Walnut Blasting, plugs, and bonus: rims

Decided to share my experience with some "maintenance mods" that I had done. First up is a very thorough walnut blasting, done by the friendly people over at Performance BMW in Chapel Hill, NC for a very fair price of $400.

Keeping carbon build-up is an important part of making sure your N54 / N55 is running smoothly, and will make a noticeable difference in how your car performs.


I've been running methanol in my car for about 20k miles, and while it has been decently good at keeping my valves clean, take a look at how they looked when we got her opened up:




Aaaand the after:





The difference was immediate, but I couldn't really put the car through its paces because of the increasingly bad misfires I was having. Plugs were overdue. I bought a set of OE plugs for about $90 from the dealership, and a tool online for ~$20. An hour later:




Long story short: between the walnut blasting and the new plugs, my car feels brand new. Well, better than brand new, because its modded. Basically, the car has never been smoother or more fun to drive. I HIGHLY recommend doing both of these relatively simple tasks when you hit 40k miles. Plugs should be every 10-20k miles, and walnut blasting every 30k-40k miles, depending on how hard your car is modded and how hard you drive.

Methanol and OCCs can also help extend the intervals for walnut blasting.



Bonus: New VMR701s








Cheers!

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