Neal

I'm amazed at what these are selling at. Got one for my e21 in the 80's and by today's standards it's a very poor as a torch. Was then as well. Still have one somewhere.

No need to be sorry in terms of every one owning an M3. Not many clubsports in NZ . I'd be happy to replace the 328 with a 330i at some stage.

Driven both , 330 is brisk , m3 is fast. 330 has good road holding and is forgiving on bumpy roads. M3 has superb road holding and cornering with larger brakes but you feel every cats eye or road joint. Spec wise the M3 s have more of the options boxes ticked. Don't go for smg as we want to keep the prices for those of us in the know of how good they are in the M3. Plenty of fud about the smg setup on the internet.

Had a good look when adding extra cables for processor and iPhone audio and video. Based on the above I might try spraying or replacing the ashtray and aircon relation panel and getting the main console covered. Probably similar price to replacing with new bits but should be more durable.

Has anyone recoated the rubber console trim on their e46's ? Mine needs a good tidy up and not sure if I should plasti coat it , wrap it or go leather covering like the BMW individual consoles ?

Car came with the japan eject box. The iphone 5 was too wide to fit in. Idea is to add charging , passive aerial , audio and video out from the phone. Used a rotary tool to trim the plastic so the phone would fit. More work to do.

Rear speaker replacement proved to be problematic. The 355cs are a similar depth to factory speakers. It initially looked like simple adaptors would mean the speakers would just bolted in. The best part of a day later I finally managed to mount them. Adaptor rings were offset mounted and trimmed down. This stopped the rear speaker magnet assemblies fouling on the inner basket. The bottom of the speaker has 2 mm clearance . The cone excursion comes within 3 mm of the covers. I'll see how these sound , otherwise will make up an alternative.

Progressed to rear parcel shelve. My original idea was to mount the crossovers in the tyre well . After taking the interior out I released that the rear parcel shelve had the potential to conceal the rear PPI 355cs crossovers. A quick check revelled there was just enough height to do so. 14 Gauge speaker wire has been added to ensure minimal cable loss. The sound damping was trimmed to allow the rear parcel tray to fit

My sony gear over the years has been a bit hit and miss. Brought a high end unit and had the tuner and face ribbon connector fail which was replaced under warranty. With the 24 bit system dacs you need to watch playing mp3s as the sampling rate is 96 kHz on many of them rather than 2 x sampling @ 88.2 I find on the wife's system the fore runner to the above (all sony xs ) wma and mp3 s don't sound as good as they should.

Met some great people in chile so welcome.

Last one to try is dynamo laundry liquid. 1 part dynamo to 3 parts warm water. Scrub in and leave for 5 mins. Wash off. Works well for removing brake dust and chain oil contamination on my motorcycle swing arm.

If your looking at the higher end of the audio spectrum then the pioneer deh-80prs is worth a look. Has slightly retro styling and if you go down the slippery slope of high end car audio at a later date it has every possible feature for running time alignment , active speakers etc.

Yep , put it down to experience ...... Like your first big off when learning to ride a push bike .....

I'm staying Clear of this thread , still in trouble with her indoors after spell checker change her name from Ang to Nag

Looking forward to you build. I'm a bit behind the times but are MANZ certing moly cages ?

The map here http://www.ispmap.co.nz/topmap.html gives an indication of the tier 1/2/3 providers. Global gateway is Telecom btw. You'll notice that trademe is bolted in as a tier 3 isp would be.

Cheers Tim I guess in terms of goals a man has to have enjoyable projects. For me I've been tinkering with audio since my first kit set amp at the age of 12. Until recently it's been easy to improve on BMW sound systems. With this build the focus is on improving clarity and dynamic headroom of the system. Also the reason of integrating a PC means I've got my music catalog on tap in lossless format .:

Next The rear speakers. Ran into some issues with mounting the mid basses in the rear factory locations. Speakers sit 5 mm too high. Will need to modify the baskets and make up some custom spacers. Looks like crossovers will be able to sit on parcel tray. A few mm of height to spare. To be continued .....

The rear seat card has a factory 2 inch mid range. I'm going to try this location for mounting the rear tweeters (Also using PPI 355Cs two ways in the rear) The tweeter can with a number of mounting cups. I've installed the version that tilts the tweeter up slightly. Old and new

Running 14 Gauge cable to all speakers. Want to leave the old cable intact so the car can be returned to factory if need be. Getting door connectors to accept new speaker wire is a bit of a misson. Took a while to remove trim panels , glovebox , side trims etc. The connector on the car interior comes apart and the door speaker connector can be removed. This allows room for speaker wire to be added. Audio is contained within the left hand rectangle Speaker wire through first connector Door side connector is not as straight forward. However , the connector can be taken apart and carefully trimmed to remove the audio section. Then a case of threading it all together. Old fashion washing line is great to use as a pilot wire to pull the speaker wire through the connectors and door garter. Door card ready to re-attach.

Mid Bass & Crossover install Used a combination of the mid bass mounting ring and a e46 to 5 1/4 adaptor ring PPI crossovers are huge ! just managed to fit the cross over in with 3mm to spare on depth. Used hot glue to mount which can be removed later if needed Added wiring and door card finished

Managed to get time again this week to work on the car. Started on the front door builds. Going 2 way passive rather than the 3 way active factory system. While this sound like a downgrade the quality of the two way PPi 355CS have greater clarity and headroom. These speakers will have 100 rms on tap from the amp with a low pass filter of 80 hz. I'm trying the factory door locations this time for tweeter rather than my usual dash / pillar location. Factory doors & Speakers Tweeter install

Coffee in one hand while doing lipstick with the other.

I'd be inclined to use a combo of a bit of Dremel trimming / sanding the CF weave and then build up a few layers resin with light sanding in between. You've got nothing to loose other than time and a small pot of resin. Repair kits are roughly $30 used on eday. If it doesn't work out then replace with new. Worked well on a couple of my Ducati CF parts that were looking untidy . Check YouTube cf bike frame repairs for the jist of how to repair.