The Barbara Chronicles

[Vass 1014]

On 3/18/2025 at 12:21 PM, Olaf said:

That looks superb.  Very individual.  

I’m finding myself in the very unusual position of being envious of your stick 😎

Thanks! Had to restrain myself from making some crude joke there. Because I'm an aDuLt now.

[Olaf 3401]

adulting is overrated!  you can be a grownup without being surrendering everything!

 

[Vass 1014]

Even after installing the catless headers I wasn't quite happy with the exhaust tone. It somehow feels too subdued and is missing that throatier tone that I'm craving. It may be placebo but I swear I've driven and felt factory 330i's to have a nicer sound to them somehow.

When doing the engine swap I had both the stock 325i and donor 330i exhausts on hand and decided to stick with the 325 one since it looked tidier without the 330i exhaust flap, which I wasn't going to bother hooking up anyway. Apart from the flap the two looked identical. RealOEM gives separate part numbers for the front, mid and rear (muffler) sections, despite the full exhaust being one solid piece (in our part of the world anyway) - the front two are the same for both 325 & 330, the rear section with the muffler being different, obviously because of the flap but it got me wondering whether the two mufflers might have also been somehow internally different too. Only one way to find out.

@Carbon happened to have a full 330i exhaust laying around and we made it a quick mission to compare it with my 325 one. To make it at least a little bit scientific, I ordered me a cheapo Aliexpress decibel meter.

VIDEO: 325i Exhaust

VIDEO: 330i Exhaust

In the end the 325i exhaust maxed out at 98dB, the 330i exhaust at 94dB. Not sure how much of an influence it would have had but the 325i one had been in regular use and was still warm from having just driven while the 330i had been sitting (indoors) since around Christmas and wasn't fully warm at the time of testing. Whatever difference it may have made, it wouldn't have been night & day so I'm guessing there is no difference in the 325i & 330i muffler internals. Was worth the effort of finding out though. Not sure what made me feel that factory 330i's sound better than what I've got, might be the extra sound deadening I installed in the doors.

Still not overly impressed with the soundtrack the car produces, sounds too muffled even when giving it the beans. I know these aren't the best sounding engines in general and will never sound as good as a V8 but just want a bit more of a throatier rumble without being too obnoxious. Might play around with it a bit more somewhere down the line, maybe a secondary cat delete or an aftermarket muffler or something.

Edited Tuesday at 12:15 PM by Vass

[Vass 1014]

On 11/23/2023 at 10:09 PM, Vass said:

• Been having an intermittent issue of the driver's side HID headlight not wanting to turn on. Sometimes it'll just take an extra minute for it to light up, sometimes it'll need a smack, others it'll work perfectly fine. I suspect it'll be something to do with the ballast or a loose connection as if it was a bulb then it probably wouldn't turn on at all. Will need to go on a mission of swapping components over to opposite sides to figure out what the culprit is exactly. Could even be the ignition switch, apparently, who knows...

Decided to revisit this issue since the frequency of it happening seems to have increased of late.

I had previously installed new HID bulbs, which made no difference.

Next up was the ballast, which I managed to grab a spare of. Fun fact - the E46 shares the same part number with the first gen (BMW-era) Mini, of which there was plenty of at Pick-A-Part so I nabbed a newer 2006 production date one. Seemed to work at first but a few drives later the issue resurfaced.

I then dug a bit deeper and took the lid off the housing where the ballast connects to only to discover this:

The insulation on the wiring had gone real brittle and was cracked throughout and one of the brown ground wires seemed to be crushed by the seal, leaving the metal completely exposed. Not even sure how to remedy this properly, rewiring seems like a mammoth task to get right looking at the way all the wires are intertwined. For the time being I just cleaned up the most obviously damaged part and wrapped it in electrical tape to at least somewhat isolate it.

At one point I also scored a spare xenon headlight from Pick-A-Part when one eventually turned up. Testing it out it fired up straight away without any issues so I'm hoping the internals on that are in better state than my current one. Unfortunately, the casing on it is pretty rough and has several clips and tabs broken off so it's not a straight swap in its current state. I will need to dissect the light and hopefully make one good one out of the two I have.

As of a few weeks ago, poor Barbara got kicked out of her cosy garage to make room for this ol' nugget that I'm still trying to resurrect. Ever since sitting outside I started noticing the problematic driver's side headlight also suffering from moisture buildup inside the housing and the issue of it failing to fire up has become noticeably more frequent, failing to light up at all on several occasions in the past week, no matter how many times I cycled the switch. I'll need to order a strip of butyl and reseal both headlights properly, and will combine that with swapping out the internals on the driver's side light. This project has all of a sudden bumped itself to the top of the priorities list, although it's not without competition.

So as things stand, I've got a broken 316ti occupying the garage, a broken X5 occupying the driveway and a touring with a broken headlight relegated to street parking. BMW life in a nutshell.

[Harper 600]

11 hours ago, Vass said:

Still not overly impressed with the soundtrack the car produces, sounds too muffled even when giving it the beans

I've got no regrets after chopping the centre muffler resonator section out of the compact. Made the car maybe 10% louder and just sounds a bit throatier and more low speed burbles. I'm not sure how different the 325ti rear section is though, totally different shape and smaller than the 330 muffler so maybe that contributes.

Edited Tuesday at 11:47 PM by Harper

[Vass 1014]

1 hour ago, Harper said:

I've got no regrets after chopping the centre muffler resonator section out of the compact. Made the car maybe 10% louder and just sounds a bit throatier and more low speed burbles. I'm not sure how different the 325ti rear section is though, totally different shape and smaller than the 330 muffler so maybe that contributes.

Yeah good shout, that's probably what I'll end up doing next. Just scrolled back through your thread again, for some reason at first glance I thought you had the secondary cats cut out instead of that resonator. Good to know it is an improvement even with the cats still in place. Having gotten rid of the stock manifolds I'm hesitant to get rid of the secondary cats too, don't want it so smell like a bag of eggs left out in the sun...

[Vass 1014]

Some more tiny details that I've tinkered with recently.

Did a few tweaks to the stock DME tune, main one being the thermostat target temperatures. Originally pioneered by @Eagle and I just followed suit. On my android headunit the coolant temperature display is always just 2 clicks away so I've been monitoring the running temperatures quire regularly. I believe they've always been within the norm but were constantly on the higher side, hovering around 99-100°C city driving and 101-102°C motorway cruising. With the below changes they've now gone down a tad to 97-98°C city driving and 94-95°C on the motorway. Eagle reckons some brand thermostats just run a bit hotter than others, in his experience he hadn't seen any M54's consistently run above 97°C so 102°C did seem a tad excessive. This tweak seems to have brought the temperatures down into a more comfortable range. Next time I change the thermostat I might give another brand a go, currently running a Borg Warner unit.

Originally, both tables had identical values, as per the right side AC ON table above. The screenshot is halfway through the process with only the left side AC OFF table values modified, the AC ON values were then also modified to match.

On the topic of exhausts, I stumbled upon a little titbit of information in Bryson's thread over on E46 Fanatics about the vibration dampeners on the stock exhaust system. Turns out automatic cars had two of them, both #4 & #12 on the schematic below, whereas manual cars only had #12. Mine being converted, I decided to unbolt the #4 dampener from the rear of the muffler. Can't say it made a discernible difference but it's now a tiny bit closer to a factory manual.

The power steering reservoirs on these are notorious for weeping and creating a mess. Mine is still fairly new and hasn't succumbed to this inevitability but as a little piece of security from a potentially messy situation I got myself a cheapo wrist sweatband and draped it over the reservoir. Fits well and looks quite inconspicuous being all black without any tacky logos. The idea was of course blatantly stolen from Garagistic but cost me a fraction of the price.

[Eagle 1753]

12 minutes ago, Vass said:

Garagistic

With the amount of ideas they have stolen over the years i dont think anyone would care

4 minutes ago, Vass said:

Turns out automatic cars had two of them

My SMG has both of them for a reference. I wish i didnt delete my exhaust flap, i have a feeling that would of help with my resonance in ~2k range.

6 minutes ago, Vass said:

I might give another brand a go, currently running a Borg Warner unit

Im pretty sure all my have been Mahle ones on any BMW with plastic housings

18 hours ago, Vass said:

I then dug a bit deeper and took the lid off the housing where the ballast connects to only to discover this:

Getting flashbacks of VW's when going in for a simple bulb change. Liquid tape can help to some degree but its a bit messy. Re-wiring is the only proper fix.

7 hours ago, Harper said:

Still not overly impressed with the soundtrack the car produces, sounds too muffled even when giving it the beans

Must a be a wagon thing at the point, more insulated with exhaust further away?