Zen and the Art of E46 M3 Ownership

[Bimma360]

Unbelievable pickup, IB slicktop is pretty amazing, seeing as how youre a seasoned BMW owner I definitely support the throw everything at it right away. Excited to see what you think before and after.

Yeah it's crazy, in hindsight, how much I valued the color/slicktop combo. B/c I would have just done a carbon roof if it wasn't, but I actually preferred it more I guess. Maybe it was just the rarity, and one less thing to do.

Unfortunately, I don't think I am going to have too much of a before. Three big things stuck out to me on the initial drive home. The car is pretty loud at highway speeds, which is why I am just going to replace the driveshaft anyway. At higher RPMs there is a good bit of NVH in the cabin. The engine/trans mounts are probably original and at 100k miles, so they should be replaced anyway. The big one though, is the steering at very low speeds is pretty stiff (but the wheel does return to center unassisted). I have never driven an e46 M3 with the ZCP rack but I feel like this has to be at least a smidge abnormally stiff. Not terrible, but makes ya think ya know? I have an E46 ZHP rack in my e36, and it's not that stiff. Granted, somewhat apples to oranges. Either way, hoping it's a front suspension thing and not the rack hah. Would be annoying if it's a steering column bearing. I could live with getting a new pump though. Haha I really didn't want to throw everything at the steering this soon to be honest. But it is what it is.

[CrisSilberGrau]

Unbelievable pickup, IB slicktop is pretty amazing, seeing as how youre a seasoned BMW owner I definitely support the throw everything at it right away. Excited to see what you think before and after.

[Bimma360]

Thanks guys!

Nice, congrats!

Where in PA are you? West Chester, PA, here.

Hahah, I've been on the forums long enough that I actually knew that. I also saw you driving your M3 on Route 30 by 252 like a solid 15 years ago haha. I am in Media. Would love to get together after the holidays and when I get most of the stuff on this car taken care of.

[Poowill]

Congrats on the purchase and looking forward to seeing your build! Looks like you got a good one as a start.


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[Obioban]

Nice, congrats!

Where in PA are you? West Chester, PA, here.

[davidinnyc]

Great spec! Enjoy the ride.

[Bimma360]

After 20+ years of e30 and e36 ownership, and some other BMWs in-between, I ended up skipping a bunch of generations and picked up an F97 X3M for family duty. That really opened my eyes to modern cars, and when it came time to add another "me" car I had it narrowed down to an M4 CSL or F87 M2 CS. So what do I do? Buy an E46 M3 haha.

When I was 16 years old, this magazine came out (yes I still have it) and man did this car get me. I was already a "BMW guy" at that point, but man this was the one. Now I felt like I had moved past older BMW's, but when it came down to it owning this was probably something I needed to do.



So less than two weeks ago I picked this one up from a member here on the forum. Flew down to Atlanta, and drove it back to PA with an overnight in Greensboro, NC:



I guess NC can get pretty foggy? B/c this is what I walked out to at 6:30am the next morning. It was like this for the first hour or two of my drive.



And after about 7 hours it met the current residents. Unfortunately, after 12 years of ownership the E36 M3 is going to get the boot.




So the reason I am a bit over older BMW's is b/c I am tired of "restoring" cars slowly over a multi year timeframe. I just want to enjoy the car, and only have little maintenance or upgrades to do here and there. So the plan with this thing is to throw everything at it in as short of a time as possible. This is going to be the dream build, and the goal is to get it to 90% in a matter of a few months at worst. I want to experience this thing as fresh as possible, and just about all at once.

So I have a brand new driveshaft, engine/trans mounts, and steering coupling ready to go (will probably just have a shop do it). Since time is important, I won't try to tackle everything myself. The big 3 was already done by the previous owner, and he offered to install parts with the sale, so he ended up replacing all of the bushings in the rear (+ some other stuff) for me. I am going to pull the trigger on a full suspension/bushing overhaul for the rest the second the CSL Kingpins from Schmiedmann get tracking info (it's now been 20 calendar days).

Half the exterior CSL parts are inbound (boy do I have an interesting story about that, that I will post in the main forum). And once I pull the trigger on a front CSL bumper, the car goes in for paint. Unfortunately, the paint is a bit worse than I expected so 2/3rds of it is going to get resprayed. And there will be plenty of other things to come too.

But for the first week, I replaced the headlight lenses, gaskets, and corners b/c what was on there was atrocious.



And I should mention the spec: 2006 Comp slicktop w/ SMG and what appears to be no additional options. Kind of perfect for what my goal is with this car.