[braziers]

I've been lurking on these forums for years, but finally joined the E9x Club early last year with this;

December 2011 JDM BMW E91 335i LCI (facelift) with the N55 + auto box, on only 38k miles, in Alpine White and with Black Leather interior.
Freshly imported from Japan and into my ownership at the start of 2024.

This is my 3rd BMW, after 2 previous cars;

• 2002 BMW E46 M3 SMG Coupe in Phoenix Yellow with Kiwi Leather interior, which I owned (unfortunately not long enough) ~10 years ago.
• 2015 BMW F22 M235i Auto in Mineral Grey with Coral Red Leather interior, which I owned for 5 years and made way for the E91.

Coming up on a years ownership now, and I absolutely love it.
At first, I thought I might live to regret moving on the F22 with the ZF8 in favour of the E91 with the older 6-speed Auto, but I have to say that after a matter of days, that feeling went away.

In the last year, I've done some general maintainence and tidying of the car to bring it to it's current form, and I have a list of plans as long as my arm to start, in around every day life, perpetual house DIY and other hobbies!

I'll add more details as I go, but wanted to get a thread / post started so that I can backfill later!

Factory Spec;

Vehicle Information

• Prod Date September 2011
• Reg Date Dec 2011
• 335i
• E91 (3 Series)
• Touring
• N55
• alpinweiss 3
• Leather "Dakota"/schwarz

Editions and Packages

• M Sports Package
• M Sports Suspension
• M Aerodynamics Package
• BMW Repair Inclusive
• Navigation Professional
• Package Comfort
• M Leather St.Wheel+Shiftpaddle+Multif.

Comfort and Interior Equipment

• Panorama Glass Roof
• Roller Sun Visor, Rear Door
• Floor Mats Velours
• Warning Triangle And First Aid Kit
• Interior Mirror With Automatic-Dip
• Smoker Package
• Interior Toll Mirror For Japan
• Seat Adjustment, Electric, With Memory
• Sports Seat
• Lumbar Support, Driver And Passenger
• Storage Compartment Package
• Seat Heating Driver/Passenger
• Armrest Front, Retractable
• Interior Trim Strips,Alum.Finishgrinding
• Blow-By Heater

Multimedia

• TV Function
• Navigation System Professional
• Voice Control
• HiFi Speaker System
• Area-Code 2 For DVD
• USB/Audio Interface
• Control, Combox

• Driver Assistance and Lightning

• Headlight Cleaning System
• Park Distance Control (PDC)
• Fog Lights
• Rain Sensor
• Xenon Light
• Adaptive Headlights
• Automatic Air Conditioning
• Cruise Control With Brake Function
• Kilometre Speedo
• Light Package
• Rear-Seat Headrests, Folding

Wheels and Drive

• Automatic Transmission
• Active Steering
• Multifunction F Steering Wheel
• Tyres With Runflat Properties
• BMW Alloy Wheel, M Spider Spoke 193

Environment and Safety

• Fold-In Outside Mirror
• Exterior Parts In Vehicle Colour
• Comfort Access
• Roof Railing Black
• National Version Japan
• Battery Master Switch
• Hot-Climate Version
• Acoustic Fasten Seat Belt Reminder
• Language Version Japanese
• Radio Frequency 315 MHz
• Decoding, Daytime Running Lamps
• Automatic Locking During Starting
• Control Unit COP
• Dummy-SALAPA

Individual Equipment

• High Gloss Shadow Line
• Headlining Anthracite

Other Equipment

• CO2 Equipment
• Brake Energy Regeneration
• Dummy-SALAPA
• Control Of Number-Plate Attachment
• 80 Ah AGM Battery

Current Additional Spec;

Exterior;

• OEM Performance Aerodynamics Sills (Not currently painted or fitted)
• OEM Performance Aerodynamics Rear Diffuser (Not currently painted or fitted)
• OEM Performance Kidney Grilles
• Michelin Pilot Sport 5 Tyres
• Osram Fog-Breaker "Yellow" Foglight Bulbs

Interior;

• OEM Aluminium "Hex" full interior trim set
• OEM Performance Shifter
• OEM Performance Shifter Boot
• Aftermarket Android Auto / Apple Carplay Screen Unit

Planned Additional Spec;

• Z4 35is Front Discs
• Full Caliper Refurbishment all-round
• H&R Wheel Spacers (10mm front / 15mm rear)
• Steering Wheel Retrim in Nappa Leather
• UK-spec iDrive Professional Re-fit + OEM DAB + OEM Bluetooth Audio
• OEM Performance Aerodynamics Front Bumper (if I can ever find one, let alone LCI with Washer & PDC

[braziers]

I'll start at the beginning of this journey...

After having multiple eBay / Auto-Trader etc Notifications on for a few years, looking for an N55 E91 with low mileage, nothing had come up that was the right spec or condition I was looking for.

After getting in touch with a company who specialise in Japanes-import Germans, they had an Alpine White E91 LCI 335i coming into the country, yet to be registered and yet to be sold.
I went and had a look at it, took it for a lengthy drive and that was that, it was the one I had been looking for.
Exceptionally clean (bar some frosty headlights, which I'll get to later), one owner from new, low mileage, and a great overall spec (full black leather, heated and electric front seats, iDrive professional, panoramic roof etc).

After some negotiation, we agreed to a trade deal involving my F22, and I collected the E91 a few weeks later, once registered in the UK and MOT'd.

Some photos from when it arrived in the UK, sat on Style 194's...

[braziers]

Collected and back home at the end of February 2024;




When I originally viewed the car, I believed the Style 194's to be original, and the same story for the Walnut interior trims.
However, I also had a set of Style 193's and Aluminium Trims with the car, and after doing some research on the VIN, it appears it came from factory with the 193's and the Aluminium.
As far as I know, the Japanese owner had swapped onto the 193's for Winter use, and had swapped the interior trims through choice at some point in it's life.
To each their own!

Both wheels and trims needed a new lease of life, which I will get onto later...

First weekend was spent giving the headlights a bit of TLC.
They'd gone a bit yellow in the Tokyo sun, and weren't looking so fresh next to the paintwork, so I set about restoring those.
At some point, I plan to have them professionally done to a higher standard + clearcoat, or potentially replace them with brand new units. Time will tell, as to whether I ever get around to either



Also spent some time giving it a good clean and polish, including under the plate mounts etc.
A nice shot of the headlights restored and the front end looking fresh;

[braziers]

Next up the following month was to replace a few small parts, which in my opinion make a massive difference overall.

Trip to my local dealership to pick up new side-indicators, both dash cup-holders and the surrounding trim.
The original indicators had suffered a similar fate to the headlights, but given they're size and ease of access, it was just easier to replace them. Plus, they're cheap enough.
Both dash cup-holders were working, but extremely slowly. Rather than taking them apart to refurb, with the risk or breaking or damaging something, again it was just easier to replace with brand new parts, along with the surrounding trim, which is one of the easier parts to scratch on the interior and as a result looked a little worn.







Also took the opportunity to polish up the wind deflectors on the car, and the surrounding shadowline trims. (Photos below pre-trim polish)

I have no idea whether the wind deflectors are some obscure OEM part or not. I've looked high and low for a reference to them, or similar piCtures, and I've not come across anything.
The BMW logo is the correct typeface, but that's by no means an indication that they are OEM.

I ended up taking them off shortly after cleaning them up, as the ahesive tapes had started to come away in a few places, and it gave me a chance to further clean and polish the trims underneath, along with the deflectors off the car.
They've not gone back on yet, I need new tape and to give the clips a clean and paint, but I'm considering doing that soon as I do like the look of them.

[braziers]

After what felt like an age (in reality only a few weeks) waiting for the registration documents to come through, first with the assigned reg-number and again with my private reg-number, I could finally get my private reg-number on the car.

As the car is a Japanese import, it came with JDM-size plate mounts on the front and rear.
In my younger years, I was a massive Honda-head, so I've always liked how an import-sized plate looks on cars, but this I thought it looked odd on the front.
So on the front, I opted to go with an adhesive plate and to remove the plate mount. Just cleans up the front end quite a lot.
At the rear, I decided to keep the plate mount, and originally go for a US-size plate (12"x6") as I thought the jap-size plate on there looked too blocky.

I've later found out that the jap-size plates originally assigned on the car are 13"x7" plates, which are the larger of the jap-sizes available, the other being 13"x6.5".
I'll probably swap out for this down the line at the rear, but the US-size one does the job for now, even if you can see the plate-mount slightly on the edges.





I then managed to source both Genuine LH and RH OEM BMW Performance Kidney Grilles.
Had a bit of fun with this; originally I visited my local dealer to enquire about the grilles, who told me that both RH and LH had been discontinued, but that a single LH grille was showing as avilable somewhere in the UK dealer network, so I ordered this and hoped to find a RH grille elsewhere.

Similarly, sites like Schmiedmann were showing the LH as being available, but the RH discontinued and unavailable to order, to I consigned myself to having to try and find one either through pot-luck forums or ebay etc.

I collected the "LH" grille from my local dealer once that had arrived, but when I got home, I discovered a Genuine RH Grille in a LH-part marked Grille box. No idea why this would be, I didn't question it back to BMW, I can only assume someone had hidden a RH Grille at some point, or returned one incorrectly in the wrong box and it had never been checked.

As a result, I then ordered the LH grille through Schmiedmann, and in the end had a matching pair, result!

Better photo of the adhesize front plate here too;

[braziers]

Next job once the weather warmed up a bit was to start removing the aftermarket tint on the windows.

I know a lot of people are a fan of tint, but unless it's subtle and factory, I have a severe dislike for it.
You can always tell when aftermarket tint is applied, in one way or another, and this was no exception, with the addition of bubbles and ripples starting to appear, predominently on the hatch glass.
Set about with the heatgun one weekend and found it extremely difficult to remove, which means it must have been on for quite a number of years.
Why it wasn't spec'd from factory by the original owner, I don't know, but I now had the task of trying to remove it.

Took nearly an day to successfully remove the hatch glass along with all of the adhesive.
A job well done on that front, but to this day I still have all the other windows left to do, including the front side windows (which have the most minimal of tints applied) and the panoramic roof.
I'll eventually get round to it, one window at a time





A couple of weeks later I finally got around to having the 193's refurbished, along with new tyres.
Went for a high-gloss silver finish (similar to OEM, but I wasn't going to be too fussy about chasing the elusive OEM finish) and OEM-sized Michelin Pilot Sport 5 tyres.

Makes such a difference to the overall appearance IMO, when compared to the 194's. Plus the ride and overall handling feels much better compared to the 193 setup, which had Bridgestone Potenza Run-Flats fitted.

[braziers]

Had to rein in any more "nice" stuff for a few months, so I could finish some stuff around the house.

However one afternoon on my commute home from work, I pulled away from some lights in traffic, and heard a "pop".
At first, I didn't think anything of it, but a few hundred yards down the road, up popped the EML, followed by a dreaded "Engine fault! Reduced power" message on the iDrive .

Fortunately, I was only 5-10 minutes from home, but I pulled over to have a quick look around, and couldn't see anything "obvious".
Nursed it back home and had another good look round, only to discover every N55 owners favourite thing... a wobbly charge pipe!

As I wasn't pushing the car hard, or indeed even owned it very long by this point, I can only assume that this (along with multiple other plastic parts) had gone rather brittle over the years, and through generally wear and tear had finally failed.
It looks like the fitting to the TB had gone brittle and cracked, which led to the pressure blowing that apart, and in turn then blew the pipe right off from the mount.

Once I removed it, there were several other brittle clips etc around the engine bay, so these were all on the list to remove and replace as well.

A nice £300-odd trip to the dealers, a 30 minute swap over, followed by my local indie checking it all over and coding out the check-fault for me, and it was like it had never happened.

At some point in the future, I'll look to upgrade the charge pipe, not through anything other than making it more bulletproof.
Yes, I could have gone for a cheaper "patent part", or upgraded it for something more durable then, but I was keen to get it back on the road "as it was".

Some photos of the culprit...

[braziers]

Next up was some interior bits and bobs...

First was to replace the "standard" shifter and boot with the Genuine OEM Performance versions.
A much nicer grip and look, a real no-brainer swap.







I previously mentioned about the interior trim...
Essentially, the wood isn't/wasn't what originally came on the car, that was originally the "ground" aluminium (the sort of horizontally brushed). I have that with the car, in a box, but a few bits looked a little tired, despite being in generally VGC for the age and considering how easily damaged they tend to be.

Whilst most of the work up until now has been to get the car back to a mint / rolling-off-production-line state, the ground aluminium isn't really my taste.

I stumbled upon a mint set of the "hex" aluminium, so that's what's gone in for now. Really like how clean it looks against the black leather.







I do also have a set of the Individual Piano II Dash Trims, which I found for 5 of your our finest British Pounds. They were in a pretty poor state when they arrived, but I've been slowly restoring them back to a usable condition.
At some point, I'll finish them up and then possibly fit them, which could be a nice combination with the rest of the aluminium trims.

[Theador]

If I missed it in the listing, apologies, but is the entertainment system all working as it should? I've been considering getting an import 335i/340i too

[M-technik-3]

OP has not logged on since March of last year.

[braziers]

Originally Posted by M-technik-3

OP has not logged on since March of last year.

I'm still here, just haven't logged on "properly". Super busy the last year so updates on the car have been slow, but some better things on the way!

Originally Posted by Theador

If I missed it in the listing, apologies, but is the entertainment system all working as it should? I've been considering getting an import 335i/340i too

Some of it... haha.
The radio bandwidth on FM is limited to Japanese bandwidth, which is low compared to the UK, so picking up the majority of stations isn't possible.
I can get Radio 2 and maybe 1 or 2 others (not that I listen to any of them).
AM is fine.
Nav is also limited to Japan, so that's effectively useless.
But everything else works;

• Aux in
• CD player
• All the usual iDrive stuff (servicing, and all that jazz)

I've had a carplay screen unit installed for the past 2 years, and while it's not perfect, it gets me by just fine.

I will, at some point later this year hopefully, have a UK iDrive unit fitted to give me full OEM Radio / Nav functionality, along with OEM DAB etc.