330d Sport

"Had her for about a year now she was around 10k when i got her with 60k on since then spent around _Ǭ£1500 getting her sorted out. To start with i had to get rid of the Fullrun tyres which made the car really dodge in the wet! Almost any corner the back end would slide out! So i got 4 new Michelin sports 225 40 r18s on front and 255 35 r18's on the back _Ǭ£655 for all included full wheel tracking the car was great and the grip was crazy no tyre noise either! A few months till number 6 injector went! on my mrs drive got rescue to home and then the next day my local garage collected it. Around _Ǭ£500 bill collection of car fault finding new injector and some sensors too. Nice ! not Next was the service when i needed 2 new pads so another _Ǭ£280 in total there. I took the car to a remap centre for an extra 50bhp and 100 torque everything great till the drive back when my kickdown pedal would not work and the cruise control gave up also! Spoke to the remap centre on the phone and they said they could have taken the software off for the cruise control but the foot pedal was not anything they could explain from what they did. Next day i took the car into BMW for a diagnostics report _Ǭ£36 they come up with throttle modual sensor 2 gone so that expained the foot pedal and also air mass and vacuum error but no cruise control error and also the parking sensors gave up week after i got it and that not come up either. So the fun started I also got quite a bit of smoke from the exhausts when booting it also the car was feeling a bit y. I changed the air mass meter which was a not nice to do with 3 inch of snow on the drive! BMW wanted _Ǭ£250 and i got the same part for _Ǭ£130 from andrew pages and its the same bosh part so you really are paying for the name with some parts! The foot pedal was on order (dealership part only _Ǭ£80 ) I arranged a day with chris a mate and decided to take a day the week later and strip the engine down and take a look at what_¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s going on. The day rather quickly 7am start lucky we had the garage this time we started by taking the air intake off removed the washer bottle to give us some space the engine cover airbox EGR valve top of engine bay where pollen filter is etc all off on taking intake manifold off (1 nut short!)then we started to see why the cars was running like ! Firstly when the manifold came off a washer with rubber backing was crushed and bent which had created loads of gunk around where the air and was coming in as the manifold was not fully sealed. Also the airfilter looked like it had never been changed. The car had a full BMW service history till recently then a local garage service it and sorted the injector. So it can only be one of them to blame for dodgy workmanship!. Never taking it to a garage again!!! The EGR valve was caked in black sut BMW dealership part only pages told us _Ǭ£138 approx Cleaned the EGR valve back to new looking and the vacuum pipe from the vacuum chamber was worn out you could pull it appart easy so that got replaced to. We was sure this would cause the car to be running badly so we did not strip anything else off as all looked ok we put everything back together and took her for a drive the car is like it should be! with loads more power :-) its worth doing just to check and i think i will be cleaning it every 6 months or so and checking pipes more too. looking at getting a larger intercooler soon as alot of people recommend that if you had a remap if anyone knows what to get please let me know. "

youve had a right old time with her havent you fella! glad she's sorted you still have to take me out in her since you got her mapped!

"i would be very careful now you have replaced the damaged parts get another diagnostic but i would go to a cheap local garage type not bmw they will just rip the shirt right off your back! as for the fmic a friend of mine bought a allard fmic which gave his car so much more power his words were if i remember rightly ""it feels like the car was bunged up and now it can really breath!"" haha so id go for one of them. however if you were intending on getting the fmic you should of waited to get the remap as this would have allowed you to of unlocked more power. "

"i will get another diagnostic when i replace the EGR valve. (did not think the _Ǭ£36 was too bad since it was main dealership for diahnostics) cleaned the valve and the smoke went well for a little whlie anyway! so a new one is the way forward i think. also looking into getting a sprint booster for the throttle modual on the e46 its electronic its called drive by wire i think. So you have a delay of around a half a second when you put the pedal to the floor from stand still so hopefully that will make it loads more responsive and get it well under 6 seconds to 60mph. they about _Ǭ£170 so saving up.. "

"this all seems very strange to me nigel! i would blame the remap center? who was it you had it remaped by? i know if i had all the problems you listed up there i would have takent he car back to them and told them to give my money back and to fix my car!! Also i dont mean to sound rude however if your planning on adding performance parts to your car especially with it being a newish car you will have to remap the car for it to even notice its there! eg the FMIC or anything else you add. As for egr valve these should last most of the life of the engine so i cant see why a good clean didnt fix it? why are you replacing it? is it seized open or closed? If the egr valve was stuck open you'd find the engine would have a rough idle or stall. If closed the combustion chamber would get silly hot and you would hear a faint knocking noise if this is the case then i would get it done and check the turbo is ok too! as this is a huge cause to turbos going bang. and as for the sprint booster you shouldnt need to as all the sprint booster does is provide better throttle responce for low range revs (more for town driving or to just pop to the shops etc) where as a remap should give you all round better throttle responce. I would save your money. "

"Hi thanks for the reply I was the first to think the remap centre had wrecked my car but when I looked in to it I held back on the blaming... Crushed washer on manifold (previous dealer/garage) Dirty air filter (not changed on last service by garage) Throttle module (common fault) Vacuum pipes (common fault) Air Mass Meter (common fault) Cruise control failed (sensor needs replacing) the problem with the egr valve getting dirty I think was caused by a washer crushed on the manifold and the air intake not fitted correctly so the seal was not tight. Over time and mine done 90k and with the air intake problems i am quite confident that this has cause the egr to get dirty and not work correctly. all the rest of the problems i have had could not have been caused by the remap place apart from the cruise control which they are sorting out. I had a long drive to Stratford from York and back and everything seems to have settled down I going to be taking the entire air intake manifold off & egr again and check to see what it looks like. I saving up for an intercooler and then will be looking at another remap once i sorted everything else out. "

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Quote:
Caz-R34GTT As for egr valve these should last most of the life of the engine so i cant see why a good clean didnt fix it? why are you replacing it? is it seized open or closed? If the egr valve was stuck open you'd find the engine would have a rough idle or stall. If closed the combustion chamber would get silly hot and you would hear a faint knocking noise if this is the case then i would get it done and check the turbo is ok too! as this is a huge cause to turbos going bang.

"sorry not replied but have spent the past month in my garage rebuilding the engine! Yes she went bang whilst doing 10MPH! Yes 10MPH. Once recovered to my home we started 1st taking all the engine covers off the intake manifold off and instantly we could see the problem. One of the swirl flap rod was broken off in half and the flap bent back we could not see the rod anywhere around the vents. Chris a mate who is very handy with cars helped me take the head off where we found the alloy swirl flap rod fully in-dented into a piston head. 4 valves bent and misplaced! Along with a nice dent the head where the piston had pressed the alloy rod in the metal! Nice!!!!!! Making things even worse a new Garret Turbo was needed as the old one was dead and locked up. The list was getting bigger and bigger with new piston set of 6 new big ends head reconditioned 4 new valves new head bolts gaskets for everything (6 I think) intake manifold AGR valve 6 meters of Vacuum hose loads of clips new fuel and oil filter coolant 10l of engine oil 3l of that went on drive! LOL ATF fluid new O-ring for dip stick Air con re-gassing new thermostat etc etc I lost count of the money on parts phone calls and hours spent covered in oil! The BMW timing locking kit from ATS for the M57 engine was really handy! And the BMW TIS workshop manual from a guy in Birmingham via ebay . Once you start replacing parts you don_¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t stop! Most things are only sold in packs and getting everything correct was a nightmare as I now found out my engine is quite rare? Anyway 3 weeks later she running today done 60 miles so far n all seems ok I had to replace the back 2 tyres as one had a 3inch metal rod in the inner wall and both of them are almost worn out. So yeah another load of money! Off to Stratford tomorrow (340 mile round trip) so good to bed her in I hope I don_¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t come back on a recovery wagon! "

"yeah you've done all that and had a rough time but how good did it feel when it fired back up for the 1st time . well worth it i think lol. glad its good for you fella"