After a long break, sofaBae needed some attention. The OEM spark plugs have been on for about 32k kms and were acting up leading to intermittent misfires and bad mileage.
Fortunately thanks to Kashif Nazim (a fellow 330i and VRS owner), who was able to source OEM 330i High Performance spark plugs that would hold up to heat and abuse better than the ones for the 320i, I got to the task of changing them out. The 330i is a higher output version of the same B48-B20 engine with slightly lower compression and better ignition components, so we decided to go with those.
Now came the incredible task of actually pulling half the top of the car apart to reach the 4th spark plug. I understand BMW designed the car to be 50-50 weight distribution, as a result of which the engine is pushed into the firewall as much as possible, but I sincerely hoped their engineers would be able to do that while keeping serviceability in mind. Also the un-necessary E-torx bolts thrown into the mix just go to complicate things further.
Finally after a lot of elbow grease the plugs were changed, and I managed to remove some of the heat/sound insulation that are standard on CBU cars but have no reason to be on Indian cars due to our tropical climate conditions. With that removed the turbo sound is much more apparent and the car feels a lot nicer to drive, in spite of the horrible luxury line suspension.
If I do decide to keep this car beyond 2021 January, we may go about getting a cup kit for the car and maybe an Evolve Tuning remap which claims to pump up the output by 80hp to about 270hp... lets keep our fingers crossed.
