600bhp 1 Series

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Discussion

brickwall

5,250 posts

211 months

Saturday 19th October 2019
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Indeed they discounted the hell out of them earlier this year, presumably ahead of the new 1-series release. I got a 3 month old ex dealer car for £25.5k, so even selling it at (say) £23k at 15 months old would still be a pretty cheap year motoring.
(I love it, and am definitely not intending to sell for a while!)

va1o

16,032 posts

208 months

Sunday 20th October 2019
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andykn said:
I'm looking at maybe a secondhand M140i, originally having considered an Audi S3 to replace my elderly A3 2.0TFSI DSG. I was wondering why the 140i is noticeably cheaper than the S3 (and Golf R) secondhand?

My researches suggest £25k will get me a '68' 140i, a '67' Golf R or a '66' S3.

Or a '17' M140i is around £21k, Golf R round £24k and S3 £26k.

Is the M140i a bargain or have I missed something?
This was also the case back in the M135i days, they were always consistently cheaper than a matching age/ spec Golf R or Audi S3. Use it to your advantage, they're great cars and represent impressive value for money smile

andykn

3 posts

164 months

Tuesday 22nd October 2019
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Thanks for the advice all.

D4MJT

Original Poster:

1,253 posts

159 months

Wednesday 22nd April 2020
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So..... an update.

Well, the car is on 58k miles now. No issues at all. The warranty is out in 15 days, obviously I've already previously taken my chances by adding a tuning box etc, however I won't be going for the extended warranty as obviously I've already tuned the car and intend to keep doing so, so it's pointless. I have used the warranty to replace a steering wheel that was wearing rapidly and a rear light cluster that let in moisture. Bar that the car has been faultless for 3years and 58K miles.... almost.

Recently I had a major service come up. For reasons I don't need to go into I had an issue with the supplying dealer, so I chose a BMW approved local specialist for the job. Low and behold on removing the oil filter it disintegrated into the housing. I had the car recovered to BMW as it is a known issue with the 40i engine. Warranty job. They then attempted to charge me for the oil as it wouldn't have been required otherwise, but wouldn't update the service history as the car hadn't had "the pollen filter" changed. I asked for a price for the £35 pollen filter, amazingly it was £125 as it's a tricky job. If you have YouTube, it appears to be a 5 minute job under the glovebox with a torx fitting, or at least it was when I did it. In a further twist, despite the PUMA job on BMW's system (I have a pal who is a tech) explaining that the oil filter housing must be replaced incase any debris has entered) they decided to just fit a new filter. When I queried them on this, they explained that the PUMA was just for if the original filter had disintegrated, but as my car had apparently been serviced 3 times and the filter "had been changed" it wasn't applicable. Wow.

Needless to say I took the car home and changed the oil myself.

Great cars, appalling dealerships. I obviously can't name names but this one was near the Tyne Tunnel.

Anyway...

Up first in the mod category was an induction pipe from Williams Performance:





After that I decided more power was in order, handily one of my good pal's had got into tuning B58's, so we decided to go (at the time) all out.



ITG Pro Filter, Z4 TU / Supra Spark Plugs, 4.5" decat downpipe:





Here she was getting the downpipe installed:



Then I was able to flash my chosen map myself easily with an OBD Ethernet cable:



We then went out and did a few datalogging pulls to make sure all was good and timing corrections seemed alright:



What a monster. Honestly it was fast with the JB+ box on it, but it is a different car with a Stage 2 99RON BM3 Map on it. Allegedly it should be around 460-480bhp but the mid range torque now is just obscene.

Asides from that, it's now done around 8K miles mapped properly and it's never missed a beat, already had another oil change, no issues there thankfully.

I tried cleaning the steering wheel with a non acetone nail polish remover that a PHer recommended. Wow. Admittedly I added AG Leather Care Balm afterwards, but this wheel (my 2nd) has 40k ish miles on it now...





I recently decided to have a change from the 640D tailpipes and reinstalled the chrome M Performance trims, not sure about them yet:





Apart from that, I love that bar the twin exhausts it's hard to distinguish from a regular 116D M Sport:



And apart from that, the ride height has settled and I think it looks perfect!



The next wave of mods are front and rear C-Hook discs and decent pads, and a B58TU High Pressure Fuel Pump, which will allow me to run the Stage 2+ BM3 Map and around 540bhp at the crank.

It's just a brilliant, brilliant bit of kit.




Edited by D4MJT on Wednesday 22 April 19:47


Edited by D4MJT on Thursday 23 April 07:33

chrismc1977

854 posts

113 months

Wednesday 22nd April 2020
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It’s a pity the car isn’t more aesthetically pleasing. They just look all wrong to me

D4MJT

Original Poster:

1,253 posts

159 months

Wednesday 22nd April 2020
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chrismc1977 said:
It’s a pity the car isn’t more aesthetically pleasing. They just look all wrong to me
Horses for courses, it looks phenomenal to me.

Mr911lover

207 posts

147 months

Thursday 23rd April 2020
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Very nice, a friend has just got an m140i and flashed MHD stage 1 on the car.

I was reading up that the Supra fuel pump is a direct fit and will also release some extra ponies!

toon10

6,194 posts

158 months

Thursday 23rd April 2020
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Nice work. I often see you around town in it. I changed my M135i and got a more sensible car. 540i xDrive. I miss the little 1 for the fun factor. I'll be sure not to try and race anything I see with a 116d badge on the back biggrin

Henry_b

191 posts

80 months

Saturday 4th July 2020
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Great cars these M140I's..

Kind of fancy dropping the P38 in favour of a nice fast BMW..


At 58k would it be worth a Gearbox oil change?

Especially with the tuner?



Court_S

12,985 posts

178 months

Saturday 4th July 2020
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Nice set of updates.

Are they genuine exhaust tips? Did you have to do much fiddling to get them to fit?

The black chrome tips on my 140 pitted and rusted badly in less than a year so I ended up wry some cheapy Chinese tips. No idea how they’ll last. My back up plan was 435 brushes aluminium tips but the stock sized tips look a bit lost in my Reiger diffuser.

Fitting some H+R -15mm springs to mine today.

D4MJT

Original Poster:

1,253 posts

159 months

Saturday 4th July 2020
quotequote all
Henry_b said:
Great cars these M140I's..

Kind of fancy dropping the P38 in favour of a nice fast BMW..


At 58k would it be worth a Gearbox oil change?

Especially with the tuner?
As it happens, I have a genuine ZF sump / filter and ZF Lifeguard fluid ready for a change next week, great minds laugh

Court_S, they’re OEM 640d tailpipe trims, fit straight to the M Performance rear back box. I think the stock back box outlets are a slightly smaller diameter?

I’ll do an update this evening, as I’ve suffered badly from spec creep in the last month or so and it’s all got a bit out of hand laugh

tgr

1,134 posts

172 months

Saturday 4th July 2020
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Are you certain the ZF box can take the increases in power and torque?

D4MJT

Original Poster:

1,253 posts

159 months

Saturday 4th July 2020
quotequote all
tgr said:
Are you certain the ZF box can take the increases in power and torque?
Yeah, it starts to suffer with slippage in 6th gear unless the software is updated, but there are numerous cars in the states, Belgium and the U.K. I know of running up to 740whp and getting towards 900nm with no issues

I’ve seen cars twist the driveshaft out and ruin it well before the box shows any sign of problems

It’s a phenomenal platform.

Henry_b

191 posts

80 months

Saturday 4th July 2020
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D4MJT said:
As it happens, I have a genuine ZF sump / filter and ZF Lifeguard fluid ready for a change next week, great minds laugh

Court_S, they’re OEM 640d tailpipe trims, fit straight to the M Performance rear back box. I think the stock back box outlets are a slightly smaller diameter?

I’ll do an update this evening, as I’ve suffered badly from spec creep in the last month or so and it’s all got a bit out of hand laugh
Gotta love doing the ZF service the 6hp was a procedure and a half LOL

With over 500hp at the crank in the future i'm sure she'll be a weapon, i'm sure i read someehere you can get the box mapped for insanely quick shifts?

What do you suppose the 0-62 time is in it's currant format?

Court_S

12,985 posts

178 months

Saturday 4th July 2020
quotequote all
D4MJT said:
As it happens, I have a genuine ZF sump / filter and ZF Lifeguard fluid ready for a change next week, great minds laugh

Court_S, they’re OEM 640d tailpipe trims, fit straight to the M Performance rear back box. I think the stock back box outlets are a slightly smaller diameter?

I’ll do an update this evening, as I’ve suffered badly from spec creep in the last month or so and it’s all got a bit out of hand laugh
Cheers for that. I’m running a standard back box so have 60mm pipes, I believe the M Perf ones are 67mm so a reducer is needed. Might just pop on some standard 435 tips when my Chinese ones die.

D4MJT

Original Poster:

1,253 posts

159 months

Thursday 6th August 2020
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toon10 said:
Nice work. I often see you around town in it. I changed my M135i and got a more sensible car. 540i xDrive. I miss the little 1 for the fun factor. I'll be sure not to try and race anything I see with a 116d badge on the back biggrin
Ha! I saw your car at Silverlink a few months back, I knew the plate but it was on the "wrong" car so I was confused! Lovely choice!!

D4MJT

Original Poster:

1,253 posts

159 months

Thursday 6th August 2020
quotequote all
So, the next round of unplanned and impulsive modifications.

Recently, we hit this milestone. Excuse the horrendous state of the dusty dash.



A perfect milestone, as the 60,000 miles rocked up around the same time as the 3 year ownership mark and the end of the warranty, which made all of the following slightly easier to justify.

As it happens, I got a reminder on Instahamz a few days ago about a post 5 years ago, more BMW related good times, my first few laps of the Nurburgring, in an E61 M5. Good memories.



Back to mundane 1 series life anyway. I'd been experiencing a hot oil smell, which turned out to be a split breather hose.



This is where modifications are good, because if I hadn't been tinkering, I wouldn't ever have found that as the hose is wrapped in foil and it was cracked about an inch inside the foil shroud.

Handily, it had to come off. As I was getting rid of this:



Commence heart surgery:







And replacing it with this:



A PureTurbo's Pure800 Hybrid. In the short term my good pal has lent me his Dorch Stage 2 HPFP, however in a few days I'll be swapping this back out for a TU M340i/Supra HPFP until I'm feeling flush enough to go for a Dorch myself. At the moment it doesn't really make sense as the TU HPFP will do everything I'm after.



The Pure800 is a big old unit and comes with it's own lower turbo intake pipe, which works with the Williams Performance upper turbo intake pipe I'd previously installed. This results in a direct turbo feed with no silencer chambers and makes for some fairly lairy turbo noises. I'll try and stick some on YouTube in the next few days and link them in.





Currently the car is running on a BootMod3 OTS Stage2+ Tune with the Pure800 and Dorch Stage 2 HPFP, which should be a fairly comfortable 520-540whp. In time I will get a custom tune for the car, the turbo is good for 750bhp on Peter @ PureTurbo's own M140i, so there is a lot of scope, it's barely ticking over at the moment and is still on pretty much stock boost.

The main characteristic change is a really wonderful spooling sound from the turbo now and also the turbo only really comes on song after 3k rpm, which gives it an almost old school turbo feel. However once it spools up you really know about it.

To go along with the new map and turbo / HPFP I've also gone with an xHP Stage 3 gearbox map for the ZF8. This has sharpened up the shifts but more importantly increased the line pressures and clutch clamping pressures, whilst removing the torque limiters in 1st and 2nd gear.

It's really pretty fast now, I've had a couple of quick runs with a Dragy box, and even on the Stage2+ map I've recorded a 100-200kmh time of 7.3 seconds on pump fuel, which is pretty much exactly the same as the Dragy times a certain man like Ricky is getting out of his Stage 1 tuned GTR according to a recent YouTube video.

That's only really relevant as his GTR was dyno'd on the same dyno as I use and it made 530whp, so when I get a chance to get back along it'll be interesting to see what mine makes and what sort of difference the weight / 4wd makes.

So that's pretty much where it's at now. In the next week I'll be servicing the gearbox and diff as part of preventative maintenance, and I couldn't resist a new badge for a cheeky photo laugh



As a testament to how well the car still drives, my 58 year old mother has recently decided to learn to drive, and I had her out in the car the other day and she had no problems driving it at all.

It even got a cheeky wash. It's crying out for a proper detail though.





So in summary, more silliness, still loving it, no issues!

Edited by D4MJT on Friday 7th August 00:04

AW8

303 posts

212 months

Thursday 6th August 2020
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I have seen the comments re state of oil filter....I can understand why this may have been concerning.

Allegedly....Some allege that some dealerships give bonuses or incentives to some technicians if they complete a service or other work under the allocated book time. Allegedly some might say that some staff allegedly might be motivated to cut corners to reduce the amount of time booked.

I have no idea if these allegations are true & thus have to assume all dealerships do a fine job !

I appreciate I may have been over tactful with the wording............"allegedly"

Great car & interesting performance mods.............thanks to OP for updates.

D4MJT

Original Poster:

1,253 posts

159 months

Friday 7th August 2020
quotequote all
AW8 said:
I have seen the comments re state of oil filter....I can understand why this may have been concerning.

Allegedly....Some allege that some dealerships give bonuses or incentives to some technicians if they complete a service or other work under the allocated book time. Allegedly some might say that some staff allegedly might be motivated to cut corners to reduce the amount of time booked.

I have no idea if these allegations are true & thus have to assume all dealerships do a fine job !

I appreciate I may have been over tactful with the wording............"allegedly"

Great car & interesting performance mods.............thanks to OP for updates.
Allegedly, that wouldn't suprise me in the slightest.

Now that I'm out of warranty I'm doing all the maintenance on the car myself.

Mr911lover

207 posts

147 months

Friday 7th August 2020
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Really enjoyable read and love the mods.

I would expect those times to be a bit quicker, is it a case of the BM software not making the most of the turbo? A well sorted stage 2 m140i on a stock turbo should be doing high 7's 100-200