Banks water-methanol injection and Cobb tuning Accessport tested on a BMW 335i

California is known for its sunny beaches, Hollywood lifestyle and terrible gas, especially in the winter when the percentage of ethanol increases. So when Sig Jamison, the owner of this ’07 BMW 335i, was preparing to ship his car from the East Coast, he made a point to top off the tank with precious 93-octane. At the time, the 335i was running a custom turbo-back exhaust and Cobb 93-octane software which gave, according to Sig, “awesome performance.”

As the 335i sucked down its last drop of 93 in California, he knew the party was over and planned to install the Cobb 91-octane program. Although he knew the lower octane would diminish performance, it was the scale of the loss that surprised him.

It wasn’t just straight-line power that was down, but he found the BMW was more susceptible to heat soak, had different throttle response, poorer gas mileage and diminished overtaking performance.

Eventually, he removed the Cobb software entirely because he was uncomfortable with how much timing the motor was pulling under acceleration, and that the engine was retarding the ignition timing under full boost. So the 335i returned to stock, leaving Sig slightly bummed.

Fortunately, he moved to sunny SoCal for a new employment opportunity at Banks Engineering – specialists in diesel performance. His arrival couldn’t have come at a better time as the engineers were in the process of finalizing development of its StraightShot water/methanol injection system. This would be the solution to restore and enhance the performance of his N54-powered 335i 3.0-liter twin-turbo. -