Karter16

Yes installing new parts is extremely satisfying. Such a pleasant experience compared to cleaning up old dirty parts!

My son and I spent some time this morning removing the rear bumper and having a look at why it sits so badly and with a view to affixing the replacement speed clip brackets to the kevlar support. Unfortunately the reason is a little more serious than I was expecting. The rear bumper had been replaced prior to my ownership due to a collision (something I was aware of when I bought the car). I suspected that the reason that the bumper didn't sit well was because it wasn't installed properly. This was indeed the case, with the foam screws missing, etc. and the lower brackets of the rear bumper cut up, presumably to make the diffuser fit. I was expecting to have to get these items sorted and plastic weld the bumper, but I wasn't prepared for the fact that the kevlar support is damaged (in hindsight I should have realised it likely would be). The kevlar support has several folds/tears toward the centre of the piece which has broken the resin. This in turn appears to have allowed, over time, moisture to absorb into the kevlar weave. As a result the support appears to be beyond practical repair. Also as an integral part of the collision system I'm keen not to skimp on it. The red outline in the photo below shows the affected section. In the meantime we have reinstalled the bumper as-is, while I source a new kevlar support and a couple of other bits and pieces. Oh, and it's time to replace the exhaust hangers again... Aren't old cars just the best!

Gave the car a quick wash this afternoon and was finally able to put the door trim back on the driver door. I took the trim off several months ago to adjust the drivers door window, but the rubber grommets on the clips were too hard and brittle to be able to use again, so had to wait for replacements from Schmiedmann (I ordered a significant amount for the future). Anyway, here the trim is with new clips ready to go back on. And reinstalled.

Got a chance this morning to quickly sort out and consolidate the various parts that have arrived over the last 6 weeks. I now have most of what I need to commence on the 6 point RSM/RACP brace install. I still have a few bits and pieces to get: Replacement diff fluid LH side tray to go with the non-CD changer trunk lining End caps for the 2x exposed tube ends on the brace Rubber seals/grommets for where the brace goes through the top layer of sheet metal to the rear RACP threaded sections I'm looking forward to getting the new rear diff cover on and enjoying the new bushes. I'm curious to see if/what difference it makes. Not pictured below is the brace and the LH side trunk lining. I also now have in hand most of the OE items that I need for the airbox install. I'm still waiting on the CSL dipstick tube (that's currently slated to arrive sometime in November), and I have a few more bits and pieces to get for the wiring side of things, but most of the key bits are now in. I also ordered the airbox itself yesterday from Karbonius. With their standard 12 week lead time the theory is that it should arrive around Christmas or so, which will then mean I can play round with it over my (southern hemisphere) summer break. There'll be some downtime while I work through the install, get the wiring install just how I want it, iterate on the one piece SMG expansion tank bracket, etc. so summer break will be the perfect time for that. I'll also be working on my own M3/CSL hybrid tune (basically doing a worse job of the amazing work that Bry5on (over on NAM3Forum) is doing). This is probably the part I'm most excited about to be honest - as someone who studied as an embedded systems engineer (and now spends their days as an IT consultant) it's great fun getting into the weeds of the DME. The one thing for the install that I haven't 100% committed on is the snorkel. I'm 85% sure I'll go with the Haimus resin snorkel, but keep holding off actually ordering it. I like the idea of the OE snorkel, but given my approach of keeping everything reversible/as unadulterated as possible, I'm not super keen on having to add the H-Bridge and associated componentry to the DME, plus the significant additional expense for something that I'm not confident would make that much difference to the end result. I love the OE snorkel look (flat black contrasts well with the CF intake) and for this reason am not a fan of the Karbonius snorkel (if I went this route I'd want to paint it black and that's just silly). The Haimus snorkel seems to be the closest to the OE look, without the added complexity and cost of running a functioning flap. Maybe I'll convince myself that the flap is purely for noise control (even though I know it isn't really), and that therefore a simple snorkel with no flap is what BMW would have done in an alternate universe anyway. Anyway - shaping up for some fun projects to work on in a few months!

Well I haven't had many updates the last couple of months - it's mostly been a case of hurry up and wait on parts deliveries, I've now received most of the parts I ordered back in June both for the rear shock mount brace install, as well as the OE parts needed for the CSL airbox install (just waiting on the factory to do a run of CSL dipstick tubes). A few weeks ago I also ordered a set of A/B/C pillar trims. I had been planning to go down the route of covering with BM-3109, but then discovered that the plastic mounting points on my current trims are damaged, and that I was therefore going to have to fork out for a new set. I ordered those a few weeks ago and looks as though they should arrive at the end of the year or so. Last Friday I also dropped off the RSM brace to Arkro Powercoating (excellent - highly recommend) in Porana Rd , and yesterday it was ready to be picked up. I opted for matte black, as it matches the OE powder coat finish on items like the front strut bar, etc. My goal with this install is to make it look as OE as possible.

Yep that yellow is spot on - looks awesome!

Another piece of the RSM/RACP brace puzzle arrived today. As part of doing the brace the rear trim and carpet needs to be cut for the brace. I'd rather not cut up my original pieces so am sourcing spares. This one though I had to buy new as finding one in New Zealand was too much of a struggle. The left hand side trim that came with my car includes the larger space for the CD stacker, etc. Given I've removed the stacker and am just running the hi-fi amp I wanted to get the left hand trim to go with it so that I have more boot space (plus it will be an easier cut for the brace. I was fortunate to find one on eBay at a very reasonable price with $39 international shipping (which was about $250 cheaper than shipping via Schmiedmann or the like) so I jumped on it, and it arrived today. Also apologies to anyone who is upset by me planning to cut up a brand new item. It upsets me too 🙃 BNIB

I would think the result would be the same with a heat gun. I would caution that for this particular use case you'd want a pretty fine nozzle on the heat gun so that you don't end up blasting everything with too much heat. The little flame jet I used was nice in that it was a small, controlled area.

I took a small, and carefully controlled amount of flame to the buttons on the front seat belt latches today. First up - please note that this process works to remove white oxidation and restore the red colour, but it will not work if the surface of the plastic has degraded too far. do not do this if you have any breakdown of the surface of the button. To begin with I carefully cleaned the surface of the button. If you're going to heat up the surface of the plastic you do NOT want any dirt, skin oils, grime, etc. to be on the button. To ensure that I cleaned this well I used a small piece of magic eraser (note that magic eraser is abrasive and wouldn't normally be recommended on car surfaces, however in this case because we're effectively resurfacing the button the slight abrasion doesn't matter and helps make sure that all the dirt is removed). For the cleaning step I used the magic eraser with warm water with dish soap in it and gave the button a good scrub (be careful to not let water get down into the latch), making sure I worked carefully around the raised "PRESS" letters. I then rinsed off the remaining soap with several rounds of clean water, before carefully drying the button with paper towel. I then left it a few minutes to ensure all moisture on the surface of the button had evaporated. Next step is to carefully use aluminium foil to shield the rest of the latch. I was very careful to make sure that the foil wasn't touching the button surface as we don't want to be accidentally bonding things to other things that they shouldn't be. I then used a towel to shield the wider area. This resulted in something that looked like this: The next step is to apply the fire. Firstly, ensure that you take all normal precautions around the use of fire. Secondly, make sure that your fire is clean burning. I used one of these because no matter how long I had a go at a piece of tin foil I could not get it to leave any carbon residue. If your preferred fire source leaves any carbon residue (black soot) at all, do not use it. I did not take photos of applying the fire. My advice is to go slow and carefully get closer with the flame jet until you see the surface change. I made sure to keep the jet moving the entire time and I took several breaks to ensure that I didn't get any part of the surface too hot. You do not want to end up applying too much heat in one place for too long and causing bubbling or smoking, you want just enough for as short a time as possible to get the surface to glass up. By being careful and going slow I was able to get a perfect result with no mistakes, it's a straightforward process so long as you carefully prepare and take your time. Hopefully it goes without saying to not touch the button or the foil for some minutes until the plastic has cooled. I'm very happy with the end result: And the passenger side: I don't need to do the rear seats as they already look perfect, so this job is done!

Time for an update on the CAD projects. CAD Project 1: SMG Expansion Tank bracket I now have a reproduction of the OE bracket that the tank slots into. This is a simplified bracket that doesn't have mounting holes, or the stand off that the original does. That's because I will be mating this to the other part of the bracket that I'm working on. Anyway I'm happy to have this part done. I won't be able to mate the two parts of the bracket together and finalise the part until I actually have the intake in hand so I can ensure everything fits perfectly. So this project will go on ice until then. CAD Project 2: Adapter for Bosch *101 MAP sensor And excitingly the adapter for the Bosch 101 MAP sensor is now done! I have a final print in CF-PETG which I will now clean up and bond to the sensor. Key differences from the last prototype I showed are: - Return to 1.5mm stand-off. in the CF-PETG 1.5mm is more than strong enough and this allows a bit more of the nose of the sensor to fit into the rail. - Ever so slightly widened body for better fitment. - Slight changes to some of the fillets to match the sensor. And here's some photos of it bolted to the rail (note that it is not bonded to the sensor in these photos). The bolt hardware is temporary just for demonstrating fitment. I'll be using Loctite 401 to bond the bracket to the sensor. The sensor itself is PBT which can be a bit tricky to bond, however my research suggests that Loctite 401 should be suitable to bond PBT and PETG together (and be heat resistant enough for the application). I'll post the end result when I have it all sorted.

Sourcing parts in general to NZ is a lot of effort. I would estimate that when I'm buying parts I spend about 4 times longer working out the cheapest combination of parts + shipping + GST + import duties than I do actually researching what parts I need to buy. It results in some seemingly non-sensical combinations. E.g. when ordering parts for CSL intake recently it was cheaper to order the CSL dipstick tube by itself from Turner, than it was to include in the rest of my package coming from Schmiedmann.

Recently I picked up a matte screen protector for the headunit. I wanted to give it a go and see if it would be an improvement over the glare that you get from the glossy head-unit screen. I wasn't able to find one exactly the right size so had to cut to size (which I got wrong slightly as you'll see in the photos). But it's good enough to try it out. If I decide I want to do this permanently I'll pull the head unit out and disassemble it so that I can get the screen protector across the entire surface of the screen so it sits perfectly behind the bezel. It's quite a big improvement. In the photos below I intentionally didn't clean the surface protector once it was on, so it has my fingerprints all over it. With direct lighting from behind onto the screen this was the most reflection I could get: And here's a couple of other photos (again with the same lighting conditions but photo taken slightly off-axis. I'm very happy with this so will try it out in driving conditions over the next few weeks and if I decide I want this permanently I'll pull the unit out and do it properly 🙂

This evening I also managed to make some progress on... CAD Project 1: SMG Expansion Tank bracket With the SMG expansion tank in hand I was able to measure up and design a copy of the bracket that the tank clips into. I measured up the tank: And was able to draw up the two profiles at the top and bottom of the clip, which results in a bracket looking like this: Again I've sent it off to Dad to have the first prototype printed. The second part of this is to 3D scan the strut tower and design up the other part of the bracket - if I get time tomorrow I'll get started on that.

Dad dropped off the the prototype this afternoon: And here it is fit to the sensor - I'm very happy with how well this fits for a first prototype. Very happy with how well it fits together and seems I even got the radiuses of the beveled edges right! It fits up nicely to the rail: Planned changes for the next iteration: - Enlarge mounting holes a bit to allow some wiggle room for the mounting bolts - Enlarge hole for sensor nose as I had to file it out slightly in this proto. - Reduce the thickness of the spacer plate. The piece is very solid and I think it will be better to reduce it back to approx 1.5mm so that the o-ring on the nose will sit a little bit lower in the air rail. Dad will also print the next prototype with CF reinforced PETG which should be a suitable end material with sufficient heat resistance for this application. Printing in the target material will allow us to check for any dimensional variance with a different material (proto 1 is just PLA). I think this should turn out well!

The CSL secondary air rail and SMG reservoir were waiting for me when I got home from work this afternoon. I took the opportunity of having 1 out of 2 children with the grandparents and made a start on... CAD Project 2: Adapter for Bosch *101 MAP sensor With the air rail and sensor now in hand I was able to check the fit and measure up: I was aware that you either have to trim the nozzle or stand off the sensor and that's fine, but I wasn't prepared for this: Now in practice this probably won't matter too much, but it's not as good a fit as I expected. Also as I had read elsewhere the o-ring will need to be replaced for a correctly fitting item. It's far too loose in this application. If people are buying this sensor and just chucking it on it's not going to be a good seal/fit, there's work to do to make this fit decently. So I decided to get on with it and draw up the stand-off plate + second mounting point. For reference here are a couple of close-ups of the mounting point on the rail. And here's some close-ups of the sensor: And this is the stand-off that we need to account for: It measures in slightly more than 1.5mm but I'm going to make the standoff 2.5mm thick to allow a little wiggle room. I knocked this up and have sent it off to Dad to have a first prototype printed for fitment checks: I'll report back on this when I have the prototype in hand. I expect there will be fine-tuning adjustments to make.