Now that the DV+ was back in, I felt like the rest of the re-installation process should be fairly smooth sailing and straight forward.
Luckily, at least for the turbo inlet pipe, it was.
Installing Pure Turbo Inlet Pipe
The main tricky thing here is lining up the Pure Turbo inlet pipe straight in the turbo (best done from looking down via the top of the car) prior to giving it a proper shove into the turbo.
I had the air intake sensor disconnected, and moved air intake out of the way previously. This involves removing the right side corner strut brace, which covers the 4th clip of the airbox. Also, I learned that the airbox will not clip in properly unless you first clip in that 4th clip which sits under the corner strut brace. That was fun, lol.
Further, I had removed the left side corner strut brace in order to loosen the water tank and gain better access to the turbo inlet pipe vacuum hose connection, secured by one allen screw (formerly a torx screw on the stock pipe).
You can see the photos of top of engine with my arm in there past the water tank, and both corner strut braces off. I actually later figured out that if I pull directly up on the water tank, the hose will stretch, and I can place it at a 90 degree angle toward the front of the car, and it'll sit there. As opposed to the 45ish degree angle in the photo. That made life even easier!
As for install, very simple. The Pure Turbo inlet does not reuse the 10mm nut that the stock inlet pipe had at the turbo connection. It's a tight fit and when clamped to the air intake, it is rock solid.
I kind of wiggled the Pure Turbo inlet pipe and turned it around a bunch in order to avoid snagging all the lines, hoses, and electrical wires that are in that part of the engine bay, and made sure to re-route those electrical cables the same way as they had been, prior to attempting to actually insert the pipe into the turbo.
Basically make a note when removing stock pipe which electrical cable routes around it vs behind it, and one is clearly longer so it makes sense.
Once the Pure Turbo inlet pipe was in the engine bay (still loose, but it can't exactly fall out now), I went back under the car and lined it up with the turbo inlet -- see some photos where the pipe is about an inch away from the turbo, and then when it's partly in. I probably went back and forth a few times between top of car and under car to adjust the position.
Finally, pushed it in from the top of car where I had more physical leverage, as hard as I could, into the turbo. If it's aligned straight, it will go in.
The other fun part was not nearly as hard as removing the stock pipe was, mostly because I had figured out how to properly access the screw that secures the vacuum hose to the inlet pipe with the water tank moved out of the way to make more space to get my arm down there with an allen wrench. I included some photos of how I reached that screw.
Getting the vacuum hose into the inlet was also easier than the original removal, again because I felt more confidence to push the thing around with more force than when I first started this project. See photo of inside of the inlet pipe with vacuum hose snugly in there, and the allen screw on the outside of the pipe.
Also, after I had already done the work, I purchased a set of ball-ended torx wrenches which I think are 100% necessity for BMW work. Should have done that sooner and added to my ball-ended allen wrench set! The other must have tool I ended up purchasing to finish this job and do all the clamps were ratcheting wrenches -- made life so much easier, as well.
The Pure Turbo inlet comes with 2 clamps and a rubber tube to connect to the air intake. This was pretty straight forward, I left both clamps loose, put them with rubber tube and air intake all together, fit the rubber tube to ensure coverage of both ends (the air intake and pure intake fit pretty close together, so this is likely hard to mess up). Once fitted, last is to tighten both clamps. This was an important lesson I learned later with the charge pipe.
Inlet pipe was in, woot!
