Hi there,
New member here, Christchurch based, first ever BMW and a realization of a dream of sorts. Been on the lookout for a good honest straight-6 3-series for a while and ended up snapping up this tidy 2003 (2002/05 produced) 325ci, full leather M Sport. Have been in love with it since, but definitely needs a decent amount of love to get up to standard. Came with comprehensive service history up to about 4 years ago, but didn't get any records from the previous owner, who'd had it for 3-4 years and having now spent some time under the hood, I see that a lot of preventative maintenance is long overdue, which I will be trying to address in the coming weeks and months.
This is the first car that I've owned that I'm in the position to keep long term, and being an unapologetic perfectionist that I am, I really want to take as good a care of it as possible, with close to no expenses spared. I haven't done any major mechanical work on cars up to this point, but am generally good with tools and with the increasing amount of resources widely available on places such as this board and YouTube, I reckon the E46 is a perfect platform to learn, and I'm really keen to start going deeper down the rabbit hole.
So far I've replaced the valve cover gasket and both front headlights and indicators, with the old ones being absolutely molested in order to facilitate some cheap sh*t LED "angel eyes", which is a whole catastrophic story for another day.
I yesterday received my 3 big packages from FCP Euro with close to $2k worth of maintenance parts and am also waiting on a VANOS rebuild kit to arrive in order to get properly stuck in.
The immediate plan:
Cooling system refresh (expansion tank, auto trans thermostat, all radiator hoses)
Oil filter housing gasket
Replace auxiliary and clutch fan with electric fan (as seen on the manual models)
Replace all belts, pulleys, tensioners and water pump
Rebuild VANOS with new seals, bearing washers, gaskets and give it a good clean (was a bit shocked by the state of it whilst changing the valve cover gasket, but didn't want to take it apart without having the necessary parts on hand)
Further down the line:
Replace CCV/PCV system
DISA valve
Whatever other issues will inevitably crop up in the process
Lower priority objectives:
Get some kind of AUX solution sorted (current CD player is not AUX compatible but don't quite feel like abandoning the original look yet, waiting on a compatible head unit to become available, although patience is wearing thin with the current FM transmitter approach)
Re-glue the A, C and possibly B pillars
Doing up the paintwork - see how far a decent cut & polish would get me
Other aesthetic stuff like getting the banged up front bumper resprayed, black out grilles and replace faded hood emblem
Get a set of 18" wheels on to fill the fenders a little better, not a huge fan of the current style 68's
That's about it for now. Wasn't sure whether to post it here or in the Projects section, but seeing as I'm mostly going to be addressing maintenance items and not any serious mods or rebuilds, I thought I'd just say hello and have the thread moved later on if need be.
But anyway, happy to be part of the Bimmer fam, looking forward to getting stuck in and learning from folks on here! Will try not to repeat problems addressed in older topics, but would definitely welcome all tips, advice, warnings, cautions and criticisms
Cheers
