Harper

I've seen a few sets in e46s around the Auckland pickapart/zebra yards. Most of them pretty average condition but you can probably piece together one decent condition set.

Thanks Tom, have one ordered from ebay but I'll let you know if all else fails and I'll buy one off you

Called BMW a couple weeks ago trying to source a remote key for my M3 since I currently only have a manual one. The remote keys are no longer available apparently. Seems like you can by the diamond key blanks with the chip in it but it needs to be coded/cut. The coding I can do but does anyone know a place that can cut the key to match the manual one I have?

Bummer, yep have a few pending quotes from different forwarders. Will see what comes back, thanks.

Japan

What is the best way to get oversize heavy/bulky items shipped here internationally at the moment? Don't really care if it takes forever to arrive just looking for an option that isn't a few grand for a 60kg package.

Put the car back together a couple weeks ago with all new power steering parts. New high pressure lines, reservoir, fluid etc. Also pulled the second hand pump that I got off trademe for cheap apart and it was perfect inside. Got very lucky with that being for sale at exactly the same time as my car decided to fry one. Checked all the internals Also decided that while I had the pump apart I would modify the pressure regulator by stacking the old shim with the new one and reduce the power steering assistance by an additional 12.5% according to forums. Supposedly this would also help to keep temps slightly lower, whether or not that is true I have no idea. Reassembled pressure regulator with the stacked shims: Fully re-assembled pump, looked like brand new: I didn't take any photos of all the refreshed power steering lines but it is nice to have all those finally replaced. They had been weeping since I had bought the car and probably long before. Decided I would re-dye the parcel shelf as a saw a few others do on this forum since mine was that typical faded purple that all E46's seem to get. I totally forgot to take before photos but the after is infinitely better than before. Very happy. Everything back together: Also decided I would buy the m-texture door cards Tom has had for sale for a while now. I really didn't need them but I couldn't resist. I was prepared to get some really beat up manky door cards but they were in much better condition than I initially thought and couldn't believe how well they cleaned up. Considering they were $100 for the full set front and rear I'm stoked. Once I cleaned the alcantara part of the door card up they were in super good condition. Best $100 dollars I've spent in recent memory, even though these are pretty much just going to go into storage. The vinyl on them is pretty beat up so eventually I'll either have it repaired or swap the inserts into a cleaner set of vinyl cards. Couple close-up shots comparing the reproduction fabric from my bucket seats to OEM: Not sure what it is about the fabric but I just have an obsession for it. Has to be one of BMW's coolest interior options imo.

According to the vin this car is a non-sunroof version. It's just a lazy ad by a guy trying to flip it to make money. Sunroof delete would usually mean the sunroof has been replaced by a fixed panel to save weight.

That's not true at all. There are loads of sunroof delete panels which are significantly cheaper and easier than a full slicktop conversion.

Not very familiar with these so maybe it's common but damn that alcantara interior is super cool.

I've been itching for one of these recently... I way prefer the 4 door to the coupe

All those parts including bolts are available from schmiedmann for a reasonable price except #12 which is pretty expensive. Buying stuff like that hurts when it's available at a scrapyard for dirt cheap though. There's 4 or 5 at the auckland scrapyards that all have those bits.

Agreed, OE is the way to go where possible. Will be like a new car when done! Who's doing the upholstery work?

There's no doubt those things increase load on the power steering system, but it's also not an uncommon setup for a dual duty e46. If anything most run square 265 or larger instead of the 255s that I'm running. Not sure whether to attempt to upgrade the cooling loop or just put it back together as is with new parts and hope for the best. It might just have been that the last few turns at Taupo before the corner that it failed on were too tight/low speed but you'd think failures would be more common doing things like autocross if that were the case.

Pulled apart the whole power steering system last weekend to see what the damage was. The power steering reservoir had a bunch of plastic from the cap in the filter and when I pulled the pump out there was bits of plastic inside the pump, as well as pretty obvious scoring on a lot of the rotating surfaces. I think it's fair to say the pump is shot. I thought maybe the reservoir might not have been OEM hence why it melted but it is the OE ZF piece so it's very strange. Fortunately there was an S54 power steering pump on trade me for $125 which was pretty lucky so I grabbed that and it appears to be pretty much perfect inside. I was worried I would have to bite the bullet on a new PS pump from which was looking closer to $600. I did order a full set of new lines since mine were already weeping and it's something I've been meaning to do for a long time but put off since they aren't cheap. All in I was at just under 800 dollars for all the replacement high pressure lines, hoses and reservoir, not including the second hand pump. Ouch. As far as I can tell there is nothing that 'failed' that would have caused the fluid to boil. No blockages in the cooling line, none of the high pressure lines had collapsed or failed. Really seems like the fluid just got too hot which seems bizarre. There doesn't seem to be any obvious upgrade options for the cooler line which seems like the most obvious solution. It seems like the E9X cars have a beefed up cooler with more fins but they are a totally different design so fitting one to the existing would require some custom mounting. Doable but not very elegant. If anyone knows of something to upgrade there let me know. In other news unrelated to the M3, I picked up something pretty cool for my 'daily driver' alfa 156 2.5 V6. The 3.0L V6 from an alfa 166 is pretty much plug and play with the 156 since they are essentially the exact same engine just bored out and are a nice upgrade for them. They run off the same ECU and map, all that swaps over is the bigger injectors from the 3.0L and that's about it. A 3.0L 166 came up at a scrap yard so I thought I'd go check it out. That weekend I was pulling it lol. Unfortunately someone had already snagged the larger intake runners so I'll have to use the 2.5 ones which will choke the motor a bit but I'll just have to keep an eye out for a set. I hadn't really intended on taking the engine because it's meant to be a daily driver car but when I saw the window sticker on the car saying it had done 75,000km as of mid 2020 I figured I would just grab it. Couple hours later I now have an engine sitting in my garage. I can't believe how good the condition of the engine is. It looks brand new. The internals are perfect as well. The original honing on the bores looks untouched which is hard to get a photo of but the crosshatching is perfect. I will do a full gasket set, replace the rod bearings and a few other parts that are easy to get to since I have it all apart already and they aren't so expensive. But I'm pretty blown away with the condition since it cost me less than 300 dollars. Love it when a daily driver turns into another project... But it should be pretty cool when it's swapped over.

The only reason I thought it might have been the pump first is just since its pretty unheard of for these to boil the fluid when using ATF, it can happen when using hydraulic fluid. But yes the cooler line might be partially blocked or damaged or something. I will have a closer inspection once I pull everything apart. The fluid was maybe a year old, flushed it not too long ago. Fortunately I have a spare steering rack if this one is toast too, hopefully not though.

First track day in the M3. Car was 'almost' flawless. Weather Couldn't have been better despite the days either side looking pretty miserable. Still can't believe how much attention this car garners even surrounded by some pretty cool cars. Some CSL airbox noises: 20220604_131453.mp4 20220604_122738.mp4 20220604_092642.mp4 We were just talking about how the car had been faultless before the second to last session and we must have jinxed it. I was getting a bit more comfortable in the later sessions and pedaling the car a bit harder. On the last lap of the second to last session I lost power steering mid corner and did the cool down lap with a plume of smoke coming out from underneath the car. When I came into the pits I could see it was power steering fluid that was on the undertray and assumed the high pressure rack lines had failed since mine were weeping a little bit already and I would call it a day. When I went to top the reservoir up to make the drive home I noticed it actually looked like the fluid had come out from underneath the cap and through the overflow hole. It was pretty clear the fluid had boiled. When I undid the cap to see what the level was at, the dipstick had completely melted off... The power steering did return once the fluid had cooled down but it was clear on the drive home that the pump was toasted. It was whining under any kind of load and has probably had molten plastic pulled through it. I'm not really sure of the sequence of events, whether the pump failed and the bearing over heated which cooked the oil and the cap, or whether the oil boiled and caused the pump to fail. I have never heard of an E46 boiling power steering fluid while using ATF, I wasn't going sideways that much. Either way, looks like I'm gonna need to start buying some replacement parts..

Called them and they confirmed that a single tow hook on the front is sufficient thankfully

Only have one tow hook for the m3, anyone know if I need to have two for the track day? The tow hook I have can either screw in the front or rear, would be annoying if I get turned away for not having both at once.

Kayne Barrie

Been ages since I last updated this so I'll definitely miss a few things that I've done. Most notably, had a problem with the ohlins dampers on the front sticking slightly on rebound. I was worried they might be bent or something but after removing them and sending them off to get rebuilt at KiwiSuspensionSolutions it turned out to just be some toasted internal bushings. I did really want to play around with getting some lower spring rate springs for the front while it was all disassembled and put a CSL front sway on to get the bounce frequencies closer to a flat ride setup, unfortunately cost just got in the way this time so I'll add it to the list of wants. Also finally updated the MAP sensor to the Kassel Performance unit to replace the old GM MAP sensor that had the wrong scaling for the OEM CSL engine management. Pretty easy swap over. Finally got around to grabbing some facelift tail lights for a pretty reasonable price. Visually they were mint, unfortunately a couple of the LEDs in the left hand unit were dead though. Luckily the place I got them from was a wrecker in the states and has already shipped a replacement unit so I'm not too upset. Currently in the midst of gearing the car up for a track day and one of the items on that checklist was sorting the diff fluid which hasn't been changed since I owned the car. While I was there I decided to replace the side seals on the output flanges since the left side was weeping a small amount. It should have been a straight forward job but for whatever reason I was having a nightmare doing it. Problem after problem. All went back together eventually though. Went with castrol fluid available from FCP and buying the friction modifier separately. Most people say to add 4.6%, I figured better to have too little than too much so I started with just under 4%. Went for the mandatory 'test drive' out to an empty paddock to make sure the diff still locked up and sure enough. No diff noise and the lockup feels sharp too, significant savings over the OE fluid so I'm satisfied. One day I'll get Kayne to build me a proper clutched diff since the fluid LSD's in these have a limited lifespan. Couple more things to do this week before the track day, flush brake fluid, new wheel studs etc. Really looking forward to going out on track in this, although the weather is making it look like I might spend a good amount of the day sideways...

Can't they be converted by just putting an E90 M3 manual gearbox in and coding to match. Meaning it's pretty easily reversible no? I can't really see a problem with converting them personally.

Yeah unfortunately BMW fabrics are ungodly expensive. Would ASC be significantly cheaper? Pretty sure they would be indistinguishable from the OE stuff tbh.

Awesome, good choice. OEM all the way IMO. ASC is pretty responsive on Instagram if you haven't tried there yet. Stu's Trim and Sound in Wiri did all the work on my interior, would recommend them super highly. They always have some crazy high end classics in their workshop too so you know you're in good hands if you go there.

Have you decided what route you are going to go with the retrim? What fabric did you decide on?