[Ageispolis]

I picked up a 335 with 50k miles and although the car is in really fantastic shape for its age, I worry I cut myself short.

After poking around I discovered it has an MPK (not sure to what extent) and a Dinan Stage 1 that was on when I got it. Has that hurt it?

Now, from what I could see on the carfax, all the maintenance was completed on the car in good fashion. And the condition of the car tells me all of its previous (3) owners cared for it.

I obviously can't return it, nor do I really want to because the search for a 6MT F30 has been far far far longer than I wanted it to be.

All that being said, what do I need to know to extend the longevity of this car that's been tuned for the last 8 years? I see posts about the N55 seizing and hear about turbos failing. What do I do to be proactive about extending the life of this beautiful machine for as long as possible?

[visionaut]

Neither of these mods alone would hurt your car. How the POs drove and cared for it, maybe…

FWIW Dinan piggybacks matched the BMW warranty, and most were installed by/at BMW dealers. They’re safe. And Stage 1 isn’t putting any real extra strain on your engine, and MP exhausts have no adverse effects.

Learn more. Don’t read too much into others troubles - it’s not widespread. Your mods are nowhere close to extreme or life shortening…

[mike@x-ph.com]

Given that the previous owner used Dinan stage 1 as their tuner, it is doubtful they have done anything to the car.

Look into replacing the charge pipe and intercooler and that should be it for now

[thejeremyman9]

+1 to above. if you "see posts about the N55 seizing and hear about turbos failing" you are searching for the negative. I did the same thing before i got my f30 many years ago - for every car i considered i went into the respective car forums and searched for problems, and of course you find them. But that doesn't mean those are common issues. Turbo failures are exceedingly rare and seizing is generally either from oil starvation during track use or lack of priming during a repair like OFHG.

[Ageispolis]

Thanks for the replies. I wasn't really looking for problems, maybe bad timing on those posts in General. Seemed like there were 3 at once last week and everyone chiming in mentioned bad priming on OFHG replacement.

I've never tuned a car. What I've heard about tunes is kinda the same sentiment you'd hear from your old-school doctor when complaining about back pain. "Oh you lift weights? That's it, that's what it is, say goodbye to your back". I want to extend the life of this car because I just love the AWD/6SPD/N55 platform and will be happy using tis as a daily until I'm old and grey. Its such a rare thing in cars with the S4 being the only real competitor.

Charge pipe I'm considering. I've looked into intercoolers a bit. Are there any decent bolt-on intercoolers out there that don't require modification?

[thejeremyman9]

That was the same person bumping all those threads because his engine seized after OFHG. But now you know what to watch for if you have to do OFHG inevitably.

CP is a requirement as preventative maintenance; stock one will explode.

IC is good as the stock one is undersized, you can also consider that sort of 'protective' in a sense, especially if you already have a Dinan on there that is increasing boost.

Tuning is fine on a well maintained car, especially more modest tunes. People drive tens-hundreds of thousands of miles on tuned cars, including ones with upgraded turbos etc. But just depends how far you want to go.

You probably just want to do IC+CP to get your hardware robust for the current state of the car then if you want more later you can add a DP and flash tune, etc.

I would generally recommend a race IC but for your use case you can probably just get a 5'' HD like from MAD and it will fit easily and be more than enough for you. They also sell CPs.