....the "other" 1M

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Discussion

ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
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Stedman said:
What's the 60-100? I bet it's raaaaaaaappiiiiid
Quite a few people have asked me this, along with what's it's 0-60mph, 0-100mph, etc.

I've never had the chance to time it, but if I can make it along to one of the VMAX events and someone has a VBOX that I can borrow, then I'd gladly test it and post the results up smile

ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
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Stedman said:
Good man. I'd just video the speedo. And also get a satnav to find out what the real speed is at 60 and 100 etc etc.

/geek. biggrin
Actually that sounds like an idea. I'll see what I can do.....

ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Thursday 18th October 2012
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stuart-b said:
Get yourself an obd dongle and "torque" app, like I did - gives you loads of engine information and feedback. You can also plugin to a laptop, and do your 'runs', and see how much power to the wheels, etc etc.

Here is my results:- Torque is ft/lb, but you can set up bhp instead, and various others - any screen you want, and hundreds of gauges/graphs, etc.

That looks superb. Can you give me some more details about it please?

ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Friday 19th October 2012
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Rosscow said:
I don't doubt that for a second! Until your turbo or gearbox blows hehe

But you obviously have deep pockets and long arms so fair play. I can only dream!
To be honest, I don't drive the car hard at all. In fact if anything, with the increased power, I pretty much bimble around, changing gear at 3500-4000 rpm (I can hear you laughing at me now) and just use the torque. In most situations, with my daughter in the back and my wife in the front, I don't want to be doing standing starts and putting a lot of stress on the engine / gearbox. I'm quite a sympathetic driver smile

Also, the power I'm running is nowhere near the limit that some of the Yanks are running their N54 motors. Combine these factors and I'm quite relaxed that I'm not "pushing the boundaries" too hard. There are people I know running the DMS maps on their 135i N54 motors for over 80,000 miles and they are fine.

stuart-b said:
I bought this: http://obdkey.com/ bluetooth version - around £100.

It plugs in to your OBDII port and comes with some software for windows. You can connect to it and pair via your laptop (with bluetooth) and run the software.

You can do most things with it out the box, from resetting error codes, reading error codes, basically checking every sensor in the car.

http://obdkey.com/obd_software.asp

You can then do fun stuff with it, and most of the fun stuff comes from the Torque app for Android. It's only a couple of quid. The iOS version is another app and costs about 30 quid, but I don't think it does much more.
Fantastic! Thanks for the info. I'll have to have a look at this!

ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Saturday 20th October 2012
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Bealo said:
I love these cars.... I would defo have one one if they came with the DCT gearbox.

Great mods..... great colour. Jealous...
I wouldn't have minded trying one with a DCT gearbox but I wonder if you would have lost some of the driver involvement with it? Having said that, the auto box in the new M135i does look mightily impressive!!

ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Saturday 17th November 2012
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After reading the great reviews online, I decided to upgrade the tyres on my car and fit the Michelin Pilot Super Sports.

Although the fronts were fine, I don't like mixing tyres so opted to change all four tyres. A full four wheel alignment was also carried out as it they needed adjustment.

The results are quite staggering if I'm honest. The Super Sports have lot more grip, even though I've got to "scrub them in" over the next couple of hundred miles and its wet and greasy out there at the moment. The ride is also softer, the car doesn't rebound over bumps and it just feels super sticky around the corners biggrin

I'm looking forward to running them in properly and then having a good drive in the dry, but early impressions are very good and I'm impressed with them!





Oh and I got around to sticking in my little PH sticker smile



ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Wednesday 2nd January 2013
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Well it was bound to happen sooner or later, my wife clipped the front offside wheel of my car and although the damage wasn't too bad (see below) it was still annoying me.

I'd also had a few chips taken out of the rear wheels as well, I think from when I drove it along a newly surfaced road and a few bits of rock / tarmac flicked up and hit the wheels. So I thought it was time to get them repaired.



You would not believe the problems I had trying to find someone to repair the wheels. Most places wanted me to send the wheels to them, which is very difficult as I needed three repaired. I also didn't want to leave the car anywhere as I needed it over Christmas.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I remembered in Evo Magazine that they used a company called Revive (http://www.revive-uk.com) to repair the wheels on their 1M long termer. So I called them up, gave the guy the details of my wheels and booked the car in. He had to order a special matt lacquer and of course the correct paint, but none of this was a problem.

The work took about 3 hours and involved the Revive guy filing down the damage, filling it with some form of filler, spraying over the area with the wheel colour and then applying the lacquer on top.

I will get some photos, but they just look like my wheels I've posted previously in this thread, they're perfect. The finish is incredible and you cannot see the area which has been repaired. Why oh why did so many firms refuse to do a mobile repair on my wheels is beyond me and I would 100% recommend Revive to anyone on here (they're national).

Happy days smile

ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Wednesday 2nd January 2013
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GALLARDOGUY said:
I spotted you in Old Moulsham between Xmas and New Year.
I've been driving the car quite a bit recently, but I really need to do more with it this year. Hopefully a few track-days lined up smile

ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Friday 25th January 2013
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Seeing as this edition of the magazine went out of print last October, I thought I'd upload my review.

If anyone from BMW Car Magazine wants me to take this down, please say smile

For anyone struggling to read the text, if you right click on the image, copy the link and paste it into a new window, it'll give you the full screen image that is much easier to read.





ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Wednesday 20th March 2013
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I thought I should probably post up a quick ownership update with the 1M.

I've now covered just under 11,000 miles and am still having a lot of fun with the car. Although it's been a long winter, the 1M continues to put a smile on my face. Most of it's use recently has been driving to the local station to get to work and ferrying the family about. We also moved house last month and I used it quite a bit to take rubbish to the dump (don't worry, everything was wrapped so no mess was left).

This general use has proven to me that the 1M is quite practical when you need it to be. Sure it's not going to have the capacity of a hatch-back, but it's surprising how much you can get in it when the seats are down.

Anyway, hopefully with the warmer months ahead of us, the clocks changing and hopefully some better weather, the 1M will start getting used a bit more for pleasure rather than being a work-horse.

To start with, I'm going to make a real effort to get along to some track-days this year. I only managed Brands last year and with the house move and work going on, just ran out of time and money to do anything after that.

In preparation for some track-days, I've decided to swap my brake pads over to something with a bit more bite. After reading various reviews, I've decided to add some Ferodo DS2500 pads to the front and rear. At the same time I'm going to have the brake fluid flushed and changed to something like the ATP (or ATE, I can't remember the exact name) that Ray West at Thruxton has recommended. Finally Ray is going to carry out some geometry changes to the car to set it up for "fast road use / occasional track work". A fellow 1M owner has already had this work done and mentioned that the rear end of the car feels more planted under full load with less nannying from the traction control.

The work is booked in for the 3rd May (the next available time I have off work), so I'll post up more when I've had it done.

For the meantime, I'll just have to look at my new pads haha!


ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Tuesday 7th May 2013
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I finally got around to driving down to see Ray West last Friday to have a few more bits done to the 1M. Ray kindly fitted my Ferodo DS2500 brake pads along with changing the brake fluid for something more “track” focussed. He also carried out his “fast road” geometry changes.

The results are quite profound. Firstly it’s fair to say that at the moment, the brakes don’t feel as sharp on the initial application, but as you depress the pedal, they are much more progressive. Ray did say that I’d probably need a good 500 miles to really bed them in. However, after a few hard braking applications on some empty roads over the weekend, they certainly feel a lot stronger. I couldn’t get the ABS to come on and you can feel the speed scrubbing off the car very quickly.

The geometry changes were also worth doing. The car now feels much more positive on turn in and just grips and grips. The other change that I’ve noticed is that the traction control doesn’t activate as much now, although Ray did want to reset the traction control settings as he thought it was still coming on more than expected. Unfortunately we couldn’t get it reset, so I’ll have to do that locally then pop back to Ray to refine. Having said that, it feels so much better than before and I can’t wait to get it on track.

Ray also had quite a few nice cars sitting outside, so I had a good look around them as they worked on my car smile




ChrisBuer

Original Poster:

628 posts

226 months

Thursday 4th June 2015
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Well I ended up selling this car and have now moved back to Lotus again. As an all-rounder the 1M was superb, but as I now have space at home for a second car, I've decided to get something a little less practical in the Lotus and a cheap little run-about to leave at the station car park every day.

The 1M was superb. It might be gone but it'll never be forgotten!

biggrin