VF620 Self Install

[Longbow64]

Over the last long weekend, I installed a VF620 supercharger kit on my 09 E90 6MT M3. Ordering the kit was pretty straightforward. Robert at VF Engineering made sure that the kit made it to me with enough time for me to install it over the weekend. I installed the kit 7 hours from the house at a friend's house. He has a full array of tools, plenty of room, good lighting, and a huge compressor. The kit was shipped direct to that location. I left my house and headed north on a stock tune and full bolt on. I'd like to initially thank Mike Benvo for his great customer service while running and now not running the BPM tune. Let me tell you, running the stock tune for seven hours through the middle of the desert is very disappointing. Friday evening, we started the teardown. I'll post a thread for each day we worked on the car. By no means is this meant as an instructional guide and I'm sure some of the steps are either not required or might not even be endorsed by VF Engineering. Any work on your vehicle by you is your responsibility. You'll need a lot of patience, both metric and standard sockets and alan keys/bits, torx, a torque wrench, and a lot of silicone spray.

Day 1:

Jacked the car up on the front jack points and reinforced with jack stands.

Removed the front wheels, wheel liners on both sides (passenger side probably not required but makes routing hoses easier). Removed the front bumper

Removed the stock airbox, manifold, top radiator hose, radiator fan, secondary air injection hose and idle stabilizer hose, and the airbox bracket (this last step required tapping spot welds and we essentially broke the bracket off, probably a better way to do it, but I don't plan on returning the car to stock)

At this point UPS delivered the kit to the house. Game on.

Removed the Rogue Engineering pulleys and replaced them with the OEM pulleys. Then removed the belt running to the drivers side of the car. Left the other one loose, but in place. Removed the hydraulic tensioner mechanism (doesn't go back in). Installed the stud for the U-mount that holds the bottom of the supercharger bracket and the VF idler bracket.

Mounted the supercharger to the bracket. At this point we noticed that our bracket didn't match the instructions, so we went into panic/let's figure this out mode. When we test fitted the bracket and supercharger we were concerned that the supercharger was angled down too much and looking at the clocking, we weren't quite sure how to rotate the blower and not entirely sure we had the correct bracket. We started at 5:30 p.m and ended that day around 4:00 a.m. with the bracket in, the supercharger angled too far down. I emailed every email I could find from VF and was a bit concerned because they are not open on the weekend.

[Longbow64]

At 9:15 a.m. on Saturday, I received a phone call from Jeff at VF. He was calling from his personal cell phone and read my email from 4 in the morning. He confirmed that I had the version 2 bracket which is not depicted in the instructions and that if you loosen all of the alan key bolts surrounding the volute, it would rotate freely 360 degrees. We started day 2 at 11:30 a.m.

Rotated the volute (blower), replaced the shipping plug with the vent cap. Pulled the mount and blower out. Trimmed the wheel well (there's a requirement to trim until you get at least 1/4" clearance from the blower and the wheel well. Dropping the bracket into the right place wasn't very easy. There is a support bracket that is mounted to the heat shield at the first, not the second bolt and then back to the blower. Loosen all bolts on the bracket to include those holding the volute on. Mount the support bracket to the bracket first. Then loosely mount the bolt that mounts to the U-bracket. Line up the support bracket on the heat shield and tighten about 75%. The we lined up the other bolts, started the threads and then tightened everything up to the torque settings provided by VF. Make sure you belt is ran properly. Then we tightened up the belt and alas the supercharger was in.

Next we tried to figure out how the water pump mounted to the vehicle. The instruction say to mount it to the frame rail. There two holes in the frame rail that kind of line up with where the water pump bracket was supposed to go. One hole is small and square and doesn't line up with the hole on the other side. The other hole is a larger circular hole. After phoning a friend again (Jeff), we used the larger hole with a 1" washer and mounted the water pump.

Then we ran the vacuum lines. Getting the 1” ID hose (18” length) to air pump pressure sensor was fairly difficult. We removed whatever the big black box, vent looking thing is on the back of the engine and lifted it up to the get the quick connect fully remove this hose so we could work on it outside the car.

Next was the fuel injectors. This was pretty straight forward. Just be careful not to lose and clips in the engine. We were lucky and didn't lose any. We didn't have to go hunting in the engine for any either.

We stopped working on Saturday at 6:00 p.m.

[Longbow64]

Day 3 started around 12:00 p.m. We started with trimming the driver's side intake. The final trimming was much larger than depicted, but you get the idea. We test mounted the intake and then saved that for when we were done with the intercooler.

We installed the rest of the hoses to the manifold, intake, and water pump. Reseated all previously removed radiator hoses and installed the bypass valve.

We then removed the IAT sensor from the old manifold, used the supplied extension, and placed the sensor in the new manifold. It requires you to trim a tab on the sensor housing, but everything else is plug and play.

Then we wired the water pump. Comes with a relay. One wire runs to the battery power supply, one to a ground, one has a quick connect that goes to the water pump and a ground off of that that we mounted to the stud on the frame rail. There's one more wire that requires a splice into the white wire with red stripe on the white connector in the ECU. We used a splicing connector and clamped it onto the wires.

It seemed like our intercooler was also version 2. Luckily, Jeff sent us pictures so we'd have an idea on how to mount it. First, we determined we need to remove the rounded plastic bracket shown with the outside arrows. We couldn't get the tabs depressed to get it off, so we just used some vice clamps and applied force until it broke apart. Like I said, I'm not going back to stock form and we were running out of time. Next, we notched the remaining hard plastic bracket with the forward portion completely open. Then we trimmed the two center vertical supports off. We lined up the intercooler, drilled some pilot holes, secured the hoses, and bolted in the intercooler with the provided self-tapping screws.

Now that all the hoses were routed, secured; power supplies were connected, and all belts/bolts tightened (except for the water reservoir). The reservoir is left unsecured so when you prime the pump you can raise it up higher than the manifold to ensure you don't have any air in the system. We reconnected the battery, started the ignition (engine off), and listened for the water pump to operate, which it did. then we raised the reservoir and added coolant/water (50/50) to the system until it went out the suction side and recirculated in the reservoir.

Since everything was operating properly, we turned off the car, installed the intake, and started reassembly. We had the car back together by 2:00 a.m. At this point, I did an ECU read, just for fun (because I already had my tune; thanks to Nik at VF; he sent me the tune at 11:30 Thursday night to help me get the tune before they went into the weekend). Then I loaded the tune, cleared adaptations, and fired her up. The car started up with no issues. Around 4:00 a.m. I took it out of the garage and went for a low demand test drive. Pulled it back into the garage with zero issues.

The next day, I got up around 10:30 and drove around for about 40 miles before I hit the road for my 7 hour trip south through the middle of the desert. Through varying low and high demand driving, I didn't have and continue to not have any issues with the car. Once again, I'd like to thank Robert at VF for the sale and the quick shipping, Nik for the tune at 11:30 at night, and Jeff for returning my email and staying in contact with me throughout the weekend to help me out with the install. I'd also like to thank my buddy Chris for helping me with the actual install.

[Mike Benvo]

Awesome!! Looking forward to more pics and vids

[j2m]

Lookin Good!!!
So are you stuck or able to continue with install?

[Mike Benvo]

Originally Posted by j2m

Lookin Good!!!
So are you stuck or able to continue with install?

I think he's already seen tipple digit speeds since the install

[RBB]

Awesome post, man. I love seeing DIY stuff like this. Waiting for the rest of the pics!

[whats77inaname]

Now I know why you moved away from the Vishnu Considering the temps out there, I'm curious as to why you didn't run it in addition to the VF620.

[Longbow64]

I figure the air/water cooling, front mount, and aftercooler of the VF are enough. I didn't want any other variables in there. I also purchased a P3 gauge this week so I can monitor what's going on.

[aussiem3]

Originally Posted by Longbow64

....

That would have been a great saving in terms of installation. May be enough save for another mod DIYs are great and you appreciate and understand the car more in terms of identifying and addressing issues.

The DIY section on this forum I am sure has saved a lot of money for fellow members. Keep it coming guys

[///M Power-Belgium]

I have a lot for what you have done !
BTW...i'm so curious what your next post will be...i think...the run video
Also...i want to say...the thing that you deserves v v v

[Longbow64]

Autocross tomorrow. I'll get some video on the GoPro.

[The_Dude]

Still slower than the evo! You forgot to mention the 1.5 bottles of bourbon consumed Saturday night and the runs in "Mexico". And that prairie dog that came within an inch of his life, literally. And no install is complete without a picture of the shop dogs. If VF is reading this, a flow diagram like what mfrs use for vac/egr routing probably would have been more helpful than the step-by-miss-a-few-steps directions.

[FormulaMMM]

Originally Posted by Longbow64

Autocross tomorrow. I'll get some video on the GoPro.

Subscribed.

[Longbow64]

Originally Posted by The_Dude

Still slower than the evo! You forgot to mention the 1.5 bottles of bourbon consumed Saturday night and the runs in "Mexico". And that prairie dog that came within an inch of his life, literally. And no install is complete without a picture of the shop dogs. If VF is reading this, a flow diagram like what mfrs use for vac/egr routing probably would have been more helpful than the step-by-miss-a-few-steps directions.

That's still under debate now that the DME has adapted. A rematch is in the works and yes a flow diagram would have been very helpful.

[The_Dude]

The shop dogs.

[BabyZ]

man that looks good!

[edwinm3]

Originally Posted by The_Dude

The shop dogs.

Dogs are cool! Enjoy your kit and post some vids pls

[img]

Awesome work man,Congrats !

[Longbow64]

Did some autox today. Didn't go as well as I would have wanted. While the car was up on jacks last weekend, I adjusted the bump settings on my KWV3 making them harder. Big mistake. My car was all over the place today and not because of the new power. I was using the KW recommended setting of 1 full turn from full hard (insert joke here).

One note on the SC kit; on the second run, the car went into limp mode and flagged a DSC fault. This was very concerning. I remembered the instructions from VF warned that the vacuum lines needed to be properly ziptied to avoid contact with the throttle linkage or it would cause limp mode, so that's where we started looking. The extension harness for the IAT sensor was lodged into the forward passenger side throttle linkage (Red arrow). We dislodged the harness and ziptied it out of the way (Green arrow).

[UBER ///M3]

awesome job man..im so glad you posted this and have fun!

[THE TECH]

Looks good.