heinzboehmer's 2006 Some-kind-of-grey SMG ZCP Coupe

[heinzboehmer]

Waiting on a bunch of parts for this car to arrive, so figured I'd start the build thread

To be honest, this was somewhat of an impulsive buy. Price was right and car is the perfect candidate for a mild restoration. What ended up selling me was the fact that this is a very late production car and has pretty much every single option available. And no, this will not be replacing my blue car

Factory Specs

• Production date: 2006-04-25
• Type Code: BL93
• Body Type: Coupe
• Transmission: SMG
• Exterior Color (original): Alpinweiss 3 (300)
• Engine: S54
• Interior: Cinnamon power seats
• Exterior: Sunroof, style 163s
• Options: ZCP, SMG, sunroof, rear sunshade, ski passthrough, lumbar and heated seats, navigation

Out of focus pic right after I bought it:



As you can see, the car is not white anymore. A previous, long term (10 years) owner had it repainted to this grey. It's not an ugly color, but yeah it's a repaint.

And of course, that's not the only bad thing about this car. Copy paste from another post I made:

Here's all the good things about it:

- ZCP
- Built 04/25/06
- Clean title
- No accidents
- California car
- Cinnamon interior
- Has every single option (even the rear sunshade!)
- VANOS done
- SMG pump rebuilt with Burkhart stuff
- SMG slave cylinder replaced recently
- Completely stock
- Cheap!

And the not so good:

- Originally alpine white (which would have been awesome against cinnamon, sigh), but was resprayed some sort of metallic grey by the previous, long term owner
- Car sat in a driveway most of it's life, so paint is hazy, but looks like a paint correction can fix that
- 181k mi and still on original rod bearings (!). Actually kinda excited about this one, really want to see what those bearings look like
- SMG. It's still on all stock everything, so maybe the CSL tune will help, but man SMG is weird

It has potential, but will need some work to get there.

Anyway, more pics. I did not want to keep driving the thing on the original rod bearings, so I had it towed home, where it has been sitting since:





And that's where the car will stay until I do the bearings. Also ordered other typical maintenance stuff like filters, engine + transmission mounts, FCABs, diff mounts, valve cover gasket, VANOS bolts, VANOS gasket, spark plugs, etc. There is mention of cooling system work on some of the paperwork I got with the car, so holding off on that for now until I start taking things apart in the engine bay and can inspect the work that was done.

I'll be keeping this thread updated with documentation for the work that I do to the car. Super excited about the rod bearings. Honestly I'm kinda hoping that they're all down to the copper so I can hang them on the wall as garage art

[SWRT_M3]

Congrats on your 2nd M3, can't wait to see what you have in store for this M3. Your Topaz journal is great inspirational/reference to start wrenching on mine.

[karter16]

So excited to follow this!

I vote we (you) expand the scope of the "mild restoration" to include a return to Alpine White ❤

[0-60motorsports]

Congrats! Looking forward to this.

[heinzboehmer]

Thanks guys, looking forward to taking apart this car as well.

karter16 I'd love to go crazy and restore this fully to factory specs. But at the end of the day, it's a high mileage car that I still don't know too much about, so I'm gonna try my hardest to stick to my "mild restoration" plan

[Nate047]

Nice pick up! I like the color, how well done is the paint work? That kind of color is hard to read in photos, we shoot with colors like this a lot. It's going to look vastly different in different lighting. I bet it's cool in person. I for one love dark grey paint with lots of flake. I would leave it and let it be one of the unique things about the car.

[heinzboehmer]

Nice pick up! I like the color, how well done is the paint work? That kind of color is hard to read in photos, we shoot with colors like this a lot. It's going to look vastly different in different lighting. I bet it's cool in person. I for one love dark grey paint with lots of flake. I would leave it and let it be one of the unique things about the car.

Yeah it's a difficult color to capture for sure. Looks less boring in person. I actually do like it, but having the trunk and engine bay still white does bug me.

Base coat looks totally fine. From what I can tell, all the glass and trim were removed/replaced before painting. The clear coat is more of an unknown. It's faded in certain parts, so it's hard to tell what the quality is like. Right rear quarter looks pretty good though, so I'm fairly confident that a good paint correction will bring it back.

[heinzboehmer]

Disassembly started this week:



Unfortunately there was absolutely no drama. All the bolts came out without a problem and I found no sketchy repairs. This car is missing the front undertray, though, so everything was super grimey. Not fun.

Got the oil pan off yesterday and removed the rod caps from cylinders 3 and 4. This is what those bearings looked like:




Looking much better than expected! Think I'm just gonna throw them back in and reassemble everything. No point in swapping stuff out if they've still got some life left

[Tbonem3]

Those must have been replaced at some point, can't be 181k miles.

[heinzboehmer]

Those must have been replaced at some point, can't be 181k miles.

That's the same thing I thought, but there was absolutely no evidence of anyone being in there before. None of the fasteners had any witness marks on them and none of the other wear items around the area had been replaced.

There's also no record of them being replaced by the first owner (<100k mi) and the guy that sold it to me told me they weren't replaced under his ownership either.

We'll have to see how the rest of them look tomorrow...

[0-60motorsports]

That's the same thing I thought, but there was absolutely no evidence of anyone being in there before. None of the fasteners had any witness marks on them and none of the other wear items around the area had been replaced.

There's also no record of them being replaced by the first owner (<100k mi) and the guy that sold it to me told me they weren't replaced under his ownership either.

We'll have to see how the rest of them look tomorrow...

At this point then i would go ahead and replace them especially if you have the parts already.

[heinzboehmer]

At this point then i would go ahead and replace them especially if you have the parts already.

Ha, yeah I was just messing around on that other post. Gonna plastigage and replace all of them tomorrow.

[Obioban]

Low RPM previous driver :P

[heinzboehmer]

Low RPM previous driver :P

Yeah, I think that's the most likely explanation. Well, that and also the fact that this car has lived in a mild climate its entire life.

[heinzboehmer]

Finished up the bearings today. Here's what the old ones look like:




Not bad at all. There's a couple showing a little bit of copper, but they mostly look great.

I went with ACL bearings and stock rod bolts for the replacements. I did plastigage them and they were all well within spec. I'll post up more details (and pictures) soon.