58 PERFORMANCE BMWwith room and something that might be
faster than a GT-R, so the M5 won – the
fact that it’s cheaper to mod than the GT-R
is a bonus as well.”
With the M5 purchased, the modding
could begin, but what we like about Nick
is that rather than just jumping on the
most popular, and expensive mods, he
did his own research and applied a bit
of innovation. “The fi rst thing I did,” he
says, “was look into air fi lters. What I saw
was that they were all crazy expensive,
so I decided to make my own. I looked
for universal fi lters, settling on a pair of
Ramair dry cone fi lters, which cost £100 a
pair, and cut the intake pipes then attached
the fi lters and they fi t perfectly where the
standard air boxes would sit. It took me
20 minutes to fi t them and I saved myself
a fortune,” he grins. “I then found some
scoops in the Screwfi x catalogue for £1.50
each, which were the perfect size and
shape to fi t behind the front grille and feed
air to the fi lters,” he adds, and we really
have to applaud the innovation here. “I put
photos and details of my home-made kit
on the M5 forum and everyone copied me,”
Nick laughs, so he was clearly onto a
good thing.
“I did the exhaust next,” he continues,
and while there’s a big selection of exhaust
options available for the F10 M5, you won’t
fi nd an off-the-shelf system here as the
whole thing is completely custom. “If you
look under a standard car,” he explains,
“you’ll see that the exhaust goes from
two pipes into an X-pipe and where this
happens the pipework gets pinched down
from 100mm to 70mm in diameter. I had
that section remade so there’s no pinch
and the piping remains at 100mm all the
way through and I also had the X-pipe
relocated. The result was a phenomenal
increase in power and a complete change
in noise.” But Nick wasn’t done, and went
on to have the rear boxes removed as well
as adding a pair of cat-less downpipes and
removing the secondary cats as well. This
has resulted in a further increase in power,
about 100hp he reckons, along with an
absolutely apocalyptic exhaust note; we’re
not kidding, this car sounds absolutely
outrageous and is shockingly loud. So
loud, in fact, that Nick’s actually had the
cold start programme removed in order to
not upset his neighbours too much every
time he fi res it up.
“Once I increased the power I started to
get the gearbox temperature warning light
coming up on the dash,” says Nick, “so
I changed the standard 1.0-litre gearbox
pan to a 2.5-litre one with larger fi ns for
additional cooling and at the same time Ihad a gearbox remap done. What this does
is it increases the torque limit, increases
shift speed and downshift rev-matching
and also adds 20% extra clamping power,
which helps to stop the clutch from
slipping. It’s made a huge difference to
how the car drives; it was £500, so I had
to be committed to go for it, but it was
absolutely worth it,” he says. With intake,
exhaust and gearbox attended to, Nick
decided to treat the M5 to a remap and for
that he went to Evolve. “Their remap is
really phenomenal,” he beams, “and with
it applied the car made 755hp on Evolve’s“
It’s a very comprehensive range of
engine upgrades and it has resulted in a
dyno-tested 820hp, which is a monstrous
amount of power in anyone’s book
”
dyno. Imran took the car out to see how it
drove and when he brought it back he said
‘wow’ so to hear that from him meant a
lot!” he exclaims.
So far, so standard as far the
performance mods are concerned but this
is where Nick’s M5 journey ventures off-
piste and heads in a direction that’s not yet
well-established in the UK and that’s meth
injection. “I’d read about it on the forums,”
he explains, “and decided to go for it. I
started speaking with a guy in Texas who
knows all about it and he’s given me all
the guidance for my own setup. Paul atHome-made air
fi lter setup was
a bargain and
works brilliantlyPBMW217.f10_m5.ed3.indd 58 07/08/2017 08:27