Big Bertha - My 335xi GT

[GTBrandon]

Well, after a departure with my first car, the 2006 Acura TL, it was time for something new. The requirements for this car were it had to be able to fit my german shepherd, move me to and from college, and still be fun to drive. The first pick was an MDX, then an X3, and finally and GT given it was closest to a sport car while still maintaining adequate trunk volume as well as all wheel drive.





After a few months with the car, I started doing research on the forums and realized what my engine platform was capable of given a few modifications, and I was hooked. I immediately hopped down the rabbit hole and haven't looked back

While I was back for winter break, I realized I needed space during the winter months, and decided to pull some HGTV style garage makeover. I ended up clearing out everything in the two-car garage, and making space for my car to fit for the impending weather (news flash, we never got any)







I left a box of chocolates for the garbage men, and to my surprise, everything was gone other than paint cans when I got home from work. Thank god because I don't know what I would have done otherwise :bow:

My first idea was simply to go with a JB4 and downpipe, as I found a killer deal on the forums. After calling a couple of shops to see what they could quote for the downpipe install (I heard the subframe had to be dropped due to xDrive so I did not want to try this on my brand new car), I was sold on a whole new set up. I was told that the Jb4 was inconsistent with its results, and that I would not pass emissions with the decatted downpipe. So the new setup came about..

The new plan was a ecu flash tune by Frank Smith (Believe Stephen had this done on his m3), a decatted downpipe, and an intake. The shop owner(GTPeace in Chantilly) quoted me a killer price on the DP/Intake combo that I could not pass up, which made the price of the tune a little easier to swallow.

Fast forward a few weeks of research, and I come to realize that the stock chargepipe is made out of plastic and will most likely blow if I add any boost so I need to add that into my shopping cart. Well then I'm just one step away from full bolt-on, so I might as well just add a bigger intercooler, right?

So now I find myself having ordered a FMIC from CTS Turbo (group buy on the forums got me basically half off) and a chargepipe from FTP. Everything else was coming from the shop. Break rolls around the corner, and it's time to get everything knocked out.





I call up Jake as I heard he knows a thing or two about BMW's, and he agrees to help work on my car in his garage the night after we get back for break.

As we take off the bumper I notice some repainted spots along the bottom of it, but refer to my other post regarding that whole ordeal..

So we get to removing the intercooler and run into a slight problem...rust. The car is 2 YEARS OLD! HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE! Well, regardless, it's there.. So the bolts we need to remove are rusted out, and even with pv blaster, they're bound to strip.





We decide the first thing to do is to grab some bits for removing stripped screws from homedepot, and try to removed them that way. This did not work, but did help strip the screws even further which ended up helping somehow in the end.



Then Jake had the idea to try and drill out the bolts, as it didn't like his dremel would fit in order to carve the heads into some sort of square shape. Well other than almost setting my bumper on fire, this did nothing other than break some of his drill bits. I was able to drill through my bolt, but nothing really happened which I will get back to..

Well finally, I had the idea to just try every screw head he had in the toolbox at every possibly angle since the bolts were already stripped to hell. Eventually somehow, with on square head, and another allen head bit, I managed to get the bolts out. Now back to the one that I drilled out. The bolt head came off just fine, but it left the actual screw still in the plastic housing, blocking anything else from going back in..I'll get back to that again lol

Once the bolts and hoses were removed, we pulled the old intercooler out and the greatest thing I have ever seen happened. A full body of a bird fell out of my intercooler and inches away from Jake's head while he was trapped under my car holding an intercooler above his head. Never have I laughed so hard while working on a car before :lol:



Well after that, it was time to get the old chargepipe removed, and after about an hour of twisting, turning, banging, and bending, the damn thing came out.

I'll just leave this here


Putting the new chargepipe back in was a breeze, and all we had left was the intercooler.



We now remembered about that whole stuck bolt situation from earlier, and also realized there was only one new bold in the garage that could be used. Knowing that I would be going to the shop in 2 days for the rest of the install, as well as the fact that Jake swore by this as the official racecar technique of installation, we decided to zip tie the other side it. It was as sturdy as the thing was gonna be for the time being, so we put the belly pan back on, started the car to make sure we didn't break anything too badly, and called it a night.



The zip ties managed to stay in place until Monday when I brought it into the shop, and they were able to fix it for me before we brought it to the dyno for the baseline.



Now we went over to PTuning for a baseline on their DynoDynamic all-wheel-drive dyno. Now let me just say, I really did not like my experience there. The guys did not know how to put my car into a dyno ready mode, had to be told how to do it by the GTPeace owner(Galen) who came with me. They then proceeded to overheat the car and continue trying to dyno it, only to be stopped by again, Galen. Then once cooled down, managed to get one good run in before again overheating the car and this time fully disengaging xDrive and only spinning the rear wheels. Finally, Galen just told them to stop before they fully limped the car, and we were done. I have nothing against the guys at PTuning, but this was just my experience and I thought I would share because when I went in for my dyno at a different location afterward, the experience was completely different.

Well, after that whole fiasco, I had my heart broken by the dyno. I experienced a 21% drivetrain loss due to xDrive, putting me at the following numbers The N55 engine is 300HP and 300TRQ which is how I got the 21% number.



After that I left the car with Galen for the night, and came back the next day after work to pick it up. He had installed the catless downpipe, intake, new spark plugs, and full ecu flash for me so I was pretty exicted to see/hear the difference, and wow.

All I can say is wow, because that car was completely reborn after these modifications. The sound is more aggressive, throttle is more responsive, and overall the thing is so much faster even though it weights 2 Tons without me inside. I had a blast the next few days whipping it around town, doing some launches, but of course staying within the speed limits :wink: It really is a shame the car didn't come like this from the factory, but hey I guess they need to sell the M3 somehow right?

Well after a couple hundred miles of the ECU getting adapted I took it in for the new dyno to see what I had gained. I took it down to MD to Frank's shop since my experience with PTuning had no been so great, and since Frank himself had wrote the code for this tune. Side note: He is one of the smartest guys I have ever met in the car scene, and if you are thinking about getting your car tuned, just take an hour to sit down with him and you'll be blown away.

So we got my car all strapped up, and after just the first run, I broke everything. :mrgreen: My tires(stock continentals) made so much noise on the rollers, that the frequency knocked out the dyno computer, and we had to replace some chips on the circuit board. Apparently the only other tires to do this were drag radials, so I'll take that as a good thing!

After some good runs, I was left with some good and some bad information. First the bad, Frank informed me that my stock oil was terrible and was getting hot really quickly so I should switch soon, no surprise there. Next, Frank showed me that my car had been in an accident before I bought it...see my other thread for more details on that :dunno:

As for the numbers, well on the same number conversions for a DynoDynamics setup, I gained 80WHP, and 110TRQ which was awesome. I also had him convert to DynoJet numbers as this is what every tune and filter on the market advertises their gains as, just to see what it stacked up to compared to other tunes on the market. After that, I ended up staying for another 3 hours just talking to Frank about everything car and life-related, and it was truly an eye opener.





On my way home, I got a CEL for the intake, which was now the second time this had happened. This had been a common problem with the open-box intakes on these cars which I knew about before installing. It also had a rough idle which was attributed to the intake, and after a second CEL and rough start, I decided to take it off.

While I loved the spooling sound with the open box setup, I did not want to deal with any CELs or rough starts, so I swapped it for the stock box and a drop in K&N filter.

That brings us to the present! I now am back at college and away from the car, but cannot wait to bring it up to the car show and try it out at autocross! I picked up a set of the new Michelin PS4S's and I might throw them on for the autocross, but we'll see what the weather looks like.

I really want to continue with this car, but at the end of the day need to remember how big she is, and that I should probably be saving the money anyways so we'll see what happens.

Sorry for the long read, but I hope you enjoyed and you can now tell my why I shouldn't have done any of this to the car!

Also, I took some videos along the way so if you are interested in what I put on the car as well as how it sounds now, check out my totally legit youtube channel :thumbup:

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[RawrImAMonster]

I'd say leave it alone as far as power mods go. It should be pretty reliable as is and 330 whp isn't bad at all.

Yeah I'm running a TTFS tune on my M3 too. He has a really good reputation around the forums.

What size tires are you running? The new Michellin's aren't supposed to be available in 18" sizes until late 2018. The only exception is the 245/40/18. No idea why they are releasing stuff like that, but I'm guessing that's what you have since those wheels don't look like 19's.

[GTBrandon]

I'd say leave it alone as far as power mods go. It should be pretty reliable as is and 330 whp isn't bad at all.

Yeah I'm running a TTFS tune on my M3 too. He has a really good reputation around the forums.

What size tires are you running? The new Michellin's aren't supposed to be available in 18" sizes until late 2018. The only exception is the 245/40/18. No idea why they are releasing stuff like that, but I'm guessing that's what you have since those wheels don't look like 19's.

That's exactly what I ordered! It seems to work well with the whole 10 up, 5 down rule for plus sizing, as I had 225/50R18 on there originally. It is a little bit outside of the 3% rule, but it will only make my speedo read higher than what I am actually going which should help me stay out of any speeding tickets :mrgreen:

[Jake]

That bird. Ugh.

The car is kinda goofy, being a GT and all, but it does drive well. I got some brief seat time after the t00ns and it's pretty quick, given the ~4k lb curb weight.

Should be a good car to start autocrossing and doing the occasional HPDE with, then you can return it to stock and build some old beater to use as a legit track toy down the road

[Beej]

White on red is a dope combo. :thumbup: And there's nothing like a clean garage/workspace, so props on that too.

Sorry about the accident. I totally understand being bummed, but it does all seem relatively minor. The shop I took my car to wanted to respray roughly 1/3 of the car for blending purposes just to fix...a door ding. So just because all those panels/areas were painted doesn't mean they were all damaged. And don't worry about resale because 1) you got a good deal on it yourself and 2) you're not selling it right now.

It's surprising that you're dealing with rusty crap on a car that new, but hey, if you're gonna drive a vehicle in snow/salt, that's just about the perfect one.

I've read lots of good things about Frank Smith's tuning. Good to hear he's the kind of business owner who will take some time to shoot the breeze, too.

[ScottyB]

nice way to start it off with a new car! i know all too well the amount of suck that corroded bolts will bring to your life but good on you for sticking with it and getting some helping hands in there to bust it out.

those numbers are pretty healthy as far as i'm concerned...i'm sure the weight is always going to hold it back a little, but at the end of the day you're still working with a ~400hp AWD GT cruiser and there aren't a whole lot of those around. enjoy it for what it is!

that bird couldn't resist the turbo whistle i guess....