Complete rear end refresh: paint, powdercoat, or other..?

[timmo]

Haven't powdercoated parts for my own car but have experience with other stuff such as welded tubular spaceframe and machined components. Powdercoating is going to be much more durable than paint. Usually as part of the powdercoating service the shop will sandblast your parts as surface prep and to clean off all contaminants. To maintain the size and surface finish of the bores for bushings & balljoints, you should not have those blasted or powdercoated and request that they are masked. Same thing with any screw threads, the shop will have small rubber plugs they put into any small holes so the powdercoating doesn't go into the threads.

[BTB]

Good evening E46 fans,

I am starting a new project to rebuild the entire rear end on my M3 with 205k miles. The car spent quite a bit of time in the midwest and seemed to be neglected by previous owners; the rear end is corroded AF. I just picked up a complete rear axle assembly (subframe, diff, axles, trailing/control arms, sway, brakes) from another car with 70k miles, and it's very clean other than some surface corrosion.

I don't have a complete shop, nor do I consider myself a proper mechanic, but I'd like to do as much of the work as I can such that I'll basically bring the refreshed rear end to a shop with the car and have them swap it in. My question is:

For those that have had their subframes and/or trailing arms refinished, did you paint or powdercoat (why?) and, in either case, how do I make sure I don't change ID dimensions for bushings and ball joints by coating parts? Also, what materials and methods do you recommend?

I'm debating how far I should go with the refresh, contemplating getting the diff rebuilt at diffsonline. I want to do solid subframe bushings and basically new oe everywhere else (RTABs tbd). Anywho, I would appreciate any insight from those who have tackled this already.

Thanks !!