My review for the BimmerLife coil upgrade

JBacon335

Corporal
Nov 7, 2016
227
107
0
40
Toms River, NJ
Ride
07 335i Sedan, 1988 Mustang GT
I won this coil upgrade kit on here and have been using it for about a month now on my daily driver. I did have one of the coils fail on me but was able to get another at the local parts store to use as a backup until I got a replacement a day later from Bimmerlifetuning. It comes with a nice harness that looks like it could be a factory part.
IMG_20170624_121152.jpg

After unboxing it and walking out to my car it took all of a half hour from opening the hood to having the car running
IMG_20170624_123545.jpg

Sorry it's so dirty, it's my daily driver. So immediately after starting the car the idle was noticably smoother, as soon as I pulled away from my house I noticed how much better the throttle response was. I still have the 10k mile old ngk plugs on this and it's running better than a brand new set ever did was what I thought. The car already had pretty fast spool with the stock turbos so it was hard to tell if it made any difference with that, but the seat of the pants feel was definitely more torque. All in all I'm impressed with what such a quick and easy upgrade did for this car and I'm happy to know the ignition won't be an issue once I decide on which turbo upgrade I end up going with.
 

JBacon335

Corporal
Nov 7, 2016
227
107
0
40
Toms River, NJ
Ride
07 335i Sedan, 1988 Mustang GT
LoL it's nasty right now but I'm working 10 hours a day all summer so I'll get to it when I've got some time
 

Bmwfixerguy1

Lieutenant
Jun 5, 2017
875
292
0
Ride
07 335i MT
So question number 1 lol

Where does it get its power and ground from? Ground is easy.. Anywhere

But power where to they have you tap in for external power?
 

veer90

Lieutenant
Nov 16, 2016
1,000
774
0
West Nyack, NY
Ride
e90 335i 6MT
I'm still stuck between this set and the PR Coils. I feel like I'm going to wait a little while longer to see if anyone ever does a comparison or at least a good write up of the main differences between the two

BL is a smart coil conversion, PR uses a specially designed dumb coil with the failure points of OEM dumb coils engineered out. Both result in a much stronger spark than oem coils can provide and allow you to run higher spark plug gap.

Smart vs dumb coils is just a designation of where the coil's igniter / control box is (integrated with coils for smart, separate from coils with dumb). It should not be taken to mean "smart is better than dumb" or vice versa. The only meaningful difference from the smart vs. dumb coils is that PR coils still use DME electronics to drive the coils (although with reduced electrical load) while BL coils remove electrical load for coils from the DME with the integrated igniter / control box. Feel free to correct me if any of this info is wrong.

What I'd really like to see is someone with a high power build (800+ wheel) to race with / dyno both sets with no other changes to their car, and provide logs / general impressions. But unbiased info is at a premium nowadays as most owners already have business relations established with one vendor or another.
 
  • Informative
Reactions: Fishayyy and V8bait
Dec 14, 2016
40
28
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What I'd really like to see is someone with a high power build (800+ wheel) to race with / dyno both sets with no other changes to their car, and provide logs / general impressions. But unbiased info is at a premium nowadays as most owners already have business relations established with one vendor or another.

We're running the Precision Raceworks coils now and would be happy to compare them with these BimmerLife units. After all, these bad boys are from Audis. Why wouldn't we be giving them a fair shake?

The key in my mind is coil dwell time. The Precision units are much more robust mechanically. But they are dependent upon mapping within the car's engine management software. And despite excellent performance thus far on the PRs, I am not at all convinced the current DME tuning software is a contributing factor.

If I'm right, then it's significant that the "smart" coils bring their own dwell time to the party. They might actually be producing a stronger spark than is currently possible on the DME-dependent PRs.
 

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New Member
Jul 9, 2017
3
1
0
Ride
2010 135i N55 6MT
When are you expecting the N55 BimmerLife units to be available?
 

TWilly

Specialist
Jul 7, 2017
85
18
0
Ride
Tyler
Nice review. Nice to see more people using the BL coils. I love the look of them and the easy install. And like OP said it was simple for him to get a replacement for any part store where might not be so easy with the PR set. Still very upset I bought brand new bosh coils two months ago though...
 

morffius

Specialist
Jul 15, 2017
87
16
0
Ride
135i
Which ngk plugs and gap did you have? Seems a few others have used stock n20 plugs at the stock gap. I'm debating on what to do from the plug side.
 

JBacon335

Corporal
Nov 7, 2016
227
107
0
40
Toms River, NJ
Ride
07 335i Sedan, 1988 Mustang GT
So question number 1 lol

Where does it get its power and ground from? Ground is easy.. Anywhere

But power where to they have you tap in for external power?
There is a little plastic cap on the firewall near the jump start post that you pop off and there are power and ground studs
 

JBacon335

Corporal
Nov 7, 2016
227
107
0
40
Toms River, NJ
Ride
07 335i Sedan, 1988 Mustang GT
Which ngk plugs and gap did you have? Seems a few others have used stock n20 plugs at the stock gap. I'm debating on what to do from the plug side.
I've got the ngk 95770 at .020 Gap currently. Going to try the factory Gap once I replace them
 

Fishayyy

Specialist
Nov 3, 2016
70
21
0
Southern California
We're running the Precision Raceworks coils now and would be happy to compare them with these BimmerLife units. After all, these bad boys are from Audis. Why wouldn't we be giving them a fair shake?

The key in my mind is coil dwell time. The Precision units are much more robust mechanically. But they are dependent upon mapping within the car's engine management software. And despite excellent performance thus far on the PRs, I am not at all convinced the current DME tuning software is a contributing factor.

If I'm right, then it's significant that the "smart" coils bring their own dwell time to the party. They might actually be producing a stronger spark than is currently possible on the DME-dependent PRs.

Well nonetheless I would be interested in seeing some test results. Because it seems like everyone has their own theories on which one should be better than the other, but some real results would be awesome