Tyler's 04 slicktop 6spd Silvergrey MCS/Brembo/CSL/Karbonius/Nogaros/Supersprint

[Tbonem3]

I got into BMWs in April '03 when I bought a 1994 E36 325i (OBD1 M50) JB/blk 5spd for college, and fell in love with it. I grew up with a wrench in one hand so naturally started to do DIY maintenance, and found bimmerforums.

Modded it quite a bit: Turner chip, S50 cams, Carbonio intake, bilstein/eibachs, sways, style42 wheels. Only pics I have unfortunately:





Parted it out. Joined M3forum, and next was the slicktop 2004 M3 on Black Friday, 2009. Bone stock; 83k iirc. 2 owners and maint. history, almost $20k from a dealer down the street practically! I, even then, knew that I wanted optionless and 6spd no matter what after hating the sunroof in the 325i.

11/2009




11/2009 - 2013

I was starting my career, and pretty busy with other things, so I didn't mod too much. Mostly just maintenance. An RD Sport muffler, silicone intake elbow, BMC air filter, H+R Springs, Konis, spacers, D/A pulleys/fan delete, new alternator, adjusted the valves, obligatory "black out" plasti-dipped oe wheels lol - nothing too exciting really.


2014 - 2015

After almost 5 years, I thought about selling and upgrading (newer) vs. my heart. The heart chose to mod away as the wrenching and motorsport/engineering/mech running through the car is a great passion/hobby for me, having done a very similar thing with motocross with my father, when I was a kid. I also just loved this car. Every time I step in, it just feels right. I decided to keep the car, 140k miles notwithstanding, and spend some real money to address the Vanos, RACP + rod bearings all at once. I had to do some mods too of course! I was going to be out of town for a week, so I took it to Racewerkz, and had the following done:

WPC treated bearings
Besian goodies
Turner plates welded in
New OE ball joints/OE bushings in rear control arms
AKG sub, diff bushings 90a black poly
Euro headers + sect 1 cats
Valve adjustment
OE motor mounts, steering coupler, giubo, CSB
brake fluid flush, powersteering fluid flush


I then did the entire cooling sys (including pulleys/belts), front suspension (control arms, fcabs, mounts, etc.), new headlight lenses, new Konis, Eibachs, Alufelgen 19s, new PSSs. All new brakes (just OE) and complete parking break refresh. Later, another oil change after break in.

Got Evolve software right after too so at this point, even with the tight bearings and break in, the car was a different animal. I was very happy to have kept the car, to say the least!

Then I got a CSL trunk (Toan's Platte Forme AG rep), and fell in love again!



Specs:

2004 (11/03) Silvergrey (A08) M3 coupe, 6MT, no sunroof, manual seats, no nav, no xenon, no anything. *Though, leather is technically an option I believe.

Weight loss - Weight loss is important to me, despite it being a street car. Trying to get to 3100lbs half tank (starting at around 3300-3350lbs)

Conservative estimates
Battery -14 lbs (CSL battery)
Seats -60 lbs (22lb Nogaros w/ manual sliders)
Deletes -70 lbs (SAP/washer/fan/shroud/armrest/stockstereo/liners/brackets/mats/mobility/R headrests)
Wheels -24 lbs (19/20lb vs. 24/27lb) unsprung weight
Brakes -5 lbs (Brembo 996s, 2pc rotors) unsprung weight
Airbox/Intake -9 lbs (evolve CF, no flap, no MAP, no MAF)
Exhaust -5 lbs (catless, no resonators, EGT/rear O2 delete) w/ stock sect3 -25 lbs w/ scorza
Suspension -12 lbs (hollow sway, 6.25"/6" springs, alu RLCAs.
CSL boot/trunk items -6 lbs (w/ tools/liner delete)

Mods/Maintenance as of 04/2023

183k miles
"new" = within last 5k-10k miles

Engine
Evolve-R Alpha N tune stg 3 (SAP/EGT/postcat O2 deletes)
Karbonius full CF 2x2 gloss CSL airbox - "race"
Eventuri scoop
Supersprint Stepped V1 headers 2.5"
Supersprint Stepped V1 2.5" sect 1 w/ HJS 200 cell
OE sect 2
Oakville Motorsports sect 3 w/ 76mm polished single wall tips
New OE oil cooler/lines
New OE radiator, thermo, exp line, hoses, hi-temp o-rings, sensor, BMW coolant/distilled H2O
Fan/clutch delete
Rogue Engineering lightweight, under driven power steering + waterpump pulleys
UUC DSSR
Delrin carrier shift bushings
New OE e9x motor mounts (corteco)
Rogue Engineering street transmission bushings
Besian drilled oil pump disk + seals
New OE Vanos filter/O-rings
New OE Vanos hard line (updated)
New OE Vanos accumulator
WPC treated OE rod bearings + ARP bolts (done @ 140k)
New OE tps(s); cam sensors, filters, coils, plugs, o2s, chain tensioner, IAT, everything lol
Refurb'd (MEPEH) fuel injectors
Reman'd OEM Bosch alternator (01/17)
New OEM Bosch CSL battery H5 (05/18)

Chassis
MCS 1WNR
TMS street plates
H&R 60mm x 7" 60N/mm (343lb) front springs
Ohlins 110N/mm (628lb) rear springs/perches
DMG front strut brace
Hotchkis front sway (hollow/10lb) - medium setting
Whiteline adj front endlinks
Turner Motorsport subframe reinforcement plates (welded)
Eibach Aluminum rear lower adjustable camber arms
RE rubber (12mm) RSMs
AKG Subframe & differential 90a (black/street) bushings
DMG Comp-V rear brace (ala "GTR")
SynchroDesignWerks monoball RTABs
New OE FCAB, Control arms, ball joints, rear sway bar links/bushings
BREMBO 996 36/40 Yellow 345mm CSL + Ferodo ds2500 Front; 28/30 328mm CSL + ATE D738 Rear, RR/CM brackets; HEL lines, motul RBF600
ZHP 712 yellow tag steering rack
OE power steering refresh (resv/lines/expansion)
Yoko A052 255/35/18 - 265/35/18
Apex 18" ARC-8 9.5" et35 x 10" et25 - 5mm/3mm spacers


Exterior
Bimmian painted bumper reflector covers
APEX 75mm bullet nose stud kit black
OE BMW CSL bootlid w/ leds
Happybuyitnow168 (Ameoba wing ltd) CSL rep diffuser 2x2 CF
Philips Extreme vision H7 bulbs Halogens
New OE lights/lenses, kidney grilles, gills, badges, emblems, trim etc.
New OE belly pan

Interior
Cobra Nogaros black/vinyl/suede/tri-color stitch w/ Brey-Krause mounts on OE manual sliders.
AKG bronze clutch pedal bushings + delrin brake pedal bushings
OE (2001) Piano Black metallic Trim
New OE 6spd weighted OE ///M knob aka "M performance"
New OE ZHP alcantara shift boot
Coby Wheel alcantara ebrake boot
New OE armrest delete center console
New OE long Euro tray (coin delete)
New OE steering wheel
New OE steering wheel trims (blank top)
New OE soft touch center console pieces
New OE A, B, C pillars
New OE CSL radio delete plate

Stereo (deleted 04/20)
Pioneer DEH-80PRS
Eclipse PA5422 4ch
CDT Audio WS-100 1.1"
CDT Audio HD-6 6.7"
CDT Audio EX-530
Kicker 10C84 8" sub (ski pass mount - Infinite baffle)

Current look:

[BMWahba]

I was sad for a lot of build threads but especially miss yours!

[Tbonem3]

Appreciate that thanks!

[liam821]

Such a sweet car. Yellow calipers on silver is money.

[Tbonem3]

Such a sweet car. Yellow calipers on silver is money.

🤘 thank you Liam

-

Unfortunately, Flickr is not working well for me, and I can't find many pages of my m3f journal, so repopulating this will be slow :/ I've edited the OP for the back story and current status/mods of the car.

[liam821]

🤘 thank you Liam

-

Unfortunately, Flickr is not working well for me, and I can't find many pages of my m3f journal, so repopulating this will be slow :/ I've edited the OP for the back story and current status/mods of the car.

Yeah, unfortunately, a bunch of the old m3f is just going to be lost. Hopefully, you have most of your pictures saved on flickr.

[MrClutch55]

Beauty

[Tbonem3]

Beauty

Thanks!

2016

So with renewed purpose, I started planning out what I wanted to do and what parts were for sale that I wanted, preferring to buy from fellow members or group buys. I grabbed a used set of TMS street plates & GroundControl/Koni coilovers with new rear bumps and "tall" mounts for less droop (good for short springs/lowered cars):






Grabbed an original Oakville Motorsports Scorza!



Found the "best" cheap CSL diffuser rep pre-painted from Happybuyitnow168 on ebay:




Got a set of Sportline 8s csl rep wheels in 18", 8.5"/9.5" 20/21 lbs wrapped in 245/275 MPSS on black friday from modbargains sale





Picked up a lightly used Eventuri intake and new bosch maf. I really, really enjoyed my car at this point. Awesome exhaust, a bit of that famous CSL induction, it was great! Can't just leave things well enough alone can we?

[KhanArt]

Not sure I will ever get over M3F going down and all the data lost. I hope you have or are going to recreate your 996 DIY thread? I still need some part numbers. I am glad you are recreating your journal.

[Tbonem3]

I will! Unfortunately, I'm only on mobile now and it's proving pretty difficult to make large threads with pictures especially with the chrome app freezing on me every 5 minutes. Just this page of my journal has taken multiple edits and I'm still in 2016 lol

anyone feel free to PM me if you need info on 996 conversion

[Mike0032]

She's a beaut.

[Tbonem3]

^ Thank you!

2017

Mid Jan, went down to see Kaiv for a clutch job plus ssk since I found a used AutoSolutions SSK 30%. New clutch, tob, pilot, guidetube, pivot, fork etc just about everything plus new shift linkage parts and a new valeo starter cause why not at 170k? Power was out so Kevin did it on jack stands





I had Kevin put in some revshift green poly tranny mounts, and god damn the drive home was horrible lol. Swapped them out immediately for RE rubbers. I also found a cheap UUC DSSR on ebay so gave it a shot.




Alternator took a shit while at Kaiv's, so got another reman'd Bosch. Probably should have got a new Valeo oh well.




Then a TMS 30mm front bar (medium setting)





In March, forum member Brian N was gracious enough to offer a deal on his SG painted OE CSL boot with new badge/emblem/e90 lights. This was, and still is, really, my favorite mod, my favorite part of the car, at least visually. It's stunning design.




172k July I bought some oe injectors refurbed by MEPEH. Also cleaned ICV/TBs. New oe OHFG, oil pressure switch, spark plugs, both CPS, both in engine TPS, pre cat O2s, bosch coils 00124 off Amz, oem Elring VCG, sparkplug tube gaskets, valve cover grommets, Valve adjustment with Wiseco kit, vanos filter/oring, ///M engine emblem ($$$ ughh), oe side gills emblems again $$$ cause ebay ones look like ass. New oe Hella oil temp sensor when the dash wouldn't register an oil temp.




Still good!




Liquid goooooollllllld

[Tbonem3]

Later in 2017, a new OE steering wheel! Wow what a difference. Waiting on new lower trim.




Then got in on the SDW RTAB group buy, love these things! Also picked up a used MIS RTAB tool. Poly just pops in, but OE or bearing type rtabs need a press.








Installed APEX 75mm bullet nose stud kit (via double-nut method), front & rear




The refresh continues with new headlight trim. OLD:



NEW:




I also replaced the cabin HVAC filter, and put in new driver side "shadowline" door/window trims. Both driver door and rear quarter. A PITA, but new looks so good. Passenger side was already replaced back in 2015.

[Dino]

Such an awesome build, glad to see it back. That CSL Trunk is so beautiful, need to get myself one!

[Tbonem3]

Thank you! Yes it is!

October 2017 - now that the car wasn't a daily any longer, I decided to finally ditch the armrest for the euro tray. Entirely new center console, "short" euro tray, Coby alcantara e-brake boot & alcantara ZHP shifter boot. Awesome! Still rocking the weighted ZHP knob at that point. I liked it (with AS SSK), but it was a bit low and stiff so looked for something different later.




Near the end of 2017, Evolve was running a brexit special on their CSL CF airbox. It still wasn't cheap, but prices had fallen quite a bit so I went for it! Came home to this 😎







Instead of paying a premium for CSL CCV parts, I found some nice quality black hose and black spring clamps to make my own, re-purposing the BMW fittings.



Install







I used Turner's MAF/IAT relocation adapter to not have to do splicing and be able to revert quickly.

I already had an Evolve stage 1 tune for euro headers and was able to upgrade for free! To an alpha N tune. I figured I'd try it since my car had so much maintenance done and ran so strong (as opposed to CSL, though I knew I had an mss54hp already so that was cool).

Luckily, the first drive was smooth enough to make it fine to the gas station, but power was down. That second drive though, wow it was starting to bark and pull very well. I went home with a huge grin on my face. The third drive was THE drive. Went to some open roads at night, quiet. I started to lay into it around 3.5k-4k, and the roar melted my face!

It's intense Man, I wanted to drive all night long. Here's a video, but ofc it doesn't do justice with so much wind noise

https://youtu.be/CeB5oeY33ws - incase the quality above is too poor

I also bought a new OE INA chain tensioner. At this point, I had spent so much $ on replacing things, and at 173k, I figured I would continue replacing important things that aren't usually seen as wear items or maintenance items exactly "just because."