What's going on in my shop currently...

[MTiz]

Sorry, I don't know what that means...

He's saying this journal is basically an E46 M3 owner manual (I think its better personally 😁)

[George Hill]

He's saying this journal is basically an E46 M3 owner manual (I think its better personally 😁)

Oh lol, that makes sense. Thanks for the love!

MTiz dedock

[S14]

Matt's wagon had the electric fan setup and we decided to keep it as opposed to installed the aux fan in front of the core support and mechanical fan on the engine. The tourings electric fan is to "tall" for the M3 radiator and oil cooler
setup, so I modified the electric fan shroud and expansion tank bracket and it turned out quite well.

Read all 3 pages, great work man! Can you tell me more on how you got this fan to fit?

[George Hill]

Read all 3 pages, great work man! Can you tell me more on how you got this fan to fit?

Sorry, just saw this. Basically we take the stock non-M fan and expansion tank support and mount them to the M radiator, then trim them even with the bottom of the rad and then add a couple of standoffs to support the bottom of the fan.

[S14]

Sorry, just saw this. Basically we take the stock non-M fan and expansion tank support and mount them to the M radiator, then trim them even with the bottom of the rad and then add a couple of standoffs to support the bottom of the fan.

I tried this with the CSF oilcooler and it didn't fit one bit, but now that I think about it, the stock oil cooler doesn't poke out the back much so you have room for the fan to hang down a bit.

[George Hill]

I tried this with the CSF oilcooler and it didn't fit one bit, but now that I think about it, the stock oil cooler doesn't poke out the back much so you have room for the fan to hang down a bit.

If it's a stock replacement I don't know why it wouldn't work, the fan and exp tank bracket are cut off even with the bottom of the rad.

[George Hill]

I don't have any pics with it finished and no oil cooler, but here is some during the modification to show the bottom portion.

[George Hill]

Time for another update.

A new customer brought in a car he just bought and wanted to address some concerns with the goal of bringing it up to his expectations on how a nicely sorted M3 should be. This is a real Imola slicktop ZHP that has been swapped with a S54 and had the body modifications to match it. We looked the car over and we made a list of things to take care of and then we started looking closer, it became a situation of "while we are in there" and that kind of snowballed into a huge refresh of the car. *As I was going through all of my pics, I realized I did not do a great job of documenting the before AND afters of this
job.




First step the exterior trim. Both of the drip rail mouldings were loose and once pulled off to replace we found they had been real shoddily installed. The clips were broken and so they just double side taped the trim back on. We cleaned everything up and installed new clips and trim. The cowl end trim was missing so we installed that and installed missing clips in for corresponding trim panels. Then we installed and replaced various other trim clips that were missing and/or broken.










Next, interior trim. The console was pretty rough, but the armrest had been recovered with a Napa leather like material. Napa black armrests are NLA from BMW so we had to source a Montana black leather armrest and the switch the leather from the old to the new. At the same time we replaced all of the console pieces.




Then the seats had been very nicely recovered in MTexture, but the seat belts and buckles were old and tired and really clashed with the seats. New buckles and belts were installed for the front.






The front seats are heated and the heated wiring was routed incorrectly and showing in a way that really detracted front the seats so that was all corrected as well.








And now the big issue. The front seats originally came from a coupe and the seat belts mount to the chassis on the coupe and on the seat rail for the sedan. The sedan rails were not retrofitted to the coupe seats and then the seatbelts were just hastily fastened to the mounting hardware. We replaced the rails with the proper sedan rails to ensure the belts were safely mounted.










The car had some drivability issues where it would intermittently stall and the cruise control didn't work. First, the clutch switch was not even wired let alone properly to the DME and secondly the clutch switch was the wrong one. M3s use a different switch (orange) than all the other E46s (black). New switch and correctly wiring the switch got the cruise working and fixed the stalling issue.




More wiring, neither the oil pressure or charge indicators were working in the car. The wiring was routed for the oil psi light and the alternator indicator was turned on with coding. Then the LED indicators for the rear doors were added to the cluster so the cluster now functions fully.




The E-box fan was damaged and while under the dash a new one was installed.




Moving under the car we found the RACP had some popped spot welds so we pulled the rear subframe to address those. The car already had RACP plates installed we checked them out and it looked about as good as we could determine without cutting it apart. But the front spacer plates were only rtv'd to the chassis so we removed them and properly welded to the chassis.




With the back end apart we went ahead and refreshed everything. New subframe bushings, adjustable lower control arms and all remaining bushings and ball joints were replaced including ball joints in the RTAB location. We then replaced both outer CV shaft boots and had diffsonline rebuild the diff. Lastly we wrapped it up with a Bilstein PSS10 coilover kit.




Moving to the front suspension we didn't stop there and replaced everything in the front as well, new control arms, bushings, steering rack and tie rods along with the wheel bearings. Bilstein PSS10 kit up front with TMS camber plates. We had a terrible time we the camber plates as they were out of stock and kept getting delayed. Luckily we found a used set and refreshed them to complete the install.










The brake lines were dry rot cracked and with everything apart we found a couple caliepr piston dust boots were faulty. We took the opportunity to rebuild the calipers, replace the lines and hit them with some black paint.




After that was all sorted we took care of a couple items with the engine. Euro headers and cats we installed along with the proper euro header transmission/O2 wiring harness (pictured above).








The AC compressor was noisy so it was replaced while we were in there. P/S pulley was cracked and alternator pulleys were tired.




A new one on me, I have never seen this plug leak nor did I even know it was removable. Giving it a 1/4 turn got it secured and stopped the leak.




Lastly we replaced the oil cooler and lines with a good condition used part.








And on the alignment rack with my set of SSRs so the ARC-8s don't get scratched.




This car is now a blast to drive, it really is nice combination of pep with a composed suspension inside an eye catching package.

[ejendow]

such good content. really can’t go wrong with an s54 swapped zhp. On a side note, how did you source that m3 clutch switch?


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[George Hill]

such good content. really can’t go wrong with an s54 swapped zhp. On a side note, how did you source that m3 clutch switch?

Thanks!

You just need to make sure your parts person orders the 700 pn#, if they just type it into the BMW system it will supercede to the 898 number which is the wrong one.

[George Hill]

This car turned out really nice, here are a couple more pics of the underside.

[r4dr]

Wow, really sorted that car out. I'd totally send my car over if I was remotely close by, lol.

Are you a big fan of the PSS10 system for almost all street driving?

[ejendow]

Thanks!

You just need to make sure your parts person orders the 700 pn#, if they just type it into the BMW system it will supercede to the 898 number which is the wrong one.

good to know, thanks! I guess I’ll just have to be more assertive next time that I’m certain I need the 700 pn only 😂


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[S3diment]

Question for you: since you’ve done both the Rogue Engineering and AutoSolutions SSK. Do you have a preference for one over the other?

[George Hill]

Question for you: since you’ve done both the Rogue Engineering and AutoSolutions SSK. Do you have a preference for one over the other?

That's a tough one. I really like Ronald with AS and he puts out a great product, I've run his shifters in a bunch of different BMW chassis and they are all superb (I am working on a transmission swap that is going to require a customer shifter and I will most likely reach out to him for that). But I do like the RE shifters as well. I really haven't driven enough to say one is better than the other. Off the top of my head I would say the RE is a better "get in and drive" shifter and by that I mean anyone can get in it and drive it and it's a great experience even if you are just being lazy with the shifts. The AS seems to like to be shifted with some thought, if you just lazily shift it is a bit cumbersome, but if you are on it and really rowing gears it just soooo good.