Karter16's E46 M3 Journal

[Neal 565]

On 4/4/2025 at 8:18 PM, Karter16 said:

Torrential rain yesterday and today so I can't do any work on my retaining wall at home. Got round to a little job I've been wanting to do for a while. The trim around the SMG shifter boot makes an annoying plastic on plastic creak sometimes when shifting, which isn't particularly pleasant from a driving experience point of view.

Today I took the trim apart and used some tesa tape to insulate the clips and mating surfaces. I also gave everything a good clean while I had it apart. Put it back together and the squeaks are completely gone (unless I press very hard directly on the plastic trim), shifting is now a satisfying mechanical click, rather than the annoying creaking sound it could be before.

Cool fix to sort rattles. Also good on door card clip mounts 😀

[Karter16 444]

I realised I never really updated on the bracket for the SMG reservoir. Since I installed the CSL airbox I've been running a prototype version of the bracket. Given it's a rainy Thursday here I thought since I'd proved the concept that I'd design up a more final version of the bracket.

This is still a development version and you'll note there's a few things that need to be tidied up, but didn't want to go to too much effort until I've confirmed fitment of this latest version.

I started by using my previous prototype to confirm the location of the bracket itself and mark where I wanted it with some blue masking tape. I then scanned the strut tower and loaded the (fairly untidy) mesh into Fusion to help with placing reference planes, etc.

Because the tower is an irregular shape the bracket needs to account for this:

Note that the final unit will have rubber stand offs on the back to help it sit well on the tower and not rub.

The mounting point where it's attached to the stud on the strut tower also has a raised, angled boss as the stud is not perpendicular to the strut and this needs to be accounted for so that the nut clamps the mounting point properly.

I'll get this version printed up and do another round of test fitting and any final adjustments before I tidy up the rough edges. Given my goal of not wanting to drill holes in my strut tower I think that this should be a pretty tidy end result.

 

[Karter16 444]

Sill waiting for the ground to dry out a little bit before I progress the retaining wall so spent a couple of hours this afternoon taking the rear sway bar brackets and v brace off and cleaning them up. When Dad and I did the underbody refresh in 2017 we used an enamel black paint for most of the pieces, and 8 years on they still look amazing - wipe the road dust off and they look brand new still. There were a couple of pieces (the sway bar brackets and v brace) which we painted with exactly the same stuff, only silver instead of black. Unfortunately the silver kind of sucks in comparison to the black - presumably whatever they put in it to make it silver makes it more susceptible to surface rusting.

So anyway - I took them off, stripped the enamel with acetone and then cleaned up the surfaces with some fine sandpaper before cleaning again with acetone and then undercoating.

The pictures are a bit average because it's pretty late in the day here, but I'm sure you've all seen undercoated things before:

Had something interesting happen when I was spraying the undercoat on. It went on beautifully and then I noticed along some of the edges that it looked like it was bubbling. *Cue confusion*. The surface was prepped well and was very clean so I wasn't sure what was going on - I've used this undercoat a bunch of times and it's always been lovely.

Closer inspection revealed it was moisture beading on top of the paint. Actual paint surface is fine and the moisture evaporated again. I'm guessing that it must be close to dew point here right now and the propellant from the spray paint has cooled the surface of the metal just enough at the edges for moisture to condense.

Anyway - the moisture evaporated after some minutes and the paint surface seems good. I'll double check it when it's set to make sure it has good adhesion.
 

[Karter16 444]

Another rainy day here so retaining wall is again on hold. I took the opportunity this morning to finally redo the matte screen overlay on the Xtrons head unit. I got the Xtrons about 16 months ago and have had a much better experience with it than I was expecting. I'm well decided that I'll be keeping it. one of the downsides of it, and many head units is the glossy screen. About a year ago I purchased a matte screen overlay to see if I liked it better. I did my best to line it up nicely but because I had to cut it to size the edges were visible and annoying to me. I've long intended to take the head unit out and disassemble it so that I could replace the overlay over the entire LCD screen so that the edges would be hidden by the bezel if that makes sense. Today was that day.

Head unit out:


Rear case off:


Disconnect the two big ribbon cables between the chassis and the display and remove the 4x screws holding the display shield on.



Then the display and shield pop out of the bezel:


The screen with the old matte overlay on it:


Old matte overlay removed:


I didn't get any photos of applying the new overlay as both my wife and I were employed in getting it on and keeping the screen completely free of dust. We succeeded and the overlay went down perfectly:


The new overlay with the protection layer removed:


Then it was just a case of reinstalling back into the bezel:


And reconnecting the ribbon cables and putting it all back together:


I'm super happy with how this has turned out - we got the overlay to go down perfectly and it looks fantastic:





While I had the unit out I took the opportunity to plug in the USB extension and install the latest firmware to address the issue with a greater than expected difference between volume levels 4 and 5. This was straightforward and did indeed fix the issue.







Now that it's reinstalled I'll give the screen and the head unit a clean to get the fingerprints from install off.

Good, quick rainy day project 🙂

[Karter16 444]

Today I also finished up the repainting of the v brace and rear sway bar brackets project. I top coated them a week and a half ago and they've been resting while the enamel fully cured. Today I reinstalled them along with new hardware to match.

 

 

[Karter16 444]

Well 2 days of driving an excavator, 4 months of weekends, 300m of rebar, 14 tonnes of concrete, 232 CMU blocks, and a lot of manual labour my retaining wall is complete - finished backfilling it today. Starting to get a bit wet here for the winter so great timing.

Bit of a general update on the car.

• The latest version of the SMG reservoir bracket is in use, I've got some more tweaks to make to it so will do that and print the latest iteration.
• The MAP sensor adapter in CF-PETG shows some evidence of softening. It seems, under the clamping force of the bolts, it's not quite up to the ~100 degree C temperature that the rail hits. Plan is to get this printed in GF-Nylon which should be able to handle beyond 150 degree C temps.
• I'm doing some preliminary work on the reinstallation of the trunk interior with the RACP brace in place. Working through a few things to get to a lightweight, high-quality solution that meets my need to make it look as OE as possible.
• The version of the CSL tune I've been running the last while seems super stable. Even as it's got colder here it's remained super smooth. Seems I've got the warm-up maps pretty much spot on. I still want to do some more fine-tuning, and in particular am keen to try out running the fuel tuning process with the MAP sensor integrator turned off, but it's not top of the priority list given what I'm currently running is so good.
• Planning to get the headliner out and off to the pros to redo with the BM-134 fabric that I have stashed. I've also got brand new A/B/C pillars to go in once it's reinstalled.
• Intend to make more progress with the 0401 disassembly as well - especially as the days get shorter and the weather gets worse.

Lots of little bits and pieces on the go. 

I've also been enjoying driving the car. The refreshed diff bushes have eliminated any remaining clunk in the drivetrain. Combined with the smoothness of the CSL tune it makes for lots of enjoyable downshifts with no need for the manual throttle modulating that I'd previously gotten used to to minimize the thunk. Secondly the RACP brace has, in addition to providing top-side support to the RACP, made an enormous difference to the torsional rigidity of the rear of the car. It's a very significant improvement and I'm getting itchy to give the front of the car similar treatment 😛