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      02-07-2012, 10:57 AM   #1
Cozy
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Drives: E82 135i
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Surrey, England

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My COBB Access Port Review

Hi all,

I thought I'd write a quick thread to let you all know my experiece with my newly acquired and installed (today) COBB Tuning Access Port.

I received the Access Port last week from AR Design (kindly organised by 335i London ) who I may add have been superb and friendly throughout the whole 'getting it here' procedure from the USA. I went home that evening and downloaded the COBB AP Manger 2.0 from their website, I then connected the AP to my PC via the supplied USB cable which Windows 7 had no problem installing a driver for. I unplugged the AP from my PC and went to the car to start the ECU flash but as I had the lastest dealer firmware flash a couple of months back, I expected to hit a wall and have the AP unable to read the the ECU properly. Anyway, I got into the car and shut the door, removed the OBD II port cover in the drivers side footwell and plugged in the lead supplied with the AP to the port, then the other end into the AP and without touching any buttons or pedals I pressed the start/stop button once to activate the ignition. Making sure that the radio, climate control and all other mod-cons were turned off I then looked at the AP and confirmed that I understood the controls, then clicked install. As I thought, unrecognised ROM message was displayed and the AP offered to take a copy of my ECU data and store it via the User Tools menu, of course I did this.

I took my AP into my house and back to the laptop, connected it up and transferred the ROM dump onto it via the AP manager, I then emailed this to COBB who emailed me back at lightning speed to say thank you, that they had received it that it could take up to 5days for them to sort this out for me. They were polite, friendly & professional which made this whole alien procedure (to me) of self-mapping seem like no biggy at all...well really it isn't but I live in fear since owning a Peugeot that every mishap is a recipe for a new car.
Less than 1 business day later, COBB emailed me back to say that they had updated their database and that I should go ahead and connect my AP to the Manager 2.0 and update it, they did this with fool proof instructions and again put my mind at rest. Update done and time to flash the car, connected the AP as before and hit Install, the AP now recognised my car and I clicked OK to confirm that, now onto the map selection. I had a choice (as I am stock) of Stage 1 Aggressive, Stage 1 Sport or Stage 1 Drive, each with aggressive or linear type mapping, I chose Aggressive/aggressive if that makes sense. The car then started bleeping, whiring, ticking as COBB says it would as the OE map was removed from the ECU and stored on the AP, this took about 7mins, then more noises while the flash was uploaded which took about 10mins and I killed this time surfing E90Post on my iPhone. Installation complete and the AP removed all error codes, I then removed the key from its slot and then pushed it back in and started the engine...perfect start up like always.

Now, the drive. This consisted of a warm up and then 10mins quick sprint as I have other plans tonight. Straight away you can tell that the car is more urgent, it wants to pull more and driving in the low rev range is easier and much more torquey. A little blip of the throttle shows the car willing to take off, you could easily hold the car on light throttle and it would kill most normal cars on the road, it feels really powerful with the feeling of a swell of power ready to go nuts behind you and above all, so smooth. What you wanted to hear about is how it goes at full throttle (full-ish anyway due to the icey roads), all I can say is WOW, what a great job COBB have done and THIS is how the car should be from the factory, acceleration is relentless and it pulls very very hard all the way up so I can now see why BMW weren't keen on letting the N54 produce numbers close to their flagship M3. It really goes like stink and is so much fun to drive now but watch the speedo, seriously! The car just feels better in every sense and doing away with the 'restrictive' OE mapping is a massive plus point, everything just ticks better with this new tune and I can't wait to drive it properly this weekend. To compare this to stock, performance wise is almost night and day, it's basically a new car and would easily wipe the floor with a standard 335i.

I'll try to add to this as the weeks go on and the car adapts/I drive it more but bottom line, this product is fantastic and I am 100% in love with my car .

I will be running the car on a dyno in 4weeks.


P.S. This is on UK pump 99RON (93/94 U.S Octane)

Last edited by Cozy; 02-07-2012 at 04:07 PM..
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