2001 M3 Journey: Laguna Seca Blue Edition

[samthejam]

Great job on that headliner! Definitely will be referencing this when I reupholster mine

[nuc1]

Thank you !



Very little. Probably 20oz or so including test spraying, but it's not really sold in smaller units.

While I haven't used the canned version the reviews make it pretty clear it is not nearly the same quality of product.

Much appreciated!

Mike

[bavarian3]

Awesome work!!!! Came out beautiful.

Thank you !

How much of the gallon of adhesive did you use? They also sell 14 oz aerosol bottles.

Mike

Very little. Probably 20oz or so including test spraying, but it's not really sold in smaller units.

While I haven't used the canned version the reviews make it pretty clear it is not nearly the same quality of product.

[0-60motorsports]

Awesome work!!!! Came out beautiful.

[nuc1]

How much of the gallon of adhesive did you use? They also sell 14 oz aerosol bottles.

Mike

[bavarian3]

Carbon fiber roof part I - headliner restoration.

Ok in efforts to entertain you all how about this one. I'll break this up into parts because frankly every step of this project felt like a project.

As you all know sourcing a slicktop headliner is a PITA. I watched pick n pull inventory for months and months till finally, a slicktop e46 non-m came along. Shockingly, TWO of them popped up across different yards a handful of miles away.

It's so grimey going in these places but you do what you have to do.

One of the donor beauties...





Success. Quite easy to break these free, but not as easy to thread them out of the car with the windshields intact. I never thought to pull the seat out till Heinz mentioned it but that would likely help. Key here is to not bend the board as it can create weak spots.





Also managed to grab some other bits and pieces while it was there. These coat hook brackets will be needed later on.





Made quick work of the two junkyards and went from no slicktop headliners to two slicktop headliners. I will restore the second one and sell it to whoever wants it.





Now obviously these headliners are in cosmetically trashed condition. So here's how to restore them.

First step is to peel off the fabric and remove the old adhesive. A soft nylon brush attachment for a drill is the way to go here as it easily removes the old adhesive without damaging the board.

Most of the adhesive is already removed here, but you can see the remaining areas. Battery required of course.




All the nasty remains of it. A broom handles it well as long as you don't step on it, or else its like gum. Please wear a dusk mask at least.




Go in with a nylon hand brush to get any remaining nooks.




All cleaned up and prepped with IPA.




Now for applying new fabric. Here's where folks go wrong. I learned a bit since I did the A/B/C pillars. While the 3m 90 I used on them has held up so far, I wasn't convinced it could handle gravity and heat long-term of the headliner.

I investigated what the pros use and learned about a product called Weldwood Landau Top & Trim by DAP. The key benefit is that it won't fail under hot temps like 3m.






The catch - it needs to be sprayed with an hvlp gun.

This also means a decent capacity compressor is required. My existing one is laughably small. Harbor freight + coupons makes this all pretty serviceable.




The compressor requirements are less than if you were actually atomizing paint as low pressure is used. The product kind of just splatters out, not a fine mist.

Get a larger tank like >10g or high enough CFM to keep up with the output (>4scfm). I didn't want to lug anything huge so I got this one. It has suitable flow rate, but a small tank so it will run a lot.

Here's the gun all setup. Nothing fancy is needed here. $20 harbor freight gun with 3/8" hose. Also, don't get this compressor unless you hate your neighbors. It's actually under there in this pic, and no, you're not supposed to cover it with blankets like that. Do what you have to do.




Doing this on the ground works well, unless you have a large stand or table.

I was lucky to source a couple remaining yards of BM134 from Nate047 . The downside is 2 yards meant I had one shot at getting it right.





If the fabric has some creases like this, you can very gently steam them out. Heat breaks down the adhesive so be gentle.






To apply it, you'll spray the board, AND the fabric. Then wait a short time, maybe a couple mins is all that's needed, but 5mins is fine too. It doesn't bleed through as bad like 3m. Just keep in mine once you lay it, it STICKS.

Work in sections, not all at once. I did half half. You can actually work in sections at your convenience since you can spray the fabric. If you couldn't spray the fabric itself, it would be hard to avoid it when spraying remaining board sections, if that makes sense. Smaller sections also reduces the requirements for robust compressors.

Basically I started like this, sprayed the board and fabric then applied the half.




This is the only challenge area. I actually recommend leaving this vertical side as a dedicated pass. Work the fabric by stretching it gently to avoid folds. This all came out perfectly with some effort.





The back side is a whole nother exercise. It takes time but pretty self explanatory from the pics. Pic only shows about half of the backside complete, but you get the idea.

This doesn't need to be pretty since the accessories will be pressed into these areas. Just fold the fabric over and trim the excess. On tight corners you can snip the fabric several times to lay down.

Pro-tip - you can actually use a brush with the adhesive for small spots to avoid the spray mess. Since it lays on thicker with a brush you must wait ample time (5mins?) so it doesn't bleed through.






And the final product.




Can't complain. Came out 99% perfect and looks amazing. Best thing about this is it's one of the few freshly OE fabric upholstered slicktop headliners out there, while many out there are used or on aged adhesive.

And yes that box under there is what ya think. Stay tuned!

[bavarian3]

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!

Ah nice tip! I wasn't aware of these. Naturally my car came with these: 31316769731.

But I'm using the nuts that came with the Karbonius brace. They have a nice finish to them but are standard flanged nuts. The threads go all the way through, but no extra past the top of the nut.

[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.