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Well look what arrived yesterday, less than 6 weeks after I ordered it! I saw a few months ago that Karbonius had made another mold for the CSL replica airbox to speed up production and certainly would seem to have helped! Can't really say anything about this piece that hasn't already been said. It's spectacularly good. The memory of the cost simply melts away when you hold it in your hand and look at it. I'm still waiting on the CSL dipstick tube plus a few minor pieces of hardware, but hopeful of having everything by the time the Christmas break rolls around! In the meantime all these parts continue to clutter up my spare room!

Completely inlove with the look of this thing now. Little things left to do like restore all the trim finishes and get it painted. Will look at some better suspension next year. Thinking Bilstein B8s that I have already and have been revalved and refurbished by the NZ agents for Bilsteins. These wheels have really set off the car in my opinion and I am in the process of getting some custom centre caps made to make them completely how I want them to be.

Just some bits and pieces i've done on the car over the last few months. Resprayed all the door / shadow line trim with SEM Trim black 39143, highly recommend this paint for anyone doing the same job, perfect finish for the OEM look. Took out the window regulator / motor and cleaned out the track and regressed and took apart the slightly seised motor, window now moving up and down much faster and smoother. Replaced both driver and passenger door interior and exterior window rubber while I was in there. Ran into an issue getting the door card back on as half the holes had disintegrated and didn't have a solid hole for the clip to sit in, so epoxied some large washers in the place of the original holes and it worked a treat. Very solid mounting point and door card sits firm and flush. Door was cleaned out and the vapor barrier that had mould and rips in it was replaced, I used thick carpet protector plastic that already had the adhesive backing... saw someone do it on some forum somewhere and thought it was a decent way to replicate what was there. Will see how it holds up, gotta be better than nothing. Was battling a pretty major steering issue when turning left, steering was binding very hard. Originally I regretfully put it cheap aftermarket control arms and tie rods when I had the subframe out when I first got the car. Thought this may have been the issue so replaced them with Lemforder as mentioned in a previous post but didn't fix anything. Next I bought a second purple tag rack and installed it thinking it was the rack that was the problem but the issue still persisted. Replaced the power steering pump thinking finally that must be the issue but to no avail. At this point I had replaced basically everything on the subframe so I taped my phone in the engine bay to see if I could see anything funny happening and it turned out to be the exhaust coming into contact with the linkage when the engine leaned over when turning left (yes I have brand new engine mounts in the car). Not sure if that section of my exhaust is aftermarket or not but I couldn't find anything about this happening with others with this fairly common swap (i'm using the slim Barina linkage) so i'm assuming it must be. Ended up heating the exhaust up and tapping in a section for clearance to fix the immediate steering problem. Absolute dream now, finally get to experience the quicker rack and all the other upgrades i've done. Not too fussed with the exhaust being dented in for the time being, will look into an exhaust set up next year sometime. Side note, still trying to pluck up the courage to take seats apart and do the reupholstery... maybe in the next week or two

Me too mate me too. I used George Stocks to get em done. I got them revalved to be a tad softer too. I like the comfort hahah!

Curious , Who are the nz agents? Have a set of B8’s for an e31 - was recommended option (not a CSI but has factory m-sport springs apparently) when I bought them. But on other forums, owners say they are a harsh ride and get them revalved to a more comfort setting. Don’t want to put them the ride is horrible - factory ride is quite nice! And yeah, I’m at that stage in life! lol

Looks hot mate, even if it is mtech1 🤣

Cheers brother, you’re the man!

Thanks mate! Let’s grab a coffee again before she goes.

Good work, keep it up.

Never been happy with the way this car shifted gears but after perservering with different gearbox oils and knobs I am pleased to say I am now happy. Turns out the final piece to the puzzle was a gen ZHP weighted knob, I am sure I probably have worn bushings in there but it's much much better. Would not have thought a knob would make such a difference. Also if anyone is considering Wipertech blades I can report I am happy with mine.

Amazing thread. Joined the forum just for this! The level of work and varied nature of the jobs is highly respectable. Hi from the UK 👍

This weekend I spent a bit of time finishing up the first cut of my CSL clone tune. Essentially I'm making my own clone along the lines of the approach Bryson has taken with his Mullet Tune, but doing it myself for the entertainment/learning value. All credit to Bryson for pioneering this approach, I'm basically just building my own version of what he's already done. If you haven't read up already I highly recommend following along in his journal. When I do the swap, I'm going to do it in two stages. Stage 1: Flash the car with the base CSL tune. This will give me a baseline datum point and is a known configuration to start with and ensure that the install has been successful. Stage 2: Flash the car with V1 of my customised tune. This is a starting-point tune which blends Ignition, Injection and VANOS tables from my current Euro M3 tune with the CSL tune. The hope is that this will be an improvement on the base CSL tune and a starting point for iterative fine tuning. (I'm getting in to a bit of detail now, so those who know more about this than me will be able to point out my mistakes :-)) Scope For a vehicle with MSS54HP DME (not modified for flap) Vehicle is running a Euro tune Vehicle has a CSL airbox conversion using a MAP sensor (OE 1.0 Bar so no conversion factor required) Vehicle is MSS54HP so does not require IAT conversion factor For Stage 1 I'm starting with Terra's 0401 PD31 Full binary. This binary is a modified version of the 0401 full binary with support for the non-CSL boot loader, error codes, etc. I'll be loading this full binary at the time that I do the install. I'll then be flashing the CSL tune (partial binary) as well. There are a number of changes to be made to the original 0401 PD31 partial. Change 0xE002 from 00 to 01 to make the partial work with Terra’s modified full binary (support for the non-CSL boot loader) Enable Alternator light over canbus Set non-CSL cam offsets Set CSL intake flap control to always be open Disable DTC 124 (CSL flap) I used TunerPro to make the above changes to the partial, and now have this saved ready to go when I do the airbox install. For Stage 2 I then took the partial I'd just generated and then added the modified ignition, injection and VANOS maps that I'd prepared. The preparation of these maps were of course the bulk of the work. The merging of the maps is an interesting maths challenge. For this first version I took the following approach: 1: Take the standard M3 and CSL tables and interpolate both tables to allow for direct comparison. 2: Compare the difference between the tables (allowing for any conversion adjustments between the two) 3: I then manually applied a mask to blend the 2 tables together into the output table. 4: We then finish up with a nice optimisation problem. Finding the x-axis points that best describe the table as a whole and thus minimising the error. The M3 tune tables tend to have more x-axis points in the lower half of the RPM range and the CSL tune tends to have more in the upper half. This of course means that you can't just use all of the x-axis points from both maps. Ideally I would dust off my very rusty Matlab skills and write something to do it, however for now I simply added some calculations in the sheet to identify absolute change, rate of change, inflection points, etc. and then rank them by importance, this made it fairly straightforward to more manually identify the most important x-axis values to bring across. The VANOS maps in particular are quite fascinating. There is a very significant difference in the lower RPM range between the M3 Euro and CSL tunes (example of the difference in the exhaust maps below). It's easy to see why cars with standard cams struggle so much in the lower RPM ranges with the CSL map. Methodically working through these maps took me a reasonable amount of time (although to be honest a lot of that was diving into researching various topics to help make sure I understood correctly. The end result was updates to the following maps: KF_TI_N_RF_VL: Fuel Injection Full Throttle KF_TZ_VL: Ignition Full Throttle KF_TZ_GRUND: Ignition Ground KF_TZ_MIN: Ignition Minimum KF_TZ_LL: Ignition Idle KF_EVAN1_SOLL: Intake Target KF_EVAN1_SOLL_KATH: Intake Target Cold KF_EVAN1_SOLL_DMAX: Intake Target Max Deviation KF_AVAN1_SOLL: Exhaust Target KF_AVAN1_SOLL_KATH: Exhaust Target Cold KF_TZ_MIN and KF_TZ_LL are the ones that concern me most. For both I've erred on the side of taking the values from the CSL map, as for KF_TZ_MIN at least they appear to be more conservative. and for KF_TZ_LL it is different enough that I can't be sure there aren't changes in the 0401 program that interpret this map differently. I'll find out I guess when I get the tune running. It's worth noting that once I have the tune up and running I'll also be doing the VE map tuning process described here. Oh and the Haimus Racing snorkel arrived today. Well packaged and in a lovely soft bag. It seems to be a fairly nice piece. You can certainly see it's 3D printed when you look at it closely, and there is evidence of printing errors in places. The exterior has been post-processed to a fairly nice finish, and unless you look closely it looks good. It also feels nice and light for its size, but seems sturdy. All in all I'm ambivalent about it given the price (especially with shipping to NZ) (that said I haven't actually looked into how much it would cost to get one printed from CAD file), but it will look pretty nice in the engine bay I think once all is done.

Credit to the photographers as watermarked.

Selling my genuine 2006 BRABUS Forfour. Yes, this car was done by the people responsible for the B63 S, 900 Rocket, and many other stupidly fast Mercedes products. Only 1284 made globally 4 in NZ (this is the only silver one) 177hp | 230nm Getrag 5 Speed Manual (not a semi auto like most Smarts) 1090kg Drivetrain is from the Mitsubishi Colt Ralliart Version R (and tuned further of course) so is very reliable. Being so light it is very quick and it handles superbly. As some of you may know I have a black one of these. I bought it on a whim and it's ended up being one of my favourite cars I have ever driven. So naturally, about a year ago I found this one at a Turners in Palmerston North and couldn't help myself. I have spent the last year getting it back to it's former glory as best as I can and probably went a little overboard (as enthusiasts tend to do). Recent work includes: New Cambelt & Waterpump New Brake Pads & Rotors New Rocker Cover Gasket Full Set of Michelin Pilot Sport 4 Tyres Refurbished Exhaust Manifold Replaced Boost Solenoid New Shifter Bushing Going through the NZTA open data spread sheet, I can see a total of 4 currently registered in NZ. 3 in "Jack Black" (like my other one) and just 1 in Starlight Silver... THIS ONE. This car gets absolutely no use so would be nice to sell it on to an enthusiast who will enjoy it. Obviously, being a niche car I am not expecting a queue of people wanting to buy it, but would be nice to see it go to someone who appreciates it. Japanese reliability and European refinement in one of the rarest post 2000 hatches... what's not to like? Price: $11K ONO P.S: here is a review Kiwi Car Life did on my black one: (Note: the rattles he talks about are specific to the black car as my boot trim always falls off)