The new BMW F30 328I is far better than the once lacking E36 and E46 versions. The E90 was not even on the same page of the new F30, however things have changed. The new N20 2.0L Turbocharged engine is a power plant ready to unleash some power. Much like other turbocharged vehicles, simple ECU tuning of the cars boost, fuel, and timing can unleash big performance gains. From the factory, the BMW 328I makes 268 horsepower and 258 ft/lbs of torque. With a 0-60 time of 5.9 seconds, it is just shy of its bigger brother, the 335I at 5.5 seconds. The new fuel economy inline 4 cylinder is ready to pounce with the VR Tuned Tuning Box ECU programmer.
Our test vehicle was a 2012 328I. Running the car in rear wheel drive mode with a ambient temperature of around 105F using 91 octane, our baseline stock number was 253rwhp and 226ft/lbs of torque. Since the VR Tuned Tuning Box is a plug and play, it took us about 30 minutes to tap into the necessary sensors and get the car ready to run again. Doing 3 runs on the N20 engine, numbers were pretty consistant with the gains over stock. Peak torque was around 4100 rpm gaining 50 ft/lbs and peak horsepower was at 4900rpm gaining 30 wheel horsepower. From our start test at 2500 RPM, the car gained substantial power all the way to around 6100 rpm. With the addition of a downpipe and exhaust system, we should see further gains to redline.
Check out the pics, dyno, and more on the VR Tuned F30 N20 Tuning Box here.
