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Congrats on the car. How much did it cost you buying?

Sandeep lives in wellington NZealand, not the Nilgiris lol.

Cheers. Thanks for the information.

Yes, you can retrofit paddle shifters or just replace the entire steering wheel itself. I've had the car for close to 3 years now and have felt the need for it only a couple of times. There is a hilly section of road close to where I live, which is my weekly or bi week thrashing ground. Made my peace with Sport Mode.

I must say thats quite a reasonable cost for an axle back exhaust unit. I'll check with some of the dealers here before I approach a custom shop.

On the noise or rattle, its clear to me now. The source of the rattle was not exactly clear when you first wrote about it. I'm still on the fence about the severity of it, as the car does not have that many miles. It has age so maybe that equals out for a tendency for parts to fail.

I won't necessarily say the series of engines you've owned and now own are always problematic. Its sort of a hit of miss really with these Euro cars. My friends BMW 1 Series had total engine failure at about 180,000 km. Thats after the car being maintained by BMW. I don't recall if it was a 116 or a 118i. From what he described, it sounded like the timing chain snapped and the car just abruptly stopped on the road. Insurance wrote it off and he drives a new KIA now! Didn't want to touch another BMW.

You can safely maintain 10k with good quality oil. I'd shorten the interval if the car spends more time in the City. I can understand this is more a personal choice.

Hi, I am considering switching to a 245/45/18 squared setup on my 330i. Wanted to know if anyone is using the same size tires and if there is any fowling. The overall diameter increases by ~2.3% in the front and ~2.7% in the rear as the car is currently running a staggered setup on 19-inch wheels.

Congratulations, car looks good. Ive got the red interior as well, and paired with the the upgraded OEM interior ambient lighting package from Bimmertech the interior looks fantastic at night.

For BM3, just pick up a local eNet cable from Amazon. I've been using mine for 5 years now. Coat me 700 bucks, IIRC.
I never bothered with the phone adapter. You'll wind up reflashing tunes maybe a couple of times a year and the laptop works just fine.

Are you planning on going stage 2, given some of the other mods?

Hi! Thank you! Would prefer to not reveal the price here. Please PM me for more details.

Also, yeah I figured later that Sandeep is not in Wellington TN :D

Yep, it was the cheapest axleback unit I could find on the internet. It’s pretty damn good for what it is. Just wish it had come with a valve to control the volume!

I think I may shorten the service interval to around 6-7k km considering the age of the car and the characteristics of the engine generally.

Thank you! :)

I’m not in a tearing hurry to tune the car, but yes I will eventually get a stage 2 tune once I install the sport cat. I would like to first try a stage 1 OTS tune and drive it for a while before trying a different tune.

Do let me know what tune you’re using via BM3.

Please also share the link to the upgraded OEM ambient lighting package.

I have done a few cosmetic tweaks to the car like the red start-stop switch and M3 style dual slat front grille.

I’m not a fan of the faux carbon mirror covers that the previous owner had installed, so I have ordered replacements. I have also ordered aluminium foot pedals and new wheel-cap/logos to freshen it up a little. A small boot-lip spoiler is also on the way and should get installed by Feb next year.

Not sure why you've gotten an intercooler and some of your other mods if you aren't going Stage 2.
Stage 1 needs no bolt-ons. Larger intercoolers often come with decretive performance, FYI.

While it's your call if you dont want to share prices, sharing of information's encouraged - this is a forum, after all. Helping others understand what market prices are is par for the course.

But hey, your call.

I am going stage 2, but not immediately. Maybe in a month or two. I want to tune the car in a staggered manner. Also, there is absolutely no harm in getting an intercooler. The stock intercooler is pretty crap honestly and improved charge cooling will be good regardless of the power figures, tuned or otherwise.

Charge pipes, boost pipes and turbo inlet were replaced since there were many reports of these plastic pipes breaking and cracking especially on tuned cars and older cars that have gone through repeated heat-cycles. These were preventive more than anything else.

Also, I wanted to understand the repercussions of tuning the car without sorting out the mechanicals first, like the transmission oil + pan, and the timing chain. Looks like there won’t be any adverse effects so I’m good to go.

I would prefer to not reveal the price of the car itself since I was requested by the previous owner to keep it confidential, but the car was advertised at 17.75 lakh on T-BHP classifieds. However, I’m happy to share the prices of the parts I ordered.

- Wagner Evo1 Intercooler: $470
- FTP Charge Pipe + Boost pipe kit: around $350
- MST Turbo Inlet: £200
- Active Autowerke axleback exhaust: $670
- Bootmod3 licence + tune package: $520 with ENET cable and phone adapter
- Start Stop switch (red): £5
- Rear lip spoiler: INR7000 (unpainted)
- Aluminium foot pedals: INR4000
- Wheel caps: INR2750

Parts mentioned in USD were bought from Extreme Power House USA.

Parts mentioned in GPB were bought from ML Performance UK and were hand carried by a friend.

These prices do not include customs and shipping that were handled by an agent (whom I would not recommend going forward, for various reasons) and I may have spent about 70k on just customs and shipping for the parts.

Before getting these, I had to urgently address two issues that the car had - 1) shot dampers, and 2) shot brake rotors.

- Bilstein B4 dampers (front and rear): INR40,000
- Febi mounts and dust cover kits: INR20,000
- Zimmerman rotors (front): INR14,000
- Febi rotors (rear): INR12,000
- EBC Ultimax pads (front): INR4000
- EBC Ultimax pads (rear): INR3000

I had also received a quote for Bilstein B6 (INR80,000) but I decided to go with B4 for the time being.

The suspension and brakes were sourced from GTP Otomotiv (Delhi based import parts supplier for premium cars).

I am considering starting a separate ownership thread to document all these details and support them with photographs as well.

EDIT: the sticky door handles were procured from Amazon for INR8000 (set of 4 inner door pulls in black).

All parts were installed by Carmed BLR and labour was charged accordingly.

Also, I have noticed that the headlights have become quite poor in terms of performance. Where could I source replacement bulbs and what is the solution for pitted headlight covers?

What did you do with the wiring harness for stock exhaust valve? Just left under the car? Does leaving it unconnected trip a code?

What a find! The car seems to be in showroom condition both inside and outside.

Active Autowerke had provided a PDF with the purchase, indicating a solution to prevent the code from being registered. The wiring harness for the stock exhaust valve has been left / looped back under the car. The folks at Carmed managed this for me.

Yes, in fact the protective blue covers were still left unpeeled on the aluminium door sills!

Apart from a few scratches (due to vandalism while the car was parked), the sticky door pulls, and the pitted headlight covers, there were no signs of ageing on this car. Extremely lucky to have found such a pristine example!

Hi!
I wanted to know if anyone has done a Transmission oil change on the ZF8 gearbox, as it seems to be a bit of a meticulous process. Although BMW says it is a lifetime gearbox and doesn't require the oil to be changed, ZF recommends a transmission service to be conducted every 8 years/80,000 kms

Refer to this update from santoshbhat:
https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/long-...ml#post5692677

I did mine at 84,000 kms. I did it at a trusted FNG under my supervision. I took a printout of the document for carrying out the service from ZF and made sure the mechanics followed every single step. I also had a wireless obd to monitor transmission fluid temperature during fill (very important for getting the correct quantity back inside. Most FNGs will try to cut corners here). My car is at 97,500kms and going strong.

There are folks who have got to 1.8 lakh kms on the original fluid without changing it. But being a petrolhead, I find it very hard to ignore preventive maintenance. Next thing I wanna do is the differential fluid. But the differential does not have a drain plug, so it needs a tool ( a bent pipe) from FCP Euro to siphon out the fluid through the fill plug.

Also, if the transmission fluid is lifetime as they claim, why does the transmission pan have a "drain plug" on it?

The claim of lifetime oil is from BMW, not ZF, bmw has accurately figured out that the majority of customers, lease customers and those who trade in frequently won't be bothered by the transmission oil change. If you reach that stage then the car is out of warranty, so technically wear and tear. 8 years or 1 lakh km on our conditions send to be the recommended interval according to most youtube videos.

It seems you have to buy a drain plug too if you do the differential oil change, according to bimmerpost at least.

Can someone recommend me a competent garage at Lucknow? I plan to get an f30 or e90 320d but haven’t been able to discover a garage that I can trust.