,
And now we finally have the underside panels back on, which have been off since the removal of our factory headers. Although the underpanels weigh around 20-lb collectively, with bolts, it had me thinking…this would be easy weight loss! But I wouldn’t be surprised if the aluminum piece acts not only as an oil pan protector but also as somewhat of a chassis stiffener similar to the X-brace featured in our most recent Project E36 M3 article. Not only does it have similar mounting points as the X-brace, it’s also quite a thick piece of aluminum!
One thing we hadn’t told you yet was that we only got to experience Epic Motorsport’s tune tested in Part 3 for just a few weeks. Unfortunately, upon removing the ECU one time we found an awful lot of corrosion around the first three connectors, and it led to one of the pins—the one for the DME relay, of all things—to actually break off into the female connector in the factory harness, rendering the DME useless.
The above picture resulted in a dreaded “EML” light on the dash, and the car not being able to start. After speaking to our BMW tuning expert, Randy Mueller of Epic Motorsports, along with a technician at RPM Motorsports in Canada, which specializes in repairing and unlocking BMW DMEs, we got the idea to jump the DME relay with alligator connectors. Unfortunately, this didn’t work. Our DME was dead for now.
Instead of plunking down over a grand for a new DME, or spending several hundreds on a repair bill (which we're sure RPM Motorsport could fix), we simply moved forward with a major upgrade we'd already anticipated for the future. Notice the harness, which has the exact same pin connections as the DME we pulled out. Anyone guess what it is?That's right, it's the AEM Infinity engine management system (pictured above is the S54-specific harness only), and the car’s been running great ever since with it. Installed at Modified by KC with AEM's base map, it even fired right up the first time and purred like a kitten with a stock-like throttle response before even hooking up the oxygen sensors (we were curious)!
Having been around several other stand-alone EMS cars, I can honestly say the AEM Infinity is a real eye opener. Stay tuned…
SOURCES:
AEM
BF GOODRICH
D-FORCE WHEELS
EUROPEAN AUTO SOURCE
MODIFIED BY KC
UUC MOTORWERKS
