The Barbara Chronicles

[Vass 830]

The detailing mission still slowly chugging along, I took on tackling the front bumper, which is by far the roughest panel on the car. It's suffered quite a bit of abuse throughout its life and probably deserves a full respray but that's not something I'm willing to entertain at this point so will settle for an improvement instead of perfection for now.

The mounting rails that slide onto the hanger brackets were already broken when I got the car with the passenger side one being particularly bad. The bumper was sagging quite badly initially but I managed to align it well enough that it wasn't too obvious. Was about time to properly address the issue though so I used it as an opportunity to further hone my plastic welding skills.

Bent the broken bits back in place and melted in some steel mesh for reinforcement. 

Won't be good as new but will hold much better than before anyway.

The paint was badly stone-chipped all over, beginning to crack in a few places and had a few rough scratches here and there as well. I polished it up best I could, touched up the rock chips and the worst of the scratches on the underside.

The mesh grille was looking quite faded and rock chipped as well so gave it a few coats of paint to bring it back to black. Only got a before photo of it though.

The trim inserts got some Carpro Perl treatment to rejuvenate the front end even further.

The result was never going to be perfect but from a few feet away now looks infinitely more presentable, which was the best I could have hoped for without it becoming a full blown repaint. Mint.

[Harper 547]

Has to be the best kept E46 in the country

[Vass 830]

4 hours ago, Harper said:

Has to be the best kept E46 in the country

Hahah doubt it. Not yet anyway, but I'm working on it

[Vass 830]

One thing I'd been meaning to address ever since getting the car was the fact it only came with one key. Lose that and I'd be screwed.

After putting it off for ages I was resigned to finally make my way to the dealership and drop $500 to have a spare made up... until I got to chatting to @Eagle who encouraged me to have a go at coding some keys myself. Having superficially looked into it aaaages ago I had filed the task away as something beyond the realm of my abilities but after all the sh*t I've seen and done over the past couple of years it didn't seem as daunting a mission on second glance. A couple of special tools/adapters were required but I was surprised to find you could get all that you need for under $100 off Aliexpress. Probably even half that but I also got a special adapter for an EWS4 that helps avoid any soldering since RealOEM had told me that's what my car had. Turns out it still had the older EWS3 in it so I could have gotten away with just the AK90 unit but I'm sure it'll come in handy eventually.

Getting the EWS data read was a bit finnicky but once that was done the coding of the key itself went smoothly. Did the synchronising procedure in the car and the remote started successfully locking/unlocking the doors straight after. Only thing left to do was to get the key physically cut. Easier said than done.

Took it in, got it back 5 minutes & $50 later, got home to the car only to discover the key was cut incorrectly and was essentially ruined. Took it back the next day, they ordered in a new blank key, cut it properly this time, somehow transferred the insides over from the previous one and I finally had a fully functional spare key the day after. Great success.

If anyone needs a key coded in the Christchurch area feel free to hit me up, happy to help out. Will also tell you who to avoid going to to get it cut hahah.

[Vass 830]

I was out exploring the great outdoors (i.e. Pick-A-Part) one weekend, scavenging for some random parts I needed for a new project car when I noticed one of the cars there was equipped with a feature I'd been thirsting after ever since having it on my first ever E46 325ci - automatic lights & wipers. After a quick Google to look up what all is needed for the retrofit, I turned a quick parts trip into a 4-hour mission of untangling the whole wiring loom to look up exactly how everything is routed in order to get the end result as close to factory standard as possible.

Turns out all you need is the rain-light sensor, bulkier mirror surround, LCM fascia panel with the auto lights position and 4 wires to run, then just enable the feature with PA Soft or similar and off you go. Of course the windshield itself will need modifying or replacing with one with a black surround where the sensor attaches to. I'm still hoping to catch a stray rock from a haulage truck passing by and get a brand new screen through insurance but might bust out some black paint and install it as is if I get bored in the meantime.

Now I just need to find a towing module & wiring so I can rip out the interior and install this, the heated seat wiring and possibly dash cam + radar detector hardwiring all in one go.

[Olaf 3317]

Awesome progress!  god loves an e46 touring!  Took mine on a club trip last weekend, the M54B25 certainly isn't quick like a B30, though the car remains enjoyable to drive.  Going to hunt back through your thread looking at speakers and amplifier areas.

 

[Vass 830]

58 minutes ago, Olaf said:

the M54B25 certainly isn't quick like a B30, though the car remains enjoyable to drive.

Funny you say that. I recently discovered my B30 isn't as quick as a B30 either 😅 Still enjoy driving it although it's been a good 2 months since I have... 

58 minutes ago, Olaf said:

Going to hunt back through your thread looking at speakers and amplifier areas.

I've not done anything on the audio front apart from the headunit so doubt you'll find anything useful.

[Olaf 3317]

Perhaps I can make a contribution on the audio front to our collective knowledge on Touring audio - at least if I can be arsed doing it myself!  I did initially think of the double-din android units like you and @adro have done, though can't be arsed on the extra cost of the unit and running in a Camera (as useful as that would be).  I'd rather spend the extra on Konis 😊

[Vass 830]

12 minutes ago, Olaf said:

Perhaps I can make a contribution on the audio front to our collective knowledge on Touring audio

Yes please! That's further down on the priority list for now but keen to know what works for when I get around to it.

[Vass 830]

A few months ago I helped @Carbon manual swap his E39 530i. Awesome car, a stunning topaz blue 2001 Msport sitting on Style 65's.

Shortly after the swap he stumbled upon a cheap, grandpa spec 530i and just couldn't pass it up.

Despite the newly manual swapped one having tonnes of maintenance items ticked off and the newest purchase, although being tidy for its age and price, being borderline neglected, he was adamant about the former being noticeably low on power in comparison. My butt dyno wasn't as well calibrated so I couldn't feel much of a difference but to make it scientific, he organised to put both of them on a dyno power run and find out for sure. To satisfy my own curiosity and to add an extra point of comparison, I tagged along.

Three M54B30's put to the test.

First one up was the 2001 Msport 530i with around 150k km's on the clock, manual swapped with a 5-speed ZF and single mass Valeo flywheel. Maintenance included a rebuilt VANOS, rebuilt DISA, new fuel filter, new genuine camshaft & MAF sensors amongst other things so by all means well up to standard and running the latest EU2 tune.

Somehow, it only managed to push out 250 Nm & 157 hp. The air-fuel ratio held steady up to around 4k RPM at which point it fell off a cliff, taking the power numbers down with it. The drop-off seems to occur roughly at the point VANOS and DISA kick in so we suspect one or the other. Currently in the process of swapping over VANOS units so will see what that does.

Second was my Touring. Roughly 10k km's post engine rebuild, all reasonable and unreasonable maintenance addressed and well documented.

The torque curve looked a wee bit better but still ended up low on power, pushing out 255 Nm & 166 hp. It seemed to be running on the rich side throughout. The tuner said he usually aims for an air-fuel ratio of around 13 when remapping NA engines, mine were floating around 11. He was fairly confident that with a remap there's easily another 20 hp in there and that he could tune for it but it's best to figure out why the mixture is as rich as it is in the first place.

And lastly, the grandpa spec 2002 530i automatic with around 180k km's. Still very tidy for its age but out of the three definitely the least looked after and borderline mechanically neglected. Post-dyno we also discovered the DISA to be completely broken and non-functioning - the flap being completely loose and dangling around the shaft, unconnected. Lucky that the infamous pin hadn't dropped into the engine.

All this made the results all the more puzzling...

268 Nm (disregarding the early peak) and 186 hp.

What the actual hell.

The M54B30 is supposed to produce 228 hp at the crank. Account for ~15% in driveline losses, the figure to aim for should be 194 hp at the hubs. The blue car fell 37 hp (19%) short of that figure, mine 28 hp (14%).

The grey "broken" car had barely lost any power whilst we and our pReVeNtAtIvE mAiNtEnAnCe had basically managed to downgrade our engines to M54B25's.

I guess the takeaway here being that we've both just wasted stupid amounts of money on upkeep and trivial brand new parts when all they needed was a healthy dose of neglect.

Less is more.

Grandpa spec FTW.

I went back to the readings I pulled when I suspected I might have a vacuum leak, with the LTFT's sitting at 8.6%. Sure enough, the 8.6% actually had a '-' in front of it so I had been running rich this whole time, just wasn't clued up on how to read fuel trims properly to realise it at the time.

I've since read up on there being a faulty batch of Hengst fuel filters out there with faulty fuel pressure regulators that produce around 60 PSI of pressure at the rail instead of the spec of 50.76 +/- 2.9 PSI. Sure enough, I had installed a Hengst filter just this past October so suspected it might be the cause of my rich running. 

I hoped for that to be the cause since that would have been an easy fix. So I went out and got a fuel pressure tester to verify only to find that it sits at a steady 52 PSI at idle - well within spec.

With the engine turned off, the pressure quickly drops to 48 PSI and then holds steady for at least half an hour, which would also rule out leaky injectors.

I tried clearing all adaptations, then ran the car at idle, logging running parameters and sure enough, after a few minutes STFT's shoot straight into the negative territory, sitting at around -15%.

Something's not quite right and I'm not sure how to troubleshoot it further. The lack of power itself isn't really that noticeable since I barely ever push the car to its limit but constant rich running can't be good for it.

MAF, O2 sensors are brand new OE, DISA is rebuilt and seemingly operating properly (which, judging by the grey car, might actually be a detriment), ICV cleaned, fresh VANOS seals etc etc.

I could just go back to the dyno and have the car professionally tuned to aim for an AFR of 13-14 but would be good to figure out why it's currently running as rich as it is. Otherwise, if the issue eventually somehow fixes itself I might end up on the lean side instead.

Could it be something to do with the EU2 tune and it being adjusted to the petrol used in Europe that's somehow different to what we're using here? Then again all 3 cars are running EU2 tunes and 95 octane so that shouldn't be a point of difference.

All in all, the dyno experience was a good one and well worth doing, despite coming out of it slightly demoralised. Will need to do some more thorough data logging and keep myself up at night even more.

Once the car is ready to see the light of day again that is.

[Eagle 1662]

On 7/5/2024 at 10:17 PM, Vass said:

I tried clearing all adaptations, then ran the car at idle, logging running parameters and sure enough, after a few minutes STFT's shoot straight into the negative territory, sitting at around -15%

Id be going for a decent drive and re-check when its warmed up. Im not sure how long adaptions take to reset but probably more than a few mins on cold start.  If its still that high then id hook up the gauge and drive just to be sure the regulator aint spiking somehow. If that checks out log the MAF and O2 sensors to rule them out. 

[Vass 830]

Long overdue update.

After being in various states of disassembly even since before the dyno day back in June, she's finally back in one piece and looking better than ever. As these things tend to do, a little pain correction snowballed into a full blown detailing mission spanning a good 5 months.

No panel was left untouched by the end of it. Started running out of the Koch Chemie heavy cut compound I had so switched over to the Autostolz offerings halfway through. After the heavy cut, finishing polish and touching up and deeper scratches and rock chips, each panel got 2 coats of Chemical Guys Blacklight glaze, followed by 2 coats of Menzerna liquid carnuba wax and topped off with Fireball Pirouette spray SiO2 sealant.

All 4 doors got taken apart down to bare shells & wiring, installed sound deadening, door lock and window mechanisms checked over and relubed, rubber seals treated with Gummi Pfedge and vertical pillar shadowline trims cut & polished.

All the window tints were looking real tired, either from shoddy quality or purely due to age so off they came with the help of my tiny steam cleaner. The door ones were the easiest to do whilst the windows were out of the car. I rushed a bit on the first one and did the whole window on one refill, which left behind quite a bit of residue that was a pain to scrub off. From there on I slowed it down, only gently pulling on the film whilst dousing it with steam at the base. The average window now took 3 refills but now only left behind very minimal glue residue. The rear window alone took over an hour of mucking about and about 8 refills, dragging the job well into the night. Well worth the effort though.

I then gave the windows a quick polish with Meguiar's glass polish and a special glass pad. Didn't do much on the deeper scratches but helped get rid of stubborn water marks and old gunk from the edges of the windows where they sit against the seals.

One annoying bit I ended up abandoning were the seals around the rear door back windows. They were badly perished on both sides so I got replacement ones a while back. They come in one piece as a surround for the whole window. With the doors apart did it became apparent that there's really no simple way of replacing the surround without butchering it. The bottom bit is too wide to slide in between the door shell and the window so would need to be cut off or trimmed down. The whole thing also seemed to be held in place with whatever sealant was used for the window. I didn't want to risk ripping some of it out and compromising the weather tight seal so reluctantly abandoned the mission for now.

With the windows back in, I buttoned the doors up with "new" vapour barriers. 3 of the 4 original ones were ripped and torn to various degrees so I scavenged good condition ones from good ol' Pick-A-Part, carefully peeling them off the doors leaving all the butyl attached to the foam. Walked away with a full set of 4 for a whopping $5. I gradually heated the butyl up with a heat gun as I went around the door and stuck it down with a sound deadening roller, making sure it's nice and secure all around. Good as new.

[Vass 830]

The shadowline trims that go around the windows were looking real tired. The finish is somehow different to the vertical pilar trims, they were heavily oxidized and no amount of cutting, polishing or even wet sanding seemed to do much to improve the look. Ended up giving up and passing them on to professionals to get properly repainted.

Ended up at Evan's Colour Works in Sydenham. The turnaround was quick, the price reasonable and the finish was mostly good, although did have quite a few dust bits stuck under the paint and a couple of runs. Ended up leaving one piece to get resprayed but the rest came out decent enough with a quick polish. Will have to get some 'after' shots later on.

The roof rails were also pretty bad, with paint bubbling up and peeling off in a few places, as well the 3D printed plugs needing filling in. The finish was satin black so I felt more confident in taking these on as a DIY. I epoxied the plugs securely in place, carefully masked off the rubber seals, filled in the gaps around the plastic plugs and sanded down all the rough bits. I used 1 coat of etch primer followed by 2 3 coats of flat black enamel.

Turned out mostly fine but I did a pretty poor job of filling in around the plugs so was left with a few craters. The spray nozzle was also pretty poor so ended up with a few drips here and there. Will sand it down at some point, fill in the imperfections properly and give it another few coats, whenever I've got some surplus motivation.

I had epoxied one of the taillights back together a few years ago. Mucking around this time I noticed the other one coming apart at the seams as well so it also got the epoxy treatment. Whilst I was at it I also gave all 4 rear lights a cut and polish. Came out really nice, getting rid of the swirl marks and the yellow haze from the clear bits. Photo of a before and after of the inner lights below, no points for guessing which one is which.

Finished them off with all new bulbs throughout and chrome bulbs for the indicators which made a surprisingly noticeable difference.

Ohh, and I ended up swapping out for a slim black plate as well. Don't care much for personalised plates and wouldn't be able to justify the price of one, but for $200 I do love the stealthier look. Plus, it'll pay for itself if it does a good job of confusing a speed camera or two... Did get a new standard issue combination though, as a symbolic start of a new chapter if you will. Naturally, the plate holder plinths got trimmed down to size once again. Also, took off the towbar for now. Looked way too rusty for my liking so will give it a lick of paint before throwing it back in. Hoping to come across a towing module soon so I can wire that in at the same time.

Another small tidy up mission were the rear arch liners. When having the rear guards rolled, the fella doing the job took a good few chunks out of them in quite a crude manner. Fair enough they're the part that rubs against the wheel as much as the guard lip itself but he took away way too big a piece either side, leaving a gaping hole for road dirt to get flung into against the chassis and inside the bumper cover. Not a big deal but has bugged me ever since. I picked up a pair of tidy ones and cut away the protruding parts in a more conservative manner. Then gave the bits some Carpro Perl treatment (the bumper and door trims got the same) and threw them in.

Can now sleep a bit easier at night.

[Vass 830]

On the "performance" side of things, I committed blatant sacrilege by throwing on some intake mods.

First was a Bevinsee intake air scoop off Aliexpress. Wouldn't usually go for such things but it looked tidy, all black, no logos and supposedly helps with intake air flow and reduces intake temperatures by a few degrees so was worth a shot for the low price.

The second was a Dinan airbox. I've heard of them mentioned over on the E46 fanatics forums, supposedly being one of the few intake mods that are somewhat of an improvement on the stock setup. I'd never be able to justify the price of it though so never crossed my mind actually getting one. I happened to be chatting to @Eagle one day when he mentioned coming into possession of one as a bundle deal on his recent purchase. He didn't feel like using it himself so kindly passed it on. Absolute legend.

It's essentially just a different lid for the bottom part of a stock intake with a bigger filter fitted inside. Originally would have come with extra tubing which taps into the brake duct and drills into the bottom of the airbox, adding a third source of airflow. Unfortunately it didn't have that tubing intact but it's something I can just whip up as a DIY at a later point.

The filter is an odd shape but the filter elements themselves look identical to the washable K&N filters. Supposedly these aren't washable and need to be replaced every 1-2 years. Unfortunately, replacement filters are stupid expensive, are out of stock in most places and the few places that do stock them don't ship to NZ. I dug around the forums a bit and found reports of people washing and oiling them with K&N kits for years without trouble though so that's what I did.

Having taken it on one proper drive so far, the sucky noises do sound more pronounced, which isn't something I ever felt the need for but nice to have I guess. Whether it does anything beyond that in terms of performance, who knows. Does look cool though.

I did discover a few new issues on the first drive post paint correction. The first one being a massive puddle that started forming right after parking up.

The mind straight away jumped to the worst case scenario. Luckily, it needn't have.

Windshield washer fluid.

I had just refilled the reservoir as well. Didn't seem to leak when stationary but once the engine gets warm the fluid bubbling up and pissing out straight out the nozzles. Real weird one. Having talked to @Eagle about it he mentioned there's certain brands of washer fluid that are known to wear out the seals in the nozzles. Pretty annoying but what can you do. Will throw a pair of new nozzles onto my next order and will do some research on BMW-safe washer fluids.

The second issue could also have been more serious but ended up being a simple solution. I'd intermittently get a trifecta of ABS-brake lights pop up on the dash, maybe once or twice a year. Usually happened after the car had been on jack stands so I didn't think much of it. You'd restart the car and the issue would stay away for another number of months. This time around in the span of 2 days and 200-something km's it must have happened a good 25 times. Something more serious was at play. Got so annoying I ended up killing the engine without stopping and restarting again on longer straights.

Initially thought it must be a bad wheel speed sensor - some of the last components I've yet to replace - but having checked live data mid drive they were all returning the same numbers. Dug a bit into the engine bay having gotten home and discovered the positive terminal next to the ABS unit heavily oxidised and looking yucky. Cleaned it up with some wire brushes and contact cleaner, another 200km later and the issue is yet to return. Great success.

[Vass 830]

A short lesson in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Ordered in a pair of new washer nozzles. Being the fancy heated type they weren't exactly cheap for what they are - around $40 each. With the shipment nearly at my door, only then did I think to look up how common a problem this is and stumbled upon this thread, which immediately made me feel like an utter dumbass. A wee while ago I threw on a new washer reservoir cap, not because of it having anything wrong with it, rather just a visual thing. Didn't think to notice it at the time, but unlike the old one, the replacement was completely solid and didn't come with a vent opening. The fluid would heat up in the engine bay, pressure would build up and without a vent opening the only way out would be for it to push its way out through the nozzles. Physics, duh...

Took the cap off, drilled a 1mm hole through the middle of it, problem solved. Threw the new nozzles on too since they were already here.

Packed the order out with more unnecessary stuff to justify the shipping costs somehow, anything relatively cheap that I could think of really. Got a new fuel tank vent valve (just because I had an issue with the car stalling that once a while ago), a new expansion tank cap (started weeping occasionally) and a fuel filler cap (seal was starting to crack).

[Vass 830]

Have been trying to hunt down the cause for the rich running ever since the dyno day. Fuel trims were not a topic I was too familiar with so set out on a bit of an educational journey on the science behind it all. A bunch of Google'ing led me to a number of useful forum threads on the topic, including this priceless guide on reading engine logs by our very own @NZ00Z3. Despite being a Z3 loyalist , he's a bit of a legend over on the E46 Fanatics forums and an absolute treasure trove of information, helping countless people interpret their data logs and get to the bottom of their engine troubles.

I've gone into greater detail documenting the logging journey over on E46 Fanatics but so far, even with the help of the hive mind, haven't been able to find the smoking gun - the LTFT's for both banks have anchored themselves at -8.6%.

• The engine is in great condition, strong compression numbers, fuel pressure within spec, tested for vacuum leaks, no engine codes.
• O2 sensors & MAF are brand new OE, the Rev Rise Test seems to indicate the MAF operating as expected.
• Have re-run the logs having swapped out various components without any change, including a throttle body, ICV & MAF that @Eagle kindly lent me.
• One of the case studies mentioned an instance of rich running being caused by over-oiling a rechargeable K&N filter, which I did run for a while. I swapped it out for a brand new stock filter, cleaned the new MAF as well as re-running logs with a spare MAF without any change.

My latest attempts of getting to the bottom of it involved tinkering with the DME. I hacked up a spare body loom I had to make up a bench coding setup. Came out looking pretty crude but does the job well enough. Used a random old 12V, 1.5A charger for a power supply.

I had a spare DME from the engine donor car which I used as a coding test rabbit and to eliminate the possibility of the original DME not operating correctly. I updated the DME to the latest MS430069 firmware, checked that it's running the latest EU2 tune, did an EWS delete, cleared all adaptations and threw it in the car. It started up on the first crank, ran fine so I took it for a drive whilst monitoring fuel trims. The signs were promising in the beginning but then slowly but surely the LTFT's started creeping their way down before settling at the familiar -8.6% for both banks after around 20 minutes of driving.

With the original DME out on the bench, I flashed that to the latest firmware as well, cleared adaptations, threw it back in and sure enough the fuel trims were back at -8.6% within 5 minutes.

One other suggestion was to test the barometric pressure sensor on the DME since that could also cause false readings if faulty. I did the test whilst the DME's were coming in and out. Read 4.95V between pins 2 & 3 and 4.06-4.07V between pins 3 & 4 on both DME's, which checks out, seemingly eliminating the DME as the culprit.

Running out of ideas at this point, I should probably just leave it alone really. The car is still running fine, I don't explicitly feel any lack of power but knowing that something is not at 100% is still low-key eating away at me.

As was suggested in the other thread, it could just be the type/grade/quality of fuel used in NZ that's behind it but then the dyno results and AFR graphs shouldn't have been as different between the 3 cars as they were. A few weeks back we took @Carbon's E39 for a longer cruise with OBD Fusion hooked up the whole time, his LTFT's never went beyond +/- 0.3% throughout.

Few more things I might still try:

• Will take out the spark plugs and check how sooty they are - would seemingly verify whether the engine is actually running rich or if the DME just thinks it is. Might just throw in a new set regardless. They've only done around 11k km's post engine rebuild but they did go through the whole running-in process, which could have gunked them up somehow I guess? Did read/hear somewhere that it's best to hold off throwing in brand new spark plugs onto a freshly rebuilt engine, advice that I blatantly ignored. So many conflicting opinions on the best running in process that it's really hard to tell what the definitive best practice might be but new ones definitely won't hurt at this point.
• Might look at getting brand new injectors. Had the original ones professionally cleaned, the fuel pressure test didn't indicate them leaking at all, the trims for both banks are the same so should also eliminate any individual ones being faulty. Only thing that would make sense is all of them injecting too much fuel, equally as much so it quite a big long shot.
• Blocked cats? Wouldn't mind a set of catless headers but yet to come across a decent RHD set - Malian Exhaust ones are sh*t, as @Eagle has experienced, Gravity Performance don't ship to NZ and Super Sprint are $4k+...
• LS swap?

[Vass 830]

Tank was getting empty so thought I'd try out some BP 98. Put in half a tank and have done around 60km on it so far, monitoring the fuel trims throughout. Slowly but surely the LTFT's have now settled on -5.5% for both banks, could possibly go even further with more driving. Quite a decent improvement. It is an extra 20-30c/L but with the limited amount of driving I do in this car it might actually be worth it, especially if it improves fuel consumption as well.

Might try some NPD 100 at some point just to see what that does.

[Harper 547]

2 hours ago, Vass said:

Might try some NPD 100 at some point just to see what that does.

Weirdly, I recently tried NPD100 in my compact and it ran noticably better. Within 10 minutes of driving I could feel it.

Revved nicer and pulled better, sounded cleaner. Couldn't believe how noticable the difference was. Definitely going to be my go to gas from now on. I can't wait to try it in the M3.

[balancerider 758]

34 minutes ago, Harper said:

Weirdly, I recently tried NPD100 in my compact and it ran noticably better. Within 10 minutes of driving I could feel it.

Revved nicer and pulled better, sounded cleaner. Couldn't believe how noticable the difference was. Definitely going to be my go to gas from now on. I can't wait to try it in the M3.

May want to look at this thread first @Harper

[Vass 830]

1 hour ago, Harper said:

Weirdly, I recently tried NPD100 in my compact and it ran noticably better. Within 10 minutes of driving I could feel it.

Revved nicer and pulled better, sounded cleaner. Couldn't believe how noticable the difference was. Definitely going to be my go to gas from now on. I can't wait to try it in the M3.

Haven't seen an update on the ol' compact in a while. Guessing you've gotten it all certified by now?

32 minutes ago, balancerider said:

May want to look at this thread first @Harper

Ohh damn, I do remember reading that thread a while ago but wasn't considering using it at the time so my brain didn't retain any specifics.

N-methyl aniline seems to be the problematic substance, supposedly causing carbon deposits and swelling of rubber seals. There's this disclaimer on the NPD website claiming discoloration of plastics to be the main side effect (if exposed to UV light).

Had a skim through the BP 98 datasheet and sure enough it doesn't have it as an ingredient.

NPD 100

BP 98

No idea if any of that other stuff is good or not. Would have assumed there's be lawsuits piling up if engines were exploding left and right. Then again that disclaimer is probably enough to shield them from liability.

That thread probably deserves a revival. It's been 3 years since its introduction to the NI, assuming there's a good number of people out there using it in BMW's, keen to hear of any actual long term, real world repercussions.

FWIW, we've exclusively used NPD 100 in our Subaru rally car for a good few years now without any issues... But then again it only ever sees off road use, has a metal fuel tank and the engine is dyno tuned specifically for use with that fuel so not really applicable to the use case at hand.

[Vass 830]

Well, nevermind. Started doing victory laps way too soon. Took a detour on my way home from work along the motorway. All was looking well until all of a sudden... 

Back to square 1.

[Harper 547]

I don't really care whether it's blended or not. I'm just going off feel, unreliable as that may be. Typically I would use gull 98 which is an ethenol blend anyway, and on occasion BP98 as a last resort since it's overpriced. BP98 and force10 feel the same to me with BP getting slightly better km/L.

NPD100 feels like it runs the best of the 3 in the compact, I was quite surprised how noticably. I'll have to test it in my E90 M3 since that thing seems to be super sensitive to fuel.

Edited October 24 by Harper

[Harper 547]

1 hour ago, Vass said:

Haven't seen an update on the ol' compact in a while. Guessing you've gotten it all certified by now?

Yes it's due an update, I'll make a post soon. Yep all certed and legal, surprisingly painless experience to be honest.

[Vass 830]

3 hours ago, Harper said:

I don't really care whether it's blended or not. I'm just going off feel, unreliable as that may be. Typically I would use gull 98 which is an ethenol blend anyway, and on occasion BP98 as a last resort since it's overpriced. BP98 and force10 feel the same to me with BP getting slightly better km/L.

NPD100 feels like it runs the best of the 3 in the compact, I was quite surprised how noticably. I'll have to test it in my E90 M3 since that thing seems to be super sensitive to fuel.

From what I gather, it's not ethanol that's problematic. NPD 100 supposedly doesn't include ethanol anyway... 

The problematic bit is the additive N-Methylaniline. To quote from the report linked below, it “promoted soot formation in cylinders, injection and exhaust valves leading to mechanical abrasion when applied in concentrations above 1.5%.”

According to the NPD 100 data sheet it makes up 2-3%.

https://www.sustainablefuels.eu/assets/uploads/2018/10/Harmful_Chemicals-2.pdf

I don't doubt it will perform better, but it might come at the cost of increased engine wear.

[Harper 547]

11 hours ago, Vass said:

From what I gather, it's not ethanol that's problematic. NPD 100 supposedly doesn't include ethanol anyway... 

The problematic bit is the additive N-Methylaniline. To quote from the report linked below, it “promoted soot formation in cylinders, injection and exhaust valves leading to mechanical abrasion when applied in concentrations above 1.5%.”

According to the NPD 100 data sheet it makes up 2-3%.

https://www.sustainablefuels.eu/assets/uploads/2018/10/Harmful_Chemicals-2.pdf

I don't doubt it will perform better, but it might come at the cost of increased engine wear.

Interesting. But that doesn't really concern me honestly.

That report says "The latter disadvantages are all associated to blends with NMA significantly exceeding a typical concentration of 1.3%." So even if NPD are using 2-3% it's probably fine.

Not to mention "However, no traceable sources and references as well as descriptions of investigation methods are available". All the sources at the end of the report are unverified Russian articles, and the Russians are far from impartial when it comes to the production and sale of gas...

Edited October 24 by Harper