2001 M3 Journey: Laguna Seca Blue Edition

[heinzboehmer]

The camber plate studs barely have enough threads after the reinforcement plates(on top the camber plates) and rogue spacers.

Are you using the stock strut bar nuts (51717895241)? They have an extended threaded collar for more thread engagement.

Don't think they're necessary here though, looks good as is!

[bavarian3]

Strut brace install

Given that I have an early 2001 model, these actually came without a front strut brace from the factory. This left some structural rigidity on the table. I wasn't expecting this to transform the handling obviously, but I have seen some folks with cracks in the surrounding areas of the chassis due to not running one.

I thought about a bunch of options, ultimately ruling it down to the Karbonius, and Slon triangulating brace. I actually found a Slon second-hand for a price I could stomach, but it turns out due to the early model bumpy strut towers Slon has a different design for these models. I figured with Heinz refining his design perhaps down the road we'll have a more plug and play consumer ready solution, or maybe a more accessible tuner(than Slon) will come out with their solution.

So I went with the Karbonius, while I got it on sale it's still an excessive amount to pay for a strut brace. Unboxing:





I had to wait a a month IIRC as I wanted it with the black mounts...





Now installing this is way more work than I anticipated.

First you have to pull the positive terminal housing and hood sensor off. TLDR these get in the way and need to be basically rotated to opposite sides.




In order to rotate them they have to be modified. Me figuring out how the heck to cook this thing with Avedis journal as a guide.




After repeating dremeling and test fitting you get something like this:






You can then slide it on so it fits on the drug big side.








Then you have to extend the hood sensor, to avoid cutting into the factory wiring I just created a harness:




More fun things to worry about. As mentioned early MY's have bumpy strut towers. This creates an uneven surface causing a mounting problem for strut braces.

To solve for this, I used Rogue's strut tower spacers. These had an added benefit as they protect the paint and spread the load out at the mounting points.








Now it's time to install the brace, but wait, more fun. The airbox relocated dipstick now is in the way too!





This was a dilemma as bending it didn't seem to be as easy as it looks with a pipe bender, and I didn't want to modify the part if it's not needed.

Off came the intake half, and here's where I ended up with. It's not perfect as there's some slight stress near the dipstick pull.





Alright finally room has been made and it can be installed.

The camber plate studs barely have enough threads after the reinforcement plates(on top the camber plates) and rogue spacers.




Later on I'll improve this by trimming space from the spacers around the strut braces mounting feet to give this a flush sitting.




Lastly the hood insulation is called to be trimmed to fit the strut brace. I decided to toss it in the storage pile. More intake soundz.





Final shots:









Oh and some driving impressions. Perhaps in my head, but I noticed an ever so slight increased rigidity. Keep in mind I went from no strut brace ever to this. The engine bay is looking good now.

[bavarian3]

I'm in love with your spec dang!

Much appreciated! Stay tuned for more soon

[bimmermh]

I'm in love with your spec dang!

[bavarian3]

Boooooooooring... wake me up when the matching Cinnamon Recaro Sportsters arrive.

JK this car is freaking awesome! Amazing restoration.

Ha ha, patience and you may be entertained! Thanks!

[freshprince2421]

Boooooooooring... wake me up when the matching Cinnamon Recaro Sportsters arrive.

JK this car is freaking awesome! Amazing restoration.

[TexaZ3]

Looking good!

[bavarian3]

Been a while, friends! It's been a winter of enjoying the car as we got little rain in CA.

I did work on a couple small projects, and have some big ones coming. So I'll get back to things here to get warmed up.

ZCP steering wheel trim retrofit

The titan grey steering wheel was part of the plan to go with black interior. As I switched gears to cinnamon, I preferred more black accents to go with it.

I got a cheap set of beatup zcp trim on ebay and immediately sent it out to our trusty TexaZ3 for refinishing.

Removing and assembling the NOS button.



Ebay special



Nice!





The nice thing is I don't have to pull the steering wheel. Just unplug the battery, wait 30mins, then pull the airbag. The trim can then be removed. A look at the old, which I'll keep around if things change.




Now the tricky part. Wiring this up was a bit of a brain exercise. So heinzboehmer was gracious as always to help me problem solve a perfect solution. The reason for the added difficulty is I wanted to avoid splicing into factory wiring.

The TLDR of the solution:
Tap into the sport button ground at the DME side into the cruise control ground. To avoid splicing anything, you can simply use a Y connector harness solution as shown. So to be clear if you were splicing you would depin the cruise control wire from the dme, then splice it into the sport button wire at the dme.

The harness is simply to avoid splicing, acting as a y connector.








Just for reference - For non-smg cars, another solution is you could splice into the control center sport button ground(or any button you wish to activate with the i/o button), and the run a wire into the empty slot in the clock spring. This is a reasonable and easy solution, but if you have an early model like mine, the slot is actually blank with no pins!

All other models should use the same clock spring for cars that have smg or manual, but only smg cars will utilize it for the paddles I believe.





Looking good!





Everything works great. Now when I want a big NOS power boost I have it at the tip of my fingers. In all seriousness, hope this helps non-zcp folks that also want to wire their i/o button to something.

The one caveat to this is you won't have cruise control(well obviously since I won't have the button controls anymore), and if I did the Z4 stalk retrofit I would need to run another wire from the clock spring to the DME (no big deal). For whatever reason I rarely touch cruise control, even on road trips. On this vehicle cruise control would be used 0% of the time, so I'll opt to not do the retrofit.

A couple more shots with my cam even though the forum butchers quality.






Stay tuned. I'll show the install of my strut brace since my car never came with one.

[Gt4]

where might one pick up one of these diffusers?

Just send me a pm here on this forum

[Arclitgold]

Too bad our diffuseurs aren't selling cause fitment is spot on. Better than the first MEC production batch/mold

Now you give me motivation to work on my LSB and get my CSL parts painted!

where might one pick up one of these diffusers?

[bavarian3]

Just read this entire build thread. Fantastic job with this car. Car looks absolutely mint now. Glad you're actually driving and enjoying it!!

Also, agree with that last pic with the 993 being pretty epic.

Thanks! too kind. Hope to be on your restoration abilities one day.

[Casa de Mesa]

Just read this entire build thread. Fantastic job with this car. Car looks absolutely mint now. Glad you're actually driving and enjoying it!!

Also, agree with that last pic with the 993 being pretty epic.

[bavarian3]

Last pic is awesome! Nice work and DIY tips and tricks in your post. Cheers.

thanks! hope it can help some others.

Cold start will be getting a major revision this winter! My car warms up before the end of the block right now, so it's too warm to tune Glad you're out there enjoying it!

looking forward to it !

[Bry5on]

Cold start will be getting a major revision this winter! My car warms up before the end of the block right now, so it's too warm to tune Glad you're out there enjoying it!

[0-60motorsports]

Last pic is awesome! Nice work and DIY tips and tricks in your post. Cheers.