First, thanks so much for all the trouble-shooting on the bad Cyl #1 and advice about possible repairs.

I had some posts a few months ago about what turned-out to be a bad piston ring in cyl #1 in my 95 530iA and decided to replace it with a 4.0L long-block with low miles and finished it and man what a difference in the performance.

I found that both cat convs where crumbled and replaced them with free-flow magnaflows and removed the resonator and it's even more responsive in addition to the 3L to 4L swap. The exhaust flow makes a real difference when opening-up the throttle even with my 3.0L MAF(4.0L MAF on the way).