Introduction

Hello everybody, after my long journey I have decided to give back to the community. It was hard trying to find specific information when trying to turbo my car. After gathering information from a variety of sources, I was finally able to turbo my car. Now, before you get too deep into it, I want you to know it isn't a cheap endeavor. I spent approximately $6,000 and collected parts over a period of 6 months. You will not spend that much as I bought a lot of unnecessary parts. You will be looking to spend about a maximum of $4,000 and much less if you're good at finding deals. The majority of the things on this website will also apply to E36, E39, and E60 with an M5X engine (M50, M50TU, M52, S50US, S52US M52TU, M54).

If you're interested in buying a full kit that essentially uses everything from this blog, you can get it from BE RACING TUNING here.

Disclaimer: The eBay, BE RACING TUNING, and maxpeedingrods links provided are affiliate links and allow me to earn a slight commission on purchases made.

Depending on the fuel you have access to, the engines listed above can make anywhere from 300 wheel horsepower to 500 wheel horsepower WITHOUT being opened up. That means without touching the head gasket and without installing head studs. On E85, you'll be able to get close to the 500 mark safely, otherwise on pump gas you'll want to limit yourself to the lower 400s. Alternatively, you can use meth injection if you really want to be near 500. For iron block engines, you can go ahead and throw in head studs if you want. It's a different story for us with aluminum blocks. The aluminum alloy BMW used for the M54 was not of the greatest quality so every time we touch the threads for the head bolts, it gets weaker and weaker, resulting in threads pulling out. If you're dead set on doing studs, the only thing I recommend is converting to 12mm studs as that drills out the original threads and should give you plenty of bite.
If you're interested in upgrading the rods, you can buy maxpeedingrods from here. They seem to hold a good amount of torque and use genuine ARP hardware.

If you have an E46, without a doubt go with a VinceBar. E36s do not have access to VinceBar at the time of this being written but they also seem to be less affected by subframe issues. In that case, just welding plates should be fine. When I went to install my subframe, I had zero cracking which is great news. E46 325's and 330's had a better design than 323's and 328's.