heinzboehmer's 2002 Topaz 6MT Coupe

[Sprp85]

Quality posts! Topaz blue might be my favorite blue for E46.

[heinzboehmer]

Quality posts! Topaz blue might be my favorite blue for E46.

Thanks! I've managed to catch it in some pretty good light recently

[Casa de Mesa]

Hey Heinz! Love the track photos! The car looks amazing, especially with the CSL lips.

What brake pads are you running? And are you running the same front to rear?

You could try a pad with less initial bite in the back, or a pad with more initial bite up front. My racecar doesn't have a brake bias valve due the type of ABS it has. Running a less aggressive pad (still a race pad, just less aggressive bite) in the rear might solve your issue if the bushings do not. I have always run different front and rear brake pads. It's not elegant, but it works.

Also I need to do the bushing swap in my car. Still have the solid aluminum ones... 😶

[heinzboehmer]

Hey Heinz! Love the track photos! The car looks amazing, especially with the CSL lips.

What brake pads are you running? And are you running the same front to rear?

You could try a pad with less initial bite in the back, or a pad with more initial bite up front. My racecar doesn't have a brake bias valve due the type of ABS it has. Running a less aggressive pad (still a race pad, just less aggressive bite) in the rear might solve your issue if the bushings do not. I have always run different front and rear brake pads. It's not elegant, but it works.

Hey Bryan! Appreciate the compliments and tips, as always.

Running PFC08 pads all around. mrgizmo04 mentioned something similar to me when I complained about the instability under hard braking. He's running split compounds front to rear on his 996 calipers. I'll have to think about doing the same once I wear these pads out. Definitely less effort involved in buying a different compound than in swapping out the RTABs . Although I am due for an alignment soon...

Also I need to do the bushing swap in my car. Still have the solid aluminum ones... 😶

Are all three solid? The cover was much simpler than I expected to swap in place. Hour or two of work. It's been a while, but I think there was a significantly bigger decrease in diff noise when I swapped out the rear poly bushings for stock compared to when I swapped out the front poly bushing for stock.

Might be worth swapping out the rears sooner and getting to the front bushing next time the diff is out.

[Casa de Mesa]

Are all three solid? The cover was much simpler than I expected to swap in place. Hour or two of work. It's been a while, but I think there was a significantly bigger decrease in diff noise when I swapped out the rear poly bushings for stock compared to when I swapped out the front poly bushing for stock.

Might be worth swapping out the rears sooner and getting to the front bushing next time the diff is out.

Yeah all 3 are solid. I never gave this approach a thought (it's appealing) but might try that. I worry about different materials used in the front bushing vs the rear/cover. But maybe given the front bushing is mounted laterally, it doesn't matter.

Will need to think about it but I like this idea!

[heinzboehmer]

Yeah all 3 are solid. I never gave this approach a thought (it's appealing) but might try that. I worry about different materials used in the front bushing vs the rear/cover. But maybe given the front bushing is mounted laterally, it doesn't matter.

Will need to think about it but I like this idea!

Yeah forces on the two sets of bushings would be orthogonal, so it should be fine (?).

I ran a rubber front bushing on my car and poly rear for threeish years (forgot to buy the rear diff bushings when I did my vincebar and then got lazy and put off swapping them). Had no issues with that combo in terms of accelerated wear or anything like that.

And, well, we all know that if you read something on the internet then it's a fact, so you should be good to go now!

[Casa de Mesa]

Yeah forces on the two sets of bushings would be orthogonal, so it should be fine (?).

I ran a rubber front bushing on my car and poly rear for threeish years (forgot to buy the rear diff bushings when I did my vincebar and then got lazy and put off swapping them). Had no issues with that combo in terms of accelerated wear or anything like that.

Good to know. I may try this sooner than later then. Pulling the diff is such a PITA that I may try this approach and if it's quiet enough to knock some of the annoying frequencies down, I'll probably leave it until it's time for a new diff. Which is on the horizon...

And, well, we all know that if you read something on the internet then it's a fact, so you should be good to go now!

Cheese and rice, truth right here!

[heinzboehmer]

Moved recently, so haven't had the usual amount of time to dedicate to car stuff. Has been a while since the last update though, so probably still gonna be a long post.

New place has a much, much bigger garage than before. Quick comparison:




New garage also has a drain inside, so I gave both cars a thorough wash. Doing it inside was surprisingly pleasant:



And while the new garage has much more space, it wasn't exactly too much more than just a box, so I built myself a workbench. Decided to design the thing in cad first and it made my life sooo much easier:




Tops aren't completely level, but this is just the first iteration of it. Next iteration involves adding some heavy duty threaded casters to each leg so that I can wheel the sections around easily and also level them out.

Also, the leftmost section is going to be dedicated to electronics and is still missing the cover shown in the cad. Cover is a bit overkill, but I will be adding it soon. Really want to be able to take some delicate electronics apart and then just leave them there while I grind stuff on the section next to it.

I added some thin strips of wood on the inside walls of the cabinet and put a bunch of these organizers in there to act as some sort of drawers. They're mostly filled with electronics stuff and some more delicate tools:



Workbench has been super useful so far, but enough with the amateur woodworking and back to cars.

Took the M3 out for a spin after not driving it for about a month and got as far as the gas station that's a few blocks away before the car went into limp mode. Read codes and turns out that one of the TPSs hat I replaced 5-10k miles ago had gone bad. Of course it had to be the one under the intake too.

I previously used whatever sensor FCP said was OE, but went for the genuine BMW stuff this time. Decided I was bored of this issue, so I swapped both TPSs, accelerator pedal and the pedal bracket that I had broken a couple years back. Also decided I had had enough of those super soft pozi screws that BMW uses, so I bought some hex head replacements from mcmaster:






Limp mode gone

Then came replacing a couple other engine bay components. First off all the belt tensioner and pulley related bolts. Bought all new ones after snapping that tensioner bolt a few months back. New at the top, old at the bottom (featuring hardware store temp replacement at the far left):



Also swapped the driver's side high beam boot, as I noticed the old one had a tear in it. Surprisingly easy job, thought it would be a lot more finicky:



Car worked flawlessly during the test drive, but as I was pulling back into the garage, one of the driver's side window switches broke:



New switch from BMW is ~$80 and used ones on eBay are ~$50. Decided to just grab one from the junkyard, as all I really needed was that one cap. Bryson and I hit up the local junkyard and I came home with all of this:



Always fun to go treasure hunting at the junkyard. Have a decent amount of projects to work through for both cars now. The best junkyard find (not pictured) was a set of 986S calipers that we stole for a whopping $100. Those are ultimately going on a friend's (and fellow forum member's) car.

Anyway, back to broken window switches. As I was swapping the cap, one of the pegs that it pivots on broke off, so I drilled out both of them and glued in two small metal dowels that I made out of a watch band link pin:




This honestly did not turn out great. The pins are barely glued in, but seem to be holding. Not too worried about it though, as it's the rear switch. Should last me until I go back to the junkyard and grab an early coupe window switch.

Rest of the easy junkyard stuff got installed (no pics, but this included the trunk tray, positive battery cover, top rear bumper bolt covers and non-cracked BST connector). AC vents had a couple broken tabs (but nothing like the ones on my car), so those will get installed later. Everything else is a future project.

The mirror pictured above used to have the short clown nose. Swapped it onto the mirror in my car before taking the pic though. Clown nose itself fits into the mirror housing just fine, but the LED standoff was a bit too tall and I had to slightly modify it. Easy enough to do, just drilled into the standoff to let the LED sit slightly more recessed:




(forgot to take a picture of the mirror on the car, but it's just a mirror with the short clown nose, nothing super special)

After that came the memory mirror retrofit. I lost that feature when I installed the nogaros and missed it quite a bit. Picked up an E46 power seat control module and an E38 memory mirror button module. My plan was to make a bracket to mount the E38 buttons to the seat rails and then have a quick PCB made to interface between them and the E46 power seat control module. Was planning on just soldering directly to the E46 PCB, effectively just making a button extension.

Racked my brain to remember all the digital logic and boolean algebra that I learned in college and made this:



Was starting to design the PCB in my mind when I decided to look at the E46 circuit board and see how much of it I could cut off, as I only needed a small part of it. Turns out the buttons each go to a discrete pin on the microcontroller (left side of the board), but the I bus output pin is on the same connector as the motor power wires (right side of the board):



This is when I realized (obvious in hindsight) that the memory mirror modules are just listening to the I bus and react whenever a recall or save message is received. Seat control module isn't doing any processing besides the I bus translation. Upon realizing this, I decided to stop the hardware retrofit and instead retrofit this entirely in software.

Looked into the BlueBus source code and lo and behold, t3ddftw had already written an entire I bus API for me . After a couple emails with him, I got the source to compile and then wrote the feature in. Source was super easy to work with. "Hardest" part was sniffing the I bus to see what messages the seat control module was sending out to the mirror modules. Can now use the radio buttons to both save and recall all three mirror memories. No added weight and no packaging issues to deal with either!

Kinda hard to capture the feature in a pic, but here's part of the UI:



To sniff the I bus, I had to plug the stock seat back in, which meant temporarily removing the driver's side nogaro. Unfortunately both (!) front studs stripped when taking the nuts off

I'm thinking that these stretched last time I torqued them and then the nuts destroyed the threads on their way out:



To fix, I cut the studs off and tapped new holes into the seat rail. Metal below the studs was thicker than expected, so I got about four threads out of the tapping. Definitely not ideal, but that's about how many threads the nuts have and they're holding torque fine:




Seat is temporarily held in with some bolts, but I've ordered 12.9 studs and will thread them in with some red loctite to sve wear on the chassis threads. Amusingly, the seat slides back and forth much easier now.

Also, the part with the studs has a separate part number, but is NLA from BMW. Looks like it's held in by 10 or so spot welds, so I'll grab a good one next time I'm at the junkyard. Will likely end up bonding it into my car.

Memory mirror project ended up in a bit of a catastrophy, but I just barely managed to save it. Again, not ideal, but car is fine for now.

Aaand finally caught up!

[HC1963M3]

Got the second one installed. Went pretty smoothly since I knew what I was doing this time.

I did learn that the transmission tunnel is asymmetrical though. The passenger seat does not run into the tunnel and instead hits the stops on the sliders when being pushed all the way forward. Makes backseat access easier, but it's still tight.

Here's a pic taken from an angle more like yours Thoglan, with both seats as far forward as they'll go. Passenger seat is visibly more forward than driver's.



Still less space than with the PPs. Maybe the Nogaros sit further back in relation to the seat rails?

Also, got a couple hours of driving in with the new seat. Very boring, sit in stop and go traffic type driving, but I think that makes my impressions more insightful, as it's the worst case scenario comfortwise. In summary, the Nogaros are definitely a downgrade for street driving and for my body type compared to stock.

Here's a list of pros and cons:

Pros:

• Much more solid than stock. No creaking or flexing when adjusting myself.
• Much lighter.
• Three point seatbelt works perfectly fine with them. I knew this would be the case, but it's still nice to confirm.
• I did not notice the off centeredness (in relation to the steering wheel) at all while driving.
• Backrest uprightness is totally fine for me.
• Feels like a racecar. I feel cocooned by the car and the lower seating position puts the shifter and steering wheel in a spot that makes me feel like I'm in an S2K.

Cons:

• Feels like a racecar. There's no button to turn off this feeling, so you're stuck with it whether you're in traffic or not. Gets old fast if you're not driving aggressively.
• These things are HOT. I was not expecting this at all, but they're not very breathable, especially in the sections wrapped in alcantara.
• Sitting in traffic means a decent amount of time with my arms down, which in turn means my shoulders get pushed forward by the seat a bit too much. Can get quite uncomfortable after a while.
• They're unfortunately past the limit of too low. I thought they weren't, but driving the car made it very apparent that they are.
  • I can't see the front of the hood, which makes placing the front of the car much harder.
  • Every car blinds me with their headlights.
  • Blind spots are HUGE (they weren't before).
  • Being so low means that I don't know what to do with my left arm. The door armrest is too high and just dangling my arm in space feels weird.

I sat and stared at the seats a bunch after the test drive and I've come to the conclusion that the seat is at a decent height in relation to the chassis. However, I sit far too low in the seat (stupid short torso). I'll drive some more tomorrow sitting on a towel or something, but I'm pretty sure most of my comfort issues can be solved by having me sit a bit higher in relation to the seat. So I think my solution to this is to build myself a booster seat. Should be pretty simple to wrap a block of foam in fabric to put between the lower seat cushion and the seat itself. Need to look into what type of foam and fabric to buy, but I'm fairly convinced that my next modification for these things is going to be that.

Also, just to be clear, these things are super supportive and feel great when driving closer to the limit. I'm sure they're going to be awesome on track, but they did turn out to be very much a compromise for me on the street.

Hi, please excuse the random post from a newbie ...

I'm UK based, and have Cobra Nogaros in a Porsche 996.

Cobra demo seat fitted to test driving position (full disclosure, Mark who owns Cobra seats in the UK is a friend of mine) :




And the custom trimmed seats (no logos here either !!)







I'm the opposite to you, short, stumpy legs and a long torso
I do however have some issues with the Nogaros that are similar to yours, that being the section between the shoulder "wings" is too narrow and thus pushes your shoulders and neck forward (and does weird things to your spine in the process)

I too have to have a inflatable lumbar support at the very base of the Nogaro back rest, it's only mildly inflated, but without it, my lower back rapidly gets painful. I struggled to get a bucket seat low enough in the 996, and in the end the only viable option was the Nogaro with the matching ultra-low Cobra side mounts.

I presume the reason you shifted the complete backrest cushion "pack" upwards was to try and "flatten" the void between the "wing" section to make it more comfortable ?

Anyway, the reason I've posted here is that I'm trying to get Mark to manufacture some wider Nogaros (only the backrest and specifically the "wing" section, not the whole shell) and flatten that section between the "wings" to stop the top of the backrest forcing your shoulders/neck/head forward compared with the base of your spine.

I'd be interested to know if our shoulders are roughly the same width. I'm 6ft tall, 170 lbs, waist 29", 29-30" inside leg and my shoulder/arm circumference measurement is 48", though that was measured without assistance, so may not be 100% accurate.

If you'd be happy to provide the following information it would be really useful (DM me with it if you'd prefer) :

Your height, weight and leg length.
If you could also measure around your torso/arms/shoulders and take that measurement, and also measure straight across your back at shoulder height, from the outside of one arm to the other (I measure just under 22").

Great build by the way !!

[heinzboehmer]

Hi, please excuse the random post from a newbie ...

I'm UK based, and have Cobra Nogaros in a Porsche 996.

Cobra demo seat fitted to test driving position (full disclosure, Mark who owns Cobra seats in the UK is a friend of mine) :




And the custom trimmed seats (no logos here either !!)







I'm the opposite to you, short, stumpy legs and a long torso
I do however have some issues with the Nogaros that are similar to yours, that being the section between the shoulder "wings" is too narrow and thus pushes your shoulders and neck forward (and does weird things to your spine in the process)

I too have to have a inflatable lumbar support at the very base of the Nogaro back rest, it's only mildly inflated, but without it, my lower back rapidly gets painful. I struggled to get a bucket seat low enough in the 996, and in the end the only viable option was the Nogaro with the matching ultra-low Cobra side mounts.

I presume the reason you shifted the complete backrest cushion "pack" upwards was to try and "flatten" the void between the "wing" section to make it more comfortable ?

Anyway, the reason I've posted here is that I'm trying to get Mark to manufacture some wider Nogaros (only the backrest and specifically the "wing" section, not the whole shell) and flatten that section between the "wings" to stop the top of the backrest forcing your shoulders/neck/head forward compared with the base of your spine.

I'd be interested to know if our shoulders are roughly the same width. I'm 6ft tall, 170 lbs, waist 29", 29-30" inside leg and my shoulder/arm circumference measurement is 48", though that was measured without assistance, so may not be 100% accurate.

If you'd be happy to provide the following information it would be really useful (DM me with it if you'd prefer) :

Your height, weight and leg length.
If you could also measure around your torso/arms/shoulders and take that measurement, and also measure straight across your back at shoulder height, from the outside of one arm to the other (I measure just under 22").

Great build by the way !!

Those seats look great!

And wow, yeah a version with slightly wider wings would be awesome. The extra cushions help push me forward in the seat and effectively decrease how much the wings push my shoulders forward. Has pretty much eliminated all of my discomfort, but a factory solution is more appealing to me than the band aid fix I have now.

Think we're of a pretty similar build, so you having a similar experience with the seats makes sense. Here's my measurements:

Height: 5'11"
Weight: 165 lbs
Waist: 29"
Leg length: 30" (this is measured, the jeans I'm wearing now say 32 leg length on them)
Shoulder circumference: 45"
Shoulder width: 22"

Hope that helps you convince Mark to make these!

[Obioban]

I struggled to get a bucket seat low enough in the 996, and in the end the only viable option was the Nogaro with the matching ultra-low Cobra side mounts.

BK makes Nogaro specific mounts for the factory 996 manual slides:
https://www.bkauto.com/R_9775_Cobra_...e_p/r-9775.htm

[HC1963M3]

Those seats look great!

And wow, yeah a version with slightly wider wings would be awesome. The extra cushions help push me forward in the seat and effectively decrease how much the wings push my shoulders forward. Has pretty much eliminated all of my discomfort, but a factory solution is more appealing to me than the band aid fix I have now.

Think we're of a pretty similar build, so you having a similar experience with the seats makes sense. Here's my measurements:

Height: 5'11"
Weight: 165 lbs
Waist: 29"
Leg length: 30" (this is measured, the jeans I'm wearing now say 32 leg length on them)
Shoulder circumference: 45"
Shoulder width: 22"

Hope that helps you convince Mark to make these!

Thanks for your kind comment on the Nogaros in the 996 (they've been a gamechanger, the stock seats were awful) though I have to admit that extended time in them does create neck, shoulder and lower back issues, so there's price to pay for the improvement in driving position and the connection with the car when doing canyon runs.

Many thanks for your height, weight etc information, it's really useful information to have to be able to give to Mark.
As you've said, it sounds like we're very similar stature. I suspect the seat probably only needs widening in the wing area by a 2-3" maximum (probably just 2" if the curvature of the back can be reduced too)
I know Mark said he wanted to adjust the headrest section so it's slightly angled forwards, rather than being angled back, but the primary focus needs to be the width and I suspect the curvature of the backrest, in the critical wing area.
I'll report back once I've chatted with Mark.

[HC1963M3]

BK makes Nogaro specific mounts for the factory 996 manual slides:
https://www.bkauto.com/R_9775_Cobra_...e_p/r-9775.htm

Looking at the BK Nogaro side mounts I suspect they're not as low as the latest ultra-low items Cobra now supply, and the seat height really was critical for me.
I used the complete Cobra mounting package, as they've redesigned the floor mount adaptor plate too, so you could say I was I was the guinea pig for the new components !!

[heinzboehmer]

Thanks for your kind comment on the Nogaros in the 996 (they've been a gamechanger, the stock seats were awful) though I have to admit that extended time in them does create neck, shoulder and lower back issues, so there's price to pay for the improvement in driving position and the connection with the car when doing canyon runs.

Many thanks for your height, weight etc information, it's really useful information to have to be able to give to Mark.
As you've said, it sounds like we're very similar stature. I suspect the seat probably only needs widening in the wing area by a 2-3" maximum (probably just 2" if the curvature of the back can be reduced too)
I know Mark said he wanted to adjust the headrest section so it's slightly angled forwards, rather than being angled back, but the primary focus needs to be the width and I suspect the curvature of the backrest, in the critical wing area.
I'll report back once I've chatted with Mark.

Yeah agreed. Huge difference on track for me as well vs the stock seats, so worth messing around with the extra cushions on the street.

Thanks! Looking forward to hearing the response from Mark.

[Obioban]

Good to be 6’4, so no extra cushioning is required 🤣