Overall, this will give you the best performance improvement per dollar. It gives an additional 12hp at 5500rpm and 15 lb-ft at 2500rpm. The car definitely feels more responsive with the chip and accelerates more smoothly. I ordered mine through Turner Motorsport. The cost is about $250, and is well worth it. It was on my first car, and is now on my second.

I purchased this cat-back exhaust from Turner Motorsport in 2002 for $420. My stock muffler had a loose baffle & sounded pretty bad. Stock replacements were in the $200-$300 neighborhood, and did not have a 5 year warranty like the Supersprint unit. Installation is very simple if all of your original exhaust equipment is in good shape (the flange). I also replaced all of the muffler hangers and related parts.

The muffler & resonator have no internal baffles, which would lead one to think that the unit would be pretty loud & obnoxiuos. This is, however, an incorrect assumption. The unit is almost as quiet as stock (there is a little more low-frequency noise emitted) at low RPM's & low throttle load. When you give it some gas and are above 3500RPM it will let out a nice sporty tune. It is not obnoxious (or for lack of a better term, it is not the least bit "ricey"...and I am VERY picky about that). Overall, it is a nice, mellow sounding unit. From what I understand, the unit is no longer produced, and they can retail for upwards of $750. That is a bit too steep a price. As much as I like the unit, I will have to find a more cost-effective one when this one is at the end of its road.

This has been installed on my new 318iS.

This was one of the first modifications I made on my car. I was still in High School and under the impression that an intake would give some sort of gain in power. I picked up the largest filter I could find at a local parts store (it cost $70) and proceeded to "make it fit." It did make the car a bit louder, letting out more engine noise, but I do not think that any more power was able to "escape."

The heat shield was fabbed a few months later. I begain by making a cardboard template & tracing it onto some 18ga aluminum sheet. It was a 2-piece shield, and I pop-riveted it together. I also painted it black to try to make it blend in a little better. All in all, it was a bit of a waste of money, but I had fun making it.

For a while I even removed a high-beam to harness the benefits of the "ram-air" effect (you never know when you might be going 210mph & need that extra 1.2HP). Anyway, intakes for the M42 are prettymuch useless as the factory one was designed pretty well to begin with. Now a multi-throttle manifold, AFM delete & stand-alone engine management might yield a noticeable gain, but that will not be done for $70.

I have not installed this on my second 318iS as it was both ugly, and useless.

In late 2002 I needed to smog my car, and the factory cat was...done. The element was loose & rattling. I opted for a Catco 3-way high-flow catalyst as the replacement, which cost me $80 at a local parts store. I had a local muffler shop install it for $40. After the installation, there was a little more exhaust noise, but nothing terrible. The car also seemed to revv a little more freely at higher RPM's. This simple mod was worth the money, enough said.

My second 318iS has one installed now as well. The stock unit was at the end of its life, and this was an economical replacement.

In May of 2005 I decided to replace the worn webbed-rubber differential mount. I purchased a polyurethane unit from www.bmwbushings.com for $55. Installation was straightforward, but slightly tedious. Installation of this part requires the removal of the rear diff cover, and subsequently the fluid to be changed. I replaced the diff cover gasket while in there as well. The original bushing is easy to get out with a hack-saw, just be careful not to damage the cover. All-in-all, it took a good hour or so. This has been put on my new 318iS as well.

There is not a lot to say about these. They do nothing to improve performance and are a poor investment. This goes for ALL aftermarket wires, not just Bavarian Autosport's. I am ashamed to say how much I paid for them, but I shall nonetheless: $170 (that was the SALE price). If your original ignition wires need replacing, get some OEM ones. I DID put them on my second car, but prettymuch because I already had them from the last car, and they look nice. They have been removed, both due to their apparent uselessness, and because I am running coil-on-plug ignition.

I purchased this during my MegaSquirt conversion on my first car. Aside from being a useful tool for future tuning, replacement sensors of this type are about 1/3 the cost of a new OE one, and are superior units (Bosch LSU4.2). The new car does not have the MegaSquirt installed in it, but the WBO2 setup has been indispensible for my MAF conversion and custom datalogger projects. For $200 from Innovate Motorsports, this is an unbeatable deal. It can be used as part of a modular tuning system, or used for logging alone. It has digital outputs, as well as two fully programmable analog outputs, and can simulate a Narrow-Band O2 sensor. This means you can run the Motronic from it, AND log the AFR on the other channel at the same time!

My senior engineering project was do design a working MAF conversion for the M42. The original version worked, minus a little glitch that occured around 4200RPM where things ran a tad rich. Months later I revised it to use a Bosch sensor that fit the engine's air box with a $5 rubber coupling (versus the original Ford sensor that would not work with the air box). The kinks were ironed out so to speak, and I must admit that this is the second most worthwhile thing I have ever done to my engine. The first is still the Conforti chip, and the MAF is followed closely by the M20 flywheel conversion. This kit required NO tuning after installation; it is truly Plug-N-Play. It also cost a mere fraction of the cost of other kits available that require tuning and massive rewiring or expensive dyno and chip tuning.

This conversion was somewhat of an ordeal, but well worth the trouble in the end. It requires a late-model M20 flywheel (single mass), M20 clutch disc & pressure plate, matching starter pinion gear (the whole assembly, not JUST the gear), AND an E21 323i throw out bearing. You also must remove the spacer ring from the M42's flywheel and use it to keep the M20 unit from hitting the upper oil pan, and order some M20 flywheel bolts. Installation is relatively easy once you have all of the parts. The only real challenge is disassembling the starter as it tends to get very rusty and the screws are nearly impossible to remove. Once done, a marked increase in performance can be noted in the first and second gears. The idle does suffer a tad, but it is still plenty bearable. It was well worth the trouble, and I have done this on both of the 318iS cars I have owned.

The M42's hydraulic engine mounts are very expensive, and do not have as long a lifetime as solid ones. When the originals on my car failed, I decided to look into other options than the pricey OE solution. At $110+ per side, the stockers were not sitting well in my wallet, so I opted for some E28 535i mounts. Both mounts can be had for a total of $66, which is a heck of a deal in comparison. They had some small alignment tabs on them needing removal, and their studs were longer than the M42's. Stacking some steel washers solved this problem easily. With these installed, the idle was a lot rougher for the car's occupants. The drivability went sky high, however. This reduced engine and driveline movement immensely, resulting in virtually no bogging when the throttle was pounced on, or a fast launch. This was well worth the $66.

After tiring of replacing the expensive ignition wires, I decided to look into developing a COP (Coil-On-Plug) ingition retrofit. Since the M42 already uses coil-per-cylinder ignition, all that was needed to do this was some new ignition coils and a way to mount them on the valve cover. Initially, I attempted to do this using the stock coil packs, but that required a lot of chopping and it was nearly impossible to fit the connectors on them when in place. With some collaboration on the M42Club forums, I found that the coil packs used on most E46 cars fit very nicely. After some prototyping and thinking, I finally got it right. I even found a way to disassemble the connectors so they could be trimmed to a proper length. See the pictures below for visuals of the development and the final product! Check out the full story in the Pictures, Projects & Stories section!

In April of 2008 I installed a limited slip differential that I purchesed from a forum member for $200. Rear wheel traction is greatly improved on dirt and wet pavement. At the same time, cornering takes a little more work, and the car is absolutely unforgiving of oversteer mistakes. It is all a trade-off, and it was worth it for my needs.