Modified MS3 odometer reading
 

So my question is simple. Since your first mod, how many miles have you put on your car? How many miles did you put on your car before modding? The reason I ask, I'm quite curious, as I'm sure others are, how reliable these things are after fiddling in the engine bay a little bit.

I'm not starting a sob story thread about how I'm scared to blow up, I'm quite used to replacing motors for race cars, this is simply to lessen my curious mind.

To answer my own question, on my 2012 MS3 with tech, at 200miles I installed my first mod, which was CBE and AP. Since then I've done DP/TP TIP/SRI HPFP Springs Short shift plate and RMM, Not in that order of course. ;D. I now have about 3,000miles on my car, and when driven normally, drives like I just drove it off the show room floor, minus the sound difference.

:beerchug: Hope for a good many years of running, how have your guys MS3's treated you thus far?

The general theme seems to be that a custom tune is actually safer than the stock tune. The jury is still out, still a young platform but I know there's some guys on here who have put on quite a lot of miles without any major issues.

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I purchased my 2010 new and bought my first mod within 2 weeks of owning it. I now have around 14k on the car and I have not had any issues. I think a lot of it goes back to how you treat/drive your car. If you dont keep up with regular maintenance and drive it hard, you will probably have issues at some point... If you dont drive around like a moron and perform all of the regular maintenance you should be fine.

OP you are starting a religious debate and there is no real answer.

I am personally from the camp that says drive it like you stole it from day 1. Perhaps not redline runs to 155mph, but get it into boost, push the engine to 6,000 rpms for a few seconds at a time. Rev it up, slow down, rev it up, slow down, full throttle as much as possible. The idea is you want to get all the parts, not just the engine and rings etc, but all the parts (wheel bearings, brakes, etc.) to quickly develop and settle into a wear pattern and follow it. If you baby the car in the beginning it will not develop a solid wear pattern and MORE wear will ensue as the miles pile on.

I've beat the piss out of every car I've ever owned. On the MS3, I put my intake, TIH, and AP stage 1 on within 3k miles. The Autotechs went in 500 miles later :17: due to factory HPFP fail. Lately I've spent every free night trying to wring as much power out of this thing as possible using ATR and forum knowledge. It took 12 iterations but it worked. I just turned 10k miles.

I ran 13.8 @ almost 106mph last night with a bogged launch, APP and LC settings way out of whack (this was the first time I've ever tracked this car), full tank of gas, full tire pressures, full interior, everything in car, and 2 car seats in the back on nothing more than an intake, tip, and self-tune (AP required). I challenge anyone else in this forum with the same hardware to post a faster mph with the same mods. I'm not trying to flaunt, I'm trying to show you that driving it like you stole it right from the start is not only harmless to the car, but actually beneficial.

And yeah you need a tune now. F Cobb's OTS maps. They are good for starting points, that's it.

in process of modding now and im nearing 85k miles. Car runs strong.

im a genwon though

Ya this is how I learned to drive . If your gunna beat it up beat it up from day 1. I know i need to tune but not 100% on what I'm doing term haven't done enough research to start fiddling.

I'm with you on this one. Every car Ive ever owned I've literally beaten the shit out of it leaving the lot. I bought my speed last year at the end of November down in Houston, with 12 miles on it, and then drove it hard as fuck at the end of December to NJ. I never had any intentions of modding this car because in February I bought a leftover 2011 R6, and bought every part for that instead. Met @xb2ms3 around that time, drove his shit one night and I'm on a mission now. I'm about to hit 13k on my car, I have a 50 mile commute 5x a week, and just about every mile is a hard one. I've also known @9900rpm a long time, I know how he drives his cars, when he had his BT Pu, he literally beat his car up on a daily basis, and if he couldn't get that motor to pop, we're all in good shape. :biggthumpup:

But like @fortressofcomfort says, regular maintenance, goes a long long way. I know I'm hard on my car, and change the oil every 3k miles. But look at it this way, if you want reliability, you shouldnt have ever modded it out to begin with, and if you do blow it up, you now have a reason enough to build.

Its like me and my buddies say....blowing a motor is just an excuse to build a badass bottom end.

Just my opinion:

I think the issue with asking about reliability is lack of experience (for lack of a better term). Very few people actually have over 100k, let alone 50-60k. Most of the cars on here are relatively low mileage.

When someone says they beat the shit out of their car and it runs great, I always think about how long that car will actually last with someone driving like that. Chances are most won't drive it long enough to find out. Now, I'm not saying that the platform isn't reliable; that's not what I'm getting at. I'm simply stating that we don't have enough experience with these cars to really state the ruling of reliability.

I personally have never sold a car before 150k. All of my cars have been ragged the fuck out of and have made it to at least 150k before I sold it. Take my saturn for example; 250-260k when I traded it in. It was fully bolted and the throttle was either pinned to the floor or the car was off, for pretty much its entire existence with me. My chevy that I traded in for my ms3 - 180k without flaw. I ran the piss out of that car too. My nissan; blew 2 head gaskets by 160k.

My saturn needed - t-stat, alternator and regular maintenance. That's it. Automatic.
My chevy needed - a starter, and intake manifold gasket set (very common). Automatic.
Nissan - well it was a piece of shit to be honest. It was off the road more than on. Manual.

When you rag the fucking piss out of your car daily and you get over 150k. I would call it reliable so long as you're not doing much outside of regular maintenance and minor repairs. Shits gonna break - fact of life. But when you have less than 80k, I honestly would disagree with anyone's statement about longevity, simply due to lack of experience.

TL;DR
We need more people with more miles to tell us what's what, and set an example. Until then, we're more or less just speculating.

I'm at 167000 right now with ms intake, cbe, cs test pipe, motor mounts, twm shifter, and hypertech. I've had two smoking turbos, a bad belt tensioner, and vvt/ timing chain replaced. I bought the intake with about 2000 miles on the clock and just went from there. I think that all of the issues i've had are known problems and were replaced under warranty. No problems since 75000 miles when the turbo was replaced last. Draw your own conclusions about reliability, but imo, it is pretty good. I do drive it hard sometimes, but mostly it does dd duty. 2007 ms3.

Well I hope reliability is going to be solid. I've had my '11 for less 10 months now and i'm at 27000 miles. No issues what so ever so far. I've got intake+sri, tmic and hpfp on now with a modified stage 1 tune. Later this year I'll probably get a DP and move to a stage 2

How long have you had your current mods?

That being from the FIRST year these cars were available, and (afaik) only the second year this motor was available, is not too terribly bad. And the fact that for the last 90k+ miles it's been solid? I'd call that about as good as could be expected, maybe a little better. Even though that is only one example. I don't think we will really know the true shelf-life of these cars, specially the Pus, for a little while still, maybe a couple more years even. Because the cars that have already had a long life were around when the community didn't know much about the platform, they were the test dummies. Now that the community knows what these cars are made of and how to treat them I think we're going to see a decent life out of the motor.

tl;dr I think you are going to light the car of fire after being driven crazy by squeaks and rattles in the interior before you kill your motor if you follow the experience of the members here that have been through all of the ZZB fun.

CWP_MS3 makes a great point. Most Genpus aren't anywhere near that 100k mark yet so we won't know how long these motors will last before they commit suicide. Me personally, I know I won't keep the car that long, I'll stock out and trade in way before then.


I feel sorry for the next owner though.

im at 46k miles on my gen2. Ive run the shit out of it for over 32k miles (i bought it with 13k on the clock) and put everything except IC, hpfp, dp. Put full dp and hpfp internals on the last 1k miles before redploying and run the shit out of it with almost no problems.....

So i broke shift cable and after replacing hpfp internals starting getting minimal fp drops...both my fault. I didnt clean my FP properly so boo on me but it still runs like a champ (just no more tuning until I do hpfp swap the RIGHT way)

I started with most of them right after I bought the car. The most recent is the ht at almost 100k.

I bought my car used with about 42k on it and it's now ~90k. I bought a PTP Pill, SRI, SSP, and AP all within the first 2k miles of owning it. So far, so good. The only problems I've had (knock wood) are bushings wearing out, a ball joint failing, and a transmission top-seal leak.

I believe I'm in need of doing the VVT Actuator/Timing Chain fix, and there may be an issue with the Transfer Case, but I'm less sure about the latter.

I got my '10 MS3 off the truck, the day the dealership got their first one on the lot, back on 8/13/09. It had a June 2009 build date. My VIN was 0000001 (jk). It was one of the first units of the new bodystyle built/shipped to the US. Getting into the car, I knew I probably shouldn't have bought a first year/bodystyle change car, as many of the problems surface on 1st year cars. Overall, my MS3 was pretty reliable. It did leave me stranded 3 times. Once was in the crazy 2010 winter storm (shitty summer tires were no match for the 20" or so of snow. Not the car's fault). Other times was when I snapped the left axle at the track, also not it's fault, and when the ECU just died all of a sudden (definitely it's fault).

I probably drove this car harder in the 30k miles that I had it than most, if not everyone on this forum. It got a daily beating, was fully, yes, fully bolted within a month, and was on a big turbo the following year. I tried to listen to others about not boosting under 3000rpm, but my lead food wouldn't always cooperate. I was always ready to kick a rod and build a new shortblock in this car, but it never happened. Although people break these cars, they're not as fragile as everyone says. Maybe mine was just built tough, or maybe proper maintanence kept everything together (I changed spark plugs, oil, gear oil religiously).

As someone else has said about higher mileage, I agree that we can't say what would happen to this particular car at 100k miles, but I can tell you that at 30k miles, it probably has the wear and tear of a normally driven MS3 with about 200k miles. Looking at how mine held up, I would have to stay that these motors are fairly stout, as long as you take care of them (fluids). Also, not sure if this matters to you guys, but I've run the stock turbo deep in the 20psi range, went BT, then went back to the same stock turbo when I sold the car, and that thing had ZERO shaft play. Not even a tiny bit.

Have fun, change your oil, don't overthink things.

@MS6 Alanhas over 100k and he has been fully bolted for quite some time.. At over 100k he went bt.....

I went bt after 80k and have been fully bolted since about 30k

Very nice, after seeing these posts, makes me extreamly happy with my purchase, can't wait to start driving mile after mile with some seriously bolt ons....Whats the point of a car if you can't have fun, aye?