Adjust Intake Cam Sprocket

[jfdublyu]

I keep reading that if you adjust the intake cam sprocket an advanced 5 degrees then you will get somewhat of a hp and torque boost in midrange. has anyone done this with noticeable difference? what settings did you guys use? also there seemed to be some confusion on which way to turn the sprocket to advance the timing as opposed to retarding it. is turning with the rotation of the engine advancing it?

[kowalski]

you don't gain both, you gain hp and loose tq. if you reverse you loose hp and gain tq. i would just leave it as it is

[christophbmw]

tried it by accident, i was off by about 3 degres....it sucked, leave it stock. BMW designed it that way for the BEST all around performance.

[2002maniac]

tried it by accident, i was off by about 3 degres....it sucked, leave it stock. BMW designed it that way for the BEST all around performance.

not really.  They tuned it for best driveability and economy.

[e9nine]

I advanced my intake in the past. Yes, you loose down low but the car wails to redline later on. As you can tell from this post, personal preference is at play as always. If you're in stop and go traffic most of the time you might not like it. If you don't redline your car a lot and like to shift before 5k rpm etc...you might not like it.

[Gunni]

how did you advance it?

[bmwman91]

I did it a while back and I ended up going back to stock about a week later.  The change in the power curve was fun for a little while, but it ran poorly at idle and in the low/midrange.  I blame this mainly on the ECU not knowing quite what to do since it is using stock ignition timing maps, is taking the cam position reding from the exhaust cam which was unchanged, and it cannot account for a change in cam phasing.

All in all, I say they had it done right from the factory.  You could get it to run well with the cam adjusted, but you will need to either remap the factory chip, or go stand-alone.