Minor upgrades?

[Richibahn]

I've been searching this forum for hours now, reading up on ecu flashes, brakes, suspension, etc. I purchased a 2009 135i m sport on Saturday, and love it. It's an automatic with the paddle shift, and it performs great. It's a blast to drive.

After all this research, I'm a tad bit overwhelmed with info and can't pinpoint what to do. The car has 65k on it- I'd like it to have some more power, possibly add a cat back exhaust system, and possibly upgraded suspension. I'd like to stay as close to stock as possible, just tweak it a bit to get a tad closer to the 1M experience, but keeping it my 135.

Any thoughts? I'm very new to this forum and these cars, so input would be fantastic. I'd like to have the car be extremely reliable, no cel, no codes, all functional- just a little bit more all around and sound a bit meaner, too 😉. Thanks in advance.

[mtowle182]

In the same car and want the same things haha

[Solo_M_Tech]

Suspension, brakes and wider wheels and tires at all four corners. Power mods, get a cob flash to 365hp or so. In that order.

[Ski Killset]

I've had my AW 6 speed for nine months and I did the following:

Performance stuff:
Cobb APv3 (worth every penny)
M3 Control arms
Koni Yellows
Cobb springs
Dinan camber plates
Whiteline rear subframe bushings
Walnut shell blasting on the intake valves (probably needed at 65k)
AFe intake going in tomorrow (mostly for sound)

Non-performance stuff:
Tinted front corner lights
Carbon fibre splitters
Blackline tail lights

Near future:
Exhaust
Wheels
Swaybars
LSD
FMIC
Charge pipe
Brake upgrade

And that's about it. The car loves mods and I haven't done anything yet that has taken away from the driving experience. The car is comfortable and fast and it looks great.

Have fun!

[bokyo1987]

My suggestion... Start off with Cobb/JB4 and a good set of tires. Your 1er will get a significant boost in power and handling will be improved. Hopefully this will allow you to get a feel for which direction you want to take your car.

Once you get a real good grasp on what pleases you, mod your 1er specifically to suit your needs.

[vivanapoli806]

If your going with tune first I suggest you do charge pipe at the same time and might as well get new plugs so you don't encounter any misfires. I had an auto also and had the alpina trans flash and was even more fun driving in manual mode with the paddles. Intakes and cat back exhaust won't get you that much power they are both for sound. Get rid of the runflats of you still have them and run 225/255 tires it will help. I did tune and fmic and chargepipe all around same time and it's a night and day difference in power

[Richibahn]

Thanks everyone for the suggestions! I've already started looking into a tune and some tires/suspension- think I'll do wheels and tires so I can put the factory wheels back on if I need to.

[Pyrat 2]

Before you finalize your decision on which wheels and tires to buy you need to ask yourself what you are trying to accomplish. Are you looking to improve the handling? Are you looking for straight line traction only? Are you looking for looks primarily? Are you looking to track the car? Depending on the answers to these questions you'll end up at a different place on your choice of wheels and tire.

I'm biased towards the handling and track my car too so I chose some of the lightest weight wheels I could find (cost permitting) and ended up with a square setup to reduce the amount of understeer.

If that's not your bias then you have a lot more options.