BMW F80 M4 Manual
Discussion
I’ve been meaning to do one of these for my F80 rather than spamming everyone else’s F80 thread 
so here we are.
I kicked off with my first M4 a few years back, bought used with a few thousand miles on the clock.
This one was a non comp pack car and it was properly wild - I loved it but soon after I bought it I saw a Silverstone blue manual M4 Comp in the classifieds with zero miles, pre registered with a chunk of money off it.
The only thing about the white car I didn’t like so much was the metallic white and I really like Silverstone so I went for it and did the swap. This was the new car on collection day in June 2017:
First points of note are that I felt that the 20 inch wheels are too big. The car rode worse than the outgoing one. I looked into it further and it is clear that BMW also upped the spring rates on the comp cars. Ouch.
Also, the comp cars are boost limited in the first three gears which is the main reason the magazines thought the comp was “much less rowdy” than the old car. Most of them said that the more easy going nature was solely due to the improved suspension which just springs - more stiffness and a balance change between spring rates front to rear - they missed the bit about the boost limit! I also noticed that the new car didn’t have the Harmon Kardon stereo and I missed that. Although since I run a car audio brand I shouldn’t really complain or have much of a problem sorting that out but it’s a bit like a bus-man’s holiday so I prefer to leave stereo equipment standard if I can!
Anyway - on the plus side the new car has the extended leather on the dash and some of the interior parts are a bit updated over the older one.
I have made the decision to self maintain this M4 and so I obtained myself the BMW ENET software so I can talk to the car and do things like brake fluid flush, CBS resets and other stuff.
I ran the car for a good couple of years before I made any changes to it.
First little mod was to obtain a new grille for the front that didn’t have the M4 badge on it. The rear of the car is de badged from new and so I wanted to match that up.
Next I removed all the dull plastic trims from the car - the lower front grilles and the rear bumper plastic bits. I painted them in “Simoniz Tough Paint” which is a nice gloss black that resists stone chips. It’s a really subtle upgrade:
Quite hard to tell on these pics but the plastic now matches the other gloss black trims:
I’ve been doing a service every year and just writing that back to the car - I take care to tell the system what actions I’ve taken but normally I do more than the CBS wants anyway. Because I’m not a bmw agent I decided to use the tag “Not BMW” on the service history just to be clear:
The car did have its running in check at BMW because I was busy at the time and wanted the car programmed out of run in mode. With hindsight that was something that can be done in a few seconds using ENET but anyway.
This last service in May included using ENET to activate the ABS pump and perform a full fluid flush. It’s very easy to do and the car just pumps fluid through automatically! You do need a big booster battery or power supply (not just a charger) connected when you’re using ENET or INPA though because the systems kill the battery rapidly.
I used some RBF600 fluid which is my favourite and I also installed some Goodrich lines at the same time.
Whilst it was in bits I gave the calipers a good clean and re greased everything nicely. I also painted up the disc backings as they do go grotty pretty quickly.
The back ones do necessitate the removal of the shoes:
My next step was to sort out the ride and handling.
This isn’t a track car. I’m not saying I’ll never, ever venture out for a few laps if I have the car with me whilst I’m there with something else but essentially this is my least hardcore car - so I don’t want to build a racer.
For that reason, I researched the spring rates and sure enough the earlier car does indeed have softer springs. Here are the rates:
Original car.
Front - 177 lbs/in
Rear – 591 lbs/in
Comp Pack car.
Front – 198 lbs/in
Rear – 685 lbs/in
The Eibach pro kit is lowered by about 0.9 inches at the front and 0.3 inches at the rear and so that seemed perfect to just close the front arch gap a tiny bit whilst not spoiling the usability of the car.
The rates are also a great half way house:
Eibach Pro Kit
Front – 183 lbs/in
Rear – 628 lbs/in
Fitting was pretty easy - just whip the suspension struts off (the carbon chassis brace and the alloy brace do also have to come off first if you want to do it the “proper” way with the suspension fully off the car. If anyone is interested don’t use your impact gun on the strut tops as these dampers have electronics built in and you might damage them. Also if you don’t have ENET or whatever to reset warnings don’t put the ignition on without the dampers connected as you will chuck a fault code or three.
Anyway - dampers out:
And on the bench. I use a cut away socket to make it easy to remove the strut top nuts. Don’t forget to get some new top mount nuts as they are single use. This one is why the impact gun is a bad idea:
I gave them a bit of a clean down. To be fair to bmw the dampers are lovely - they’re aluminium - really well made and very lightweight:
The new springs are visibly a little shorter and thinner when you put them on - these are the rears:
So built back up and running some 19 inch wheels the car looks much better and drives far, far more like the original one. The turn in is sharper and the grip still way in excess of what you need on the road. Forgot to mention that the geo needs tweaking after the installation of the slightly shorter springs.
You might notice I also fitted a carbon boot spoiler - jury is out on that.
Finally I have just upgraded to the Alcon brake discs and some Ferodo Pads:
These have a lower weight than the standard items and since I managed to warp a set of the standard ones in 4K miles on the white car I figured it made some sense to remove the factory ones now at 2900 miles whilst they are still perfect.
That’s largely where I’m up to. Next is to flash the steering with the GTS M4 software, test out the CS damper software and then take a look to see if we can put back some of the boost in the lower gears!
so here we are.I kicked off with my first M4 a few years back, bought used with a few thousand miles on the clock.
This one was a non comp pack car and it was properly wild - I loved it but soon after I bought it I saw a Silverstone blue manual M4 Comp in the classifieds with zero miles, pre registered with a chunk of money off it.
The only thing about the white car I didn’t like so much was the metallic white and I really like Silverstone so I went for it and did the swap. This was the new car on collection day in June 2017:
First points of note are that I felt that the 20 inch wheels are too big. The car rode worse than the outgoing one. I looked into it further and it is clear that BMW also upped the spring rates on the comp cars. Ouch.
Also, the comp cars are boost limited in the first three gears which is the main reason the magazines thought the comp was “much less rowdy” than the old car. Most of them said that the more easy going nature was solely due to the improved suspension which just springs - more stiffness and a balance change between spring rates front to rear - they missed the bit about the boost limit! I also noticed that the new car didn’t have the Harmon Kardon stereo and I missed that. Although since I run a car audio brand I shouldn’t really complain or have much of a problem sorting that out but it’s a bit like a bus-man’s holiday so I prefer to leave stereo equipment standard if I can!
Anyway - on the plus side the new car has the extended leather on the dash and some of the interior parts are a bit updated over the older one.
I have made the decision to self maintain this M4 and so I obtained myself the BMW ENET software so I can talk to the car and do things like brake fluid flush, CBS resets and other stuff.
I ran the car for a good couple of years before I made any changes to it.
First little mod was to obtain a new grille for the front that didn’t have the M4 badge on it. The rear of the car is de badged from new and so I wanted to match that up.
Next I removed all the dull plastic trims from the car - the lower front grilles and the rear bumper plastic bits. I painted them in “Simoniz Tough Paint” which is a nice gloss black that resists stone chips. It’s a really subtle upgrade:
Quite hard to tell on these pics but the plastic now matches the other gloss black trims:
I’ve been doing a service every year and just writing that back to the car - I take care to tell the system what actions I’ve taken but normally I do more than the CBS wants anyway. Because I’m not a bmw agent I decided to use the tag “Not BMW” on the service history just to be clear:
The car did have its running in check at BMW because I was busy at the time and wanted the car programmed out of run in mode. With hindsight that was something that can be done in a few seconds using ENET but anyway.
This last service in May included using ENET to activate the ABS pump and perform a full fluid flush. It’s very easy to do and the car just pumps fluid through automatically! You do need a big booster battery or power supply (not just a charger) connected when you’re using ENET or INPA though because the systems kill the battery rapidly.
I used some RBF600 fluid which is my favourite and I also installed some Goodrich lines at the same time.
Whilst it was in bits I gave the calipers a good clean and re greased everything nicely. I also painted up the disc backings as they do go grotty pretty quickly.
The back ones do necessitate the removal of the shoes:
My next step was to sort out the ride and handling.
This isn’t a track car. I’m not saying I’ll never, ever venture out for a few laps if I have the car with me whilst I’m there with something else but essentially this is my least hardcore car - so I don’t want to build a racer.
For that reason, I researched the spring rates and sure enough the earlier car does indeed have softer springs. Here are the rates:
Original car.
Front - 177 lbs/in
Rear – 591 lbs/in
Comp Pack car.
Front – 198 lbs/in
Rear – 685 lbs/in
The Eibach pro kit is lowered by about 0.9 inches at the front and 0.3 inches at the rear and so that seemed perfect to just close the front arch gap a tiny bit whilst not spoiling the usability of the car.
The rates are also a great half way house:
Eibach Pro Kit
Front – 183 lbs/in
Rear – 628 lbs/in
Fitting was pretty easy - just whip the suspension struts off (the carbon chassis brace and the alloy brace do also have to come off first if you want to do it the “proper” way with the suspension fully off the car. If anyone is interested don’t use your impact gun on the strut tops as these dampers have electronics built in and you might damage them. Also if you don’t have ENET or whatever to reset warnings don’t put the ignition on without the dampers connected as you will chuck a fault code or three.
Anyway - dampers out:
And on the bench. I use a cut away socket to make it easy to remove the strut top nuts. Don’t forget to get some new top mount nuts as they are single use. This one is why the impact gun is a bad idea:
I gave them a bit of a clean down. To be fair to bmw the dampers are lovely - they’re aluminium - really well made and very lightweight:
The new springs are visibly a little shorter and thinner when you put them on - these are the rears:
So built back up and running some 19 inch wheels the car looks much better and drives far, far more like the original one. The turn in is sharper and the grip still way in excess of what you need on the road. Forgot to mention that the geo needs tweaking after the installation of the slightly shorter springs.
You might notice I also fitted a carbon boot spoiler - jury is out on that.
Finally I have just upgraded to the Alcon brake discs and some Ferodo Pads:
These have a lower weight than the standard items and since I managed to warp a set of the standard ones in 4K miles on the white car I figured it made some sense to remove the factory ones now at 2900 miles whilst they are still perfect.
That’s largely where I’m up to. Next is to flash the steering with the GTS M4 software, test out the CS damper software and then take a look to see if we can put back some of the boost in the lower gears!
Edited by Julian Thompson on Sunday 12th July 22:54
Yeah I think the competition package is snake oil really. Nice seats though!
And, to be honest, the maintenance is very easy on them. I video the oil changes and everything else I do just in case I have a change of heart and sell it but to be honest I don’t think I will as it’s just a brilliant car.
And, to be honest, the maintenance is very easy on them. I video the oil changes and everything else I do just in case I have a change of heart and sell it but to be honest I don’t think I will as it’s just a brilliant car.
Edited by Julian Thompson on Sunday 12th July 22:47
shaun_1987 said:
Very smart looking car. I’ve been in a 600bhp tuned cs model and the speed was just ridiculous.
Love the colour choice on this as well
Thanks Shaun. I don’t think I want to make it any faster - just get back the rawness of the original one. I can well imagine that a 600hp model would be properly crazy. I was actually following one round at Donington a week or two ago in my race car which I think was pretty modified. It went reasonably well around the turns but my God it was like a stabbed rat down the straights and it sounded like thunder. Good job it was a noisy day! Love the colour choice on this as well
Thanks for the nice comments I appreciate it.
The 20 > 19 swap takes the edge off the sharp ridges in the road and just gives the car a bit more communication as there is a bit more sidewall. It’s not a massive difference but if you were ever on an, err, private test track, and had opportunity to slide the car you would note that it is easier to read for a non drift god with the smaller wheels.
The springs bring about the same again.
The 20 > 19 swap takes the edge off the sharp ridges in the road and just gives the car a bit more communication as there is a bit more sidewall. It’s not a massive difference but if you were ever on an, err, private test track, and had opportunity to slide the car you would note that it is easier to read for a non drift god with the smaller wheels.
The springs bring about the same again.
So yes those are the Alcon replacements supplied by Litchfield.
I’m not sure what I did really - nothing much other than some spirited road driving albeit to take in some Scottish and Welsh twisties. This happened with the first car - as the miles approached 4500 the steering wheel would wobble pretty violently under braking. I took it in to BMW as it was under warranty at the time and they replaced the discs. Wasn’t that easy to get them to do it actually but I’d only had the car about three months and after a bit of persuasion they did it for me.
The oem discs on this second car have been fine for almost 3000 miles but I decided to take them off and just keep them on the basis that they might go the same way as the last set did and then they’d be scrap as after 3 years BMW would rightly laugh at me. Plus, there is more of a chance I’ll end up doing a few track laps this year which, with the updated fluid and some track pads will put hugely more strain on the discs than that Welsh/Scottish hooning did.
And they’re lighter and...
Okay you got me probably the standard ones would have been ok this time and mainly I bought them because they look cool*.
I’m not sure what I did really - nothing much other than some spirited road driving albeit to take in some Scottish and Welsh twisties. This happened with the first car - as the miles approached 4500 the steering wheel would wobble pretty violently under braking. I took it in to BMW as it was under warranty at the time and they replaced the discs. Wasn’t that easy to get them to do it actually but I’d only had the car about three months and after a bit of persuasion they did it for me.
The oem discs on this second car have been fine for almost 3000 miles but I decided to take them off and just keep them on the basis that they might go the same way as the last set did and then they’d be scrap as after 3 years BMW would rightly laugh at me. Plus, there is more of a chance I’ll end up doing a few track laps this year which, with the updated fluid and some track pads will put hugely more strain on the discs than that Welsh/Scottish hooning did.
And they’re lighter and...
Okay you got me probably the standard ones would have been ok this time and mainly I bought them because they look cool*.
- but don’t tell the missus as my story sounds better.
Court_S said:
Your car looks good; I like the spoiler too.
Fair play for maintaining it yourself. If it’s a long term car doubt there’ll be any issues.
How spiky is the handling of the none comp cars?
Old one was significantly more on/off in the boost department but also that power arrived faster and when it hit it did hit harder.Fair play for maintaining it yourself. If it’s a long term car doubt there’ll be any issues.
How spiky is the handling of the none comp cars?
It turned in more readily too - the front was far more pointy. This one is getting better now but it’s still not as good yet as the old one.
Julian Thompson said:
Court_S said:
Your car looks good; I like the spoiler too.
Fair play for maintaining it yourself. If it’s a long term car doubt there’ll be any issues.
How spiky is the handling of the none comp cars?
Old one was significantly more on/off in the boost department but also that power arrived faster and when it hit it did hit harder.Fair play for maintaining it yourself. If it’s a long term car doubt there’ll be any issues.
How spiky is the handling of the none comp cars?
It turned in more readily too - the front was far more pointy. This one is getting better now but it’s still not as good yet as the old one.
To be honest I’ve always preferred the M3 to the M4 because of the rear arches but there aren’t that many about in my budget. There seem to be quite a few DCT M4’s at the mo including a Sakhir orange one with white leather which I like the look of. It’s too early to change, but I like looking.
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