Quote:
Originally Posted by lkstaack
There is one important thing that I have learned over many years of car ownership and adding performance products: there are usually consequences when deviating from stock, sometimes unintended and problematic.
BMW puts a lot of thought and experimentation into their designs, but there are a lot of competing demands: performance, cost, safety and environmental regulations, reliability, and profit are a few. They must compromise one area to satisfy another. Generally, BMW does a pretty good job maintaining performance with their compromises. However, when you modify your bimmer with a different component, you are making a change to one of BMW's compromises. Will it be a good change?
Sometimes enthusiast changes are benign, such as changes to appearance or improving the quality of a component. Charge pipes come to mind. BMW uses plastic charge pipes on many of its engines; probably as a way to save money. Unfortunately, they sometimes break off at the intake manifold. So many enthusiasts replace their plastic charge pipes with aluminium. These aftermarket pipes don't deviate much from the original design, so don't cause any problems that I'm aware of.
Sometimes changes introduce unintended problems. For instance, I ran into many unforeseen problems when I installed a supercharger into my E36 M3 many years ago. I installed a proven, well designed Dinan supercharger system. It added huge torque and power to my M3. I really enjoyed it and I don't regret adding it. I expected it to be problem free though because it was from a very respected aftermarket manufacturer. However, that was not the case; reliability suffered because I deviated from BMWs original design. The intake system would cause all sorts of idling and acceleration issues because the MAF is very sensitive to turbulence and over-oiled filters. It became very sensitive to the smallest vacuum leak, prone to heat soak, and silicone charge tubes would sometimes pop out unexpectedly. The power steering reservoir became almost impossible to check because of components in the way. There was much more, but you get the picture.
So, any time that you want to mod your bimmer, you should try to determine what the consequences will be. Will it affect your ability to pass emissions testing? Will it affect your warranty? Will it contribute to the failure of another component? Will it cause or contribute to ECU faults? Will it actually perform as advertised?
The best teacher is experience, but that is often at the cost of a lot of time and money. Getting information from the experiences of others from forums such as this is another good way to learn, as long as you understand that some people will pass themselves as more knowledgeable than they really are (post count is not a good indicator of experience), and the vendors here need to run their business.
You are correct in being concerned with changing your tune and intake. These changes will affect your warranty and (if applicable) your ability to pass emissions. In California, just about any changes to your tune and intake or exhaust systems will cause immediate emissions failure, unless the changes receive a CARB exemption. Many states don't have rigorous emissions testing, so check yours. Factory and aftermarket warranties will deny claims that are directly or indirectly caused by modifications. They will often attempt to deny claims that are not caused by modifications too, so be aware. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act provides specific consumer protections, but may require litigation to enjoy them.
Your BMW performs great from the factory, so don't modify it unless you are prepared to thoroughly research each mod and select those that meet your needs, you have enough money to throw at it, or if you feel lucky.
|
Wouldn't I just be able to unplug the chip and it would be like it was never there? and if you happen to know what a flash tune is, would I need to do this?
Thank you for all your help