A few questions about a new purchase.
 

It's an 05 S. First things first, I love the car, love the handling, hate the power. I honestly expected a little more low end from a blower of this type. I feel it has potential, just not stock.

Where are the real gains to be made without hurting reliability and gas mileage? This is a daily driver, so my mods must be done carefully.

The pulley and a tune seem to be the best bang for the buck, but excess intake temps are something I want to avoid. I figure the motor modifications can be done to a well working chassis, a poorly handling chassis with a lot of power is harder to work with.

How do you figure out what options the car has, is it in the Vin? Some are easy to figure out, like the cold weather group, but others like LSD are harder to notice.

I've recommended the NAM vin decoder, but this one is actually more accurate www.bmwarchive.org/vin/bmw-vin-decoder.html

...there is a few things you can do, depending on what you have by way of tools... other things you will be dependent on your favorite tech to do...

First thing off is give it a fresh tune up, fluids, filters, plugs, wires and the like... if not done already.

Then plug into the OBCII and clear all the "Adaptive Settings" (this is something you may have to get your tech to do if you don't have the software and cable).

Once the Adaptive Settings are cleared your driving habits will be read and new Adaptive Settings will be created.

Concurrently you could do a pulley and belt swap like a 15% or 17% pulley, this will give you a big boost to your performance for investment, cold air intake, and performance exhaust system to start with... then you can get into the more expensive MODs like Head and Cam...

There are several KITs avail able from various suppliers like...

http://www.ecstuning.com/Mini-2005-C...mance/ES17862/

and

http://new.minimania.com/part/NMK145...4-06-Incl-Conv

It is just a matter of what you want to do...

Best of luck

Motor on!

Thanks for the advice. The Vin reader is great. As far as performance mods go, I can do everything myself except the computer crap if its beyond a simple tuner. I was just curious how responsive this motor is to certain modifications.

Wanting more low end is easy to fix. Start with a 15% supercharger pulley kit, that will gain you the most power for the buck and really bring in the low end without issue with too much heat. Plus we know it's a reliable mod as I personally have installed about 600 of them.

After that then you can look at intakes, and exhaust as we have good options there too, but power for dollar will never be as good as the pulley mod.

If you want to improve the handling the rear sway bar will be the "pulley" for your suspension as it is the best bang for the buck suspension mod.