For a long time I have been looking at and dreaming of the CSL Intake sound and performance gains of Alpha-N. After modding so many BMWs and doing FI on them for my friends I realized more and more that i wanted to go down the road of NA power!

Well the owner of a ESS SC M3 CSL is a good friend of mine and when he heard the idea and dream of my OEM CSL INTAKE he offered me a great price on his I want to say THANK YOU to HAMED and if it wasn't for this gesture I would still be sitting here dreaming

Any way Here are the pics. I will try my best to document the complete install and show how i'll be doing the Alpha-N custom tune on the dyno. The Tune will be done by SAL at EVOLVE in the UK. Now if you don't know about EVOLVE and SALs work all you need to do is look on m5boards and m3forum and also just ask the community in the UK and Europe! They are a great bunch of guys and SAL and the gang do some awesome tuning.

Ok so lets start with the pics of the Parts that will be used in the install of the OEM CSL Intake....

OEM CSL Iintake





Intake hose on the left connects to the bottom of the CSL Intake and the one on the right connects to the flap and intake hole in the bumper




Fresh New BMC OEM Air filter


Intake flap, I have modded it to stay open permanently as in this retrofit the flap will not work with the rpm as I need the CSL DME for that and I CANT BE BOTHERED. I spoke to a few CSL Owners and they say they remove the flap completely most of the times. The Hose connects to the intake hole in the CSL bumper and the other end goes into the flap snorkel



New shorter OEM CSL Dipstick and tube. Many other people who are doing the same mod over on m3f with the REPLICA Intake said they just bend the oem M3 dipstick tube but I hat that kinda shit. You wana do something you do it right!!!



Bracket for bottom of intake


THE CSL Does not run a MAF (instead it uses an air intake temp sensor)as it runs on ALPHA-N SW. In this case SAL @ EVOLVE recommended I use the AIT Sensor from the E39 M5 as that is what they use and it works perfectly! MY Master Tech made a custom adaptor from a piece of plastic so we didnt have to mod or alter the AIT SENSOR HOUSING on the OEM CSL INTAKE. Fits perfectly!




Vacuum Hose as the regular M3's is a different shape and length so it cannot be bent and made to fit


Starter cable bracket, the one on the CSL Intake was broken


As my car is SMG I had to get the OEM CSL SMG Reservoir tank and the bracket for it too



Well fella's one thing I can tell you is that this install will be delayed for a few weeks as I am leaving for the USA on Monday and wont be back till end of the month. The intake should have been installed and working by now but due to the the political unrest in Bahrain and my house being so near it I couldn't go to the workshop often. My tech could have installed everything for me but then I wouldn't have been able to contribute anything to the community.

 

How much power are you putting with these modifications, have you surpassed CSL power ?

 

Very nice! I look forward to the outcome.

 

Subscribed. The CSL has one of the best induction sounds out there. What is intake flap used for originally?

 

My car made 286whp on a dyno recently, with an intake, RT cats. I will be aiming for more after the install of the intake. InshaAllah 300whp

Thanks Bro

This is what SAL from EVOLVE said:
So many people wonder what the point of the CSL Flap is and if it has any effect on power.

We decided to invest a little time and find out.

We already know that with the sport button pressed the flap opens far earlier than with the sport button off. So a simple back to back dyno test could be done with the sport button on and off to see hwo the flap effects power output under full load.

At the high rpm's in both sport and non sport throttle mode the flap opens all the way and as we can see from the results the top end power is the same.

Conclusion:

The flap being closed does hamper the full load power output through the midrange. Anything upto 10bhp and 10lb.ft torque infact. No wonder those with non working flaps complain about the car feeling slower.

Next time we'll test with the flap closed at the high rpm's aswell to see it's effect.

So....if the CSL flap stops working then there is missing power!
__________________

 

286whp lets say 360hp max to the crank ?

 

Boy, are you in for a treat ! CSL airbox is the best induction sound on any car, past and present. Period.

 

286rwhp = 360 at the crank would mean 21% drivetrain loss. Probably a little high to guess. It would be safer to guess something like 12% which would mean 320 crank hp. Some Superflow dynos can theorhetically measure drivetrain loss but it starts to become pointless as each dyno reads different anyway.

I did some rollons with against a full full bolt-on Dinan tune E46 last summer from 50-200km/hr in my stock '04 CTS-V(400hp-3850lbs). I did not start to pull away until about 140km/hr but pulled quickly after that. We had a good 3 runs that day.

 

No, not even close.

 

Best of luck Ejaz on the conversion and hope to see you soon! I've heard the CSL scream ad if you haven't it sounds far better in real life then any video!