Karter16's Silbergrau E46 M3 Journal

[karter16]

Well that was easy!

Mr 2 went to bed early so I had some time after dinner to swap the new head unit in.

First up is removing the old head unit, the centre vents (the worst bit of the exercise), and the lower console bracket, so that I could install the HVAC relocation bracket.




Console bracket out.




How does so much debris get into a sealed area!!!

The car had had a Parrot bluetooth unit installed, which never worked properly for me, so that had to come out. I was a bit worried about how the wiring for it might have been done. The wiring harness had in fact been cut to put the Parrot unit in series. Fortunately it had been done well and I was able to just unplug the Parrot harness and plug the OE harness back together. I'll tidy it up further in the future, but for now I've wrapped it with fleece tape and packaged it up.

I then swapped the switch strip and cigarette lighter across to the HVAC relocation bracket (photo taken before swapping over):










The Xtrons unit comes with an ISO wiring harness and it makes it ridiculously easy to connect the head unit. Just plug it into the Xtrons and plug it into the car harness and that is literally it. Everything just works. The ISO harness comes with some other tails for other harnesses. I intend to remove these connectors I don't need at some point in the future to tidy things up further, but before I do that I'll just run the unit for a while and make sure I'm happy with it.

Once I'd done a quick test to make sure functions were working I put everything back together, and voila!




It works.

As others have noted the dash trim doesn't sit quite right. This appears to be because the clip is built into the Xtrons (see below) and it seems to be slightly too high up - a quick go with a file will fix this I think - again will get back to this over the Christmas break.







Initial impressions of the head unit?

• Ridiculously easy to install and get setup - you get a ton of wiring harnesses in the box and it seems intimidating. You only need the ISO one and it's entirely plug and play, no tapping to do, no extra wires to hook into, nothing. Just plug in the additional things you want (GPS, Wifi Antenna, etc. I didn't bother with the USB ports, 4G, etc. as I won't use them).
• The unit is FAST. No delays anywhere, the UI is fast and responsive.
• CarPlay seems good so far, I connected my phone via bluetooth and it just worked.

The real test is going to come over the next few months as I see if it reliably works well and quickly, or if there are gremlins. Promising start anyway, will provide an update in a few weeks once I've used it for a while.

[0-60motorsports]

Well this arrived astonishingly quickly considering I ordered it on Sunday night and it arrived from Hong Kong this morning!







Not sure what the quality of the product is like, but the delivery and sales service have been excellent.

I went for the IX8246BHL which is the highest spec option for the E46.




First impressions are better than I was expecting. It seems to be finished nicely, the buttons feel pretty good. The twisty knobs don't have the same inertia feel that the stock ones do, but they're pretty good. The chrome would usually annoy me but I'm kinda interested to see with the SMG whether the chrome on the knobs ties things together a bit.

I feel a bit of a sense of inevitability about this venture as I have, for years, seen others complaining about their "China-sourced" head units, so if this doesn't work out I have only myself to blame.

In the end I went with this option because I wasn't very enthused about the tier 1 manufacturers offerings, and secondly because this gives me a more modern unit without too much of the area taken up with buttons, but also without the "slab glued to the dash" look that a lot of other options have.

As I said previously I'm very comfortable with the tech, so don't mind some fiddling to get it setup, but once it is it needs to be rock solid. Plan to give this a year to see how it goes and will re-evaluate then.

Thanks for posting this. Let us know how it performs once installed. Might also get this.

[karter16]

Well this arrived astonishingly quickly considering I ordered it on Sunday night and it arrived from Hong Kong this morning!







Not sure what the quality of the product is like, but the delivery and sales service have been excellent.

I went for the IX8246BHL which is the highest spec option for the E46.




First impressions are better than I was expecting. It seems to be finished nicely, the buttons feel pretty good. The twisty knobs don't have the same inertia feel that the stock ones do, but they're pretty good. The chrome would usually annoy me but I'm kinda interested to see with the SMG whether the chrome on the knobs ties things together a bit.

I feel a bit of a sense of inevitability about this venture as I have, for years, seen others complaining about their "China-sourced" head units, so if this doesn't work out I have only myself to blame.

In the end I went with this option because I wasn't very enthused about the tier 1 manufacturers offerings, and secondly because this gives me a more modern unit without too much of the area taken up with buttons, but also without the "slab glued to the dash" look that a lot of other options have.

As I said previously I'm very comfortable with the tech, so don't mind some fiddling to get it setup, but once it is it needs to be rock solid. Plan to give this a year to see how it goes and will re-evaluate then.

[karter16]

And now for today's edition of karter16's Random Side-Quests.

On my to do list is the radio/nav. I've spent a lot of times working through various options and they all make me sad to some degree as there just aren't any options out there that give me the combination of OE-like and modern functionality that I'm looking for.

The current trend in the E46 M3 world seems to be towards minimalism which is fine, but for practicality reasons I want to swap to a touchscreen nav setup that I can run CarPlay on etc. Ideally this looks OE-like, however having said that I'm not a fan of the dated "screen with buttons around it" arrangement that the original E46 nav had. Times have moved on with technology and it's unnecessarily pokey (in my opinion). That said I don't particularly want a big slab of a tablet stuck on the dash either. I'm currently tilting towards something like this Xtrons unit:




This in itself makes me sad, as I would like to steer well away from the cheap electronics, but that said none of the main manufacturer's offerings enthuse me either. I'm inclined at this point to give the Xtrons a go. If it's rubbish/not reliable then I'll try something else instead. I'm technically competent so don't mind some effort to get things working well, I just need them to be reliable once I've got them setup...

Anyway, back to my morning cup of coffee quest...

Regardless of what option I go with, I want to make it feel as OE as possible. One aspect of that is replicating the original boot/splash screen used on the OE Nav. Now of course the OE Nav is more than 20 years old at this point and the original image is low resolution:




I had a decent search on trusty google but was unable to locate a high-res reproduction of this image, so I decided to make my own.

I actually used Figma to do this, which is a bit of a random choice, but I'm very familiar with it and its capabilities are more than sufficient for this project. Secondly Figma is a vector image tool, so what I'm producing here is a vector-based image which I can then use to output whatever resolution I like with no loss of image quality.

Upscaling images by hand, especially graphics/text is part math and part subjective tweaking. To start with I take the source image, resize it to a suitable scale to work with on the canvas (I chose 1280w, large enough to see detail, without being too large and unwieldy). I then started overlaying the text and graphic components. When doing text I tend to use a contrasting colour so that I can get the sizing, etc. approximately right and see what I'm doing:








Often the challenge can be working out exactly what font has been used. BMW made this nice and easy for me in this instance as they use their own "BMW Helvetica" font for everything 🙂

Once I figured out the exact size to set the font to, which is trial and error, I was then able to roughly put in the bars with the linear fades on each side. Getting the proportions of the fade right is again just trial and error and viewing at different zoom levels to judge what's right.


I squared everything up and had an image that looked pretty much like the original, but higher quality. The next step is make sure it replicates the original as closely as possible which is a lot of tweaking and pixel shuffling. I find that the best way to do this is to take the image you've just produced and output it at the same resolution as your original image.

This gave the the following:




Looks pretty good huh!




Actually when we look at the original and the reproduction side by side (repro on top, original on bottom) we can see I haven't quite got it right.







In the reproduction the BMW text is slightly to the right. This is because I centred the text in the image between the fade bars which I made of equal width on both sides. Doing that on the face of it makes sense, but there's a good reason why BMW tweaked it slightly.


If we look at this side by side (repro on top, original on bottom):







We can see that BMW actually made the fade bars on the right hand side slightly wider than those on the left, this is to account for the fact that only the top right edge of the W extends fully to the right of the bounding box for the text, whereas the B on the other side is hard up against it. Although in my image the text is dead centre and everything is symmetrical, the perception to the eye is that there is more whitespace (or blackspace in this case) after the W than there is before the B. To account for this BMW actually made the fade bars on the right hand side come across to the left just a little bit.

So let's adjust it:




Getting closer, just a bit more to go:







Now we're looking pretty good!




It was a number of iterations to get to this point, but now things are looking pretty similar between the two. I'm happy with this now.

All of that work means that I how have a fairly faithful, high res, reproduction of the original image ready to go for when I need it.







This is pretty niche so I can't imagine anyone else really having any use for this, but if you do you're more than welcome - SVG and PNG downloads below :-)


SVG

E46 BMW Nav Splash Screen Vector.svg


1280w png




2560w png

[karter16]

Thanks for the link. If you shoot me your email in a private message, I will send you a copy of the tutorial. It isn't done, but the wiring portion of it is complete. I can also send you a link to the crimp tool needed for the MQS connectors used in the mirror plugs.

Awesome thanks! Will PM now :-)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[heinzboehmer]

Does the mirror switch go to the GM5? If so, why not depin the wires from that and make a new short harness to replace it with? Instead of having the harness go from center console to door and then back to center console

Edit: Aaah wait no, I think it goes to the memory mirror modules. Carry on...

[Avedis]

Yes sure,

They're an AliExpress special - here's the link: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005...7063f19c7KXihb

Key thing to note is that you have to bring up the picture for the item/s you want and then add to cart. On this page it's the male and female 6 pin black connectors.

Note too that you'll need to cut the little wing off the black connector that plugs in to the mirror control unit so that it fits - trivial with a craft knife.

Not for you specifically Avedis as have seen in your build thread you have the same control unit as me, but for others, check your mirror control unit first if you do this as if you have other mirror features you may have a different and/or second connector on your mirror control unit to wire in as well.

Thanks yes I've been following your amazing build thread! I'd be keen to see some more photos of how you routed the wiring, but maybe that's coming in the complete diy guide you're putting together?

Thanks for the link. If you shoot me your email in a private message, I will send you a copy of the tutorial. It isn’t done, but the wiring portion of it is complete. I can also send you a link to the crimp tool needed for the MQS connectors used in the mirror plugs.

[karter16]

Nice, do you have a part number or link for those connectors?

As you saw in my build, I recently did the install. I actually started something similar with the harness but changed plans last minute. If you need any info on the wiring/connectors/tools/etc shoot me a message.

Yes sure,

They're an AliExpress special - here's the link: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005...7063f19c7KXihb

Key thing to note is that you have to bring up the picture for the item/s you want and then add to cart. On this page it's the male and female 6 pin black connectors.

Note too that you'll need to cut the little wing off the black connector that plugs in to the mirror control unit so that it fits - trivial with a craft knife.

Not for you specifically Avedis as have seen in your build thread you have the same control unit as me, but for others, check your mirror control unit first if you do this as if you have other mirror features you may have a different and/or second connector on your mirror control unit to wire in as well.

Thanks yes I've been following your amazing build thread! I'd be keen to see some more photos of how you routed the wiring, but maybe that's coming in the complete diy guide you're putting together?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Avedis]

Nice, do you have a part number or link for those connectors?

As you saw in my build, I recently did the install. I actually started something similar with the harness but changed plans last minute. If you need any info on the wiring/connectors/tools/etc shoot me a message.

[karter16]

Quick mid-week update - As I mentioned in my last update I haven't yet routed the wiring for the mirror controls to the centre console location. The reason for this is that I don't want to have to cut/hack into my wiring harness for a modification that I may feel differently about in the future. So that I can avoid cutting or tapping into the existing wiring I ordered some connectors so that I can make a harness extension that connects to the OE plug sited in the drivers door.


These connectors arrived today:




Now that I have these I can install an extension from the centre console to the door and put these connectors on each end and just plug it all together without any damage to the main harness 😎

[karter16]

Really enjoying the restorative focus of this build. Awesome to see your dad helping you out, and your son being a part of it as well.

As a father of two, it's hard not to get emotional when reading about your children's health struggles and long stays in the hospital. I'm sure that's incredibly draining on you and your family. I know it's just a car forum, but I hope writing it all out like that helped you unpack it a bit. I hope this project continues to be a healthy and positive outlet and counter balance the daily struggles.

Thank you so much for your kind words and encouragement. Yeah it's been a long six years and we'll have more to go, but it's worth it all for the times when the boys are home and well and happy.

It is just a car forum, but funny the places you find support and encouragement eh! Nice to have something fun to think about and work on for sure!


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[Avedis]

Really enjoying the restorative focus of this build. Awesome to see your dad helping you out, and your son being a part of it as well.

As a father of two, it’s hard not to get emotional when reading about your children’s health struggles and long stays in the hospital. I’m sure that’s incredibly draining on you and your family. I know it’s just a car forum, but I hope writing it all out like that helped you unpack it a bit. I hope this project continues to be a healthy and positive outlet and counter balance the daily struggles.

[karter16]

My order from EMIAuto arrived earlier in the week after a bit of a delay at Customs (turns out if you read the invoice properly and pay the correct amount it tends to speed things along).




The most exciting thing in this package is the sound insulation for under the rear seat. As I mentioned previously this is a newer item that at some point BMW has used to replace the original butyl item that came from the factory. I've been looking forward to receiving this to see what it's like and to check fitment.

It does not disappoint!




It's a nicely made piece, it's a soft felt on the outside with firmer layers inside to hold the shape, with the sound material in the core. I haven't got the scales out yet but its weight feels to align with what RealOEM quote. As you can see in the photo it comes with cutout flaps for accessing the fuel pumps. Nicely the cutouts aren't quite complete so there's some little tabs that hold it all in one piece, that you can easily cut with a knife if you need to access the fuel pumps.







I haven't done a full fitting yet, but I did have time the other day to do a quick check, and it looks to fit well. The only thing I wasn't able to completely validate without removing the rear seats completely was whether the isofix fittings fit through the existing cutouts. I'll check this when I have some time to get everything out of the rear bench.










The other exciting parts of the package were the bits and pieces that I needed to install the CSL centre console that picked up a couple of months ago. I had some time yesterday in between renovations and plastering and got to work removing the existing centre console. Step 1 being to remove the driver's seat.





Removing the centre console is straightforward, you just have to remove enough of the trim pieces and inserts to get to the screws holding the rear of the console down.










My console had, at some point, been leather wrapped, and whoever did it actually did a nice job of it, it looks and feels good and is much better that what I imagine the soft-touch plastic would look like by now. The flip side to this is that some of the inserts were a bit difficult to remove due to the extra thickness of the leather. On the inside of the console there is also a fair amount of over-spray of the adhesive that they used to affix the leather (not that this affects the end result). Once the gear selector trim is lifted and unscrewed as well, lifting up the handbrake boot means you can then remove the trim at the back of the console and then lift the whole thing up and over the arm rest. This then means you can access the bolts for the arm rest.








Once the three bolts are removed (being careful not to lose the metal collars which are loose) the arm rest can be removed. I took this opportunity to then give the whole thing a good vacuum.







The module resting on the carpet is the "genuine bluetooth module" which, given I don't use it, I took the opportunity to remove it and wrap up it, and the connector for the rear ashtray light in the soft wrap that the phone wiring is wrapped in. At the same time I installed the new bracket for the CSL/arm rest delete console.







With this done I was able to get on to the exciting bit of fitting the console! Prior to this, and not photographed, I took the mirror control and hazard light switch units and spent some time going over them with some wet cotton buds to clean them up and get all the dust and grime out of them that tends to accumulate over time. The other thing that I needed to do as part of fitting the console was make some space for the depth of the hazard light switch by depressing the carpet underneath it. If you don't do this the carpet will offer too much resistance and pop the hazard light switch back out again.







With the console in place the next thing was to replace the gear selector trim with the new titan shadow trim I ordered. The car was originally spec'd with this, and at some point it has been replaced with silver trim, which is in excellent condition and very nice, but I wanted to go back to the original colour. While I was doing this I gave the window controls the same cotton bud treatment. It was at this juncture that I discovered that what I thought was a spec of cola on one of the buttons does in fact appear to be collateral damage from when the contents of the rear view mirror leaked out (prior to my ownership). This is a shame as it is corrosive and can't be cleaned off the switch, so I'll need to order a replacement. Fortunately it has only affected one of the two switch units.










Once that was done I was able to reinstall the trim. Almost done!




Last thing for the console was the installation of the new boot. This is straightforward, just use the factory procedure of cable tying it on and then fit it in place!

The last work for the day was to replace the 3 other dash trim pieces. This is easy if you have a set of trim removal tools and in no time I was done and had the driver's seat back in.










I'm very happy with the end result. The CSL console very much suits the seats. I have a couple of things left to do to finish that particular project entirely.


1: The mirror control switch currently isn't wired in. With everything that I do with this car I want to make it easily reversible (why I don't know as I intend to keep the car for a long time) so rather than just hacking the existing wiring I'm working on building an extension harness to extend the wiring from it's current location in the driver's door back to the centre console. I wanted to actually move the console and check the mirror control switch before I ordered the parts for this side quest.

2: I need to order some foam-backed 9002 Alcantara to manufacture a copy of the OE tray-insert in the centre console (since these are NLA).

Speaking of NLA, the titan shadow trim I ordered was manufactured in late 2004! Which is interesting and really highlights that with these cars now being 20 years old, when the spare parts run out a lot of these sorts of projects are going to become astronomically more difficult.

Anyway, a good little project for a Saturday. When I get the time, Christmas probably, I'll get into the next steps on sorting out the rear seat!

[karter16]

Quick update - today the replacement auto-dimming mirror glass for the rear view mirror arrived. I've been meaning to get this sorted since I bought the car in 2015!!!

I also received notification over the weekend that the shipment of parts I'm waiting on is with NZ Customs, so just waiting for them to send me the bill and then it will be cleared for delivery. I'm particularly looking forward to getting the rear seat sound insulation and the bracket and handbrake boot for the centre console!

[karter16]

Well doesn't time fly when you have children and a busy job!

Since my last post I've spend a lot of time with children in hospital and busy with a major go-live at work. I have however managed to drive the car a number of times and enjoy the CSL seats. They make such a difference to the driving experience, you feel so much more connected to the road, held in place, and also means a noticeably quieter interior as they don't move or squeak at all.

I've also been working on furthering the refresh of the interior.

To this end I dropped by M3_Power's the other day and picked up this:






It's a slippery slope.... The quality of the console is amazing, and I was surprised how lightweight it is (which I shouldn't have been given its carbon fibre). Replacing the standard console with this one gives me multiple benefits. Firstly of course it's awesome, secondly it will be nice to not have my elbow bumping into it, thirdly it gives me the opportunity to properly pull the standard one apart and rebuild it without the squeaks (I purchased a number of replacement parts for it some time ago, so will be able to get to work on it once I've swapped it out).

I have an order coming for the other bits and pieces I need for the console-swap (mounting bracket, handbrake boot, etc.), so actually swapping it in will probably be a Christmas holidays job.

The other thing I picked up from M3_Power was this:



The MSport interior (G7AT) uses the same Laser cloth centres as the CSL seats, and the bolsters are Alcantara. The Alcantara is very close in colour to the Amaretta that comes on the CSL seats, it's a couple of shades different, but close enough that you can't tell unless you put them side by side. This is great for me as it means I can put my black leather rear seat into storage along with the fronts to keep them in good condition and can have rears in the car that pretty much match the CSL fronts. I need to give these seats a clean, but also before they go in the car I have a few other things to do.

Under the rear seat is a butyl-like sound deadening insulation. As we know this goes brittle over time. I removed mine intending to replace it, but when I looked up the part number to replace it I encountered something interesting.

The part number on what I removed is 51488204055 and is indeed the butyl-style item. Checking on realoem, etc. however this part is not listed as ever having been spec'd to the M3, only to the standard 3 series! As we know realoem isn't infallible, so likely what has happened is that it was used from the factory and then superseded at a later time, and realoem isn't showing the history. I intend to dig into it in more detail when I get a chance. The item that realoem lists (51488252759) is a newer woolly type item as used on newer BMWs. It's very lovely and it looks like this:






Although it's not the original item, it should be better in every respect, will last better, weighs less than half as much, etc. So I decided to go ahead and order it. It's on it's way and again will hopefully be here in time for the Christmas break.

The other thing I need to do with the rear seat out is remove the access covers for the fuel pumps, strip them and repaint them, as they are rusting along one edge where moisture has presumably come down through the seat. At the same time I'll strip and repaint the ISOFix anchors as well. Once all that's done then I'll put the new to me rear seat in.

In the same order I've ordered a bunch of other bits and pieces, notably including Titan Shadow dash trim to replace my silver set.

I've also ordered some BM-3109 fabric to have a go at redoing the A/B/C pillars. I object to the current price of new ones, and also many people have had trouble recently with the fabric not matching on new items from BMW, so I'll go the DIY route first. If it's not successful (e.g. if I'm not skilled enough at upholstery) then I'll stump up the cash.

Oh and I finally ordered a replacement ISOFix cover which was actually the very first part I put on my "parts to purchase" spreadsheet back in 2015!

Anyway - lots of bits and pieces on the go, hopefully everything arrives in time for the Christmas break, when I will hopefully have some time here and there to apply some of the increasing pile of parts to the car 🙂