Factory Specs
Figured it was about time I made a journal for my car.
Bought it in Dec 2017 after spending about a year looking for one. Found this one in Denver, about 30 min away from where I was. 2002, topaz blue, 6mt, 2 owners, 104k mi, and a binder full of maintenance history.
Here's how it looked the day after I got it:
First thing I did after getting it was clean up the interior. Pulled the seats, vacuumed all the carpet, and conditioned the leather. Then changes brake pads, oil, transmission fluid, diff fluid, filters, valve cover and associated gaskets, guibo, shifter bushings, belts, headlight lenses, and tires. Also installed a 330d shifter and ZHP knob, shifter felt much better after all this.
Feb 2018
A couple months after buying, my sister visited and we took pictures of the car:
April 2018
The car developed a small oil leak and I traced it back to the timing chain guide bolt that's located behind the thermostat. Thought it would be as simple as cleaning the threads, applying some threadlocker, and torquing to spec. Turns out the bolt had snapped, which made the timing chain rattle around inside the engine and in turn shear the lower bolt as well. Quickly learned that the rattle I heard around 3k rpm was not the VANOS, like I originally thought.
Upon disassembly, it became clear that someone had previously tried to remedy this leak and used a bolt that was too long. This caused the plastic part of the guide to snap in half.
Swapped everything out with new OE parts, cleaned up the engine and got everything back together.
Destroyed the first front crankshaft seal I tried to install but managed to get the second one in without issues, or so I thought (more on that later).
Next I replaced VANOS seals, water pump, thermostat, and did a valve adjustment.
May 2018
OEM 18s were pretty banged up from having been used as winter wheels for a while. Got some VMR V703 19" x 9.5" ET22 rears and VMR V703 19" x 8.5" ET35 fronts with PS4Ss. 275/30R19 rear 245/35R19 front. Car felt much better with these tires on, especially after having driven it through the winter on snow tires.
Unfortunately discovered a crack in my driver rear subframe mount the same day I got my new wheels and tires on.
Time for plates! Stop drilled and fixed all cracks, then epoxied plates in.
Also cleaned up the rest of the underside and subframe, changed out bushings and painted everything to avoid rust issues.
June 2018
Found some pictures I took on a sunny day after a wash and wax. Really glad I found a car in this color.
August 2018
Went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park and found another M3.
September 2018
I wanted to learn how to weld, so I decided to gut the stock muffler and make it a bit louder.
Couldn't find any pictures of the finished product, but this is basically what I did (well my welds looked significantly worse since it was my first time welding lol).
Decided it wasn't loud enough so I opened up the other two chambers and wrapped the perforated tubing with some exhaust wrap.
Then I got a stock section 1 off of craigslist and combined it with my section 1 to make a dual resonated one. Sounds pretty good for being a low budget, low effort job. Also replaced of the stock tips with some 3" stainless steel ones I got off eBay.
November 2018
Got a buildjournal tune and AFD E85 kit on black friday with decent discounts. No install pics unfortunately.
January 2019
A bit of oil was still leaking from my engine, so I decided to pull the front clip off and clean up everything to identify the leak.
Before:
After:
Traced the leak to the VANOS gasket after a few days. Added some gasket maker and no more leak!
Shortly after this happened:
March 2019
Sourced some OEM LED tails on craigslist for cheap. However, the passenger's side light had some LEDs that didn't work, so I opened it up and replaced them.
Also reverted to chrome kidney and side grills. Luckily, my car had had the original ones plasti dipped, so it was just a matter of peeling it off.
Shortly after went on a drive in the Colorado mountains with some friends and snapped these pictures with my friend's DSLR. Clearly still need to work on my photography skills as half these pics are out of focus lol. LED tails and bigger exhaust tips visible in last image.
May 2019
Graduated! Decided to wash the car as a graduation gift to myself.
June 2019
Stalked some other BMWs at cars and coffee.
Moving to California soon, so I decided to do rod bearings on the car, as well as a couple other things (engine mounts, LCAs, RTABs with limiters, rear shock mounts, etc). Bearings looked really good! These had about 80k mi on them.
Cleaned up the front subframe and installed the new parts.
July 2019
When I did my bearings, I also took off my valve cover to check on things before leaving Colorado. I accidentally pinched one of my fuel injector wires when putting the cover back on. It eventually melted and caused a misfire. Found this out the day before driving out to California.
Pulled valve cover and fixed the wire. I'm glad I caught this before leaving Colorado.
This is what the M3 looked like during the road trip. Managed to fit everything I wanted to take with me in the car. Who said coupes aren't practical?
Decided against driving straight to California, so made a few stops along the way.
Arches National Park:
Grand Canyon (was waaay more impressive than I expected, highly recommend):
Arrived in California!
October 2019
Previous owner had added some plastic splitters to car. Accidentally ripped one out on my way to ski one day back in 2018, which left a pretty bad scrape on the bumper. Got some eBay cf splitters mostly to cover up the scrape, but ended up liking them more than I thought I would.
Also ditched the angel eyes that came with the car and enabled euro DRLs and turn signal DRLs.
Next, I pulled the interior and gave it a thorough clean with leatherique, leather looks much better now. I pulled everything except the driver's seat and steering wheel so I could still drive the car, then did those two over the weekend. Driving the car without the rest of the interior felt awesome! Need to put it on a diet soon.
Sample before:
Sample after:
Driver's seat was the only thing not done here, everything else had been treated.
Interior was looking great, but my fuel pump decided to give out on the way back from work a couple days later. First time I had the car on a tow truck.
Swapped the pump out for an Walbro F90000274 E85 pump with the radium kit. Car worked again, but fuel pressure would bleed off after the car had been off for a few hours. Read about some other people having similar issues with the Walbro pump and decided to replace it with an AEM 50-1200 E85 pump. No more issues.
Got some facelift inner taillights from alexM3Chicago on M3Forum to finally complete the retrofit.
Also got a plate from eBay since I was trying to decide whether I liked the black and yellow California plate on my car. Decided against it as it didn't really fit in with the blue.
January 2020
Got a dashcam for christmas. Installed it as soon as I could.
February 2020
Noticed that I had trouble seeing well at night, so I re-aimed my headlights. Tape is where they should have been pointing, no wonder I couldn't see much.
March 2020
Rode in Karbon's (from M3Forum) M3 with a CSL box. I was blown away and ordered a Karbonius box as soon as I got back home. Karbon's car:
Received the Karbonius box! I almost want to hang it on my wall, it's so ridiculously well made. I felt bad putting it in my engine bay.
Also spent a ridiculous amount of time getting the M Power sticker on. Still managed to get some air bubbles, oh well.
Next, converted my non-HP DME to HP spec and flashed CSL software modified to run on my car (stock cams, manual, etc).
M3Forum was down, so I had quite a bit of trouble finding the info that I needed to do the DME conversion. Reached out to terra and NZ_M3 and they helped me get everything done. Thanks again guys!
I wanted to make sure the install looked as stock as possible, so I removed the MAF plug and fed the wires for the Kassel MAP kit and IAT sensor through the place where the MAF wires were before.
Also got the IAT boot on.
Here's the airbox in the daylight:
Everything was going great! Up until I was going to go on a drive with a friend and my accessory belt shredded. I salvaged what was left of the belt and put it back on, managed to limp the car back home. Upon inspection, it looked like my front crankshaft seal was leaking (again, clearly I hadn't installed it correctly last time), so I took the front clip off (again) and cleaned everything up (again). The front of the engine was absolutely disgusting.
And of course I once again destroyed the first seal I tried to install.
Went to AutoZone and got a DuraLast one because I was done with non-spring type seals. Used a combination of highly specialized custom made tools to get the new seal in. First seated it with a cut solo cup:
Then finished installing it all the way with a block of wood and the old harmonic balancer bolts. Tightened each bolt about a quarter of a turn at a time so that the seal went in straight.
So far no leak!
Also got my BlueBus and installed it! Had some trouble with the mic on calls but Ted was super helpful and we got everything working like it should.
April 2020
Installed a hidden switch for the wireless charger I put in my car before driving out to California so that it doesn't run at all times.
More info here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...harger-install
Also took apart my CD53 to try and fix some dead pixels. I had a whole column that wouldn't light up and having the BlueBus display metadata made it pretty bad. Couldn't fix it completely, but it's better than it was before.
Will continue to update this post as I do more things to the M3.
- Production date: 2002-04-16
- Type Code: BL93
- Body Type: Coupe
- Transmission: 6MT
- Exterior Color: Topasblau (364)
- Interior: Powered, lumbar, non-heated, black nappa (N5SW)
- Options: Sunroof, HK, CD53
- Misc: MK20, MSS54, M11 rod bolts
- Non-m, silver outside, black slat kidney grills
- Apex EC-7 18x8.5 ET35 with 235/40 R18 PS4S and Apex EC-7 18x9.5 ET22 with 265/35 R18 PS4S (street)
- Apex ARC-8 17x9.5 ET35 (+ 7.5mm spacer to clear calipers) with 255/40 R17 RE-71RS and Apex ARC-8 17x10 ET25 with 255/40 R17 RE-71RS (track)
- 3" stainless exhaust tips
- OE LED taillights
- Front CF splitters
- Garmin Dash Cam 66W front + Garmin Dash Cam Mini 2 rear
- Antigravity H5 40Ah
- Karbonius full carbon CSL airbox
- Kassel MAP kit
- MSS54HP conversion
- SSV1 and SS catted section 1
- Bryson mullet tune
- Bryson brake cooling scoops
- Wireless charger integrated into cubby below radio
- Gauge.S in place of front ashtray
- AutoSolutions AutoCross SSK
- 996 brakes
- Cobra nogaros
- MK60 swap (with ZCP module + E39 wiper stalk)
- ZCP steering rack
- ZCP interior trim
- Bluebus
- Tainik alcantara steering wheel
- Weighted stock-like shift knob (p/n 25117896884)
- Alcantara shift and handbrake boots
- VW grocery bag holders in trunk
- Short, no armrest center console with long euro tray
- Slon rear wall
- CMP solid subframe bushings
- CMP monoball RTABs
- Turner street camber plates
- Eibach pro aluminum rear camber arms
- Koni shocks
- Eibach pro kit springs
- Vincebar and gusset cups (is this considered a mod?)
- Happybuyitnow pre-painted 1x1 cf CSL diffuser
- Mechanical fan delete
- AKG bronze clutch pedal bushings
- AKG delrin brake pedal bushings
- Motul RBF 600 brake fluid
- PFC 08 brake pads (for track use only)
- Some other stuff I probably forgot about...
Figured it was about time I made a journal for my car.
Bought it in Dec 2017 after spending about a year looking for one. Found this one in Denver, about 30 min away from where I was. 2002, topaz blue, 6mt, 2 owners, 104k mi, and a binder full of maintenance history.
Here's how it looked the day after I got it:
First thing I did after getting it was clean up the interior. Pulled the seats, vacuumed all the carpet, and conditioned the leather. Then changes brake pads, oil, transmission fluid, diff fluid, filters, valve cover and associated gaskets, guibo, shifter bushings, belts, headlight lenses, and tires. Also installed a 330d shifter and ZHP knob, shifter felt much better after all this.
Feb 2018
A couple months after buying, my sister visited and we took pictures of the car:
April 2018
The car developed a small oil leak and I traced it back to the timing chain guide bolt that's located behind the thermostat. Thought it would be as simple as cleaning the threads, applying some threadlocker, and torquing to spec. Turns out the bolt had snapped, which made the timing chain rattle around inside the engine and in turn shear the lower bolt as well. Quickly learned that the rattle I heard around 3k rpm was not the VANOS, like I originally thought.
Upon disassembly, it became clear that someone had previously tried to remedy this leak and used a bolt that was too long. This caused the plastic part of the guide to snap in half.
Swapped everything out with new OE parts, cleaned up the engine and got everything back together.
Destroyed the first front crankshaft seal I tried to install but managed to get the second one in without issues, or so I thought (more on that later).
Next I replaced VANOS seals, water pump, thermostat, and did a valve adjustment.
May 2018
OEM 18s were pretty banged up from having been used as winter wheels for a while. Got some VMR V703 19" x 9.5" ET22 rears and VMR V703 19" x 8.5" ET35 fronts with PS4Ss. 275/30R19 rear 245/35R19 front. Car felt much better with these tires on, especially after having driven it through the winter on snow tires.
Unfortunately discovered a crack in my driver rear subframe mount the same day I got my new wheels and tires on.
Time for plates! Stop drilled and fixed all cracks, then epoxied plates in.
Also cleaned up the rest of the underside and subframe, changed out bushings and painted everything to avoid rust issues.
June 2018
Found some pictures I took on a sunny day after a wash and wax. Really glad I found a car in this color.
August 2018
Went camping in Rocky Mountain National Park and found another M3.
September 2018
I wanted to learn how to weld, so I decided to gut the stock muffler and make it a bit louder.
Couldn't find any pictures of the finished product, but this is basically what I did (well my welds looked significantly worse since it was my first time welding lol).
Decided it wasn't loud enough so I opened up the other two chambers and wrapped the perforated tubing with some exhaust wrap.
Then I got a stock section 1 off of craigslist and combined it with my section 1 to make a dual resonated one. Sounds pretty good for being a low budget, low effort job. Also replaced of the stock tips with some 3" stainless steel ones I got off eBay.
November 2018
Got a buildjournal tune and AFD E85 kit on black friday with decent discounts. No install pics unfortunately.
January 2019
A bit of oil was still leaking from my engine, so I decided to pull the front clip off and clean up everything to identify the leak.
Before:
After:
Traced the leak to the VANOS gasket after a few days. Added some gasket maker and no more leak!
Shortly after this happened:
March 2019
Sourced some OEM LED tails on craigslist for cheap. However, the passenger's side light had some LEDs that didn't work, so I opened it up and replaced them.
Also reverted to chrome kidney and side grills. Luckily, my car had had the original ones plasti dipped, so it was just a matter of peeling it off.
Shortly after went on a drive in the Colorado mountains with some friends and snapped these pictures with my friend's DSLR. Clearly still need to work on my photography skills as half these pics are out of focus lol. LED tails and bigger exhaust tips visible in last image.
May 2019
Graduated! Decided to wash the car as a graduation gift to myself.
June 2019
Stalked some other BMWs at cars and coffee.
Moving to California soon, so I decided to do rod bearings on the car, as well as a couple other things (engine mounts, LCAs, RTABs with limiters, rear shock mounts, etc). Bearings looked really good! These had about 80k mi on them.
Cleaned up the front subframe and installed the new parts.
July 2019
When I did my bearings, I also took off my valve cover to check on things before leaving Colorado. I accidentally pinched one of my fuel injector wires when putting the cover back on. It eventually melted and caused a misfire. Found this out the day before driving out to California.
Pulled valve cover and fixed the wire. I'm glad I caught this before leaving Colorado.
This is what the M3 looked like during the road trip. Managed to fit everything I wanted to take with me in the car. Who said coupes aren't practical?
Decided against driving straight to California, so made a few stops along the way.
Arches National Park:
Grand Canyon (was waaay more impressive than I expected, highly recommend):
Arrived in California!
October 2019
Previous owner had added some plastic splitters to car. Accidentally ripped one out on my way to ski one day back in 2018, which left a pretty bad scrape on the bumper. Got some eBay cf splitters mostly to cover up the scrape, but ended up liking them more than I thought I would.
Also ditched the angel eyes that came with the car and enabled euro DRLs and turn signal DRLs.
Next, I pulled the interior and gave it a thorough clean with leatherique, leather looks much better now. I pulled everything except the driver's seat and steering wheel so I could still drive the car, then did those two over the weekend. Driving the car without the rest of the interior felt awesome! Need to put it on a diet soon.
Sample before:
Sample after:
Driver's seat was the only thing not done here, everything else had been treated.
Interior was looking great, but my fuel pump decided to give out on the way back from work a couple days later. First time I had the car on a tow truck.
Swapped the pump out for an Walbro F90000274 E85 pump with the radium kit. Car worked again, but fuel pressure would bleed off after the car had been off for a few hours. Read about some other people having similar issues with the Walbro pump and decided to replace it with an AEM 50-1200 E85 pump. No more issues.
Got some facelift inner taillights from alexM3Chicago on M3Forum to finally complete the retrofit.
Also got a plate from eBay since I was trying to decide whether I liked the black and yellow California plate on my car. Decided against it as it didn't really fit in with the blue.
January 2020
Got a dashcam for christmas. Installed it as soon as I could.
February 2020
Noticed that I had trouble seeing well at night, so I re-aimed my headlights. Tape is where they should have been pointing, no wonder I couldn't see much.
March 2020
Rode in Karbon's (from M3Forum) M3 with a CSL box. I was blown away and ordered a Karbonius box as soon as I got back home. Karbon's car:
Received the Karbonius box! I almost want to hang it on my wall, it's so ridiculously well made. I felt bad putting it in my engine bay.
Also spent a ridiculous amount of time getting the M Power sticker on. Still managed to get some air bubbles, oh well.
Next, converted my non-HP DME to HP spec and flashed CSL software modified to run on my car (stock cams, manual, etc).
M3Forum was down, so I had quite a bit of trouble finding the info that I needed to do the DME conversion. Reached out to terra and NZ_M3 and they helped me get everything done. Thanks again guys!
I wanted to make sure the install looked as stock as possible, so I removed the MAF plug and fed the wires for the Kassel MAP kit and IAT sensor through the place where the MAF wires were before.
Also got the IAT boot on.
Here's the airbox in the daylight:
Everything was going great! Up until I was going to go on a drive with a friend and my accessory belt shredded. I salvaged what was left of the belt and put it back on, managed to limp the car back home. Upon inspection, it looked like my front crankshaft seal was leaking (again, clearly I hadn't installed it correctly last time), so I took the front clip off (again) and cleaned everything up (again). The front of the engine was absolutely disgusting.
And of course I once again destroyed the first seal I tried to install.
Went to AutoZone and got a DuraLast one because I was done with non-spring type seals. Used a combination of highly specialized custom made tools to get the new seal in. First seated it with a cut solo cup:
Then finished installing it all the way with a block of wood and the old harmonic balancer bolts. Tightened each bolt about a quarter of a turn at a time so that the seal went in straight.
So far no leak!
Also got my BlueBus and installed it! Had some trouble with the mic on calls but Ted was super helpful and we got everything working like it should.
April 2020
Installed a hidden switch for the wireless charger I put in my car before driving out to California so that it doesn't run at all times.
More info here: https://nam3forum.com/forums/forum/m...harger-install
Also took apart my CD53 to try and fix some dead pixels. I had a whole column that wouldn't light up and having the BlueBus display metadata made it pretty bad. Couldn't fix it completely, but it's better than it was before.
Will continue to update this post as I do more things to the M3.
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