Rebuilding a BMW intake: S52 to M50 manifold conversion, day 7

Coming to you live from my parents garage in this 7 part series, are the chronicled adventures my dad and myself had converting an S52 intake manifold to the larger M50 intake manifold.

Today I got a new aFe Pro Dry filter in the mail, aFe’s new oil-less filter. To clean it, you can simply tap it on the ground to remove up to 85% of the particles, vacuum to get 96%, or wash it in soap and water. Yes, with no oil to use, this should hopefully prevent the degradation of mass air flow (MAF) sensors :-) I also got a new VOB OEM MAF sensor too.

Swapping the old parts out and the new filter and MAF sensor in, I then cleared the CE codes and started the car again, and voila! Things were finally smooth, perhaps this was the problem all along?

I took the car out for a 15 min highway drive and it really was night and day. The car was finally running smooth again (albeit it slightly off, but that was to be expected with the new intake manifold) and wow, the power gains! WOT around 3000rpm really felt a lot stronger, pushing me back in the seat.

The intake manifold was finally working!

I continued to drive it around on and off yesterday and I did see the CE light come back on. However, KO Performance said the CE light would likely come on after driving for 20 min, then go away after the car cycled a few times. Seeing how things are smoothing out still, this makes sense.

With no rough idle either, I don’t think I have any vacuum leaks, whoohoo!

Finally, it seems like the M3 is back and better than ever!