F31 335d x drive Touring - perfect daily ?

[peetee7]

ahenners said:

Fantastic summary of ownership there and the broad range of talents this car has!

Thanks for the very kind words ahenners

[peetee7]

This is what a BMW genuine air-filter looks like after 11,701 miles. Have now replaced it with a K&N Performance Air Filter. All ready for my trip to Unicorn Developments tomorrow for a stage 2 tune.

[peetee7]

STAGE 2

The wagon went for its final power upgrade yesterday courtesy of Ricky @ Unicorn Developments. 2hrs of fettling the 400bhp target couldn’t quite be achieved as the car struggled for air. We eventually settled at 391bhp / 812nm - very pleased with how the car feels now. Power delivery is very linear and progressive, pulls like an N/A engine - Ricky is a wizard. Looking forward to getting some 0-60 & quarter mile times on the Dragy.

[peetee7]

812NM torque making light work of the new toy. Clio 182 Trophy number 485 of 500 delivered to UK. 49k miles and 1 owner from new …

[RichardDastardly]

Will be very interested to read the 0-60 time in stage 2.
Are the gearboxes strong enough to take that much torque as standard?

[jagfan2]

RichardDastardly said:

Will be very interested to read the 0-60 time in stage 2.
Are the gearboxes strong enough to take that much torque as standard?

Simple answer no, especially not with XHP stg3 removing gear torque limits. its an 8HP70 - the 70 is 700Nm and ZF limit 1/2nd lower than this, its around 450/600Nm from memory. you will notice every OEM limits to this, as ZF wont warrant any higher, old alpina limited to this too, latest is still only 730Nm, and has 1/2nd gear limits still.

I know plenty of people have gotten away with it, but if your doing drag launches and running heavy/towing regularly its a question of how long the first gear clutch will last, and/or fatiguing/snapping internals etc with limits removed . However OEMs normally design the prop or driveline as a fuse before the trans, so outright snapping stuff on launches, normally a prop or shaft goes first, then tcase output, as they are a lot cheaper to replace. have seen a couple of stage2 snapping rear props, though one had the xdelete RWD tcase mod on it.

Personally, i wouldn't be dragging or towing with 800nm a + xhp stg3 on a daily without a 500nm 1st gear limit. 3rd upwards running 800Nm is probably fine for 50k miles +, as the driveline takes much less of a pounding in longer gears.

[peetee7]

Will get some Dragy times up soon. Gearbox is GA8HP70Z – ZF recommends the upper safe limit be capped at 700nm torque. So many of them running 800nm + without issue. I think the bottom end going on these is more of a problem than the gearbox. A good friend who happens to be a warranty controller at BMW informed me he's seen stock 35d engines go bang from around 50k miles. Scary.

On the other hand the previous gen 335d touring (E91) has the GA6HP26Z gearbox which ZF recommends the upper safe limit be capped at 600m torque. Again so many of them running 750nm + torque with 150k + miles.

A used GA8HP70Z in good condition costs £400/500 if the worst was to happen – genuinely can’t see it going bang. I think it’s going to require A LOT more abuse and A LOT more miles to break it. If it does then that’s what this thread is for, i'll let you all know

[jagfan2]

peetee7 said:

Will get some Dragy times up soon. Gearbox is GA8HP70Z – ZF recommends the upper safe limit be capped at 700nm torque. So many of them running 800nm + without issue. I think the bottom end going on these is more of a problem than the gearbox. A good friend who happens to be a warranty controller at BMW informed me he's seen stock 35d engines go bang from around 50k miles. Scary.

On the other hand the previous gen 335d touring (E91) has the GA6HP26Z gearbox which ZF recommends the upper safe limit be capped at 600m torque. Again so many of them running 750nm + torque with 150k + miles.

A used GA8HP70Z in good condition costs £400/500 if the worst was to happen – genuinely can’t see it going bang. I think it’s going to require A LOT more abuse and A LOT more miles to break it. If it does then that’s what this thread is for, i'll let you all know

I used to be a trans engineer for an OEM, did driveline duty calcs and durability testing on 8HP70 as part of my job. Yes the 8HP is an extremely well built box, and has some margin, but they have careful tolerances to manage this, particularly focused on shift speeds and pressures, they only let lighter non towing cars have the fast shift speeds for example. So upping shift pressures/speeds and using a reasonably heavy car for towing does increase duty, though not to the level that this box peaks at, as used in X5 M50d and other high torque drivelines with much higher GVWs, so likely ok, just adding risk, especially in lower gears.

Just making sure people know what there doing, as i said fuse is normally further downstream, but will increase wear on tcase and shafts, as long as your sensible daily, and budgeting for it and going in eyes open, its probably fine. I will be more than happy going stage 1 on my 330d once its had full engine and trans service, but that's only to 335d levels of performance, so very low risk.

[peetee7]

Service History,

Quick oil & oil filter change yesterday after finishing work. Parts supplied by Harry Fairbairn BMW.



Breakdown of all service intervals on the car to date below,

2018 - Service 1 - 16,936
2020 - Service 2 - 10,587
2020 - Service 3 - 8,901
2021 - Service 4 - 8,393
2021 - Service 5 – 7,379

I’ve decided to stick to strict 8,000 mile or sooner servicing intervals. Car is on 5 oil changes at 52,196 miles.

Car is filthy and could do with a clean soon …

[peetee7]

jagfan2 said:

I used to be a trans engineer for an OEM, did driveline duty calcs and durability testing on 8HP70 as part of my job. Yes the 8HP is an extremely well built box, and has some margin, but they have careful tolerances to manage this, particularly focused on shift speeds and pressures, they only let lighter non towing cars have the fast shift speeds for example. So upping shift pressures/speeds and using a reasonably heavy car for towing does increase duty, though not to the level that this box peaks at, as used in X5 M50d and other high torque drivelines with much higher GVWs, so likely ok, just adding risk, especially in lower gears.

Just making sure people know what there doing, as i said fuse is normally further downstream, but will increase wear on tcase and shafts, as long as your sensible daily, and budgeting for it and going in eyes open, its probably fine. I will be more than happy going stage 1 on my 330d once its had full engine and trans service, but that's only to 335d levels of performance, so very low risk.

Excellent. Really interesting to get input from a transmission engineer. Talking of which, I don’t agree with the BMW on the gear box oil being lifetime. I’ll be giving the gearbox and transfer box a complete service at around the 60k mileage mark

[gareth h]

peetee7 said:

Excellent. Really interesting to get input from a transmission engineer. Talking of which, I don’t agree with the BMW on the gear box oil being lifetime. I’ll be giving the gearbox and transfer box a complete service at around the 60k mileage mark

I think you’ll find BMW changed their mind on that and recommend a change at circa 70k miles

[okenemem]

speechless, 170mph

wonder how the new m340d compares

[peetee7]

@gareth h - thanks for the info thats really good to know. At the next oil change at 60k miles i'll get the gearbox and transfer box oil flushed

@okenemem - absolutely. Would love to see a 340d in action.

[peetee7]

Cheeky 0-60 run with little man over the lunch break. 1.99% uphill gradient 4.26 seconds - Dragy verified. Improvement over the previous best run of 4.29 seconds. Will invest a little more time into the 0-60 runs soon. I don't think a 4 second flat run is out of question.

[peetee7]

Research leads me to believe 4.14 seconds is the quickest 0-60 time recorded for an F31 335d on Dragy in the UK ... whilst 4.26 is the second quickest.

[s70rmp]

4.26 secs is still very very impressive for a diesel

[ROSSI89]

peetee7 said:

STAGE 2

The wagon went for its final power upgrade yesterday courtesy of Ricky @ Unicorn Developments. 2hrs of fettling the 400bhp target couldn’t quite be achieved as the car struggled for air. We eventually settled at 391bhp / 812nm - very pleased with how the car feels now. Power delivery is very linear and progressive, pulls like an N/A engine - Ricky is a wizard. Looking forward to getting some 0-60 & quarter mile times on the Dragy.

Been following this thread for a few weeks Pete,
I've got an F30 335d 2017 saloon I'm gonna get mapped this year.
Won't disclose too much but looking at your pictures your very local to me!
I've changed my mind about three times on who I want to map it.
Looking at unicorn, gkr and performance torque.
All have a decent reputation.
Have you been happy with the service at unicorn?
I don't mind the travel there if it's good lol.

[ROSSI89]

ROSSI89 said:

peetee7 said:

STAGE 2

The wagon went for its final power upgrade yesterday courtesy of Ricky @ Unicorn Developments. 2hrs of fettling the 400bhp target couldn’t quite be achieved as the car struggled for air. We eventually settled at 391bhp / 812nm - very pleased with how the car feels now. Power delivery is very linear and progressive, pulls like an N/A engine - Ricky is a wizard. Looking forward to getting some 0-60 & quarter mile times on the Dragy.

Been following this thread for a few weeks Pete,
I've got an F30 335d 2017 saloon I'm gonna get mapped this year.
Won't disclose too much but looking at your pictures your very local to me!
I've changed my mind about three times on who I want to map it.
Looking at unicorn, gkr and performance torque.
All have a decent reputation.
Have you been happy with the service at unicorn?
I don't mind the travel there if it's good lol.

[peetee7]

That’s a stunning looking 35d @ROSSI89 - thanks for reading the thread

For me it was a pretty close call between GKR & Unicorn Developments. Both are maestro’s at tuning the 35d engine - you’ll be in good hands with either. Only point to note is GKR currently don’t have a 4-wheel linked dyno whereas Unicorn does. Between the two tuners they’ve tuned hundreds & hundreds of 35d’s and I’m yet to see or hear a bad review. Wait time for Unicorn Developments is around 2 months – service was excellent

There are many tuners out there now it can be difficult to decide who to go with especially when some are cheaper and closer to home

[ROSSI89]

peetee7 said:

That’s a stunning looking 35d @ROSSI89 - thanks for reading the thread

For me it was a pretty close call between GKR & Unicorn Developments. Both are maestro’s at tuning the 35d engine - you’ll be in good hands with either. Only point to note is GKR currently don’t have a 4-wheel linked dyno whereas Unicorn does. Between the two tuners they’ve tuned hundreds & hundreds of 35d’s and I’m yet to see or hear a bad review. Wait time for Unicorn Developments is around 2 months – service was excellent

There are many tuners out there now it can be difficult to decide who to go with especially when some are cheaper and closer to home

Thanks very much mate,
So far mods include 20" JR28 wheels,
Eibach pro springs and a few other little touches quite happy with how it looks now to be honest.
From October I'll be looking at performance based mods.
Gonna start with a base tune and gearbox map then go from there really rather than go all in straight away.