[Conntron]

I'm going to be doing catless downpipe, Chargepipe, intercooler, new plugs & just changed all my fluids . My question is which tune should I do ? Stage 1 or 2 .
My main concern is losing reliability. This is why I'm doing all the mods to prevent any issues . Any help or input with the reliability would be great .
Thanks guys .
This will be a 2014 m235i. I know this isn't the 2er forum but I didn't get many reviews on the 2er page. Any input would be great !

[T5viggen]

Any increase in power will cause more stress on some parts, namely the turbo in our case. With the upgraded downpipe I would just go stage 2. There won’t be much more wear on parts between stage 1 and 2. Bigger difference is between stock and a tune. If you go stage 1, you’ll wish you went with 2 in the first place.

[JaredG_F30]

I have basically the same mods as you do with the addition of an aftermarket exhaust, and I've been running stage 2 for 18 months now with absolutely no issues with the car or tune. You will need to change your plugs fairly frequently as I've noticed rougher idle, light throttle hesitations and erratic start-up when the plugs get about 18k miles on them. I'm about to change plugs for the 3rd time.

[Korvo]

Originally Posted by JaredG_F30

I have basically the same mods as you do with the addition of an aftermarket exhaust, and I've been running stage 2 for 18 months now with absolutely no issues with the car or tune. You will need to change your plugs fairly frequently as I've noticed rougher idle, light throttle hesitations and erratic start-up when the plugs get about 18k miles on them. I'm about to change plugs for the 3rd time.

I noticed this too. Swapped out my plugs and coil packs and it's running perfectly now. You've found that 18k is the ticket? Stock plugs or NKG's?

[Kraftwerk]

As mentioned, I only had to change plugs and coils. Went with NGK after trying several plugs. Coils from BavAuto.

[JaredG_F30]

Yeah somewhere between 18k and 20k is when I start to notice issues. When I first flashed bm3 I went with the NGK 97506 gapped at 0.022" but that was when bm3 was pretty new (November 2017) and I noticed some light throttle hesitation. The next time I went back to stock plugs and even though they are supposed to be pre-gapped to 0.032" I measured the gap at between 0.027 and 0.028 so just left it at that. The car ran great and it seemed to fix the hesitation under light throttle. Logs showed great timing through the RPM band running the Stage 2 93 octane tune. Now with the latest bm3 map revisions, one of them addressing the light throttle issues, I'm going back to the NGKs since they are free at this point through FCP Euro and will be gapping at 0.026". I've found that my car doesn't like the small gap 0.018"-0.022" and I didn't have any issues at 0.027-0.038 even on the Stage 2 E30 map.

Originally Posted by pdegene

I noticed this too. Swapped out my plugs and coil packs and it's running perfectly now. You've found that 18k is the ticket? Stock plugs or NKG's?

[Jeff@TopGearSolutions]

The rule of thumb for stock plugs was about 25K tuned. With NGK it seems closer to 15K.

[nonnname]

I've tested bm3 st1 ron98 vs bm3 st2 ron98 using dyno. (F34 N55 EWG, FMIC Forge, HF Catalytics DP, FTP charge & boost pipes, AFE Intake)
Look at the difference

[mike@x-ph.com]

Originally Posted by Conntron

I'm going to be doing catless downpipe, Chargepipe, intercooler, new plugs & just changed all my fluids . My question is which tune should I do ? Stage 1 or 2 .
My main concern is losing reliability. This is why I'm doing all the mods to prevent any issues . Any help or input with the reliability would be great .
Thanks guys .
This will be a 2014 m235i. I know this isn't the 2er forum but I didn't get many reviews on the 2er page. Any input would be great !

With these mods you can run either stage and it will be very reliable. Its well within the safety limits of the car's components.