Leaderboard

In a departure from 35 years of only owning 4x4 vehicles, I have taken the plunge and now have a 2013 320i and a 2018 118i I'm really looking forward to learning a lot from here...I have already realised just how rough the last 35 years have been...

Trying to clear out a few cars worth of spares from our shed. Largely various 320 Have absolutely all sorts, lights to ECUs to trims doors etc etc. Heaps of spare B20 engine parts all in varying states of repair, would prefer to clear out everything to be used rather than scrapped. No manual parts, and not many sedan or interior parts either as I am keeping spares for mine. Most parts have been in sheds for 20 years so varying conditions and as is. Wanting to clear so happy to just give out bits and bobs to anyone who collects. Pickup in The Awamutu for anything substantial, welcome to come have a browse through. For posts sake $75 each for ECUs, but please ask/offer and I'll have a look for anything.

The detailing mission still slowly chugging along, I took on tackling the front bumper, which is by far the roughest panel on the car. It's suffered quite a bit of abuse throughout its life and probably deserves a full respray but that's not something I'm willing to entertain at this point so will settle for an improvement instead of perfection for now. The mounting rails that slide onto the hanger brackets were already broken when I got the car with the passenger side one being particularly bad. The bumper was sagging quite badly initially but I managed to align it well enough that it wasn't too obvious. Was about time to properly address the issue though so I used it as an opportunity to further hone my plastic welding skills. Bent the broken bits back in place and melted in some steel mesh for reinforcement. Won't be good as new but will hold much better than before anyway. The paint was badly stone-chipped all over, beginning to crack in a few places and had a few rough scratches here and there as well. I polished it up best I could, touched up the rock chips and the worst of the scratches on the underside. The mesh grille was looking quite faded and rock chipped as well so gave it a few coats of paint to bring it back to black. Only got a before photo of it though. The trim inserts got some Carpro Perl treatment to rejuvenate the front end even further. The result was never going to be perfect but from a few feet away now looks infinitely more presentable, which was the best I could have hoped for without it becoming a full blown repaint. Mint.

As far as your sub issue in a touring, don't forget the factory sub option was under the rear load floor. Small, 8" I think, but people have made much larger boxes that don't require you to lose the spare, though you do have to lose the carpeting under the floor. Even seen them for sale on Amazon and eBay.

Hey Richard, The vifas i got turned out to be just chinese crap that had just bought the brand name. I got them from jaycar and they were cheap, but I should have done my research first. Below is a picture of the pods I made, but I'm sure a decent car audio installer could make and install some for you. This was by far the biggest improvement to my system. I did one door first and then sat in the car playing with the balance and the difference was night and day - the volume almost doubled, the bass extended a long way and became much stronger, and vocals improved dramatically with better clarity and separation. It was an effort to make the 6.5 in the front, and a 6 inch would be much easier but I wanted a 6.5 as I'm not running a sub. A sub isn't really necessary in this setup unless you listen to alot of drum and bass etc. In my opinion on all the e46's the weakest link is the speakers. IMO first upgrade on a e46 would be speakers, second upgrade would be speakers + amp, third upgrade would be speakers + amp + head deck. The factory wiring is not too bad, but its proboably worth looking at some cheap sound deadening and removing rattles. Neals suggestion of using a four channel amp to actively biamp is a good one, although I must admit to not being a fan of class D amps. Keep us updated, and good luck.

Richard, I like the old skool sound just like you do. Prat beats everything else. At home I run a combination of sonic frontiers, ead, sansui, rotel, denon, and b&w. When I did the stereo in my wifes e46 I was on a very tight budget, so some sacrifices were made; I retained the bmw headdeck and stacker and ran high level lines to two second hand alpine v12 amps in the boot. (the good v12's from the nineties before the quality went downhill.) These then powered some cheap 6.5 vifa front components, and cheap 6.5 vifa rears. I used decent cable and soldered and heatshrinked the connections to avoid oxidation. The biggest improvement by a HUGE margin was cutting holes in the front doors and building pods behind the door card. Dynamatt is expensive so I used butyl based sill flashing tape. If I had my time again, I would use better speakers as that is my weak link. I strongly suggest you get some front door pods built and the hole cut in the doors - I can put up pics if you like.