05 E46 M3 Restoration / Build Thread

[attbimmer]

Good thing out of this is there won't be any temptation to not do a full rebuild. That was really my intention all along, but now I have a very strong reason to.

[0-60motorsports]

Brother you should have at least removed it and checked the bearings................Keeping us waiting!

[Slideways]

Those are ARP rod bolts. Did the previous owner mention that he had replaced the rod bearings? I would not expect replacement bearings to fail at 140k.

[attbimmer]

Brother you should have at least removed it and checked the bearings................Keeping us waiting!

Haha, yeah I didn't have the right 11mm socket. My dad dropped one by today so will get it out.

[attbimmer]

Those are ARP rod bolts. Did the previous owner mention that he had replaced the rod bearings? I would not expect replacement bearings to fail at 140k.

Rod bearings were never changed from any records I have and I have pretty much everything going back to 2005 (including gas receipts with milage he was getting), so highly unlikely that he did rod bearings and didn't have record of it.

[Slideways]

Rod bearings were never changed from any records I have and I have pretty much everything going back to 2005 (including gas receipts with milage he was getting), so highly unlikely that he did rod bearings and didn't have record of it.

Someone has been in there. Those are 100% aftermarket rod bolts (ARP).

[attbimmer]

Well pulled it off and sure enough these are not factory rod bearings. Odd that there was no record of them being done given all the records I got. They are ACL bearings. Perhaps they failed at some point and someone just tried replacing the bearings without taking out the crank and having it checked.

The bearing was not spun, which I guess is good, but was very worn. Here are some pictures. Rod and crank don't look that bad and you can't feel any damage, but I know that doesn't mean they are good. Top half of the bearing had no copper left at all in the middle. Lower was all copper. Will get it out and sent off to get checked. Luckily I have an excellent crank shop (Marine Crank) just a few miles from my house.

[0-60motorsports]

Glad you got it open finaly LOL.

Yeah i would remove the crank and get it checked and light polish and get it back in there with some good bearings and reuse the ARP bolts.

[attbimmer]

Have been super busy and only occasionally have an hour or so for the car. I have stripped off most off most of the exterior of the engine. Each time it is a few minutes taking off some parts and then about 4x that cleaning it up. As much as I can I'm trying to clean things up as I take them off so that I can put them away clean and not have to deal with the mess when I start putting things back together. Today I took off the valve cover and vanos and found one of the tabs on the exhaust cam sprocket broken. One of the down sides to being dealer services it's entire life is they only used factory parts. The vanos was redone once, but never with upgraded oil pump disc. Spark plugs looked decent. Hopefully soon I'll have the rest of the engine apart and can take the crank to get checked.

[attbimmer]

It's not until you take everything apart that you really start to see just how dirty things get over time. The engine bay presents relatively well (not concours well, but overall well). Then you look closely at something like the throttle bodies and you see that they are filthy.

[attbimmer]

With the throttle bodies sitting on my bench, I decided to just clean them up now before storing them away until it is time for reassembly. Used an ultrasonic cleaner for most of the parts and some aluminum prep on the outer surfaces of the cast parts. Overall was pretty quick and they came out nicely. I put them back together loosely and will go through the adjustment process once they are back on the engine.

[attbimmer]

Finished pulling the head off and also got the crank out. Will drop it off in the morning to get checked. Overall things look decent aside from the bad rod bearing.





Started cleaning up the piston tops before pulling them out of the block.



Have an ultrasonic cleaner for the smaller parts and it is quite nice how well they work.

[Gt4]

While being there, open the oil pump and take a look at the regulator piston. 2005-2006 have an aluminum piston and coating wear easily vs 2001-2004. You can buy a new oil pump if the piston and housing are scratched. You can also upgrade the piston with a SS piston with DLC coating from Burkhart Engineering.

You can also put a 1mm shim between the spring and piston to get more oil pressure

[attbimmer]

Thanks Gt4, I'll do that.

Dropped off the crank this morning. They will weld and regrind the worn portion to bring the crank back to factory spec. They do great work at Marina Crank, so I have no worries about them doing a good job. Lead time is about 6 weeks though.