Have been looking at suspension recently, as well as a Wagner intercooler but the dreaded misfires returned. The first time I had a misfire and CEL it was cylinder 3, I replaced first 3 coils and it went away for a couple of months.
Then two separate CEL with codes cylinder 2 and then 3 again. Ok I'll do spark plugs even though they haven't done 20,000km (according to service book), and the other 3 coils while I'm at it. Picture of the plugs:
#1 smelt of fuel and looks pretty bad
#2 looked iffy
#3 looked surprisingly ok.
#4 smelt a bit like fuel from memory
#5 looks horrible. any ideas why it looks messed up? not sure if it's engine oil
#6 looks normal
Ran fine for another month or so. Then I noticed regular rough idling in the mornings that smoothed out when warm. Research says it's probably leaky injectors - plus I smelt fuel on two of the spark plugs. So bit the bullet and ordered a set of Index 12 injectors from FCP Euro. Bit of a long story but FCP came good. Last week got a CEL with both #2 and #3 misfiring in the morning - car wasn't driveable. Finally got them today and just finished putting them in.
They're a pain to remove, particularly #6! I now realise why there's a tool for the job.
Never done coding with INPA before but have been reading up on e90 forums and particularly
V3 lite. Got it set up with my macbook and virtualbox. For anyone attempting the same thing, here are some of my learnings from tonight when following the various guides and videos
1. Set the USB device to emulate COM1 (even if it says COM1 is in use). I tried modifying ini files to use the defaulted COM3... it's just easier to go with COM1.
2. Car needs to be ignition on, otherwise INPA will error on the injector screen (gave me a heart attack, wondering if it was my cable, COM setting, or because the VM was 64bit)
3. E87 chassis didn't have the engine selection MSD80 for N54. I read that you use E90 chassis instead and it worked.