Karter16's Silbergrau E46 M3 Journal

[karter16]

Well pretty pleased with this for a first prototype.





The insert fits perfectly and the two pieces fit together perfectly. I'm stoked that I got the internal geometries right for the insert as they were the hardest bit.

I will do some measurements of the prints to make sure they are perfectly dimensionally accurate, and provided they are I need to adjust the seat between the top of the body and the cap by about 0.5mm in diameter and height. The printed cap fits on the OE body, but the OE cap is ever so slightly too large to fit the printed body. I want to make sure I'm as close to the original as possible with this so will make that adjustment.

Key thing though is I can now go ahead and design the pockets for the grip pads and include the first iteration of that in the next prototype as well.

[0-60motorsports]

Oh that sounds like an awesome idea! Id be interested in one pending the finished result.

[karter16]

I got the chance today (making the most of winter before the weather improves and I get started on house projects again) to get started on a project I've been wanting to do for a long time.



The goal here is a 1:1 replica of the SMG shifter knob. Why? It occurred to me some time ago that modern manufacturing techniques present an opportunity to create a twist on the stock SMG shifter to make something a little bit unique.

The plan is to have the knob 3D printed in titanium and then finish it to a polished surface which will hopefully be a cool twist on the chrome of the original item. The 4 leather pads I'm planning to do as leather-covered TPU with an ABS or similar backing (drawing heavy inspiration here from how heinzboehmer recovered the pads on his SMG).

Why titanium? It is of course a PITA to finish, and it might not end up working out, but I've decided to give it a try for two reasons. Mostly because it's a cool thing to try, secondly - thermal conductivity. One of the nice things about the OE shifter being plastic is that the shifter doesn't feel ridiculously cold to touch on a winter morning. This is because plastic has poor thermal conductivity. Titanium of course has much higher thermal conductivity than plastic, but also it's an awful lot less than stainless steel or aluminium, so will help to reduce this effect.


The model above as you see doesn't have the pockets cut for the leather pads, reason being I want to do a test print to make sure that I've got the internal geometries right first in case I need to change anything that affects the pockets for the pads. I'm intending to reuse the OE clear acrylic centre insert which mates the shifter with the shaft, so I need to make sure it's a spot-on fit.

Anyway - first draft is being printed and will do some test fitting when I get the parts.

In the meantime here are a few screen caps of the two parts:

[Bry5on]

Man, that came out amazing. Wish I would have taken the time to do that with mine.

+1 to this, I’m envious

[heinzboehmer]

Man, that came out amazing. Wish I would have taken the time to do that with mine.

[karter16]

When deciding on the Gauge.S one of the ancillary decisions I needed to make was how/where to mount it. When he installed his Bryson designed an enclosure to go in the ash tray which is very nice, and I decided I would go with the same approach as it allows for the Gauge.S to be hidden away when not using the screen. It's also an easy swap back to the ash tray at any point.

The centre console is specific to LHD/RHD, in that the cigarette lighter is on the driver's side. This meant that the enclosure Bryson designed needed to be mirrored for my RHD to keep the screen centered. Bryson kindly shared the CAD file with me and I was able to quickly make up a mirrored version for RHD. I also removed the features that I don't need (internal mount for the GPS unit and mount/faceplate holes for USB-C charging).

The end result looked like this:



As you can see it was printed on a textured bed which gives it a lovely effect.

Now this all seemed too easy to me, so I decided to make it more difficult by doing a painted finish to more closely match the rest of the centre console components.

As always with painting it's all in the preparation:



This was then followed by several coats of matte black, before being sanded back to a completely smooth finish and then top coated with several more coats of matte black.

I'm super happy with how it's turned out:







In person it looks perfect to me, I can't find a single imperfection in the paint that I'd fix if I could.

I'll wait for this to properly harden and then do some photos showing it in place.

Just got to wait for the rest of the bits to arrive now!

[karter16]

It’s yours if you want it. PM me your address.

Oh man I ordered new connectors after Heinz shared the part numbers - wish I had seen your post first! Thanks very much for the offer though - I do really appreciate it!

[George Hill]

It’s yours if you want it. PM me your address.

[karter16]

Junkyard is your friend!

But also, they're TE 1355899-1 and 1-1452198-1. They also say BMW 6909052 and 6913629 on them, but doesn't look like those are BMW part numbers.

Ah brilliant thanks for the part numbers! Unfortunately junkyard E46's are pretty limited where I am so often struggle to pick things up that way.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[heinzboehmer]

Still to do is to confirm the exact connector used on the steering angle sensor and order a pair to make an extension for the Gauge.S.

Junkyard is your friend!

But also, they're TE 1355899-1 and 1-1452198-1. They also say BMW 6909052 and 6913629 on them, but doesn't look like those are BMW part numbers.

[karter16]

Time for a few little updates:

First the wheels/tires - having had some more time driving on them, and in particular on some dry roads I can't believe how much quieter the Potenza Sports are than the RE050As. I know that one of the complaints about the Sport is that it's noiser than the PS4S, but honestly it's still a huge improvement over what I had before, so still feels like a win to me.

I'm super super, happy with the 18x9/18x9.5 combo, and the lightweight 18in rims have given me everything I was hoping for in terms of ride + driving feel. I try very hard to make sure that each change I make to the car aligns to my goal of "improving the driving experience", and this change has absolutely nailed that brief.

As an aside, at the time that I installed the RACP brace I also replaced the rear cover on the diff with a new one with new bushes. I'm super happy to report that the combination of these two things has completely addressed what remained of the diff slop/M-Clunk/whatever you want to call it. I'm stoked about this as wasn't sure whether the diff was getting a bit worn out, but I'm super happy with how this has resolved, particularly as my brain has reprogrammed my driving style to not work to minimize situations where it happens (same thing happened when I got the tune dialed in for rev matching, it takes a while for your brain to realize the car is going to behave predictably and that you don't have to avoid certain scenarios any more.


I've also ordered a Gauge.S for CAN/D-bus logging. Thanks to Bry5on and heinzboehmer I've adapted Bryson's ash tray insert for the Gauge.S to suit an RHD car. I've also ordered the connectors for the Gauge.S board headers, etc. Still to do is to confirm the exact connector used on the steering angle sensor and order a pair to make an extension for the Gauge.S.

The plan with the Gauge.S is to put everything I can into a couple of custom CAN messages from the DME so that the Gauge.S can log these at high data rate. I've written a custom program ROM which allows me to specify the memory addresses of the variables I want to push on the CAN bus in the partial/tune binary. The advantage of this approach is it means that reconfiguring the messages is a simple tune flash rather than a change to the program binary. I can't actually test this until I get the Gauge.S setup, but it's otherwise sitting there good to go.

Also while disassembling the CAN functions I uncovered that ARBIDs 0x700 and 0x701 (which are disabled in the 0401 tune) can be enabled to send knock manager data. This is going to be super useful for tuning and big thanks to Bryson for confirming the behavior with logging.


I've got a bunch of half-finished projects on the go at the moment that I need to finish before I start anything new (which I'm itching to do):

- Finish the boot/trunk interior work with the RACP brace in place. (I managed to get myself stuck for a while on the best option for the false floor, but think I've got a reasonable option)
- Finish the SMG expansion reservoir bracket (No blocker here, I just have one that works well enough and need the motivation to sit down and do the final design)
- Print and install Bryson's Euro M3 bumper to CSL snorkel duct (this one is currently blocked as Dad is having some 3D printer issues with ABS that he is working through)
- Finish documenting all of the CAN messages on the main CAN bus for the 0401 binary (I mostly have what I need, but want to produce comprehensive documentation on this for the benefit of the community)

Think that's all for now...

[heinzboehmer]

Hell yeah man! Car is looking great. Glad it's back on the road.

The RE71-RS's while the stickiness would have been giggle-worthy, don't give the same degree of feedback and would be impractical in wet conditions, so the Sport it is.

You made the right choice. Probably an unpopular opinion, but I think "track-y" 200 tw tires suck on the street. They're noisy, uncomfortable and aren't really all that fun until you get some heat into them (at which point you have to get out of the car and adjust tire pressures). Also, they're skeeetchy in the wet. I've hydroplaned real bad on the highway on the way to the track with them, not fun at all.

Don't get me wrong, I love my RE71-RSs on track, but I'm always happy to swap back to my street tires after driving home for a couple hours.

[karter16]

Looks great and very glad you're happy with the wheel/tire setup. Now I know for sure what wheel/tire setup I'll be running if I ever do the widebody

I completely forgot to mention looks haha! Have to say that although looks weren't high on the priority list I do love how the 9in fronts fill out the front wheel wells and make the car look a bit more aggressive and purposeful without being OTT. And of course the ARC-8s are a classic look in their own right for the E46.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bry5on]

Looks great and very glad you’re happy with the wheel/tire setup. Now I know for sure what wheel/tire setup I’ll be running if I ever do the widebody

[karter16]

Yesterday I got the tires fitted to the ARC-8's and today I put them on the car and went for a test drive.

It will surprise no one that this setup is a huge improvement over 19s with old RE050A's. The first few minutes of driving were weird, it felt like I'd lost a bunch of road sensation and it took a few minutes to realize it was just harshness and unhelpful noise that was missing. All the useful feel of the car and the road through the seat and wheel was still there, it was just a quieter smoother ride with much less of the unnecessary hum, buzz, fizz, whatever you want to call it. As soon as I realised I could still read the road as before I settled in and started comparing the difference.

I can't talk to how the Potenza Sports compare to the PS4Ss, but compared to old RE050A's they are very significantly quieter, I first noticed this by noticing that the CSL intake sounded louder! 18inch wheels are clearly what this car was designed for and are better than 19s in every way when it comes to ride quality and feel. I'm very happy I opted for the firmer sidewall of the Potenza's over the, softer than PS4S, PS5's. The accuracy and immediacy of handling is still there, significantly improved upon with new sticky tires. I need to give a big shout out to Bry5on for his advice to put 9in wheels up front with the ET42 offset. I'd always been worried about putting anything too wide up front, afraid of ending up with heavy, dull steering, but with pretty much the correct offset and lighter wheels and tires all the precision and immediacy is still there, and when you get on to windy open road the feel of the car with a larger tread patch up front and closer to square setup overall is just superb.

On the topic of weight. The combination of lighter wheels and lighter tires means I'm almost 4kg lighter per corner, which (including weight of the rotors) is close to a 14% reduction in rotating mass, and I can really notice the difference. I'm always skeptical of my butt-dyno because I'm always concerned it is excessively influenced by the "wallet factor". But in this case there is no doubt. Acceleration and braking both noticeably benefit, not to mention how much better the car ride and holds to the road with less unsprung mass.

In summary, as you would expect, this is a fantastic upgrade in every way.

I do want to thank everyone who took their time to give me advice and suggestions on this project. It wasn't one I was planning to do right now, and as a result I had not performed my usual excessive amount of research and preparation well in advance. I'm very grateful to everyone who shared their knowledge and experience to help me arrive at the ideal outcome. Thank you!

Like heinzboehmer I've very much missed driving the car while it's been laid up, so like him when I got it back on the road a short test drive turned into a longer one. Only I ended up at a slightly less globally-famous landmark. The Mt Rex sand processing facility in Helensville 😂 Also, it's winter here, it was raining, and the sun was in the wrong place.