Is chipping a BMW 320d worth it?

Twedd17 · 9 May 2006 at 23:16

Hi

I currently have a 320d BMW 03 plate and the warranty has now expired (so no problems there). It's currently meant to be going at 150 bhp but this chip takes it up to 190.

It sounds pretty tasty, and for £200, fitted by a BMW technician it should be ok

However, am I being daft and are there any major detrimental effects of doing this?

Ish · 9 May 2006 at 23:32

what brand of chip is it?

Twedd17 · 9 May 2006 at 23:35

Sounds bad but TBH i'm not sure :confused:

NickXX · 9 May 2006 at 23:42

Get it properly remapped - don't use a tuning box or chip.

www.e-maps.co.uk are supposed to be very good. I got a quote of £325 - for this price the guy comes to your house and remaps your car to whatever you want/it is capable of. He seems to do loads of 3-series BMWs over at BMWland.co.uk.

I've not yet got mine done. Anyone who has done a remap thinks they are brilliant it seems and completely changes the way the car drives for the better. A remap on your car should see 190bhp, and 390Nm torque quite easily.

I'm going to go for only a 10% remap for insurance purposes. Anything higher makes my premium ridiculous (I.e. it goes up by £1,500).

There are very few negatives as far as I know, and i've done a fair bit of research on it. They don't seem to make parts fail sooner than normal, and don't really have any issues. They can even improve fuel economy. The only real issue for me is the admin thing - makes my insurance go up a bit, make day insurance impossible (you can't insure modified cars on it), and makes my extended warrantee invalid I believe.

Oracle · 10 May 2006 at 09:25

As Nick says, (and its a similar question he asked about his 330d that I pointed him towards Simon at e-maps), get it remapped.

Your M47 engine runs a Garret turbo in the region of 18psi. There are some reliability issues with the M47 engine and its turbo going pop! Its a very small turbo running high boost, but this wont go high risk anymore than without a remap because the Garret turbo boost is not adjustable through the ECU, its controlled by altering the wastegate adjuster (IIRC)

As long as you keep oil changed regular (more regular than the service schedule, i'd honestly say about every 6-8k miles) you'll suffer no problems, just maybe a tad more soot out the back on boost than normal...

Nick (AFAIK, no such problems re: turbos lie with the 330d)

Edit: and yes, if you have the manual gearbox, 180-190bhp is easy as is the torque (390Nm) which is what old 330ds kicked out before they had their power hike...