BMW M140i - Track Setup and Cost

[Danielj1000]

Do the OEM M4 pads have a much higher working temperature range than the OEM M140 pads?

I don't know the answer but whilst the M4 is more powerful and heavier, its OEM pads might still be road-biased with a lower working temperature range than a pad such as the Ferodo DS2500 (or one of the others people have suggested above). You might also find that you get on with DS2500's fine as a road pad.

[Scribble BM]

MrC986 said:

My friend has a tuned M135i ACS1 (previously mentioned). When I last visited he was keen to point out his new front brake discs he's fitting.... they are apparently M2 discs & I think he's sticking with Ferodo DS2500 pads again. He'll hopefully be at Anglesey with the BMWCC with me & I'm pretty sure he's fitting some Michelin PS tyres as an all rounder having run Yoko ADO8rs before.

Haha nice, it will be good to see the ACS1 again and meet yourself. What car will you be there in?

I’m getting the brakes bled on Tuesday ready for the day but keeping everything else stock for now in the end. I will see what ends up needing upgrading and sort it for the following track day 😊.

I can’t wait for this one though!

[MrC986]

Scribble BM said:

Haha nice, it will be good to see the ACS1 again and meet yourself. What car will you be there in?

I’m getting the brakes bled on Tuesday ready for the day but keeping everything else stock for now in the end. I will see what ends up needing upgrading and sort it for the following track day ??.

I can’t wait for this one though!

Yep, it's come around fast I'll be there with a friend in our grey Compact & should be sharing garage space with a fully track prepped Mini & hopefully the ACS1. Our Compact has had coilovers fitted over the winter & is just waiting for my bucket seats to be installed so we'll be understanding how much better it handles. Come & say "hi".

[Scribble BM]

MrC986 said:

Scribble BM said:

Haha nice, it will be good to see the ACS1 again and meet yourself. What car will you be there in?

I’m getting the brakes bled on Tuesday ready for the day but keeping everything else stock for now in the end. I will see what ends up needing upgrading and sort it for the following track day ??.

I can’t wait for this one though!

Yep, it's come around fast I'll be there with a friend in our grey Compact & should be sharing garage space with a fully track prepped Mini & hopefully the ACS1. Our Compact has had coilovers fitted over the winter & is just waiting for my bucket seats to be installed so we'll be understanding how much better it handles. Come & say "hi".

Nice one! Looking forward to it.

See you there.

Stuart

[Scribble BM]

So I finally went on my first track day in the M140i at Anglesey this weekend! What a car!!!

Following all comments I kept the car completely stock except for upgrading to Comma 5.1 brake fluid.

The car was absolutely fine doing 4/5 hot laps in a row, before coming into cool for 15/20 mins or doing 1/2 cool down laps before getting one more hot lap in.

However , interestingly both myself and a friend who races mx5 race cars were driving the car and seemed to over heat different things. I was finding the brake pedal going long, whilst he was finding the tyres going off. Showing that it is driving style that affects what over heats.

I was doing a 1min 50sec lap on the GP circuit, which was 4 seconds slower than him, but he does race after all...

Interestingly, another mx5 driver who is of similar pace was lapping 2 seconds slower in an M2! Which has not sold an M2 to me!!! I thought it would be much faster. My friend also did some laps in the M2 and reckoned it was harder to drive fast, due to it being more spikey on corner exit.

In terms of wear, we did somewhere between 50-60 laps with the last 20 done in damp conditions and the car did not wear anywhere nearly as bad as expected!

At the start of the day I had 6mm on the rears and 5mm on the front, by the end of the day I had pretty much the same except for left front, very outer shoulder wear. The brake pads look fine, the brake pedal feels fine and no coolant or oil was needed during the day.

So if you are looking at doing a one off track day, don’t think you need to go all out and invest a load of money in the car as it is highly capable in stock form. Just get track day insurance, allow for two tanks of fuel and dint stay out for too long!

[Steve H]

I hadn't realised it was you on Saturday!

Steve was using up all the tyre grip for sure, the car was screaming out for a diff when I was in it . Aside from that it was going very well though and extremely capable on track for a standard road car .

[CedricN]

Im glad it worked out, short stints can save you alot of troubble. .

If he is a racer he probably had better braking technique, with short and hard stops which puts less heat in the system, and most likely didnt brake all the way down to the same turn in speed as you.

[xjay1337]

It's better to do a really hard aggressive brake than a longer brake. :-)

[Scribble BM]

Cheers Steve! Thanks for running a great day and I’m glad you enjoyed the car!

We didn’t do live timing on the day but we did run a data logger to review at the end of the day.

I am in green and my friend Ste who races MX5 is red. I was 4 seconds a lap slower with the main culprit being that he was braver up through church and into rocket which cost me 1.8 seconds. I then carried slightly more speed into other corners but Ste had a higher slightly higher minimum speed.

But really I am pretty happy for my first track day. If I was just a little braver I would’ve only been two seconds off which isn’t too bad I don’t think...

Edited by Scribble BM on Tuesday 26th February 14:58

[NailedOn]

Scribble BM said:

So I finally went on my first track day in the M140i at Anglesey this weekend! What a car!!!

Following all comments I kept the car completely stock except for upgrading to Comma 5.1 brake fluid.

The car was absolutely fine doing 4/5 hot laps in a row, before coming into cool for 15/20 mins or doing 1/2 cool down laps before getting one more hot lap in.

However , interestingly both myself and a friend who races mx5 race cars were driving the car and seemed to over heat different things. I was finding the brake pedal going long, whilst he was finding the tyres going off. Showing that it is driving style that affects what over heats.


So if you are looking at doing a one off track day, don’t think you need to go all out and invest a load of money in the car as it is highly capable in stock form. Just get track day insurance, allow for two tanks of fuel and dint stay out for too long!

Thanks for the update.
I have a stock M140i. It is booked for its first track day soon.
Yours is an automatic? Maybe they all are.
No problems with the gearbox or engine overheating?

I’m noodling a track special (£3k budget) versus the cost of running the BMW on track, so have followed this thread with interest.

[Scribble BM]

No overheating issues. Your brakes and tyres will overheat way before your engine or gearbox

The main wear is just on the outer edge of the front left tyre.

[NailedOn]

Scribble BM said:

No overheating issues. Your brakes and tyres will overheat way before your engine or gearbox

The main wear is just on the outer edge of the front left tyre.

Thanks. I’ve learnt the hard way not to overdo it on track. 5-6 hot laps max then a good cool down. Be good to find an anti-clockwise circuit to even out that wear!

[dave_rallye]

Scribble BM said:

No overheating issues. Your brakes and tyres will overheat way before your engine or gearbox

The main wear is just on the outer edge of the front left tyre.

You've probably long since sold the car and moved on now, but just in case, did you continue to track the m140i? I'm considering one for a road car with the occasional track day (don't have time for a dedicated track car at the moment) but mostly concerned about the oil starvation issues seen on the N55 and chances of blowing it up rather than outright performance.

Thanks!

[Scribble BM]

dave_rallye said:

You've probably long since sold the car and moved on now, but just in case, did you continue to track the m140i? I'm considering one for a road car with the occasional track day (don't have time for a dedicated track car at the moment) but mostly concerned about the oil starvation issues seen on the N55 and chances of blowing it up rather than outright performance.

Thanks!

Hi pal,

The N55 in the M135i had oil starvation but I believe this isn’t an issue with the B58 in the m140i unless this has changed since I owned mine.

[Glenn63]

dave_rallye said:

Scribble BM said:

No overheating issues. Your brakes and tyres will overheat way before your engine or gearbox

The main wear is just on the outer edge of the front left tyre.

You've probably long since sold the car and moved on now, but just in case, did you continue to track the m140i? I'm considering one for a road car with the occasional track day (don't have time for a dedicated track car at the moment) but mostly concerned about the oil starvation issues seen on the N55 and chances of blowing it up rather than outright performance.

Thanks!

I bought an m140 early this year as a daily/odd track day and have done one track day so far at donington. It’s surprisingly fast out the box!
The brakes are the biggest issue fading rather quickly but the engine/gearbox was perfect. Iv changed the brake fluid and lines and have some Bilstein b14’s, chassis brace and some polly bushes to go on as soon as then get it back on track to see how it fairs but I was mighty impressed as standard.
A cayman owner approached me in the pits to ask what I had done to it as he said it was going very well!

[dave_rallye]

Thanks both, great to hear, will keep an eye out for a good one

[MrC986]

Glenn63 said:

I bought an m140 early this year as a daily/odd track day and have done one track day so far at donington. It’s surprisingly fast out the box!
The brakes are the biggest issue fading rather quickly but the engine/gearbox was perfect. Iv changed the brake fluid and lines and have some Bilstein b14’s, chassis brace and some polly bushes to go on as soon as then get it back on track to see how it fairs but I was mighty impressed as standard.
A cayman owner approached me in the pits to ask what I had done to it as he said it was going very well!

A friend had an ACS1 M135i & ran Ferodo DS2500 pads with uprated fluid & had very little brake fade (& he wasn't shy with the accelerator) on BMWCC track days. If you're committed to track days, it'd be worth getting a cheap set of wheels & putting some much more track focused tyres on i.e. Yokos or a Pilot Sport 4 etc.

[Glenn63]

MrC986 said:

Glenn63 said:

I bought an m140 early this year as a daily/odd track day and have done one track day so far at donington. It’s surprisingly fast out the box!
The brakes are the biggest issue fading rather quickly but the engine/gearbox was perfect. Iv changed the brake fluid and lines and have some Bilstein b14’s, chassis brace and some polly bushes to go on as soon as then get it back on track to see how it fairs but I was mighty impressed as standard.
A cayman owner approached me in the pits to ask what I had done to it as he said it was going very well!

A friend had an ACS1 M135i & ran Ferodo DS2500 pads with uprated fluid & had very little brake fade (& he wasn't shy with the accelerator) on BMWCC track days. If you're committed to track days, it'd be worth getting a cheap set of wheels & putting some much more track focused tyres on i.e. Yokos or a Pilot Sport 4 etc.

I put some super sports on as soon as I got it which made a big difference but my commute is only 0.8 miles so didn’t think it really worth an extra set of wheels/tyres
Those pads will be what I go for next but there’s a decent amount of life left in what’s on it already so may as well wear those out first.
I’m on holiday end of November and think there is a cadwell track day I may jump on see if the fluid/ lines have improved anything.