Casa de Mesa’s M3 color change from blue to blue

[lvm3sm46]

If you have to ask....

Not the case here. I know he was shopping a wide area. I know what the price here in NY would be so just curious what its like in NC

[usdmej]

If you have to ask....

a lot of painting costs is in R&R (which OP did himself) so i'd imagine (hope) it was a 4 figure bill for him

[stephen]

Looks great. Would be curious to see this parked next to LSB

[Casa de Mesa]

Looks beautiful - Especially with the paintbooth lighting.

That looks amazing!

Looks great, looking forward to seeing continued progress.

Dude this is insane lol

Car looks wild.

Really nice seeing people spend real money on these things!

Absolutely nuts work... jeez

Thank you guys. I really appreciate the kind words.

i'm not gonna lie, when i 1st saw you post about color change, i had my doubts that a subpar (exterior color change, no jams/engine) color change was going to happen. Boy i was wrong. Love how you went the extra mile & outside the box with the color choice. Awesome job, looking forward to it all pieced together.

Yeah I get that. I would have had the same reaction reading my posts if were in anyone else's shoes. When I started the process I knew pretty much what I wanted, but a lot of the questions I was asking in the forum probably made it seem like I didn't know what I was doing. Well I still don't know what I'm doing but making it up as I go. Ha

amazing work, Casa de Mesa ! Can't wait to see it all put together.

Also, as someone else mentioned, your disassembly (and ongoing reassembly) is great reference for anyone working on their car.

Thank you. I can't wait to see it all bolted back together too!

Other builds on this forum and back on the old forum inspired me. I was pretty silent on M3Forum but active on other sites. If it weren't for the builds other people documented, I never would have taken on this project. So while it feels a bit voyeuristic at times, or even a bit like a different form of the 'gram or other social media look-at-me platforms, I decided to post anyways. For me, this is more about sharing the build so others can hopefully benefit from it.

Regarding the questions on the pricing, while I can appreciate the intention behind the question, I'd rather not post those details in this thread. We all know the parts and labor charges on these cars aren't Dollar General and Earl Sheib level pricing. Quality comes at a price.

What I will say though is that I spent a lot more time than I alluded to looking for shops, getting quotes, researching what's involved (learning) and asking each shop about their process. While visiting shops and seeing their work, I found like with most things, you pay for what you get. I chose to spend a little more and ended up at a restoration shop rather than an insurance-driven body shop. It's not to say all hose shops are bad, but the place I found was a bit more flexible in timing, paid attention to the details and I have a paint job with multiple layers of both color and clear rather than the bare minimum to make it shine. It's done right.

I think pricing will ultimately come down to how much work each car needs (dings, dents, repair work, etc.), where the shop is located (Troutman NC real estate likely has a lot less overhead involved than a shop in SFO) and also how far you want to take the car. My car isn't a rotisserie restoration, but probably the next closest thing. I also supplied some parts that would have required repair work because the cost of labor to fix them more than paid for the new part (i.e., the Euro bumpers on these cars are surprisingly "affordable").

If you're looking at a project like this, feel free to PM me and I will help. If it's 100% a curiosity thing, well then I agree with Tbone 😁

If you have to ask....

[Casa de Mesa]

A couple update pics from last weekend. My brother came to town to help me get the motor back in. We grew up working as mechanics at a bike shop, spinning wrenches to pay for college expenses. Getting to spend that time with him this past weekend spinning wrenches on this car was pretty special. Our father, a retired-FoMoCo employee, was supposed to come down too, but ended up with bronchitis and didn't make the trip. Bummer. As I've said elsewhere in this forum, his father/my grandfather had a gas station and repair shop in the Bronx. This car thing is definitely in the blood.

Motor getting ready to go back to its home. A new AutoSolutions AutoCross shifter is hanging off the back of the tranny. I can see why these things have the hype about them. They are the real deal!



A couple minutes later... 😐







Bolted back up!



The place is a bit of a mess. All of the bags on the counter in the left background are items that are organized from the front to rear of the car. They all have to go back on the car and are only about 1/4 of the bags that remain. A huge part of this project has been organizing the work and while I've not been the best at it, I'm really, really thankful I took the time to bag and tag absolutely everything. Even with the labeling and now 3,600+ pics, I sometimes can't remember how something bolts back onto the car. My advice to anyone taking on a project like this: Take more pictures than you think you need to.



And I just like this photo for some reason.

[jet_dogg]

Loving the work B, just not loving that glossy vent LOL!

The tesa gaffers tape is legit.

[robgill]

Amazing work, love seeing this come together! I'm jealous of that garage, wish I could find that kind of space in the Bronx 😆.

Catching up on your thread I had a couple random thoughts:

• The painted engine parts look awesome! Make sure your passenger side motor mount bracket is bolted to the block bare metal to bare metal. The grounding for the alternator passes thorough the block, bracket, ground strap and into the chassis. I missed that and fixing it sucked...
• You can see the IR blue/purple hue on the "loaded" windshield with polarized glasses on 👍.

[Casa de Mesa]

Amazing work, love seeing this come together! I'm jealous of that garage, wish I could find that kind of space in the Bronx 😆.

Thanks Rob! Your build in particular is one of the reasons I decided to pull the trigger and just do this.

• The painted engine parts look awesome! Make sure your passenger side motor mount bracket is bolted to the block bare metal to bare metal. The grounding for the alternator passes thorough the block, bracket, ground strap and into the chassis. I missed that and fixing it sucked...

Oof. I missed this too and I'm seeing this about 6 weeks too late. What are the symptoms you encountered?

I'm behind on updating this thread, but the motor is running. When the car is running, I'm seeing about 14.2V at the battery so the alternator is charging the car. Just yesterday, I bolted up all of the underside panels and chassis braces and the car is going to be on the ground today. I hope.


EDIT: The irony here is that I've been extremely methodical about making sure that all grounds were de-oxidized with Scotch pads or a wire wheel, and truly a metal-to-metal contact. I can't believe missed this.

[robgill]

I'm behind on updating this thread, but the motor is running. When the car is running, I'm seeing about 14.2V at the battery so the alternator is charging the car. Just yesterday, I bolted up all of the underside panels and chassis braces and the car is going to be on the ground today. I hope.

EDIT: The irony here is that I've been extremely methodical about making sure that all grounds were de-oxidized with Scotch pads or a wire wheel, and truly a metal-to-metal contact. I can't believe missed this.

My symptom was low voltage and low battery charging when the car was running. 14.2V is bang on so you should be good! I used powdercoat and i think it is a lot thicker and not as conductive a Cerakote. If you aren't having any electrical issues I wouldn't worry about it. I had a hell of a time figuring out what my issue was. Then I was watching some random youtube build and the guy made a comment about ground traveling through the block and it hit me that i didn't clean the powdercoat off the mount points. I was able to get that mount off pretty easy from below and clean it off. That immediately fixed the issue which was a huge relief!!

[Casa de Mesa]

My symptom was low voltage and low battery charging when the car was running. 14.2V is bang on so you should be good! I used powdercoat and i think it is a lot thicker and not as conductive a Cerakote. If you aren't having any electrical issues I wouldn't worry about it. I had a hell of a time figuring out what my issue was. Then I was watching some random youtube build and the guy made a comment about ground traveling through the block and it hit me that i didn't clean the powdercoat off the mount points. I was able to get that mount off pretty easy from below and clean it off. That immediately fixed the issue which was a huge relief!!

Hey Rob - thank you so much for posting here about this. It would have sucked to have to figure this one out on my own - appreciate you preventing the same pain you went through!

I got the car running yesterday again. At idle, with no electrical load and a full battery (on a maintenance charger), it's hovering around 14V. With headlights on (at idle), it's a 13.9V. With the HVAC fan at full blast plus headlights, it's about 13-13.1V. So it's putting a charge into the battery under those conditions. It's not a fully electrical load, but the battery is full and I put the Turner street underdrive pulley's on the car. Not sure how big of an impact these will have on these cars, but I will monitor this.

I did some research on Cerakote and I don't think it's an insulator. Pretty sure it will conduct electricity just fine, which adds up given the above voltage readings. It's doing it based on the threads of the motor mount, because the 3 mounting surfaces on the motor are coated with about 4 coats of thick paint. I may temporarily try to find another place to ground the block that is not the motor mount. I just don't currently have it in me to tear apart what I just put together!! However, I will absolutely go back and shave that paint off the block and for good measure, the Cerakote on the motor mount.

Thanks again! Happy Memorial Day!

[Casa de Mesa]

After getting the motor back in the car, it was time to start bolting stuff up to it. It's a shame this coolant cross-over tube will never be visible because I love how good it looks in Cerakote.



Pretty happy with how clean these valves are for a motor with 74k miles on it.



Throttle bodies and air rail back on. I also hooked up the Kassel MAP sensor. Took me a little bit to figure out which "air tube" (not sure what they are called - the aluminum cylindrical spacers that the actual air rail connects to) to hook the sensor up to so I'm hoping this pic might help others. It's the 3rd one back from the front of the motor. As far as I can tell, this will have the least interference with other parts and pieces on the motor (i.e., throttle actuator, back portion of the air rail, etc.).



Closer look at the Kassel adapter.



Quick shout out to COVID-19. I think his MAP conversion solution for sale here is a more elegant solution. In the upcoming pics, I'll show you why. Getting the Kassel adapter wiring for the sensor to route along the motor cleanly is a bit of a pain in the ass. I PMed with COVID-19 before I did this install and fully intended to buy his kit. However, with the incredibly long list of things to do on this project, I totally forgot to buy his solution before it came time to do this particular sub-project (wiring the MAP). If I had to do this all over again, I'd pick his solution over the Kassel adapter.


Next up, Idle Control Valve hooked back up. Also the the coolant tubes for the heater core are hooked back up on the back of the motor. In the lower right of this picture, you can also see the CSL/regular E46 auxiliary water pump. It's a good bit lighter and smaller than the M3 equivalent, which appears to have 2 pumps built into the unit vs. the 1 pump in this one. It's also significantly cheaper. There is a great thread here about this.

Part numbers:

64118369807 M3
64118369805 CSL



Temporarily "mounted" the main plenum for the CSL intake in place to check fitment of the Kassel adapter wiring, and to start to figure out how to bend the dipstick. You can see the smaller CSL water pump here too.



The carbon trumpets on the Karbonius CSL intake are a thing of beauty. Amazing quality on this piece, I just can't get over it.



And here is how I snaked the wiring.

Starting from the MAP sensor, tucked the wiring back as far as possible so as not to interfere with the throttle body-to-intake boots or clamps:



Ran the wiring down along the main engine harness. Terrible picture, but you get the idea:



Then I used a metal coat hanger (cut it, straightened it) to tape the bitter ends of the Kassel wiring to and fished the wiring up through the engine-to-DME wiring harness/loom and associated grommets.



Picture from the rear of the motor facing forwards:



And finally, into the DME compartment through the grommet.



This was the best setup I could think of to keep things as clean as possible visually, but also water tight still. That is, by using the grommet from the chassis harness to the DME box, it keeps any possibility of water ingestion to a minimum. I realize that we're talking about the inside of an engine bay, but for those of us who wash their engine bays (all of us?!), this works.

Bolting this radiator support/frame back onto the car was a pretty awesome moment. Such a small thing, but it meant things are starting to come back together and the car was soon going to look like an actual car again.



Bumper cover fitted!!!!! It was temporary as I still had the radiator air duct (P/N: 51717893351 - the one that fits inside the kidney beans) to install. But the new BMW/OEM radiator, AC condenser and oil cooler are all hooked up, and all plastic supporting bits, rivets and screws were replaced.



Modified the driver side cooling fan shroud to follow the contour of the Karbonius CSL intake. Took a little bit longer to make this happen then simply cutting is straight down (as I believe is done on the actual CSL), but I think this looks better.

EDIT: thanks heinzboehmer for correcting me here. Apparently the real CSLs don't have this shroud at all! Pictures I saved for reference of what I thought were real CSLs must have been from replicas...



Radiator air duct (again, P/N: 51717893351) installed. Also filled the motor with oil, coolant and power steering fluid. As it sits here, the car is ready to fire up for the first time since October.

[heinzboehmer]

Nice work! Like how you routed the kassel wiring. I did something similar, but put it through where the MAF wires used to be.

Btw, CSLs don't have the driver side fan shroud at all. Maybe BMW thought the airbox acted as enough of a shroud? Or maybe they just found it didn't make enough of a difference to warrant making another custom piece.

[Casa de Mesa]

Btw, CSLs don't have the driver side fan shroud at all. Maybe BMW thought the airbox acted as enough of a shroud? Or maybe they just found it didn't make enough of a difference to warrant making another custom piece.

Thank you! I edited my post to reflect that. Appreciate you catching that.

[jet_dogg]

Did you change the title or am I trippin? 😂

[Casa de Mesa]

Did you change the title or am I trippin? 😂

The title of the car or the title of the thread? LOL

The answer is "no" to both.

Funny thing though. Someone asked me if I needed to change the title and registration of the car now that it was a different color. I'm like... what should I tell our good government that changed on the car? That the car was blue and is now blue?