P
Also bought an N54 intake manifold and plan to retrofit that when the garage is warm enough (too poor for a heater). Choosing this route over the 330 “3 stage” intake swap to avoid dealing with pesky DISA valves - the power gains are pretty similar: https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1902505
I understand modifying an N52 is relatively pointless, but I’m doing it for the sheer sport of it.
Found an Armaspeed carbon intake + snorkel for sale. I wanted a Gruppe M, but they’re too hard to find for the N52. Hoping the sound signature is similar!
Haven’t tested the sound yet, but fit is okay at best. It’s marketed as a 325i intake, which I thought would be identical. It seems too tall and sat slightly proud. Relocating a power steering line got it good enough to close the hood. Will be keeping my eye out for a Gruppe M in the future.
Little winter storage update, I found a pretty rare part I had to buy. These things have been NLA for like a decade and rarely pop up, because honestly who the hell would buy an OEM carbon brace for a 328i.
Engine bay is filthy I know
Would be awesome to keep analog gauges, but have some sort of P3 digital vent gauge that is subtle/matches the BMW amber color. Wonder if you could hack up an OEM vent to fit one of these https://p3.io/
Was really dreading this job, but the headliner finally gave out and started dangling - well at least the sunshade part. The rear was also sagging super badly. I ordered new OEM-like fabric, some glue, and got to work. Turned out 8/10, good enough, but definitely is a learning curve to this process and there are a few areas I caused a wrinkle, didn't apply enough glue, or didn't sand off enough of the old adhesive. Once all the trim, door seals, grab handles etc were reinstalled it looks nearly perfect though.
The job itself was super tedious. After wrestling it for quit some time I realized the headliner is removable by folding the front seats back and sliding out the rear driver door while slightly folding it in a "U" shape.
Car just turned over 150k miles
I really wanted to find a saddle brown or coral red interior to swap into the E90, but there were some limitations I learned:
- needs be from an LCI car due to the additional headrest restraint system
- needs to be sport with the thigh rest
I searched locally for the better part of a year and turned up empty handed. So I opted to do the insane thing and buy a second E90 with all the parts I wanted, and did the swap. The one big challenge here is that my seats are manual bases, which I wanted to keep. Turns out the only way to do this is to strip the seats down to the bare frame and swap the foam, leather, electronics over. Overall was an absolute pain in the ass, but worth it I think.
With the swap I also got heated seats, rear split folding seats (which I did not have before!) rear door sunshades, and a power sunshade rear deck out of it.
Donor car:
Swap:
I jumped on a set of ZCP wheels over the weekend since they're NLA and don't pop up too often for sale
99,105 miles
After replacing most of the front suspension I took the X5 into EuroTech in Minneapolis for an alignment. They charged $223 which felt pretty high considering these don't have camber adjustment. Anyways, while there they diagnosed an oil leak from the oil filter housing. I knew this thing seeped, but honestly just didn't care much until I read how these N55s like to suck serp belts through the crank seal if they get oily. Out of curiosity I asked them the rough estimate to have that gasket replaced - $1800! I was feeling lazy, but not for that price.
I was able to knock it out in roughly an afternoon and it wasn't too bad at all. The only tricky part is BMW designed it so that you cannot reach the 3rd bolt holding the housing to the block without removing the intake manifold. Other than that the trickiest part was just managing the fluids and trying not to spill - once again those giant 500ml Amazon syringes came in clutch to suck most the coolant out of the reservoir before starting. Also de-greased the hell out of the front of the engine while I was in there, but didn't take any great photos.
While in there I replaced:
- Oil filter housing gasket
- Oil cooler gasket
- Oil pressure sensor
- Accessory drive belt
- Belt idler pulley
- Belt tensioner
- All mounting hardware
Picked up a ceramic iDrive controller, which was an uncommon factory option on the 50i variant. You can also get a matching shift lever and HVAC control knobs if you’re willing to shell out.
Kinda silly the knobs are integrated, so you need to replace the entire iDrive control unit.
Attachments:
Copy cat!
I also lightly polished and ceramic coated the headlights because they were starting to get a tiny bit sun damaged at 10+ years old. Before/After:
Also @Rekpoint stopped by with his piece of shit
For months I've been chasing a clunking noise in the suspension. So far I've replaced shocks, spring bushings/rubber, sway bar links, lower control arms, adjusted steering rack pre-tension, and just yesterday replaced the thrust arms. After all this work and well over $1000 in parts I realized it was just one of the upper shock bolts wasn't tight lol. Fresh front end though, eh?
Bummer it developed a drone, sounded great when you first put it on. What brand was the muffler?
The muffler is Top Speed, a discontinued eBay special. Sounds fantastic, but annoying as all hell.
Ive put a 1000 trouble free miles on it. Seems like the new battery and new FRM fixed this cars woes. These E90s are really great - cheap, easy to work on, fun to drive 6MT, okay to get a little banged up by two goldens.
I got really tired of the exhaust setup I had, the drone was just getting unbearable with this joke of a muffler. At first I thought it sounded good enough that it'd be fine since this is a weekend car, but it just turned me off from driving the car. I swapped back to the stock muffler for now to get the drone under control. For now I have Fabspeed catless headers, stock section 1, STG x pipe section 2, and stock muffler. I'll be on the lookout for a Rogue Engineering El Diablo muffler soon. Finally can hear the induction noise of the S54 again!
Steering wheel looks awesome, I clicked your link to order the same kit and its no longer available
That is a huge bummer! I think I paid $65 with free shipping since it was on Amazon, but you can also buy it directly from ColourLock and pay the international shipping of $15 (and wait a bit): https://www.colourlock.com/Leather-Repair-Kit-for-Steering-Wheel-Black/850729-us/. Totally worth it IMO, I think it's enough material to do 2-3 wheels.
This is the first I'm hearing of it, has it basically made protool useless? I still use it for fixing things on my wife's Mini so it would suck to have the diagnostic functionality gone...
My understanding is the legal actions only impacted them hosting their "Standard Tools" package - aka Inpa, NCSExpert, WinKPF for those folks that like to do it raw. I don't think it impacted their ProTool because that is using closed-sourced, proprietary software. Although I would put money on them using parts of the BMW IP code in their product. Looks like they still sell it and support it though
After a few weeks of research, forum perusing, and tinkering I finally fixed the electrical problems with the E90. I believe this all stemmed from the battery. 2 years ago I replaced the battery with a factory equivalent 90ah AGM unit. I forgot to use a coding tool to tell the car it was an AGM battery, and according to some stuff I've read the power output of the two types is slightly different. Without the coding, it can cause subtle voltage spikes to flow through the car's various ECUs. Long story short, through forgetting to code it and harsh winter storage, that battery caused quite the issues, namely frying my front footwell module.
Some symptoms of a failed FRM are: no power windows, no central locking system, headlights permanently on, no interior lights, no 6MT hill assist, no blinkers, amongst a very illuminated dash, and a host of other issues.
To fix it I had to buy a replacement FRM and go scouring the internet for the coding tools. If you didn't know, Bimmergeeks, who used to host the resources was hit with a cease and desist from BMW NA and removed access to things like Inpa, WinKPF, NCSExpert, along with all the sp-daten files for all the different chassis. After days of digging / testing I got my laptop setup and coded a new FRM - surprisingly it all worked like a charm! Aside from the fact the FRM came from an E9X M3 and the previous owner (who I can only imagine has dog shit for brains) had coded it to turn on the high beams when the headlight switch was set to off (position 2) - this literally took me weeks of wire tracing and headaches only to figure out it was coded that way...
Edit: I did also send the original FRM off to an ECU repair shop, but they deemed it "un-salvageable" and could not find the issue.
The steps were:
Here is the car with a sweet sweet error free dash and fully working!
Sounds like a super annoying issue. I would get a voltmeter and see if you can find the OEM voltage inputs and outputs and test for variations. Ive been there, voltage issues are a pain.
After some testing I did find that the original source of the electrical issue was stemming from a faulty battery - I think from improper winter storage which was my fault. It was a 2022 date stamp so I was pretty surprised! Sadly since I was too lazy to test/fix this sooner, it fried the footwell module 
Have you checked the ground strap under the car going from engine to frame?
I didn't think to check the ground strap, but after an absurd amount of testing I did figure it out finally. In the end it was more difficult to fix the damage caused by the faulty battery than it was to fix the original issue. That's what I get for being lazy!
