Alright we’re not done but finished enough to get the car out for a brief spin around the block.
I ordered shift selector rods from two places and @George Hill volunteered to overnight me one. Well, UPS punted ‘overnight’ to Tuesday, I barely missed the dealer order window and that also got punted to Tuesday, and I ordered a second from FCP to replace the incorrect one and eta was Wednesday. So what happened? The one with a Wednesday ETA showed up early today. Wild!
So in it went, then in went the carbon driveshaft (for now), followed by my nemesis. The supersprint headers and cats. I hate those things. They already had fit poorly before, but they weren’t even close to clearing the trans brace. One pipe needed 1/4” and another needed about 3/4” - so out came the sledge hammer and I got to office space these pieces of expensive metal. I’ve got about 1/8” of clearance now which is decidedly not enough but will do for a test drive.
Things I’m still missing: reverse switch, gear position sensor bypass (and coding), muffler heat shield, evap system hoses + cover, and a driveshaft that I trust at speed.
So I went for a quick drive under 35mph and rowed the gears a few times. First thing I noticed was the supersprint-derived exhaust leak, which closed up after a minute or so. After that closed up, it settled in to a nice stock sounding quiet idle. The M3 rasp is back which I’m not thrilled about, but some of the lower frequency aftermarket-sounding tones from the e36 muffler are gone. Oh, and I can feel the exhaust resonance again since I don’t have a bracket to tie the supersprint pipes to the transmission anymore. Will deal with that soon.
I went with the factory BMW performance shift lever (25-11-7-528-881) which feels just a hair shorter than the stock M3 shifter did. I liked the M3 throw but I’m not complaining because man this gearbox shifts well in comparison. The lever is positioned just slightly forward and to the right of the M3.
On to gearbox feel, it sort of ‘snaps’ into gear like the more modern Porsches (my target) and there is near as zero slop or imprecision in or between the gates. This is all with factory NVH isolating parts too. Really nice, actually changes the character of the car. It doesn’t feel as beefy as the getrag in a way, which is hard to describe, but you don’t need to muscle it into gear at all, it just happily pulls right into the next gate. We’ll see how I feel after a redline 1-2 shift, but I’m hoping that the M3 transmission mounts will help with that.
My car always had a heavier feeling clutch than others for some reason. No longer. This is odd because the pressure plate the came out and went in were labeled with the same part number, and I kept the slave that was in before. The only difference is the pivot pin is now factory plastic instead of the stainless 850i one I found in there. Oh well, a pleasant surprise.
So overall it feels nice! I never would have bit the bullet if I didn’t nuke the getrag, and all the downtime also gave me the motivation to tackle the trunk floor, so in a way I’m thankful to that shift fork for sacrificing itself.
I ordered shift selector rods from two places and @George Hill volunteered to overnight me one. Well, UPS punted ‘overnight’ to Tuesday, I barely missed the dealer order window and that also got punted to Tuesday, and I ordered a second from FCP to replace the incorrect one and eta was Wednesday. So what happened? The one with a Wednesday ETA showed up early today. Wild!
So in it went, then in went the carbon driveshaft (for now), followed by my nemesis. The supersprint headers and cats. I hate those things. They already had fit poorly before, but they weren’t even close to clearing the trans brace. One pipe needed 1/4” and another needed about 3/4” - so out came the sledge hammer and I got to office space these pieces of expensive metal. I’ve got about 1/8” of clearance now which is decidedly not enough but will do for a test drive.
Things I’m still missing: reverse switch, gear position sensor bypass (and coding), muffler heat shield, evap system hoses + cover, and a driveshaft that I trust at speed.
So I went for a quick drive under 35mph and rowed the gears a few times. First thing I noticed was the supersprint-derived exhaust leak, which closed up after a minute or so. After that closed up, it settled in to a nice stock sounding quiet idle. The M3 rasp is back which I’m not thrilled about, but some of the lower frequency aftermarket-sounding tones from the e36 muffler are gone. Oh, and I can feel the exhaust resonance again since I don’t have a bracket to tie the supersprint pipes to the transmission anymore. Will deal with that soon.
I went with the factory BMW performance shift lever (25-11-7-528-881) which feels just a hair shorter than the stock M3 shifter did. I liked the M3 throw but I’m not complaining because man this gearbox shifts well in comparison. The lever is positioned just slightly forward and to the right of the M3.
On to gearbox feel, it sort of ‘snaps’ into gear like the more modern Porsches (my target) and there is near as zero slop or imprecision in or between the gates. This is all with factory NVH isolating parts too. Really nice, actually changes the character of the car. It doesn’t feel as beefy as the getrag in a way, which is hard to describe, but you don’t need to muscle it into gear at all, it just happily pulls right into the next gate. We’ll see how I feel after a redline 1-2 shift, but I’m hoping that the M3 transmission mounts will help with that.
My car always had a heavier feeling clutch than others for some reason. No longer. This is odd because the pressure plate the came out and went in were labeled with the same part number, and I kept the slave that was in before. The only difference is the pivot pin is now factory plastic instead of the stainless 850i one I found in there. Oh well, a pleasant surprise.
So overall it feels nice! I never would have bit the bullet if I didn’t nuke the getrag, and all the downtime also gave me the motivation to tackle the trunk floor, so in a way I’m thankful to that shift fork for sacrificing itself.
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