Black & Tan 332iT

[Bry5on]

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.

[bigjae46]

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.

I'm telling you...the non-M gearbox has an outstanding shifting experience!

[Obioban]

Weight:
I don’t know what the mechanism is, but for sure pressure plates get heavier over their lifetime. Every time I’ve replaced a pressure plate with a new stock part I’ve noticed it.
.

[Bimma360]

The interior looks sooo good! An acquaintance of mine had a 330i vert at one point, maybe still does. I never drove it, but did sit in it and shift through the gears. The one thing I vividly remember, is the shift feel. It had a very nice non rubbery pop going into the gate.

[enjoy_m3]

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

[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

[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.

[0-60motorsports]

Love it. Looks so good.