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I now have a new used Abs module onboard. ( yay for friends who have friends who have parts cars and euro garages, who have ABS modules with the same serial number as me ) Installed this arvo drove home no issues so far, fingers crossed.

Final bump/call... someone is getting a bargain - auction closes soon. And whilst I may be a little biased as it's mine: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/m135i/listing/3373138200 The car is great to drive, is pretty well specced, and whilst obviously it's not too "fast", I've got some health stuff going on and brought the car as I wanted to tick the turbo six box when in reality it's not the right car for my needs now and/or moving forward. If you have money in your bank account, and want to buy something with decent poke/handling that looks like a runabout 116i to the vast majority of people... then get in touch via the Trade Me ad (with my mate who's selling it obo me). Hope you're doing ok wherever you are 🙂

Haven't delved into it too much but even the e53 / early m57 is a lot more complex than your regular petrol engine tuning.

One tube to go now !!! Hell tube came up fairly well ... I decided to close up the gaps in the 'seamless' donuts where I had bend meeting bend and it gave a very pleasing joint. However, at some point you have to transition back to the straight tube and there is a substantial size mismatch 😕 REALLY wishing the donuts were perfect as it would reduce the fab time by nearly half I'd say. Will be a lot more work during the final welding also to diddle around with the gaps and oval vs round tube etc.

Indeed, I’m not too sure how complex the injection timing is on an E53 diesel, but I do know the latest BMW diesels have seven stages to each injection, controlled electronically… Back in the day when I worked with diesel FIE we were working to control two stage injection, and the norm was one single injection phase. Lots to play with and adjust if you want, but the complexity means you can easily get it wrong. 4M40t… shudder..

Converted to fully fledged Manual for a change. CIC Retrofit with M Track mode. Certification completed.

You’ve got it right in the first sentence, not sure about the rest of it. The over-riding factor in any factory engine tune is emissions, it’s easy to refine a tune to give more power and better economy (especially in a diesel) but one or other of the controlled emissions (NOx, CO2, HC, particulates, etc) will then go off the chart. So if you are an after market chip tuner that doesn’t have to submit to emissions test regimes then it’s easy to do, and this is the bit that really annoys me. Spend millions on development and testing to make it cleaner, and then someone can come along and re-tune and all that goes out the window, or exhaust in this case. Ask any tuner or chip supplier which EU emissions their new tune meets and you get silence.. A close second consideration is then warranty / product life, most factory engines are de-tuned to not push the limits of component life… in theory, not always in real life.

There is no addiction associated with BMW's. I have proof. I am down to my last 7 after selling one in the last few days. It just takes discipline.

Drivers Review - 140i War Hammer Last week I pick up the phone at work to Ray on the other end for our once a month catch-up. He enthusiastically said 'waddya doing this weekend'. My reply, not tons planned but bout time for a visit. He said, good cause I have something for you to try out. The 140i is on the road. Not batting and eye lid I said good ill be there with bells on. Roll on Saturday and a 45min commute from green lane up to silver dale. We arrive and sitting in the driveway was a stout little 1 series. Only hint of what is going on is the quad exhaust sneaking through the rear valance. After some chit chat .. He handed me the keys, the missus and I jumped into the car and prepared the usual check mirrors / belts / anything loose that would end up on the floor etc. Fired the little thing into life, which soon made me realise with the s65 shoe horned under the hood and modified pipes that this aint no 1 series any more. I locked the DCT transmission into reverse and eased the car back onto the road. Checking all the normal stuff I popped it into first and moved away ... with a quick pop of the paddles I was in second and gave it a medium sqeeze on the throttle, immediately we were both pushed back into our seats and I realized we were over the speed limit with the car showing small hint it was tapping at the tranction control. Giving the car a bit of a warm up I took it easy up to the open road and drove it down to my favourite testing ground run .. the sprint to stillwater. I pulled over to let the car finish its warm up of the oil and water to operational temp. Looking down I pushed the 'Power' button and changed the DTC settings to '6'. Now lets stop here for a second to look at its spec. Here we have a 120i Motorsport shell with e92 m3 sub frame components, DTC 7 speed gear box, e92 M3 diff and suspension, Mperformance brakes, newly refreshed s65, free flow stainless exhaust, Tuned MSS60 ECU and m3 GTS software loaded onto the gearbox computer and Mdynamics DSC traction and stability control. Back to the drive, I stomped on the loud pedal and plucked 2nd, 3rd , 4th, 5th redlining all the way. The sound was ammmmmmazing. But what trumped that was the amount of time it took me to break the legal and beyond. I see our first corner coming up at a great rate of knots. Look down and see a 2 with a couple of zeros .. hit the picks and dive into the first corner. It just soaked up the corner and the bumps. Accelerating out of the corner I pop the paddles and within a blink of an eye im through some more gears. The GTS gearbox software has come a long was since the SMGII days. Dual clutch transmission are the playstation generation. You cant get it wrong and it just builds confidence as the car isn't un-settled between gear changes. Up comes the next corner which is the start of a set of s bends. Complete with Rodney Council's finest b road bumps can throw at me. The car didn't flinch. I hit the down change and in comes the rev matching and throttle blips. holy crap I say that sounds awesome. At this stage Im giggling like a little girl while punching it out of the corners ... traction control is letting me know that its keeping the rear end in check. We get down to Still Water and take pause to figure out what the combination is and how something so potent can be so solid on the road with this power to weight combination. I jump out and the missus jumps in. She gives it the potatoes on the way back and reminds me I dont make a good passenger. We get to the open highway, and I jump back in the seat. And do the airfield run. I get a real chance to open it up. Pulling a big over taking manoeuvre past a local tourist. Up pops the stop sign to local highway .. The speedo is well past what would be considered sane. In come some braking performance .. bang bang bang down through the gears .. it pulls up with a face ripping gforce to the local highway. I get a honk honk and thumbs up from the tourist haha .. We complete our cool down run and return to HellBM. I get out of the car and walk up to ray, Ray: 'Whaddya think" Josh "Well that wasn't sh*t" Its given me the big hurry up on my plans for my next car. I own a e30 s50b32. I take on a car that was to put great power into something that I though needed it, at the time it was ground breaking.' This 1 series hatch with the s65b40 and DTC just brings into perspective what the new level is in badassness. This hatch is king. I have driven a lot of builds, with power and handling. Including some amazing factory cars. This takes the cake on all of it. Its really that good. Well done HellBM, this is the future of modding and its bright.