[ashburyn54]

Originally Posted by cryptocar

Let me preface this by saying I've never really run E mixes, I went straight from pump 93 to full E85 and methanol injection. So someone else may be able to better answer questions about E mixes. Also it makes a big difference if you have an EWG (electronic wastegate) turbo or a PWG (pneumatic wastegate) turbo. BMW switched from PWG turbos to EWG turbos around production month 06/2013. The following thread is very informative and helpful if you have an EWG turbo and although Terry says PWG users should ignore it, it still contains very valuable information about E mixes in the N55. http://www.n54tech.com/forums/showpo...&postcount=539

A JB4 is always a great start. It can give you instant gains of ~60WHP with no supporting mods, or 100WHP with full bolt-ons. You'll need a tune of some sort to really gain anything significant from any other mods or fuels and since flash tunes are quite expensive, a JB4 is a great entry level piggyback that can carry you from your first mod to your last. I still use my JB4 for a majority of my parameters and only use my ECU flash tune for a few key parameters the JB4 can't touch, and I'm running 550+ WHP (600+ BHP)on full E85 with nitro and meth injection. It also provides the indispensable ability to datalog and capture the ECU information in realtime for tuning purposes.

No tune is needed to run larger intakes; there are sporadic reports that intakes such as BMS's will cause a CEL with no tune, but I nor any of my friends have ever had this issue. A larger intake is really not going to do any good for you unless you have a tune because the stock intake box is not particularly restrictive until you start running higher levels of boost than stock anyway. Also many people dispute the necessity of a CAI and say all you really end up paying for is the intake new sound. A CAI was my third mod after an exhaust and tune and I still have the same AFe intake as I installed last year and I love it, I'm running 25+ psi so there's no doubt a larger intake is needed but in my early days it really just made a cooler sound than the stock intake.

Fuel-It is a company run by an awesome guy named Steve. He has been providing fueling solutions to some of the highest powered N54's and N55's on the road and the track. One of his highest selling mods for the N55 is a LPFP (low pressure fuel pump) that goes in the fuel tank to supply fuel to the HPFP (high pressure fuel pump) or additional injectors you may install in the form of a PI (port injection) kit that has 6 injectors placed on a spacer between the the intake runners and manifold, Fuel-It makes one as does PDU (I have PDU's and it's awesome), or a TBI (throttle body injection) kit also sold by Fuel-It, that places a spacer with injectors after the throttle body before the manifold. The N55 stock LPFP cannot supply enough fuel to the HPFP in high ethanol fueling setups, because a much greater volume of ethanol is required to burn to create the same power as an equal volume of gasoline. This depends on the car but the HPFP fuel starvation issues can begin as low as E35-40 in some cases. Steve's Stage 2 LPFPs solve this issue, though with larger turbos or other high boost applications, additional injectors in the form of a PI kit or TBI are required along with new larger 3/8" fuel lines from the fuel tank to the HPFP and port injection kit if applicable. Steve also sells fuel line kits specific to the N55 and has also added the option of adding an inline Ethanol sensor to the larger fuel lines. There's 2 versions of the sensor: one with built in Bluetooth technology that syncs to the Fuel-It app on your phone that reads E%, fuel temperature, and includes an E calculator for fill-ups. The other version is integrated with a JB4 which can also be viewed on the JB4 app, but last I checked you must choose between ethanol integration or methanol injection of you go the JB4 route. Personally I use the standalone BT app because I still use my meth kit to inject nitro on the track.

[Edit: Sorry if I was dumbing things down too much or accidentally glazing over some more important info, It was a long post and I wanted it to be comprehensive for all forum members to gain from.]

Great post! Thanks for adding clarification to my posts. Much more detailed. This should be an e85 use thread starter.