Dan's original owner '01 dual duty M3

[01M3Fan]

Then went to install the airbox inlet half & no way could I get the pins at the bottom to engage. Maybe it’s a case of user error - but it shouldn’t be that hard…

As I felt I was pushing the limits of breakage, I decided to put a engine lift fixture on and loosen the lower nuts on the engine mounts to get the engine as high as possible.

That ended up working and the pins ended up engaging (but not in a particularly reassuring way - no definitive “clunk” when they mated) and I was able to join the two halves together and then finish the rest of the misc items in the bay. Here’s the installed pic:



as you notice, I had to remove the OEM strut bar from the car because it interfered with the manifold - not a happy point in the build…. So I installed an old TMS bar that I had (that’s been de-stickered).

[01M3Fan]

Bought a BMC filter and really pleased how tight it fits into the TMS intake.

From reading the installation instructions for the TMS airbox, I knew it was going to be sensitive to engine height - so I bought a set of new engine mounts and decided to throw them in. After pulling out the old ones - wow, glad I did!!

[01M3Fan]

I've been struggling with a resonance on this exhaust system after I installed the new SS headers and cats. While I was under the car I started looking for heat shields that I thought might be rubbing and when I moved the exhaust I heard some noise near the mount on Section 2 and realized the mounts had sagged...

Lesson learned for me - pretty much anytime you have Section 2 off the car - change the mounts, cheap and a much bigger PITA to drop everything and do it later. Top nuts were in tough shape so removed the whole section and was able to beat an 11mm socket onto the nuts and get them to back off, phew - avoided the cutoff wheel.

Here's the old hanger



And here's old vs new hangers - FCP to the rescue!

[01M3Fan]

While I had the intake off the car I decided to clean up the routing of the secondary O2 sensors. I had previously split off the secondary sensors from the harness going back to the DME to be able to have good wiring run to the rear O2 sensors without splicing the line. Here's the line with the harness for the rear sensors.



And here's how I tied them off where the fuel filter resides to help provide some protection for the connectors.

[01M3Fan]

Got some good news from TMS today - they should have a filter by the 4th! So then need to work with HTE on the tune and get this running! In between now & then plan to refresh motor mounts as well as mid exhaust mounts - I've been struggling with occasional exhaust resonance & found mounts had sagged enough that exhaust is rubbing lightly on brace that runs across the chassis.

[01M3Fan]

On the Vanos rebuild I decided to address all the issues and completed the rattle fix, install new cam bolts and the Beisan upper chain guide. My guide was intact when I replaced it, but glad I did. Had some issues putting it back together where I couldn't get the timing chain/sprockets back on the hubs and then took things apart and realized I inadvertently installed the upper chain guide below the lower guide 🤦♂️

Here's the new cam bolts installed - I went with Lang Racing bolts.



Next was replacing the oil feed line for the Vanos - opted for Rogue Engineering, here's the original one - man, lower end was TIRED, glad I did this.



And here's the entire Vanos system reinstalled and buttoned up with new oil feed line.



Finally it was time to install the new intake - getting the plenum into the new boots was a bit of a struggle, but once I got it started it went on pretty smoothly.



Happy with finished product, but now I am on the hunt for a CSL air filter. Every source in US seems to be a month out and all the eBay options from overseas give me a 3 day to 5 week delivery window... Checking into BMC filter from Ind-distribution in the US to see if they have one in stock. Otherwise, I'm going to reach out to the eBay sources and see what the expedited delivery options are... 🤦♂️

[01M3Fan]

Yeah - I was super pleased with how clean the inside of the engine is. Car has 125K miles, but BMW replaced the engine under warranty at 75K miles after original engine grenaded soon after warranty rod bearing replacement. This one has about 50K miles on it and a bunch of track days.

Head has never been off - just 5K mile oil changes (more often when tracking) using Castrol and careful warm up and cool down.

[heinzboehmer]

Man, the inside of that head looks awesome. Has it ever been off for hot tanking? Or just kept it looking good with regular oil changes?

Also, I can't resist buying a beer when the label is car related lol. If you can find their beers (they're pretty small), Alvarado Street Brewery puts out beers with car inspired labels from time to time. I've seen F40, DeLorean, Countach, Aerostar, Iroc-Z and probably some more that I'm forgetting.

[01M3Fan]

And a couple of my favorite track pics - first couple from Lime Rock





And Palmer Motorsports Park

[01M3Fan]

I realized I didn't post anything about the RTAB changes that I've made over the years - the stock ones lasted about 45K miles and then I replaced with stock RTABs and then added TMS travel limiters. Found that was better than stock, but I wanted more predictability out of the back of the car and then changed to Bimmerworld sphericlal RTABs which were a huge improvement! Then when I was chasing noises in the back of the car when I had the MCS 2 ways on, I decided to change to Syncro Design Works RTAB which I thought was a bit more robust design.




Here the install



And the finished product.



I didn't feel any looseness on the BW RTAB's that I pulled, but after the change to Flatride, these RTABs and the D/A Koni's - the clunking noises are gone. I suspect Flatride and the D/A Koni's where the big contributors, but really happy with the finished product.

[01M3Fan]

Got to start on the Vanos rebuild today - first job was to pull the solenoid pack.




Happy how clean everything was after 50K miles - o-rings starting to get a little stiff, so glad I did this now before I pressed this into DD duties while the touring goes under the kinfe.

Seal plate all cleaned up



Next job was to set TDC and the retard the cams and get them in time with the schwaben tools. You can see some of my check marks as I worked through the valve adjustments. :-)



Then it was pull the Vanos unit off - happily, the exhaust hubs were intact, some signs of wear, but nothing concerning.



Then the fun of rebuilding the oil pump with the Beisan systems pump disk - hopefully next time I do this I'll have a better first time yield. I think it took me 4 or 5 tries to corral all of the oil buckets into the pump disk with my big mitts.



Did a trial fit as they suggest and no issues and certainly a lot tighter than OEM setup. I replaced all the seals and o-rings in the Vanos, cleaned the valve body and then installed the rebuilt solenoid pack - now everything is ready for reassembly. Was ready to start on rattle fix on the exhaust and intake hubs but only "fresh" loctite I could find in inventory was the medium, so called it a night and will run out in AM to pickup some high strength thread locker (tossed all my ancient stuff in the trash) and will get back at it tomorrow.

Decided to have a post wrenching treat.

[01M3Fan]

Had some time to work on the car today, so adjusted the valves. My 1st time doing it, I was a little nervous about this, but IMO, this is a pretty simple job as long as you are careful and work though your thought process. I used the Schwaben crank tool to work through each set of valves and I picked up a decent set of bent feeler gages on Amazon (a couple of years ago) that had 0.001" increments and then I just used them as "go - no go" gages with 0.007 - 0.009" and 0.011 - 0.013" for the inlet and exhaust clearances per the manual. I did buy a set of Wiseco shims for the S54, but the only ones I used were 2.24mm (I needed 4) and one 2.20mm. The kit comes with 3 of a bunch of sizes and fortunately one of the shims I pulled was the size I needed for one of the valves - so I was able to finish the job. I'm going to pick up 4 of the 2.24mm size to restock the kit.

Next job is to go after the Vanos rebuild - hope to start that on Tuesday.

[01M3Fan]

If you are at the point of going to brake cooling ducts, then I would agree you should take them off. My comment was more to the casual HPDE driver that isn’t pushing it that hard.

When I removed my splash shields I also put some thermal shields around my outer tie rod ends so I wouldn’t cook them.

[repoman89]

I remember there were a lot of cutting tools involved and a lot of swearing - in retrospect, I would recommend not doing this unless you need the clearance or are running force fed cooling to the rotors. I haven't had any issues with this setup on the street in cold or wet weather.

Curious why you’d recommend not doing it. I was about to rip mine out based on the Essex article that suggests doing so before trying brake ducts.

[01M3Fan]

Only thing I could get accomplished today was wiring the MAP sensor. Followed COVID-19's instructions and used his kit. Great price and a clean install. Tomorrow my Schwaben toolset from TMS shows up and I can get started with adjusting valves and then dive into the VANOS rebuild. I'll need to go to Horrible Freight or Lowes and pick up a super magnet to toggle the solenoids when I clean the VANOS valve body (and another couple of cans of brake cleaner).