Karter16's E46 M3 Journal

[Karter16 415]

On 6/11/2023 at 9:29 PM, bradgalbraith said:

Depending on what you want to do, I can help out with the trims. I’ve recently repaired and recoloured mine on my E46 M3. I run the Auckland Central Trimfix franchise  

Hey thanks for that - good to have your details as I do have a couple of other pieces of the interior that I'd like to get touched up, so will reach out to you when I'm ready for that 👍

[Karter16 415]

Well doesn't time fly when you have children and a busy job!

Since my last post I've spend a lot of time with children in hospital and busy with a major go-live at work. I have however managed to drive the car a number of times and enjoy the CSL seats. They make such a difference to the driving experience, you feel so much more connected to the road, held in place, and also means a noticeably quieter interior as they don't move or squeak at all.

I've also been working on furthering the refresh of the interior.

To this end I dropped by M3_Power's the other day and picked up this:

 

It's a slippery slope.... The quality of the console is amazing, and I was surprised how lightweight it is (which I shouldn't have been given its carbon fibre). Replacing the standard console with this one gives me multiple benefits. Firstly of course it's awesome, secondly it will be nice to not have my elbow bumping into it, thirdly it gives me the opportunity to properly pull the standard one apart and rebuild it without the squeaks (I purchased a number of replacement parts for it some time ago, so will be able to get to work on it once I've swapped it out).

I have an order coming for the other bits and pieces I need for the console-swap (mounting bracket, handbrake boot, etc.), so actually swapping it in will probably be a Christmas holidays job.

The other thing I picked up from M3_Power was this:

The MSport interior (G7AT) uses the same Laser cloth centres as the CSL seats, and the bolsters are Alcantara. The Alcantara is very close in colour to the Amaretta that comes on the CSL seats, it's a couple of shades different, but close enough that you can't tell unless you put them side by side. This is great for me as it means I can put my black leather rear seat into storage along with the fronts to keep them in good condition and can have rears in the car that pretty much match the CSL fronts. I need to give these seats a clean, but also before they go in the car I have a few other things to do.

Under the rear seat is a butyl-like sound deadening insulation. As we know this goes brittle over time. I removed mine intending to replace it, but when I looked up the part number to replace it I encountered something interesting. 

The part number on what I removed is 51488204055 and is indeed the butyl-style item. Checking on realoem, etc. however this part is not listed as ever having been spec'd to the M3, only to the standard 3 series! As we know realoem isn't infallible, so likely what has happened is that it was used from the factory and then superseded at a later time, and realoem isn't showing the history. I intend to dig into it in more detail when I get a chance. The item that realoem lists (51488252759) is a newer woolly type item as used on newer BMWs. It's very lovely and it looks like this:

 

Although it's not the original item, it should be better in every respect, will last better, weighs less than half as much, etc. So I decided to go ahead and order it. It's on it's way and again will hopefully be here in time for the Christmas break.

The other thing I need to do with the rear seat out is remove the access covers for the fuel pumps, strip them and repaint them, as they are rusting along one edge where moisture has presumably come down through the seat. At the same time I'll strip and repaint the ISOFix anchors as well. Once all that's done then I'll put the new to me rear seat in.

In the same order I've ordered a bunch of other bits and pieces, notably including Titan Shadow dash trim to replace my silver set.

I've also ordered some BM-3109 fabric to have a go at redoing the A/B/C pillars. I object to the current price of new ones, and also many people have had trouble recently with the fabric not matching on new items from BMW, so I'll go the DIY route first. If it's not successful (e.g. if I'm not skilled enough at upholstery) then I'll stump up the cash.

Oh and I finally ordered a replacement ISOFix cover which was actually the very first part I put on my "parts to purchase" spreadsheet back in 2015!

Anyway - lots of bits and pieces on the go, hopefully everything arrives in time for the Christmas break, when I will hopefully have some time here and there to apply some of the increasing pile of parts to the car 🙂

Edited October 14, 2023 by Karter16

[m325i 711]

1 hour ago, Karter16 said:

 

 

🙂

Great write up! Be interested in how this goes. Mine has disintegrated - what's it actually for? Can you just remove it all and have the seat on 'bare?' 

[Karter16 415]

20 minutes ago, m325i said:

Great write up! Be interested in how this goes. Mine has disintegrated - what's it actually for? Can you just remove it all and have the seat on 'bare?' 

It’s to reduce noise coming into the cabin through the rear seat. The seat itself actually does a lot of this. You can certainly just remove it and have the seat on bare, that’s how I’ve been driving round the last few weeks. So not strictly necessary for sure.

[Karter16 415]

Quick update - today the replacement auto-dimming mirror glass for the rear view mirror arrived. I've been meaning to get this sorted since I bought the car in 2015!!!

I also received notification over the weekend that the shipment of parts I'm waiting on is with NZ Customs, so just waiting for them to send me the bill and then it will be cleared for delivery. I'm particularly looking forward to getting the rear seat sound insulation and the bracket and handbrake boot for the centre console!

[Karter16 415]

My order from EMIAuto arrived earlier in the week after a bit of a delay at Customs (turns out if you read the invoice properly and pay the correct amount it tends to speed things along).

The most exciting thing in this package is the sound insulation for under the rear seat. As I mentioned previously this is a newer item that at some point BMW has used to replace the original butyl item that came from the factory. I've been looking forward to receiving this to see what it's like and to check fitment.

It does not disappoint!

It's a nicely made piece, it's a soft felt on the outside with firmer layers inside to hold the shape, with the sound material in the core. I haven't got the scales out yet but its weight feels to align with what RealOEM quote. As you can see in the photo it comes with cutout flaps for accessing the fuel pumps. Nicely the cutouts aren't quite complete so there's some little tabs that hold it all in one piece, that you can easily cut with a knife if you need to access the fuel pumps.

I haven't done a full fitting yet, but I did have time the other day to do a quick check, and it looks to fit well. The only thing I wasn't able to completely validate without removing the rear seats completely was whether the isofix fittings fit through the existing cutouts. I'll check this when I have some time to get everything out of the rear bench.

 

The other exciting parts of the package were the bits and pieces that I needed to install the CSL centre console that picked up a couple of months ago. I had some time yesterday in between renovations and plastering and got to work removing the existing centre console. Step 1 being to remove the driver's seat.

Removing the centre console is straightforward, you just have to remove enough of the trim pieces and inserts to get to the screws holding the rear of the console down.

 

My console had, at some point, been leather wrapped, and whoever did it actually did a nice job of it, it looks and feels good and is much better that what I imagine the soft-touch plastic would look like by now. The flip side to this is that some of the inserts were a bit difficult to remove due to the extra thickness of the leather. On the inside of the console there is also a fair amount of over-spray of the adhesive that they used to affix the leather (not that this affects the end result). Once the gear selector trim is lifted and unscrewed as well, lifting up the handbrake boot means you can then remove the trim at the back of the console and then lift the whole thing up and over the arm rest. This then means you can access the bolts for the arm rest.

Once the three bolts are removed (being careful not to lose the metal collars which are loose) the arm rest can be removed. I took this opportunity to then give the whole thing a good vacuum.

 

The module resting on the carpet is the "genuine bluetooth module" which, given I don't use it, I took the opportunity to remove it and wrap up it, and the connector for the rear ashtray light in the soft wrap that the phone wiring is wrapped in. At the same time I installed the new bracket for the CSL/arm rest delete console.

 

With this done I was able to get on to the exciting bit of fitting the console! Prior to this, and not photographed, I took the mirror control and hazard light switch units and spent some time going over them with some wet cotton buds to clean them up and get all the dust and grime out of them that tends to accumulate over time. The other thing that I needed to do as part of fitting the console was make some space for the depth of the hazard light switch by depressing the carpet underneath it. If you don't do this the carpet will offer too much resistance and pop the hazard light switch back out again.

 

With the console in place the next thing was to replace the gear selector trim with the new titan shadow trim I ordered. The car was originally spec'd with this, and at some point it has been replaced with silver trim, which is in excellent condition and very nice, but I wanted to go back to the original colour. While I was doing this I gave the window controls the same cotton bud treatment. It was at this juncture that I discovered that what I thought was a spec of cola on one of the buttons does in fact appear to be collateral damage from when the contents of the rear view mirror leaked out (prior to my ownership). This is a shame as it is corrosive and can't be cleaned off the switch, so I'll need to order a replacement. Fortunately it has only affected one of the two switch units.

Once that was done I was able to reinstall the trim. Almost done!

Last thing for the console was the installation of the new boot. This is straightforward, just use the factory procedure of cable tying it on and then fit it in place!

The last work for the day was to replace the 3 other dash trim pieces. This is easy if you have a set of trim removal tools and in no time I was done and had the driver's seat back in.

I'm very happy with the end result. The CSL console very much suits the seats. I have a couple of things left to do to finish that particular project entirely.

1: The mirror control switch currently isn't wired in. With everything that I do with this car I want to make it easily reversible (why I don't know as I intend to keep the car for a long time) so rather than just hacking the existing wiring I'm working on building an extension harness to extend the wiring from it's current location in the driver's door back to the centre console. I wanted to actually move the console and check the mirror control switch before I ordered the parts for this side quest.

2: I need to order some foam-backed 9002 Alcantara to manufacture a copy of the OE tray-insert in the centre console (since these are NLA).

Speaking of NLA, the titan shadow trim I ordered was manufactured in late 2004! Which is interesting and really highlights that with these cars now being 20 years old, when the spare parts run out a lot of these sorts of projects are going to become astronomically more difficult.

Anyway, a good little project for a Saturday. When I get the time, Christmas probably, I'll get into the next steps on sorting out the rear seat!

 

 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Karter16

[Eagle 1676]

1 hour ago, Karter16 said:

The most exciting thing in this package is the sound insulation for under the rear seat

Looks much better than the original version. What did it cost?

[Karter16 415]

4 minutes ago, Eagle said:

Looks much better than the original version. What did it cost?

Yeah I'm very happy with it, half the weight of the original and won't disintegrate like the original. I got it from EMIAuto (because I was buying a bunch of stuff and they were cheapest overall). It was 111 Euro. Shipping is expensive because it's bulky so I took the opportunity to order a bunch of other stuff that fit in the box.

[Neil McCauley 397]

Looking stunning! You and Harper (and Sammo!) have really lifted the E46 interior game in NZ.

[Karter16 415]

Quick mid-week update - As I mentioned in my last update I haven't yet routed the wiring for the mirror controls to the centre console location. The reason for this is that I don't want to have to cut/hack into my wiring harness for a modification that I may feel differently about in the future. So that I can avoid cutting or tapping into the existing wiring I ordered some connectors so that I can make a harness extension that connects to the OE plug sited in the drivers door.

These connectors arrived today:

Now that I have these I can install an extension from the centre console to the door and put these connectors on each end and just plug it all together without any damage to the main harness 😎

[Karter16 415]

And now for today's edition of @Karter16's Random Side-Quests.

On my to do list is the radio/nav. I've spent a lot of times working through various options and they all make me sad to some degree as there just aren't any options out there that give me the combination of OE-like and modern functionality that I'm looking for.

The current trend in the E46 M3 world seems to be towards minimalism which is fine, but for practicality reasons I want to swap to a touchscreen nav setup that I can run CarPlay on etc. Ideally this looks OE-like, however having said that I'm not a fan of the dated "screen with buttons around it" arrangement that the original E46 nav had. Times have moved on with technology and it's unnecessarily pokey (in my opinion). That said I don't particularly want a big slab of a tablet stuck on the dash either. I'm currently tilting towards something like this Xtrons unit:

This in itself makes me sad, as I would like to steer well away from the cheap electronics, but that said none of the main manufacturer's offerings enthuse me either. I'm inclined at this point to give the Xtrons a go. If it's rubbish/not reliable then I'll try something else instead. I'm technically competent so don't mind some effort to get things working well, I just need them to be reliable once I've got them setup...

Anyway, back to my morning cup of coffee quest...

Regardless of what option I go with, I want to make it feel as OE as possible. One aspect of that is replicating the original boot/splash screen used on the OE Nav. Now of course the OE Nav is more than 20 years old at this point and the original image is low resolution:

I had a decent search on trusty google but was unable to locate a high-res reproduction of this image, so I decided to make my own.

I actually used Figma to do this, which is a bit of a random choice, but I'm very familiar with it and its capabilities are more than sufficient for this project. Secondly Figma is a vector image tool, so what I'm producing here is a vector-based image which I can then use to output whatever resolution I like with no loss of image quality.

Upscaling images by hand, especially graphics/text is part math and part subjective tweaking. To start with I take the source image, resize it to a suitable scale to work with on the canvas (I chose 1280w, large enough to see detail, without being too large and unwieldy). I then started overlaying the text and graphic components. When doing text I tend to use a contrasting colour so that I can get the sizing, etc. approximately right and see what I'm doing:

 

Often the challenge can be working out exactly what font has been used. BMW made this nice and easy for me in this instance as they use their own "BMW Helvetica" font for everything 🙂

Once I figured out the exact size to set the font to, which is trial and error, I was then able to roughly put in the bars with the linear fades on each side. Getting the proportions of the fade right is again just trial and error and viewing at different zoom levels to judge what's right.

I squared everything up and had an image that looked pretty much like the original, but higher quality. The next step is make sure it replicates the original as closely as possible which is a lot of tweaking and pixel shuffling. I find that the best way to do this is to take the image you've just produced and output it at the same resolution as your original image.

This gave the the following:

Looks pretty good huh!

 

Actually when we look at the original and the reproduction side by side (repro on top, original on bottom) we can see I haven't quite got it right.

 

In the reproduction the BMW text is slightly to the right. This is because I centred the text in the image between the fade bars which I made of equal width on both sides. Doing that on the face of it makes sense, but there's a good reason why BMW tweaked it slightly.

If we look at this side by side (repro on top, original on bottom):

 

We can see that BMW actually made the fade bars on the right hand side slightly wider than those on the left, this is to account for the fact that only the top right edge of the W extends fully to the right of the bounding box for the text, whereas the B on the other side is hard up against it. Although in my image the text is dead centre and everything is symmetrical, the perception to the eye is that there is more whitespace (or blackspace in this case) after the W than there is before the B. To account for this BMW actually made the fade bars on the right hand side come across to the left just a little bit.

So let's adjust it:

Getting closer, just a bit more to go:

 

Now we're looking pretty good!

It was a number of iterations to get to this point, but now things are looking pretty similar between the two. I'm happy with this now.

All of that work means that I how have a fairly faithful, high res, reproduction of the original image ready to go for when I need it.

 

This is pretty niche so I can't imagine anyone else really having any use for this, but if you do you're more than welcome - SVG and PNG downloads below 🙂

SVG

E46 BMW Nav Splash Screen Vector.svg

1280w png

2560w png

[darren_mk 62]

Great work, love the attention to detail! Looking forward to seeing what unit you go for.

[Karter16 415]

Well this arrived astonishingly quickly considering I ordered it on Sunday night and it arrived from Hong Kong this morning!

 

Not sure what the quality of the product is like, but the delivery and sales service have been excellent.

I went for the IX8246BHL which is the highest spec option for the E46.

First impressions are better than I was expecting. It seems to be finished nicely, the buttons feel pretty good. The twisty knobs don't have the same inertia feel that the stock ones do, but they're pretty good. The chrome would usually annoy me but I'm kinda interested to see with the SMG whether the chrome on the knobs ties things together a bit.

I feel a bit of a sense of inevitability about this venture as I have, for years, seen others complaining about their "China-sourced" head units, so if this doesn't work out I have only myself to blame.

In the end I went with this option because I wasn't very enthused about the tier 1 manufacturers offerings, and secondly because this gives me a more modern unit without too much of the area taken up with buttons, but also without the "slab glued to the dash" look that a lot of other options have.

As I said previously I'm very comfortable with the tech, so don't mind some fiddling to get it setup, but once it is it needs to be rock solid. Plan to give this a year to see how it goes and will re-evaluate then.

[Karter16 415]

Well that was easy!

Mr 2 went to bed early so I had some time after dinner to swap the new head unit in.

First up is removing the old head unit, the centre vents (the worst bit of the exercise), and the lower console bracket, so that I could install the HVAC relocation bracket.

Console bracket out.

How does so much debris get into a sealed area!!!

The car had had a Parrot bluetooth unit installed, which never worked properly for me, so that had to come out. I was a bit worried about how the wiring for it might have been done. The wiring harness had in fact been cut to put the Parrot unit in series. Fortunately it had been done well and I was able to just unplug the Parrot harness and plug the OE harness back together. I'll tidy it up further in the future, but for now I've wrapped it with fleece tape and packaged it up.

I then swapped the switch strip and cigarette lighter across to the HVAC relocation bracket (photo taken before swapping over):

 

 

The Xtrons unit comes with an ISO wiring harness and it makes it ridiculously easy to connect the head unit. Just plug it into the Xtrons and plug it into the car harness and that is literally it. Everything just works. The ISO harness comes with some other tails for other harnesses. I intend to remove these connectors I don't need at some point in the future to tidy things up further, but before I do that I'll just run the unit for a while and make sure I'm happy with it.

Once I'd done a quick test to make sure functions were working I put everything back together, and voila!

It works.

As others have noted the dash trim doesn't sit quite right. This appears to be because the clip is built into the Xtrons (see below) and it seems to be slightly too high up - a quick go with a file will fix this I think - again will get back to this over the Christmas break.

 

Initial impressions of the head unit?

• Ridiculously easy to install and get setup - you get a ton of wiring harnesses in the box and it seems intimidating. You only need the ISO one and it's entirely plug and play, no tapping to do, no extra wires to hook into, nothing. Just plug in the additional things you want (GPS, Wifi Antenna, etc. I didn't bother with the USB ports, 4G, etc. as I won't use them).
• The unit is FAST. No delays anywhere, the UI is fast and responsive.
• CarPlay seems good so far, I connected my phone via bluetooth and it just worked.

The real test is going to come over the next few months as I see if it reliably works well and quickly, or if there are gremlins. Promising start anyway, will provide an update in a few weeks once I've used it for a while.

[adro 1084]

Very nice! I've been mulling over replacing my headunit but havent been able to really find enough reviews to make a definitive decision. Where did you get the relocation bracket from? Are you planning on installing a reversing camera too? 

[Karter16 415]

On 12/22/2023 at 3:16 PM, adro said:

Very nice! I've been mulling over replacing my headunit but havent been able to really find enough reviews to make a definitive decision. Where did you get the relocation bracket from? Are you planning on installing a reversing camera too? 

Thanks yeah I had very much the same issue. Not enough information out there to make an informed decision. I decided eventually to give it a go and see. The relocation bracket was purchased from a supplier out of Latvia. There's not many of these brackets around on the market and indeed the one I received was manufactured in 2004, so it seems there's a limited supply of these.

I don't have any plans at this point to install the reversing camera - keeping things fairly simple. The only reversing I really need to do is up our driveway and I'm a pro at that 😋

[Karter16 415]

When I bought my car in 2015 the auto-dimming mirror glass in the rear view mirror had already failed. For the last 8 years I've been driving the car around with no auto-dimming and a big bubble in the mirror. Because I like to address things promptly I recently ordered a replacement electrochromic mirror glass unit. There are a couple of vendors who specifically supply these, I believe that MirrorJohn is the most well known. My research also brought up some discussion that the unit that these vendors sell is the same thing as is available for significantly less from the likes of AliExpress.

I decided to take a punt and ordered from AliExpress. A week or so later this showed up:

It looked the part. I did notice that the two layers of the glass were slightly offset and initially thought this was due to poor assembly. In actual fact it is intentional and is how the positive and negative rails are exposed and attached.

The last few days I have gotten around to doing the replacement. It's a fairly easy process so long as you are careful and take your time. I wrote a DIY guide for another forum that covers the entire process which you can find here: DIY Guide - E46 M3 - Interior - Replace Electrochromic Mirror Glass

Removing the mirror from the car is easy, removing the front bezel less so. The bezel is held on with a series of little plastic clips. With the plastic having become fragile over time, and BMW not designing the unit to be taken apart, the clips have a tendency to break.

 

 

With the unit disassembled it's then just a case of removing the PCB bracket from the old mirror glass:

And then preparing it for affixing to the new mirror.

The existing writeups on replacing the mirror glass are then very light on this next key step which is to affix the PCB bracket to the new mirror. It's important to get this right so that the forward facing light dependent resistor is aligned correctly. I solved this by essentially reassembling the unit with the PCB in place. I then clipped the bracket to the PCB and used the front bezel to help align the mirror. 

Then it was just back to reassembly. As I mentioned I broke some of the clips when disassembling (this seems as though it's pretty inevitable). MirrorJohn's advice is to glue the bezel back on, but I didn't like that suggestion as it would stop me from opening up the mirror again in the future. So I decided to come up with something better.

I used some brass pins from a 2.54mm PCB header and heated them up and embedded them into the stubs of the broken clips. I then used Araldite to secure them in place. This worked beautifully and the bezel clips securely in place. Very happy with the end result.

The rest of the mirror reassembly is straightforward and in no time I had it back in the car.

The auto dimming feature is really cool - the AliExpress unit seems to work well (not that I can talk to longevity) - I'm glad I didn't fork out more than twice as much for what certainly appears to be the same thing!

 

Edited December 30, 2023 by Karter16

[darren_mk 62]

Great write up, well done! Thanks for sharing.

How are you enjoying the Xtrons? Do you know if the unit is compatible with the factory HK set up? My E46 Touring has Wide screen Nav and Harman Kardon but i read in a few places that some of these new units don't work with the factory HK setup.

 

[Karter16 415]

On 12/31/2023 at 2:06 PM, darren_mk said:

Great write up, well done! Thanks for sharing.

How are you enjoying the Xtrons? Do you know if the unit is compatible with the factory HK set up? My E46 Touring has Wide screen Nav and Harman Kardon but i read in a few places that some of these new units don't work with the factory HK setup.

 

Thanks! I'm actually really happy with the Xtrons so far! Of course some of the reliability testing will only come with time, but I've had no issues so far and overall the product has been better than I was expecting.

I believe that for Nav you need to purchase the extra long harness: https://xtrons.com/extension-cable-exl007 or https://xtrons.com/bmw-e38-e39-e46-e53-extension-cable-exl005

and for HK those Xtrons pages mention that you need one of these as well: https://connects2.com/Product/ProductItem/CT53-BM01

[Karter16 415]

Over the break I've been pretty busy working on the house and having fun times with the family. Since finishing the rear view mirror I've done a few bits and pieces on the car.

I've pulled the 6CD changer and bluetooth module out of the boot. I have no need for them right now, and indeed I have to pull the CD changer apart and figure out what's wrong with it. I've therefore packaged them up and shelved them, along with the two big brackets. Might as well save on the weight while the car is not completely stock.

Relatedly I've also been doing some CAD work to mock up some brackets for the OE amplifier. I could buy the BMW part, but it weighs half a kilo and would cost me $75, whereas if I 3D print some brackets they'll weigh next to nothing and will be free.

I've done a first mockup to check fitment etc. and even at 3mm thickness it's held in surprisingly well. I'll make a number of design revisions and add a bunch of reinforcement and hopefully get a final design.

 

I also took the passenger seat out of the car today to do a bit of work on the back seat. I've removed the ISOFIX fittings as they have surface corrosion and need cleaning up and repainting. While the seat was out I also took the opportunity to examine the tilting bracket.

The CSL seats seem to have a tendency over time to develop a bit of a clunk, which doesn't really come up in normal driving but if you move fairly violently in the seat, or are driving very spiritedly then it can occur. From my investigations this seems to be caused by two things.

Primarily it is caused by the catch on the tilting mechanism, this seems to wear a little over time and then allow some movement which causes the clunk. I don't know if there's already a community DIY fix for this as I wasn't able to find anything on CSLRegistry or the like about it, other than an acknowledgement that it happens. Anyway, I was able to come up with my own fix, a short length of fleece tape wrapped around the fixture like this:

 

The second, more minor, contributor to this is the front pegs that the arms which attach to the tilting mechanism rotate on. The pegs are surprisingly small, and again seem to wear over time. This allows for a small amount of movement. In practice I don't think that this really contributes much to noise or felt movement, but thought I'd have a go at addressing it anyway.

It's only a very small amount that it needs to be cylindrically shimmed. To address this I used a small amount of tin foil wrapped around the peg. This compresses when you fit the arm and takes up the gap. Being aluminium I expect over time it will wear as the tilting mechanism is used (which will probably only be once a year when the WOF man checks the rear seat belts). Hopefully though the aluminium wears away and the steel doesn't further.

 

It seems like a fairly ghetto fix, but once it was all back together I gave it a good wiggle and it seemed solid. I did a few back and forths on the tipping mechanism and it still seemed good. 

I then put the seat back in the car and sat in it and jerked about and the clunking is gone! Mission accomplished!

I'll do the same to the drivers seat when I take it out to do the wiring for the side mirror controls which should be imminent. Just waiting on delivery from Schmiedmann of replacement clips etc. for the drivers door, which I'll do at the same time to address the clunk in the door.

Hopefully by the weekend I'll get the brackets for the amp sorted and the G7AT rear seat into the car, plus the wiring done for the mirror controls.

[Cement 891]

11 hours ago, Karter16 said:

and indeed I have to pull the CD changer apart and figure out what's wrong with it

I've got all of the OEM audio pulled out of mine, you're welcome to the stacker if it's useful to you. Worked fine 👍

[Karter16 415]

On 1/10/2024 at 8:53 AM, Cement said:

I've got all of the OEM audio pulled out of mine, you're welcome to the stacker if it's useful to you. Worked fine 👍

Oh that would be fantastic thank you!!! I'll PM you 🙂

[Karter16 415]

I spent some time this afternoon getting some bits and pieces done.

First up I installed the extension wiring loom for the side mirror control relocation from the driver's door to the CSL centre console. For the wiring loom I sourced, nearly, matching wire colours. I wasn't able to get blue with a green stripe, so went for plain light blue instead.

I bundled up the 4 wires into a loom, wrapping them with fleece tape as I went.

I then attached the connector I found that's a match for the OE one to the end that connects to the mirror control switch.

I then started at the console end, working the loom down the centre tunnel to the pedal box (cable tying as I went to stop it rattling). Avedis's DIY guide is excellent and I referred to it frequently as I went.

And then across and out through the door pillar conduit.

Getting it through the rubber conduit was fairly easy, you just need something like a coat hanger to help guide it through. From there I routed it through the door (again cable tying as I went). I then cut it to length and attached the pins for the female socket. The MQS connectors, like many, are supposed to have the pins crimped with a special tool (like many various connector types). When you've done it before as I have it's fairly straightforward to tack the wires to the pins with a little solder and then crimp the pins with some pliers, like so (note, not all are finished in this photo):

And voila! the extension loom is complete:

I then hooked it up and wrapped it up with some more fleece tape to make sure it's held fast and won't knock about:

Connect up the switch and pop it in and we're all done!

 

 

While I had the driver's door apart I also took the opportunity to replace the missing bowden cable clip (as per here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/main-forum/e46-2001-2006/198724-psa-door-window-rattle-regulator-cable-clip-broken), as well as tighten up the regulator bolts and adjust the latch in an effort to make my door sound more like my passenger side door and less like a glazing truck that has been in an accident. It's a lot better, but still not as nice as the passenger side. I think further improvement will need to wait for total disassembly and replacement of the regulator and latch mechanism.

When I put the door panel back on I replaced the clips with the improved version that have foam dampening rings on them:

 

I also popped in the new window switch to replace the one that had surface damage from when the mirror leaked prior to my ownership.

If I get some more time over the weekend I'll get to work on the rear seat.

Oh, and just cause no project is complete without an issue, when I was tightening up the negative terminal on the battery the tensioner bolt thing snapped off (guess I've been using it too much due to so many projects), so now I need to get a new one of these 😑

[Vass 862]

Awesome effort, love the attention to detail. 

I've had that battery tensioner thing snap on me before as well, remedied by getting a spare one from Pick-A-Part. If I understand correctly which bolt you're talking about, and also if that part is the same on an M3 as a non-M, then you can just get the bolt thing by itself and not the whole cable as you seem to insinuate? I should still have another spare one as well. Post a photo of the exact part that broke, happy to send it your way if that's the one I'm thinking. 

[Karter16 415]

9 minutes ago, Vass said:

Awesome effort, love the attention to detail. 

I've had that battery tensioner thing snap on me before as well, remedied by getting a spare one from Pick-A-Part. If I understand correctly which bolt you're talking about, and also if that part is the same on an M3 as a non-M, then you can just get the bolt thing by itself and not the whole cable as you seem to insinuate? I should still have another spare one as well. Post a photo of the exact part that broke, happy to send it your way if that's the one I'm thinking. 

Ahh can you! I didn’t know you could get just the bolt - I’ll take a photo in the morning and send it to you - that would be amazing! Thanks!!