rear main seal and oil pan leak, or the oil has just made it's way all the way to the rear of the engine over time. I had to add a quart of oil about 2,500 miles after my most recent oil change, and another about 2,000 miles later, so need to get this taken care of or at least under control (if its the rear main seal or oil pan, I'd rather put that off until I need to drop the sub-frame for other reasons like a turbo replacement).

I replaced the oil cooler gasket and o-rings during my last oil change and that did solve the oil that was puddling on top of the oil filter housing, but it's evident that the larger gasket is the one leaking severely.

132,000 miles in and this car has never had an intake valve cleaning, so I'll be tackling this at the same time along with replacing the rear brake pads. I'm opting to pass on the blasting method, and go with the soak and scrub method instead.

Hopefully this will get my oil leak under control and help the car run a little smoother with clean intake valves.

I'm bound to have some epic carbon build-up pictures at my mileage. With almost new injectors, coils, plugs and fuel pump, the somewhat rough idle still bothered me. But an oil leak that appeared to be coming from the oil filter housing gave me an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. I decided to use the entire weekend to strip the car down, clean the valves, replace the OFH gasket, replace the rear brakes, rotate my square setup, and complete an oil change.

At this point, removing all these components is a breeze:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-1...01-Image-6.jpg

Knowing I'd need to rotate the crank to get the valves open and closed to soak them, I went ahead and unplugged the coils, removed them, removed the spark plugs (which looked pretty good -- I did change them about 5,000 miles ago) to help with compression.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-l...02-Image-7.jpg

Getting the intake manifold removed was the first task, which meant removing the DCIs:

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-m...03-Image-8.jpg

The "evil black box" as it's been dubbed by the forums. I won't lie, I did struggle with this until I found the right technique. Some lubricant, a large flathead screwdriver and some hard pulling eventually got it off the bracket. As you can see, the oil leak had begin to cake/pool on the block underneath the box.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-U...04-Image-9.jpg

Another 15 minutes and it was off:

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-S...5-Image-10.jpg

At this point, my DSLR begin struggling in the low light and the deep focusing to get a great picture of the valves, but they were as expected. 1-4 were awful, not even sure how those valves were moving. 5-6 weren't as bad. Had I gone another 100,000 miles without cleaning these, I suspect the valves would have eventually been unable to move up and down at all anymore.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-P...7-Image-12.jpg


Here were my tools -- 6 cans of Brake Clean and 1 Winchester gun cleaning kit from Walmart, about 35-40 bucks worth of supplies. The best thing about the gun cleaning kit were the large rod connectors that I was able to hook to my power drill.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-f...06-Image-5.jpg

This coupled with about 30 minutes of soak time done twice for each cylinder left them sparking clean.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-a...8-Image-14.jpg

Unfortunately no after pictures as I was having more difficulties holding a light and taking a shot in such low light, but they looked brand new. At this point I was feeling great about the entire process. Took about 5 hours in all taking my sweet time. I got everything bolted up, spark plugs reinstalled and started the car. Sputtered for a quick second and cranked right up. Idle seemed to be immediately smoother, even at cold start. I also wanted to do this for a short bit so if the oil had gotten somehow contaminated by the Brake Clean that I'd be able to drain it right after and add 7 quarts of fresh OEM oil.

Unfortunately, this is when trouble started. A small steady stream of coolant was leaking on the floor. I sourced the leak back to the hose that leads from the thermostat to the cylinder head. The two 10mm bolts that secured the hose to the head were not enough to overcome the corrosion and dry-rotting that had occurred at the connection point. The O-ring had begin to crumble and the rubber fitting itself had corroded beyond repair.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-p...11-Image-3.jpg

I quickly cut off the connection and ran to the BMW dealer down the street to see if they had any of the small fittings in stock. As with any experience at a stealership, this wasn't a great one. Not only did they not have that part in stock and it would be the following Wednesday before it would arrive, it was also necessary to change the whole hose.

https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-a...10-Image-4.jpg

This meant following the long, snaking hose all the way back the passenger side wheel area, so I could barely reach the clamp to remove the hose from the thermostat. Also meant draining most of the coolant, but this probably needed to be done anyways as the fluid hadn't been changed in some 60,000 miles since my water pump failed.

While I wait on the new hose to arrive so I can finish things up, I went ahead and replaced the rear brake pads as well as added a new oil filter and fresh oil. Hopefully the car will be running as good as new on Wednesday with the new hose.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-S...12-Image-1.jpg

With the added downtime, I also cleaned most of the oil from the engine, subframe, hoses, and undertrays so I can track any more leaks as I suspect I may still have one coming from the oil pan or rear main seal, but fixing the OFH gasket was a logical first try and should help slow the rate at which I have to add oil for now. Ideally I'll have no leaks at all after this, but at my mileage that might not be realistic.

So the car is back up and running and the thermostat to cylinder head hose has been replaced. Dropping the sway bar as you would when replacing the thermostat/water pump was the only way to access the clamped side of the hose. Once I filled the system up with BMW coolant, I started up the engine and verified no leaks after letting the car come up to temperature.

I pushed the car on the way to work this morning and everything feels great. Car is an absolute beast on the highway and power is smooth and linear all the way to redline. I'm going to daily run with Map 2 (17.5 psi) with the E85 Backend and E65 fuel and also have the ability to switch to Map 7 on the fly if I want to go all out.

The engine warms up quickly, idles smoothly and has picked up a noticeable amount of power. I shouldn't have waited nearly this long to tackle the valve cleaning.

At this point, I'm very content with all I've done with the car and probably won't add much else other than keeping up with maintenance, hastily fixing any problems, and possibly adding a new set of springs/shocks down the road. Even at 135,000 miles, my stock turbos build boost quickly, pull hard, and have no problem achieving 19-20psi on the race gas map, and make no noise at all.

Now I need to find a DynoJet and a drag strip before it gets too hot!

me too, i am looking to dyno my car

it feels like a monster, i bet yours is even crazier.

i keep trying to use the steering paddles to shift at 6k rpm, but i always forget. even with the shift light from the jb4. so it just ends up shifting by itself in manual mode. do you try to shift at 6k or you let it just roll to redline?

did u race anyone yet?

Whats the power limit of the Auto trans? Has anyone had failures. Mine is a SAT (sports trans) Just curious before throwing meth,downpipes,tune etc at it

Upwards of 600HP they seem to have some difficulty shifting under full boost despite of what you do to them. But on stock turbos you won't be seeing those power levels anyways. I haven't personally heard of anyone destroying their transmission on OEM snails.

A small update here. I was able to catch the JB4 Mobile Bluetooth Connect kits in stock earlier this month and pulled the trigger. Now having the ability to log and view live data without a laptop is very valuable to me. Highly suggest this tool in conjunction with the JB4!

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-4.../1-Image-1.jpg