[MadJoe]

Hi guys,

I know I wasn't a huge contributor, and many (if not all) of you never even noticed I was gone, but I've always been grateful for all of the knowledge shared here and have used many many DIY posts to keep my old 2006 325i running for just shy of 200,000 miles before I retired her. I had originally replaced her with a 2012 IS250. HUGE mistake! What a beautiful looking piece of turd that was. Anyway, I was fortunate enough to have a dealer who was willing to absolutely obliterate my credit score to exchange the IS250 for a 2011 328i with only 52,000 miles on the clock. She's nothing like my old girl, and exactly like her at the same time. I'll explain below.

Anyway, I was in the IS for almost exactly 30 days and in that time I realized the Lexus community for modding and DIY is pathetic, boys! And I mean PATHETIC! (I'm sorry to keep using caps but until you've resigned yourself to never driving another E9X again to getting back into one, you probably can't know my excitement).

The IS was a very nice looking car, but the seating position for the driver was built around a 5'5" individual as best I can tell. I couldn't get comfortable behind the wheel no matter what I did. On top of that, the weak-sauce 2.5l V6 was returning some epically disappointing fuel mileage numbers no matter what I did to try and improve them. On my very last day of exchange eligibility the dealership put up a 2011 AWD 328i that I'll admit, I wasn't stoked about driving, but I was desperate and nothing else they had on the lot in my price range was even worth considering. So I grudgingly took her for a test drive and immediately, and I mean immediately fell in love with how much it was like my old 2006 (even though the options lists are completely different). It felt just like her, drove much like her, and the N52 under the hood sang the song of her people like my old 2006 as it climbed through the RPM range. I was hooked the minute I got behind the wheel.

For those that are interested, I'll list the key differences below:
2006:
RWD
Sport Package
Luxury Package
Winter Package
Xenon headlights
Comfort Access
Manual Transmission
Monaco Blue Metallic on beige leather

2011:
AWD
Winter Package
Navigation
Automatic
Blue Water Metallic on beige pleather (I think I'm going to be swapping in my '06's seats because faux-leather is unacceptable for a luxury vehicle).

I would like to swap over some of the missing options if possible, and like I said, the leather seats will probably be first. But Comfort Access and the Sport steering wheel will probably follow if possible. The non-sport package steering wheel is hideous. I might swap over the staggered wheels too, but I am a little hesitant to because I figure BMW didn't put staggered wheels on the AWD models for a reason (probably to do with hurting the AWD components, but I'm not positive. If you know for sure please feel free to chime in).

Something I'm curious about: Has anyone deleted the AWD from one of these cars? I have winter tires and don't offroad the vehicle, so I don't need it and would like to save the weight and drivetrain drag if possible. If not, oh well. Just curious if it's possible within reason.

[SpeedBuggy]

In reference to Staggered Setup:
You can run staggered on xdrive, need to make sure the tire diameters are within 1%
of each other as not to cause issues with the awd system.

https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1050762

BMW puts 225/40-18 at the front, 255/35-18 at the rear as staggered on both rwd & awd applications.

In reference to xdrive Delete:
Try this link, have seen others but you may need to search a bit.
https://www.e90post.com/forums/showt...=xdrive+delete

[Diawal91]

Originally Posted by SpeedBuggy

In reference to Staggered Setup:
You can run staggered on xdrive, need to make sure the tire diameters are within 1%
of each other as not to cause issues with the awd system.

https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1050762

BMW puts 225/40-18 at the front, 255/35-18 at the rear as staggered on both rwd & awd applications.

In reference to xdrive Delete:
Try this link, have seen others but you may need to search a bit.
https://www.e90post.com/forums/showt...=xdrive+delete

+1

[MadJoe]

Originally Posted by SpeedBuggy

In reference to Staggered Setup:
You can run staggered on xdrive, need to make sure the tire diameters are within 1%
of each other as not to cause issues with the awd system.

https://www.e90post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1050762

BMW puts 225/40-18 at the front, 255/35-18 at the rear as staggered on both rwd & awd applications.

In reference to xdrive Delete:
Try this link, have seen others but you may need to search a bit.
https://www.e90post.com/forums/showt...=xdrive+delete

Thank you, this is exactly what I was looking for!

[mecheng77]

Welcome back

[NinetyEight740]

Is there something wrong with your 06? It sounds like that car was everything you wanted and this new one is nothing you wanted. From the sounds of it the best option was to just “refresh” your 2006 and keep driving it.

[tlow98]

Re; awd removal.

You can remove the front driveshaft and effectively unhook the front drivetrain. Removing the actual differential and axles will be a large PIA, tho, and likely not worth it.

Re; seats.

LCI Sport seats will swap over with no coding, etc. If you want to use older seats from your Pre-LCI car you will have to code out the active head restraint error or swap the active head restraints from your LCI seats to your pre-LCI seats.

Best idea is to just look for seats on car-part.com of CL or Facebook marketplace. Lots of people selling LCI M3 seats for 4-500/pair and LCI sport for 3-400/pair.

Re; Comfort access.

This is not for the faint of heart. Lots of wiring to be added means lots of interior dismantling including new front door handles (will need to be painted if you can't find the exact right pair used). Then modules in the car need to be coded.

[clegg]

I hear you on the Lexus to BMW difference.

I bought my daughter an Acura TL as her first car. Pretty nice car overall until you drive a Bimmer.

I went to Dallas for a contract job and decided to fly down and buy something to drive while I was there. I found an E90 328i to kick around in. I figured I would sell it when I returned home.

I let my daughter drive it when I returned home and she said sell my Acura, I'll take this..

[MadJoe]

Originally Posted by tlow98

Re; awd removal.

You can remove the front driveshaft and effectively unhook the front drivetrain. Removing the actual differential and axles will be a large PIA, tho, and likely not worth it.

Re; seats.

LCI Sport seats will swap over with no coding, etc. If you want to use older seats from your Pre-LCI car you will have to code out the active head restraint error or swap the active head restraints from your LCI seats to your pre-LCI seats.

Best idea is to just look for seats on car-part.com of CL or Facebook marketplace. Lots of people selling LCI M3 seats for 4-500/pair and LCI sport for 3-400/pair.

Re; Comfort access.

This is not for the faint of heart. Lots of wiring to be added means lots of interior dismantling including new front door handles (will need to be painted if you can't find the exact right pair used). Then modules in the car need to be coded.

I'm certainly not faint of heart, but my time and room to work are both currently constrained so I'm probably going to have to wait on the Comfort Access. I have all the parts to donate to the new (to me) car from my old one, but it will look funny with Monaco Blue Metallic door handles on a Blue Water Metallic car lol.

I've also thought I might swap over the front clip from my pre-lci car to get that look (and the xenons), but again time and a place to do the work are going to be severely limiting factors (I have already started to save up to paint her if/when I get that done, though). Lots of dreams in my head, right? Hopefully I can at least make a few come true before I'm too old to enjoy it!

I did reconsider the AWD delete, and I think removing the front CVs would achieve what I want while leaving the car mostly in tact so if I ever need or want to sell it I can convert it back very easily. I decided that because I thought if I did remove the transfer case I'd probably need to replace the driveshaft, but I wasn't sure on that one (I do have a driveshaft, but it's for an MT car not an auto so if they're different I actually don't have one).

Thanks for the heads up on the seat swap, and the pointers on finding potential alternatives!

Originally Posted by NinetyEight740

Is there something wrong with your 06? It sounds like that car was everything you wanted and this new one is nothing you wanted. From the sounds of it the best option was to just “refresh” your 2006 and keep driving it.

The 2006 was starting to have too many problems to keep DD'ing it so I decided I wanted to take it off the road to preserve it (and before anything really major went wrong) so I could make repairs at my leisure instead of in a panic because I needed it to get to work. The biggest issue is that the MT is in desperate need of a rebuild and everywhere I contacted wanted to replace it with a remanufactured transmission, but I was being a stickler about keeping the original one in the car so I had to get it off the road to affect the repair. Honestly the Lexus was only meant to be a gap car until I was done with getting my 06 back in DD shape. It didn't turn out that way, though, because the 2011 only has 52,800 (I was wrong when I thought it was 52,300) miles on it and is in great shape except for the cosmetics (the previous owner was a curb-rubbing professional). They also street parked it it looks like because the front and rear bumpers show signs of other drivers "parking by braille".

So now my choices are to make the 2011 the gap car, or to make the one with an engine with 140,000 fewer miles on it into the car that I want to drive. It's a tough choice because I am sentimentally attached to the 2006. I took delivery of it (with 8 miles on the odo) on Dec. 15th 2005 after ordering it in Nov and painfully watching the very archaic (by today's standards) BMW website very slowly show a cartoon car move along its path through assembly, to transport, to (finally!) delivery. It's legitimately the only car I've ever owned for more than 2.5 years in my entire driving life (for perspective I got my first car in 1992 (it was a 1979 Ford Granada*)).

*which I just realized also had an I6 with RWD, and I bought it because it was the only RWD car in my budget that I could find at the time.

[tlow98]

Happy you kept your 06! Smart move.

Just curious, but why the insistence on rebuilding the trans? Also, what is the failure mode?

Rare to hear of them failing.

[mike@x-ph.com]

Welcome back

[MadJoe]

Originally Posted by tlow98

Happy you kept your 06! Smart move.

Just curious, but why the insistence on rebuilding the trans? Also, what is the failure mode?

Rare to hear of them failing.

Me too! It was an easy decision, though. It doesn't have much trade in value and I had a spot in the driveway plus a car cover to make the town happy, so the choice was obvious.

About the damaged tranny, it was definitely moron-induced damage; meaning I did it by being stupid. I was power-shifting into 4th when my foot slipped off the clutch at the exact worst moment. The noise was horrific. Ever since that awful day 4th no longer goes in without grinding unless I perfectly, and I mean perfectly, rev-match it. It was no fault of the transmission, they're absolute beasts in more ways than one (this one survived (mostly) my stupidity for almost 200,000 miles, anyway), I was just being stupid and abusing my car. It was a while ago, but not long enough ago to blame being young and dumb, unfortunately.

Thanks for warm welcome back, guys! Very glad to be back! I'm still waiting for the dealership to let me know I can pick the new one up, though. This is torture.

[tlow98]

Sound like a great car. I’ve spun a couple of my cars into curbs, but ya know I wouldn’t take back all the fun stuff in exchange for the dumb stuff. They’re meant to be enjoyed