I have posted here for a while as I've been on travel. The car had been off the road in early summer as I worked the stereo, but then I just wasn't around since late July to drive it. Given the nice Fall weather in Virginia, I'm trying to get some driving time, so I've delayed finishing the stereo.
Giving I'm driving it, we've started back up on getting tuning done, with B-Q Tuning doing his thing. I had been seeing some strange CEL codes, but an adaptation reset seems to have taken care of that.
I just ordered
bimmerlife coils which you can read about on other forums (e.g. spool street). These are R8/Lambo/BMW Motorsport "smart coils" that change how ignition is provided to the plugs and significantly increase the charge power. This allows running different plugs and a bigger gap. I plan to run NGK SILZBR8D8S plugs for the BMW N20. Two quicks notes: if you consider ordering a set, the Z4 needs a different harness so you want to give Alex a heads up so he gets your the right setup. Second, my understanding is that today these can only be run if you are tuning with MHD - there is a checkbox for this ignition in the options screen. I'm not sure what gets changed in the DME but I do know the smart coils sort out their own dwell (versus in the DME) and I don't require multi-spark (which I believe the BMW DME performs). Anyway we are out of my realm of knowledge on that, but Cobb does not support these coils today.
So my hope is to finish up tuning in the next six weeks or so, at least on pump gas (hint hint). Then when it gets cold the car will go on stands to get the rest of the stereo installed, and the KW V3s along with camber/caster plates.
With some luck, I have more planned for next year, but right now its time to finish the in-flight items. As usual there are a few Z4-owning suspects that have been super helpful in this journey. I won't name names as they know who they are.
Filippo