Black & Tan 332iT

[bigjae46]

Wow! Looks amazing!

Carbon trimming...not fun.

[Bry5on]

Booger welds ftw.

Fancy seeing you here!


Heat shield is in, only 5/8" room for the exhaust to grow. We'll see if/when it contacts..


Now that the surprise work for the gearbox swap is done, and the side quest to convert to quad exhaust is nearing completion, back to where we were. Carbon trimming.

Hatch is about ready for paint, finished the massaging necessary to get the inner tail lights to fit right.


And I'd say the exhaust came out great.

[wyatth]

Booger welds ftw.

[0-60motorsports]

Certainly not anymore.

When I had even the smallest issue they would send me a full replacement straight away. Great guys at SS. Like my resonated section 2 started having a broken tin sound after many years and they still sent me out a replacement.

[Bry5on]

No warranty coverage?

Certainly not anymore.

[0-60motorsports]

They were definitely not damaged in shipping, just manufactured poorly

No warranty coverage?

[proto.corsa]

It’s perfect.

[Bry5on]

About the SS exhaust parts that are not fitting for you i think maybe they got damaged in shipping? Did you ever contact SS or their US importer to claim warranty?

They were definitely not damaged in shipping, just manufactured poorly

[0-60motorsports]

About the SS exhaust parts that are not fitting for you i think maybe they got damaged in shipping? Did you ever contact SS or their US importer to claim warranty?

[Bry5on]

This evening I decided to do something about the super sprint pipes that I love to hate. They were off center by 1" and 3/4" and the faces were angled sufficiently far off that I had 3-4mm of free space when the flanges were touching at the opposing side. Once I wrenched them down, the pipes would get sucked down to the point that they nearly touched the cross brace/section 2 support and they nearly touched the side of the heat shield. Absolutely awful.

Before:


4 Booger welds later:


Glorious, fits just like it should now - 1/4"+ of clearance to the cross brace, centered in the tunnel and all fasteners just seat right into place. Man, I can't believe how badly these things fit for the price.

While the car was up, I swapped out the ABS-GF hatch supports with PA-CF that'll handle higher temps and trialed the metal heat shield. Well there's only 3/8" clearance to the back of the muffler, and the whole exhaust grows when it's hot so that's not gonna do. I'll have to take a crack at finding another 5/8" of space or so.


And last, the roof rail clip positioning prints worked quite well. I was off by 0.5mm though I can live with that, as it's biased in the direction that you can't see from the side of the car.

[bigjae46]

Then quickly mounted up the hitch hatch and got the bumper looking complete again - happy to see that the cut is invisible even when real close to the ground!

Man that cover made me think of Knight Rider. You should motorize so it folds down and then spits out oil or something. 🤣

[Bry5on]

This afternoon was aesthetic things. First, bonding the roof rail clips to the roof with windshield urethane as the VHB did not do the trick



I had to do lots of urethane cleanup - don't use an electric gun if you're doing this at home - but otherwise the printed clip locators seemed to work pretty well. I'll snap the roof rails back on tomorrow.

Then quickly mounted up the hitch hatch and got the bumper looking complete again - happy to see that the cut is invisible even when real close to the ground!


Check out how it works

https://youtu.be/t8f_cH0ga7A?si=0jdzPE38svgjkV-Z

[0-60motorsports]

Love it. Looks so good.

[Bry5on]

Oh my - what have we done..



I promised earlier that we'd get back to the trailer hitch - that time is now. Starting with the scan we took while the trunk floor was out, built up some CAD to create a mechanism to make a tool-free trailer hitch hatch. It pulls out and installs at a 45 degree angle to the ground and is retained using 8 plastic 3D printed springs integral to the mounting parts. The mounting parts, on either side, bolt to the plastic bumper and the hitch bumper bar. The whole center section of the valance is then bonded to a 3D printed hitch hatch so the center section drops out all as one. And there are bosses printed proud such that the whole hitch hatch rests on the bosses and none of the visible plastic has to touch any surface when removed. Because OCD.

So here's the CAD we started with:




Then a photo of what it looks like with the trimmed section removed. If you're curious, I scored the plastic about 30 times with a sharp utility blade then cleanly broke the two parts apart. This worked quite well actually.


In that photo you can also see how I totally jerry rigged the non-m EVAP hoses to connect in the M3 location, more detail of that temporary move to make the car safe(r):


Back to the hitch hatch, The main printed part got sanded, IPA wiped and bond prepped with 3M Primer 94 before adhering the 5952 VHB tape



Then we bond the removed section of the quad tailpipe valance to the VHB by using positioning holes in the mounting brackets, carefully located to match the mounting holes in the valance. This also means that by putting BMW plastic clips into those holes, we can 'lock' the hitch hatch permanently closed, if that was ever useful.

In any case, here's what it looks like bonded together and half-way installed into the mounting brackets, then final cleaned up, and in its horizontal resting position.





I've also made a heat shield (made from the non-m muffler shield) to protect my hands from the hot center section of the muffler. This will all get permanently installed next time we drop the muffler to install the heat shield above it. Tomorrow we add reverse switch and GPS bypass wiring, then do some mocking up of the parts designed for bracing the exhaust to the gearbox. But at least it's drivable for short stints.

Ah yes, speaking of that. I did get a few hard 1-2 redline shifts in the car and it did great. I usually shift pretty easily and surprised myself chirping the tires into second. So far, no issues. I did pull the fill plug and saw purple oil - so someone's definitely put in some effort to mitigate what is likely that second gear grind, even on this relatively low mileage gearbox. I left the RP stuff in for now and have oil on the bench for later.

[Bry5on]

if you ever decide to put an autosolutions short shifter, I can say you won't regret it. My z4mc with the autosolutions shifter and custom lever extender is "chef's kiss" lol.
Uncanny to see the rear tail pipes on a narrowbody. Like a sleeper tease. lol

Funny you say that, I will 100% regret it! I’ve driven a few M3s and one Z4M coupe with the auto solutions kit with mild throw reductions and I didn’t like it in any of them. I do like the ability to tune the shift knob height, but I really don’t like the feel and some of the noise that comes with the AS. I do see why people like them, just not for me at the end of the day.

And call me crazy (twice in a row?) but I prefer the stock twin pipes on the narrow body, but I agree the quad pipes on the narrow body really highlight what’s there for those who know. All about the sleeper