Should I re-map ?

[ZedConvert]

ihadablackdog, recommendation is tell... If you need to claim big money the insurance co will check everything NOT to pay out.

Someone said they paid an extra £40 on their £300 premium.

[Huzee4]

After much research and great advice from the forum I decided not to go ahead with the remap. Yesterday I found myself test driving a 35iS, I instantly fell in love with her and will be picking her up this week hopefully. Pics to follow.

[R.E92]

After much research and great advice from the forum I decided not to go ahead with the remap. Yesterday I found myself test driving a 35iS, I instantly fell in love with her and will be picking her up this week hopefully. Pics to follow.

Give it a few months and you'll be thinking about remapping that to

When that time comes, do some research on "MHD Flasher".

Until then, enjoy the upgrade

[Huzee4]

After much research and great advice from the forum I decided not to go ahead with the remap. Yesterday I found myself test driving a 35iS, I instantly fell in love with her and will be picking her up this week hopefully. Pics to follow.

Give it a few months and you'll be thinking about remapping that to

When that time comes, do some research on "MHD Flasher".

Until then, enjoy the upgrade

Thanks, I'll take a look ! Hopefully picking her up on Thursday, honestly couldn't sleep last night

[RMS]

Had the remap done with autowerx. £280 inc vat. Theft the car with them for the day and collected.

9% gain in HP and similar for torque but as some other threads have mentioned, it is more responsive and the torque is improved at lower gears, so the first gear feels less homeopathic.

It hasn’t made a quick car fast of course but has improved things. Is it worth £100? Yes, easily. £200? Hmm maybe. £280, probably not. But no harm come and I’ll just have to wait longer to do the other bits.

I spoke to some insurers (I’m a cautious person by default with insurance so it was never going to be any other way) and my existing company wouldn’t cover mods of ANY kind, Chris knott said no (perhaps as it’s my first ‘performance’ car? But admiral we’re fine with the remap and it’s even cheaper than it was before the remap thanks to a multi car discount!

I can certainly see myself going to a more powerful zed in the future but I really enjoy my 23i for now

[ZedConvert]

RMS, great feedback... On my 20i I'll likely see better gains, but will probably call my insurance Company prior to remap. To be honest, just shelled out on new Wheels so it'll have to wait

[tintoverano]

as described by RMS + in my case Normal mode driving became more dynamic and responsive, feels much better - combined now with CDV delete I don't even need sport modes (just kidding)

[sachak]

After much research and great advice from the forum I decided not to go ahead with the remap. Yesterday I found myself test driving a 35iS, I instantly fell in love with her and will be picking her up this week hopefully. Pics to follow.

Give it a few months and you'll be thinking about remapping that to

When that time comes, do some research on "MHD Flasher".

Until then, enjoy the upgrade

Thanks, I'll take a look ! Hopefully picking her up on Thursday, honestly couldn't sleep last night

I have been running MHD stage 1+ for almost a year and stage 2+ from time to time, its a massive improvement in power however you will need to look into allot of routine maintenance before embarking on this little adventure your about to set onto! The N54 engine isn't for the feint of heart, it has big running costs in terms of maintenance however if you keep up to date with all the general wear and tear items and look after her she will be good to you.

Things to look out for:

Injectors! (Latest revision is 12, hopefully this one has all new shiny revision 12 injectors)

electric water pump <-- costly to repair, check if its been done.

Replace all the coils, they lead to so many issues ( I thought my dct clutch plates were wearing as my car had a shudder for a very long time, I recently had a coil failure and replaced it on the spot as I have 6 spare and boom shudder gone!), car feels smoother than its ever felt in my ownership.

Spark plugs, replace them they are as bad as the coils with the issues they cause.

high pressure fuel pump <-- costly, check if its been replaced.

oil filter housing gasket, this is a big one in terms of the ticking time bomb that it is, this leaks onto the serpentine belt which causes it to slip off the crank pulley and sucks into your engine, google this if you don't believe me as I know it sounds crazy.

O2 sensors before catalytic converters, these are prone to give trouble at some point and you wont even know it, check these with MHD by looking at your AFR values, they should be sitting at around 14.7 on both bank 1 and 2 during idle and when you let go of the throttle while driving they should both jump to a value of 234, if they don't then either you have a bad o2 sensor or you have a leaky injector.

Vacuum lines, these do and will crack over time, your car will become more and more sluggish and either you will eventually get the dreaded 30ff error (boost leak) or you will get over boost, over boost is generally a dead or dying boost solenoid, the vacuum lines that are prone to cracking is the one running to the rear turbo actuator as that incurs the most heat as it runs just above the downpipes, and then the two vacuum lines that run over the engine block under the engine cover, these always crack eventually. Just to give you an example of how likely this is to happen for anyone that wants to try tell me theirs are perfect etc, I replaced all my vacuum lines with brand new ones beginning of last year and I checked last week as I went through my logs and saw that my car wasn't meeting boost target, I then hooked up my trusty vacuum tester and saw that I was loosing vacuum, I took the vacuum line off the rear turbo and it had almost completely plasticized and was cracked where it slides onto the turbo actuator nosil. I have now ordered silicon teflon vacuum lines to replace the oem ones as the oem ones are rubbish. (you will have increased turbo lag if the lines have even the tiniest of cracks in them, you won't know till you get into another N54 135/335/z4 35i etc that is reaching boost target on a mhd or jb4 log.)

Oh and turbo waste gate rattle, hopefully it doesn't have that. you can google that if you don't know what it is, but you will know if it has it.

This is what I can think of right now.

But anyways MHD is tops! and the functionality it offers you is priceless, when my coil pack went my car was shuddering and miss firing like mad and my car threw no errors, no engine light nothing! yet MHD picked up the misfire on cylinder 2 straight away and I was able to change my coil in 5min and then clear the error using my phone! doesn't get better than that in my opinion. Even if you don't want to map the car with MHD just get MHD to monitor your car and read errors and just check the well being of that amazing N54 engine your about to acquire.

[Huzee4]

Thank you Sachak, lots of great advice, I'm very grateful

I've had the car for a week now and it is incredible, I loved my previous Zeds but this is in a different league in every way. I've barely used the stereo and prefer to just listen to the exhaust. I bought the car from BMW so thankfully I have a 12 month warranty. It's currently on 18k and I'll be taking it to a local Indy who has looked after my previous BMWs when servicing is required.
I have noticed over the past week a nagging noise coming from the passenger side which is the only negative I can comment on,
'Can't you slow down, why have we got to go so fast, you'll lose your licence' etc etc .....
It was the same with my previous Zeds but worse with this one, should I consider an ejector seat ?

Cheers Steve

[Bmac]

Very nice

[enuff_zed]

Thank you Sachak, lots of great advice, I'm very grateful

I've had the car for a week now and it is incredible, I loved my previous Zeds but this is in a different league in every way. I've barely used the stereo and prefer to just listen to the exhaust. I bought the car from BMW so thankfully I have a 12 month warranty. It's currently on 18k and I'll be taking it to a local Indy who has looked after my previous BMWs when servicing is required.
I have noticed over the past week a nagging noise coming from the passenger side which is the only negative I can comment on,
'Can't you slow down, why have we got to go so fast, you'll lose your licence' etc etc .....
It was the same with my previous Zeds but worse with this one, should I consider an ejector seat ?

Cheers Steve

Ha ha.
I must be lucky then. My co-driver sits there with 'waze' (which she oddly prefers to call 'wazz'), saying, "get your foot down there's no more cameras for two miles".

[sachak]

no problem, glad your enjoying the car They are something special.

Look yours may feel perfect and that's great news man! I am just listing common N54 engine issues, this runs accross the board (335, 135, 535, Z4 35i/s) All the problems I listed above will eventually happen its just how these N54 engines are and its why bmw upgraded to the N55 on all other models except the Z4 for some reason.
The problems are all well documented which is why I listed them as things for you to check for.

I also thought my Z4 was perfect and powerful till I was told about these issues and found them like the vacuum lines that I had no idea had leaks, but boy oh boy was the car a different monster when I replaced them. Now I have become so sensitive to any sort of power loss and I run logs with MHD all the time to make sure my car is always meeting boost target. The N54 is so incredibly prone to boost leaks its sickening.

Hope you have many safe happy miles and yea definitely look into MHD, the power difference you will get with even a stage 1+ map is mind blowing on these cars. I went from 2012kw at the wheels to 273kw at the wheels with a stage 2+ MHD map. (I do have a bigger intercooler and a few other goodies though).