Karter16

a boy-racer'd silver E90 on Quay St this evening. The burble and pop tune was so over the top that the car sounded like a truck jake braking every time he lifted off the gas 🤦‍♂️ 

A lovely silver E39 on Glenfield Road this evening. Came up behind it and was admiring it as I drove past. The driver then caught up with me to complement my car. Such beautiful cars!

Good stuff! Glad it’s going to someone on here!!

*Disclaimer* I've read the stickies in both this sub-forum and the "For Sale" sub-forum and I think that this is where I am supposed to/allowed to post this. The sticky in this sub says you're allowed to post trademe listings you own in the "For Sale" section, but then a reply from a mod to the sticky in the "For Sale" section says if you want to sell as an auction then you need to use Trademe... So... I think this is the right place. Apologies to the mods if I've interpreted the rules incorrectly.

I have for sale on Trademe the old steering wheel out of my 2005 E46 M3. I have set it to $1 reserve as a) can't work out a good way to realistically price in NZ and b) would like it to get out of my house and to someone who has a use for it. Details and link below:

This wheel is out of a 2005 E46 M3 and comes with wheel, upper trim with multi-function buttons, lower trim, SMG paddles, wiring, etc. It does NOT come with airbag.

This wheel is in generally poor condition as can be seen in the photos. However the upper trim with buttons is in excellent condition, with no scratches or marks that I can see. It therefore probably makes a great candidate wheel for someone who wants to get it re-wrapped and the lower trim repainted. Note also that the paint is bubbling on the back of the SMG paddles where your fingers rest.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/car-parts-accessories/bmw/steering/listing/4272553508

2 hours ago, Cement said:

We're almost there folks ... second cert inspection done and the glass is going back in today. Have re-sanded and polished the front and back where the new window moldings will go also. Hopefully tonight will complete the sanding polishing of the rest of the roof then can put the rest of it back together 👍

Can’t wait to see the end result!! Such a cool project

On 7/22/2023 at 1:38 AM, Vass said:

As an added bonus, the factory strut bar has also gone off for a wander somewhere, because weight reduction.

Front strut brace was added from March 2002 production onwards. Given this is an '02 it's possible it didn't come with one from the factory.

Sorry didn’t mean that to come across as short - was making dinner and looking after little one at the same time and just read it back to myself!!

Looking at your thread on the electronics forum - voltage either side of the resistor won’t tell you anything as LEDs have a fixed voltage drop (approx 1.8v in this case), voltage drop across the resistors will therefore be fixed. V=IR therefore means, in this case, that with fixed voltage drop across resistors and varying resistance, the current will vary through each LED, which in turn will influence brightness (although not enough to be able to tell it would seem) so 🤷‍♂️

17 hours ago, Cement said:

Will just research why they have different resistor values for each LED ... I'm sure there is a good reason for it. 

I wonder if it’s something to do with the button icons having different surface areas that illuminate, and they have adjusted the brightness of each LED so the brightness of each button appears to match?

Great stuff!!! Very cool 😎 

30 minutes ago, Cement said:

Love to see the DIY solutions !! Great concept you put together there @Karter16 👍 I got my creation complete today, just need to buy some dowel in case I need to get more travel out of mine after the gooping starts.

Oh yours is next level! You could just about slap a badge on that and sell it!

Might be worth having a look at https://github.com/Wnthr/arduino-alpine-remote/blob/master/src/AlpineRemote.cpp which might be helpful in that it references the hex codes to send for various commands. Might be an easier place to start than trying to capture the IR signals and replay them. I note that the readme.md on that project indicates that it's a variation on the standard NEC IR protocol.

Cool project!

4 hours ago, Cement said:

Top priority now is making the Mad Max caulking gun

Yeah that's what Dad and I did a few years ago when we were applying 3M 7333 epoxy to the RACP reinforcement plates - ours looked like the below. It worked great, and was better than spending hundreds of dollars on something we needed to use once.

looks like the valueline rear bumper part number 51128222609 to me.

On 6/11/2023 at 9:29 PM, bradgalbraith said:

Depending on what you want to do, I can help out with the trims. I’ve recently repaired and recoloured mine on my E46 M3. I run the Auckland Central Trimfix franchise  

Hey thanks for that - good to have your details as I do have a couple of other pieces of the interior that I'd like to get touched up, so will reach out to you when I'm ready for that 👍

On 6/10/2023 at 5:55 PM, Harper said:

They're also really not very expensive just to buy new from memory. That's what I did. and then painted the door handles with GM8573, it's almost a perfect match for the OEM colour. 

Picture below of my painted door trims next to a brand new dash piece from BMW.

Yeah I'm thinking that I'll probably go down this route. The current silver trim I have is absolutely flawless, so thinking that I'll sell it on to someone who wants the silver and then replace with a new set of Titan Shadow rather than painting over trim that's in mint condition. I don't have to do the door handles as a previous owner had them wrapped in leather/pleather and it's actually a pretty decent job and wears well, so will probably leave as is.

Well another weekend day, another nap time, another short window to get some stuff done on the car.

The plan for the day was replacing the steering wheel with the new OE item that I purchased last year, but while I waited after disconnecting the battery to be sure to be sure that the airbags were clear to work with I decided that today was finally replacing the gas struts on the boot so that the car no longer sounds like a dying goat when you open the boot lid.

The old one

The new one - not genuine because I couldn't justify $50 more each to get the "E46 M3" stamp on the genuine one, given these are probably going to start groaning again after a couple of years anyway.

Then it was on to swapping out the wheel. Pressing in on the clock springs to release the airbag is the trickiest part of the exercise, but even that was pretty straightforward as I had the new wheel to refer to which meant I was able to see exactly what it was I was trying to press on, and how much force was needed to depress the spring. I had the old one out in fairly short order.

And the new one was even easier to install. Pushing the airbag back into place at the end is extremely satisfying.

Am planning on getting the dash and gear surround trim in Titan Shadow at some point so that it all matches/looks original.

Looking great! This is a very cool project and certainly no mean feat! I am very much enjoying following this!

Keep up the great work!

9 hours ago, leonf said:

oh, my beating heart!!!   They are spectacular.     And if they are the seats recently on TradeMe, then NOT a cheap addition to the car.  One wonders why and how a set of these became separated from the csl they came in??   But great score for you, for sure!

Thanks! yeah they really are gorgeous! And yes, they were not cheap, but provided I look after them they should hold their value pretty well in comparison to the other options I was considering.

Yeah I'd love to know the story of why they were removed from their original car. I don't know why in this case but I do know in general it was not uncommonly done in the UK where the car was being used on the track and a bucket seat that supported use of a harness was required. (I mean if that was me I would have still kept the original seats rather than sold them), but I guess back then you could buy replacements from BMW etc. and maybe it wasn't foreseen that they'd become quite so popular/unobtainable 🤷‍♂️

Well with a wife recovering from a major surgery and two small children I haven't had a lot of time to get down to the car, but I did manage to grab a couple of hours today while the smaller of the tiny humans napped.

The sports seats were out in no time (surprisingly easier to manhandle out than various forum posts had led me to believe, they're not THAT heavy and unwieldy), and sadly plainly showing how long it is since I properly cleaned the interior 🙈

This finally gave me the opportunity to get the wet vac out and finally clean up the coffee that had presumably been spilt by a previous owner of the car. It looks like it must have spilt on the passenger seat and dripped through to the carpet. (underside of the seat did not show signs of coffee however so 🤷‍♂️). I did a vacuum and wet vac on the bits that needed it. Just did a fairly quick clean, as still intend to pull everything out and do a deep clean at some point in the future (I was running on limited time today).

That's better!

Then it was time to get the bucket seats into the car. Being significantly lighter this was fairly easy, I used towels etc. round the door to make sure I didn't scratch the seats, but it wasn't really needed as it was easy to fit them through the door and into place.

After connecting the wiring it was on to getting the seat placed properly and torqued down. I followed the advice that M3_Power had given me to make sure you keep sliding the seat back and forwards on the sliders as you tighten it down, to make sure its sliding freely and locking into place correctly with all 4 locking pins when you select a position. That was all pretty straightforward and in short order I had the passenger seat installed.

Then it was on to the driver's side, and again just a case of repeating the process. More straightforward and quicker to do than I was expecting, and THEY LOOK AWESOME!

I haven't had a chance to take the car for a drive yet, but will try to take it for a drive tomorrow. These photos also highlight that I really need to get the new steering wheel installed, as the old one is looking pretty bad now. Might try to get that done tomorrow as well, will see how I go.

In terms of the seats I'm super happy with them, they're exactly what I was wanting and it's so satisfying having bucket seats that are genuine, period correct, look awesome, and are in amazing condition. They were of course $$$, so I wasn't completely sure I wouldn't experience some form of buyer's regret, but I have not so far 😂

Very happy 😍

Well it's an exciting week in the life of this project.

Around 18 months ago I decided that I wanted to take a bit of a deviation from keeping the car stock, and look into options around bucket seats. Although I want to ensure that I can always revert the car exactly to stock, I felt that bucket seats would provide a significant improvement to the driving experience of the car. I find I move around a fair bit in the standard sports seats, so wanted something that would hold me better.

I looked into many options for seats, and fairly quickly zeroed in on the Cobra Nogaros. I was keen though to keep the look of the seats as in keeping and period correct as possible so I reached out early last year to Cobra to enquire about custom upholstery with Alcantara and laser fabric to replicate the genuine CSL seats. I was pretty excited to hear that they were working on the Munich Edition Nogaros (which were released later that year). 

Unfortunately the other key requirement I had is that I didn't want to have to go through the process of getting a cert. I spent quite a bit of time trying to work out whether there was a path to that using OE sliders, Brey-Krauss (or similar) mounts and Cobra Nogaros. Slid all the way forward you get very close to a 300mm gap, but the other key requirement that the sliding mechanism be accessible to the rear passenger was going to be hard to achieve (and pretty much impossible without going down the cert path).

As a result, when the Munich Edition Nogaros were released I ultimately didn't pull the trigger (although I still think they're a cool option)

There was of course one other possible option which met all of my exacting requirements...

I'm now the proud owner of a pair of genuine CSL seats 😍

These particular seats came out of a low mileage car and have sat in storage for the last 10 years, so as a result are in amazing condition considering they are 20 years old.

I only picked them up last night, and probably won't have time until the weekend to get them into the car, but I'll certainly be updating here when I do!

Relocation frame for the climate control arrived today - glad I didn’t pay for express shipping as it came super quick anyway.

brand new - manufactured in 2007. Not sure if this is old stock, or they haven’t been manufactured since, but anyway, I now have one!

1 hour ago, thorburn said:

Weitz has just listed one 

Mmm looking at the photos I’m not sure I’d want the rear end from that one 😛

4 hours ago, Cement said:

Just chucking my 2c into this one ... really want(ed) the modern Blaupunkt https://blaupunkt.com/product/frankfurt-rcm-82-dab/ as I only have the single DIN space. It's just so expensive though I could not justify it ultimately 😕 I did read a thread some place else that described modern headunits as looking like a 'robots dildo' which was a good lol

Anyhooo I went with the Alpine mechless UTE-73EBT as the least terrible looking option. Have the centre mount kit on the way from BMW.

Another option that is interesting is the JVC which is single DIN and has a screen for reverse camera, which is fairly unique. https://nz.jvc.com/car/audio_receivers/kd_x560bt/

Looking forward to seeing the finished result, jealous getting the car play / android auto compatibility !!

That Blaupunkt unit is gorgeous! 

Yeah it's a challenge to find something that fits with the car. the likes of the Dynavin and the Avin are closeish, but the buttons aren't quite right on the Dynavin, and the Avin sounds like a reliability nightmare - which was why I ultimately decided to go for something that I know will be out of place, but will at least work properly.

I'll post up here for sure to document the install and show the end result. The relocation unit probably won't be here for another 6 weeks or so, so will be a while before I get it all setup I imagine.

1 hour ago, m325i said:

Which head unit did you go for? 

Out of interest what do you use car play for? Maps seems like the obvious (rarely use that), otherwise why not just a bluetooth connection? 

I haven't bought it yet but am planning to get the Pioneer DMHZF9350BT. It's single DIN with adjustable float - I've seen some photos of installation in an E46 and it looks to be acceptable. Obviously a floating touchscreen is going to look a bit out of place in the E46 cabin, but the alternatives that look fairly OE just don't meet my bar for user experience/reliability. So decided that I would suck it up and get something clearly not OE that works properly.

In terms of CarPlay - it's just having something I can interact with safely while driving. I use maps all the time (to keep me updated on fastest route, not to know where to go) and I prefer having music/call/etc controls I can touch. I've got a bluetooth interface at the moment, but it's not ideal for me, hence deciding to go this route.