Karter16

Pretty sure it's the engine number. (same number that's stamped on the block (usually near one of the mounts I think)). I'm guessing it's so that you can easily locate the engine number, and also ensure that your engine is matched to your chassis?

One of these is not like the other...

Spending nearly 2 hours waiting for Windows 10 to update to the Fall Creators Update...

now that would be a cool custom build!

One of the reasons I'm going to so much effort to keep mine stock

Haha - we got pretty close to making the same mistake The welded spacers on the front brace look nice - good work!

Thanks - yeah I've been keeping an eye on eBay, trademe, etc. thought I'd check in here as well in case anyone local has anything. Cheers! Matt

you could try: https://learn-german-easily.com Sorry - couldn't resist. The advice above is probably much more helpful! Good luck - hope you get it sorted!

I'll post up photos here when I change it :-)

Something a bit simpler - this arrived in the mail today. Since my car didn't come with it's manual and service book, etc. As part of my restoration efforts I've purchased new ones to go with it. This original item is in awesome condition in spite of being second hand. Very pleased with it. I've put 1200km on the car since the rod bearings were done. Will be doing about another 800km and will do an oil and filter change. Will then be on to regular OCIs.

Hi, Probably a long shot so many years later, but interested in any E46 M3 sales brochures & other original printed information for circa 2005 E46 M3 coupe (including SMG). Cheers, Karter16

Wow! Looking awesome Nathan!! Great work and loving how clean everything is So glad you've got a build journal now and I can follow along!!! Keep up the great work!!

Well I've gone through the thread and changed all the images across to Flickr - here's hoping Flickr don't change their TOU any time soon!!!

Yeah spot on - apparently photobucket are now charging some obscene amount to host pictures, which I'm obviously not going to pay. So I now have to transfer to another host...

Update #20 So the car went back in again yesterday - Alignment on the rear closer to spec, so will let the car settle over the next couple of thousand k and do another alignment then. The car also now has it's WOF We've got to put a couple of the plastic undertray components back on, and replace the temporary zip ties on the steering boots with proper clamps, and then this round of work on the car is officially complete. Have done about 100km on the car in the last couple of days - all in Auckland traffic but good to be back in the car and running in the bearings. So stoked with how everything has gone, and now that the major maintenance work is done I can start thinking about what comes next

Yeah I've read that, and it's interesting to hear that that's always been your experience as well. It certainly makes sense given these cars were designed as left hand drive cars. It does seem a bit odd though that the rear-right camber can't be brought into "factory" spec though right? It's a bit hard of course in that I don't know if the car was out of spec before we started. In hind-sight it would have been good to get that checked before we started. At this point I'm thinking its just worth letting everything settle for a bit and then check again. Would be interested in your thoughts :-) Cheers, Matt

Update #19 So the car went in for it's WOF last Monday. Failed on the handbrake, but everything else was Alignment went fine, they noted that the rear left was sitting slightly higher than the rear right, and as a result they couldn't quite get the camber on the rear-right within spec (it's only out by a very small amount). They also did the driver's airbag recall at the same time. After the wheel alignment, as I expected the dash lights all went away. The codes I was seeing were all related to the steering angle sensor not being within calibration. Once the alignment was sorted the dash lights cleared themselves, and scanning the car shows that the codes are now historical. Today we sorted the handbrake adjustment and checked the rear to make sure there was nothing obvious. It's all looking as it should, so the plan is to drive the car for a while and let it settle in, and see if the rear comes back into adjustable range or not. If not then it'll be a bit of work to measure everything up and work out what's causing the issue. Haven't done many miles in the car given it doesn't have a WOF, but what I have done has been The improvements from the new bushes and shocks, etc. have been much more noticeable than I was expecting. I wasn't anticipating such an obvious improvement. Driving over rough bits in roads is much quieter and less of a "crash" than it was before, and because of that interior rattles and squeaks are correspondingly much less. I haven't had a chance to drive the car "spiritedly" and won't be while the rod bearings are running in, but I'm looking forward to when I do, to see if I can feel the difference then as well. The car's going in this week for the WOF re-check and once that's done I'll put some "run in" miles on it. Planning to do another oil change at about 1800km, just to clear out any dirt that might have entered the engine when we had the oil pan off. Anyway - nice to get a bit of a feel of what the car was like when it was new :-)

Thank you! very helpful information - much appreciated! :-)

That's a good question - I am actually going just for stock specs at this point. Mostly because I haven't really done any research into it. I am expecting that the alignment will need redoing in a couple of thousand km after everything's fully settled, so can look at making changes then. If you've got any recommendations or resources on the topic I'd be very interested to hear/see them :-)

Update #18 Just a quick update. We got the car back on the ground last Saturday, and on Sunday we fired it up and did a systems check. The car started first turn of the key and was running fine. Power steering needed the air flushed out of the lines which we did, but apart from that everything was looking good. Got a couple of codes on the first run to do with throttle body position sensors, etc. but haven't had a return of anything like that. We did a short test drive (after warming the engine up) and everything seemed good. Car feels good, we got the alignment good enough to mean we can drive the car (slowly) to the shop for its suspension alignment, and everything seems to be working fine. Checked the car for codes after the first run and all seems fine. We're getting a couple of dash lights appearing under braking and reading the codes it appears that it's probably to do with the fact that the wheel alignment is off and the steering wheel/rack isn't currently centred when travelling in a straight line, so expecting that steering/acceleration sensors are getting conflicting readings - expecting this to stop being an issue after the wheel alignment. If it's still an issue we'll investigate further. Car's off for it's alignment on Monday - in the mean time here's a pic of it parked outside :-)

Thanks guys!! it's been awesome to get stuck in and get a whole heap done, and it's great to be able to share the process here. Great to have a record as well of everything we've done!!

Update #17 We're back on the ground!!! Been a big day today - and we ended with the car back on the ground :parrot: This morning we started out by swapping the brake discs on the front, as Rajvosa quite correctly pointed out that they were back to front :facepalm: Also while I remember, Dad made up a custom bodge-tool to do the steering tie-rods. The interior size of the box-section is exactly the right size to do up the tie-rods, and so with an old socket welded on the other end we were good to go! Then we were on to the drive shaft. We'd prepped it last week but were missing the gasket between the driveshaft and the rear diff. With that procured during the week from Continental BMW, we were good to put the driveshaft back in the car. Greased and ready to go: The offending gasket in place: With some fiddling around, we soon had the driveshaft in place: CSB in place: We torqued up the driveshaft, and reattached the heat shield over the drive shaft, then it was on to reassembling the exhaust. The exhaust system is a bit shiny-er than when it was last photographed, here's a couple of photos before we put it together: There was a fair bit of fiddling to get the exhaust system all back in the right place and located correctly, but we got there, and it's looking good! While we were there we also replaced these trim pieces as one of them was badly damaged, and replacements were cheap: Then it was on with the plastic under-tray components and the rear brace (which I didn't get photos of) and then the (clean) wheels were back on... A couple of hours later (really didn't want to drop it after all the work we've done on it) and it was back on the ground!!! We hooked up the battery, did a final check of everything and fired it up. Given we'd run the starter last week, the fuel lines had charged, etc. and the engine started on the first key-turn. All sounding good (no clanking noises - win) and no dash lights. We let the engine run for a few minutes and switched it off. We were going to give it a short test drive, but night had fallen and we decided that it would be best to do a first test run in daylight - so we have that to look forward to tomorrow. It's been 5 months and 3 days since the car went up on the jacks. With the discovery of the RACP issues, plus the decision to do the rod bearings at the same time, it's turned out to be a larger project than anticipated, but it's been enormous fun, and it's very satisfying to have the car back on the ground, and running :thumbsup2: It's been a huge exercise, and I'm very much indebted to my Dad for the massive amount of time and effort that he's put into this project. It's great to know that the car's in good shape now and that the major maintenance items are all taken care of. Tomorrow we'll move the car out of the garage, give it a bit of a wash and take it for a short test drive. Then next week it'll be off to BMW for a full wheel alignment, a WOF and the driver's airbag recall. I'll also be spending some time helping Dad clean the garage so he and mum can finally park their cars indoors again!!! :hattip:

Update #16 We're closing in on the finish! Next weekend we'll hopefully be putting the car back on the ground :-) Today wasn't entirely without trouble however, but I'll get to that soon enough. Dad did a heap of stuff during the week :hattip:: Rear brake discs, calipers and pads on. Emergency brake reinstalled. The rest of the engine bay stuff back together. Front under-tray cleaned up. Finished cleaning up the exhaust. Today we started off with reassembling the drive shaft. We started by attaching the new CSB, and then bolted the two halves of the drive shaft together. Then we bolted the flex disc (guibo) in place. (Note that the arrows on the flex disc need to point to the mounting on the drive shaft) All torqued up We then discovered that we had missed ordering a new gasket to go between the driveshaft and the input flange on the diff. Unfortunately the local dealer didn't have any in stock, so one is on order from BMW NZ and I'll pick it up on Monday. I took the opportunity at this point to take a few more photos underneath the car before we put the reinforcement plate back on... Steering guibo and new engine mount: Steering rack and boots (with temporary "clamps" until the wheel alignment is done): Front control arm: Front left hub assembly: Front left strut: Fuel filter: Rear brakes: Next up was reinstalling the front reinforcement plate. Here it is, ready to go on (a bit shiny-er than when we took it off): And here it is installed and torqued up: We then moved on to bleeding the brakes. Takes a little while, but all went smoothly, and now they're all ready to go. We also adjusted the emergency brake. After lunch we got stuck into cleaning the wheels up. As was to be expected there was a lot of brake dust and tar to clean up. There was also a lot of sticky from balancing weights to clean up (always fun :raspberry:). Several rounds of wheel cleaner got most of the brake dust off. Then we used desolv-it to soften the sticky from the weights so that we could clean it off, then kerosene to take the tar spots off. The wheels cleaned up pretty well, the gunmetal grey colour looks great when it's cleaned up. What's not great is that at some point in the car's past the rear tyres appear to have been changed by someone who didn't know how to change tyres on mag wheels properly. Teeth marks gouged into the wheel, and a giant scrape where it appears the teeth let go and scraped the inner circumference of the wheel :shifty: That and the fact that someone has touched up the outer rim of the visible face of the wheel with silver paint, and didn't mask properly, so there's sliver paint on the gunmetal parts of the wheel have left me less than impressed with said person's work and attention to detail :facepalm: Fortunately the wheels are in pretty okay condition overall, at some point I'll have them properly reconditioned, but cosmetic stuff is still of secondary importance at this point. Here's a couple of shots of the wheels in the middle of the cleaning process. You can see the gouge marks in this photo... :shifty: While I carried on with the wheels Dad cleaned up the boot and reinstalled the carpet, etc. It looks like someone had spilled something on the left hand side of the boot as evidenced in this photo: So Dad cleaned that up, as well as thoroughly cleaning the battery compartment, brackets, etc. Posed photo of Dad cleaning: And here's everything back in place (unfortunately I didn't get any photos of the compartments all cleaned up - I was busy cleaning wheels still!!!): By the time it got too dark to see, I'd got the two rear wheels pretty much done, but I still need to do the kerosene step on the two fronts, which I'll do next weekend. Next weekend should be the last day of assembly on the car, we're hoping to get the drive shaft, heat shielding, exhaust, brace & faring all back in, and a rudimentary wheel alignment done with the car on blocks, before we lower it to the ground, torque up a last couple of things and fire it up! Getting pretty close to the end now! I'll finish with a pic of the engine bay - everything back together!

Great stuff! Welcome - looking forward to following this project!!

I'm still having some trouble. For some reason enabling notifications in the notification list when a member replies to a post I've made is "Disabled by the Administrator", and is forced to be an email. I'm happy to receive the email as well, but would be great to be able to get all notifications in the notification list.