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

[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.

[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]

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.

[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]

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]

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]

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

[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]

I think I just found a user manual.

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

[George Hill]

An update is long overdue! The shop has been so busy with big projects I generally like to wait until a project is done or near done to make updates so that's had a bit to do with it. I also because making these posts are a bit of work, but I do enjoy doing it and seeing how life in the shop progresses as we grow.


A buddy who owns a shop in Houston is thinning out his herd of projects and since we are touring fans he thought this was up our alley. It's originally a 530/auto E34 touring, but it's pretty much just most of a body that rolls. His plan was to make it kind of like a "ring taxi" with (4) bucket seats. Right now it's a bit down the road, but I'm thinking we will continue that idea with the first iteration of the engine being a S52/5MT, then either it'll get a big turbo or we'll swap a more powerful engine into it.
















The original S54 touring was back in the shop with a broken transmission. She had known this was going to be a future repair as it had been acting up, but it finally let go. We helped her source a used SMG transmission and then swapped her bell housing onto it and replaced a bunch of wear items and then back together. As a fun science project I disassembled the trans to see what happened. It was quite the challenge to get it apart and while I did, I don't think I could put it back together lol.












Next a quick job of lowering springs on a F80 M3. There are a bunch of manufacturers of springs and complete coilover kits. I do my best to spec out something that is not only functional but aesthetically pleasing too. This is the first time we used Emmanuel Designs springs and they are fabulous, highly recommend this setup.








Eric hit a giant pot hole in just the right fashion that bent one wheel, cracked another and then the car deployed all of the LH side airbags. I've seen this years ago, but very rare. What I think happens is the car thinks it is flipping over.












Insurance tried total the car, but luckily he was able to stop that from happening and we went to fixing it. e took this time to replace all of the shocks and struts and went with Dinan springs on Koni shocks/struts with Rogue Engineering rear shock mounts and OE strut mounts.






Fixing the airbags required pulling the headliner, this was a good excuse to recover that and all of the pillars in Alcantara. We have a shop in town here that we use for this service and unfortunately I didn't take any pics of it completed.












After that we decided to tackle replacing the rod bearings. The car only had 95k on it, but it was on his mind so now was as good of a time as any. Nothing horrible, but definitely glad we did them.








And all back together




I've been lucky to get to the track a few times the last couple of months, CoTA, MSR Cresson and Hallett Teching in at CoTA for a NASATX HPDE






Rainy weekend










My buddy's 330/5MT swapped touring. He'll just laugh it off and say he just doesn't car about his car as much as the next guy but he's a really good rain driver, embarasses a lot of really fast cars when the track gets wet.

This is him passing the Camaro on the outside (Advanced run group).










Heading to Cresson for a single day event with my buddy in his S50 swapped E34 touring.




Back at Hallett for a (3) day CCA event, didn't take many pics other than this sunrise.




Then a couple of misc items for Chris's M3 to prep for an upcoming HPDE. StopTech BBK, Rogue Engineering shifter, parking brake adjustment and oil leak repair. Unfortunately I didn't get many pics of this job, the pics I did take more than make up for it, this car is gorgeous!








Mike brought in his M3 for an issue with the A/C cooling poorly. We found the evaporator had failed and was leaking refirgerant, very common issue with the E46 chassis. The oily dirt and debris on the evaporator is a smoking gun as to it leaking, but this car had previously been injected with dye making the diagnosis process even more conclusive.




Next, he had a parking brake that intermittently wouldn't lock into place. Turns out the teet had worn off, something new to me. Usually we see other failures for this complaint, but easy enough to just swap out the handle while the interior is disassembled for the evaporator replacement.




Next, he has an issue with the transmission intermittently popping out of gear or grinding when shifting. The shifter had been previously refreshed so he feared it was an internal transmission failure. We decided to pull the transmission and inspect before moving forward with a trans replacement and we ended up finding the clutch was well past its prime. Not only was the clutch overly worn, almost every thing else in the bell housing was past due and to top that off the slave cylinder was leaking. With everything replaced the shifting is now back to normal.













We've been still chipping away at the V10 touring project. We found that with the A/C on the car wanted to overheat. We relocated the oil cooler to the LF brake duct area and that has made a huge improvement and fixed our issues on the highway.








That pretty much brings us up to today. There are a couple of projects in the works right now, so hopefully I'll have some updates sooner than later next time.

[George Hill]

Second round of updates:

Neil brought in his M3 for a RACP repair. We did a used vehicle inpsection and are knocking out the items on
the list he does not have time to DIY.

We did the usual, stop drilled and welded all the cracks, then CMP plates were installed. After that we stitch
welded both upper coil spring and RTAB pockets along with the wheel well seams. We've seen so many cars
that have been "reinforced" already and have this spots separating. I don't know if it was just missed during the
reinforcing and happened after but it is becoming a standard part of our RACP repair. Then new BMW subframe
and trailing arm bushings along with Rogue Engineering shock mounts.












Next, rod bearings, we got quite the surprise when pulling the oil pan off.




Doesn't look like it caused any damage though. These don't appear to be the original bearings but with 186k
miles it was peace of mind to know they are fresh.




And with the pan off we addressed the drain plug, it had been stripped and had a "pan saver" type plug in it. We
correctly installed a time sert and then surfaced it to give a perfect sealing face.




Sold my Imola ZHP.




And then quickly spent the money on an M3 (probably) parts car. The guy said it needed a clutch (SMG), but
from the short drive I took in it I think the transmission might actually be broken. It's in really good shape
overall but it has a pretty decent scuff right on the RR wheel well opening which I think is going to make it to
much investment to fix (at least the way I would want to). So it will probably live on in a sedan or touring swap.



[img]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50202891192_81c76c1989_c.jpg






It did have a check engine light on and Vanos faults stored, I popped the valve cover off as the first thing I did
and wouldn't you know, broken tab...




Adam was back for a SMG conversion, we did the usual with the AutoSolutions SSK and he provided us a
manual plenum to really round out the underhood change.








And now for a different SMG conversion. We swapped out the SMG for a ZF320 5spd, Tilton twin disc clutch and
flywheel with a CAE shifter.






We didn't have the correct clutch alignment tool for a twin disc setup, but luckily we did have a broken ZF...






And then we also "bullet proofed" the Vanos.

[George Hill]

As usual, lack of updates because the shop is slammed.

Gabe brought in his gorgeous Alpine on Cinnamon E46 M3 as he was having issues with the SMG shifting properly. Ended up having a bad gear position sensor but at this point he decided he'd rather row gears himself so we converted it to a manual shift. All the usual work including an Auto Solutions SSK and a new clutch.











img]https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50201522813_6b5d047367_c.jpg[/img]








During the inspection of the car we found the radiator was leaking. It had a Mishimoto rad with a lifetime warranty. We snapped a couple of pics and without much effort Mishi had a new one on the way, pretty darn good customer service.




Bryan brought in his M3 for poor A/C performance. We found it had a leaking evaporator which requires the dash to be removed for replacement.




At that time he had been acquiring parts to convert the interior from Gray to Cinnamon so we decided to go all in and do the interior conversion at that time as well. Lots of little detail work extended this project out longer than I had initially anticipated but it turned out awesome, the transformation is dramatic!










His original seats had adjustable lumbar and side support so we combined those options with heated cinnamon seat covers.






And found some damaged wiring and poorly executed previous repairs that were fixed correctly.






Bob brought the Supercharged 540i in for some more enhancements. First was a SuperSprint seat of headers that we installed and then commissioned Walker Pro Motorsports to fabricate the connecting pipes to the stock cats and Dinan muffler. The sound of this setup is incredible and the fab quality is second to none.










Next we want to add some instrumentation. A boost gauge in place of the fog light switch is a common mod, but often times I see people add in a random autoparts store switch in the blank spot next to the original location to control the fog lights. I have always been disasitisfied with this idea and ended up getting a euro mechanical headlight leveling switch which I modified to run the fog lights. This is a video



Next we added a custom gauge set made by a forum member that incorporates oil pressure and AFR into the center vent. It turned out really slick!






Next we are working on a little revision to the Dinan tune the car has been running. The first part of the process was to read the data out of the DME. We acquired a second DME to use for all of the testing and modifying so there is no possible harm to the first DME/Tune. This required installing the second DME into the car, when doing so we found oil in the DME/Harness. After a bit of head scratching the problem seems to be a vanos solenoid failed allowing oil to get pumped through the connector and into the wiring harness. This sent oil throughout the wiring and ultimately to the DME. The DME was able to be cleaned, but we ended up replacing the harness, both vanos solenoids, the thermostat and crank sensor.








The Mustang suspension is all assembled and mocked up into the car (save for the anti-roll bar). Dragweek got cancelled so while the project isn't sidelined it is no longer THE priority so updates will be a little slow for it for a few months.

[George Hill]

Long over due for an update. The shop is so incredibly busy, I have been for furtunate through all of the uncertainty going on that I am staying booked up. There have been a bunch of little and "boring" jobs that I probably won't chronicle so here are the highlights. Glenn's M3 I mentioned it in the last post. It got the full workover. What started out as a diagnosing of a poor shifting turned into a large sorting off issues from this build. Glenn bought it as is and had only had a couple times on track before the car broke. We set out to fix that and get it sorted so he can spend time using it rather than worrying about it.




The finished CMP topside reinforcement turned out really nice.




The car was still drivable but intermittently had a weird clutch pedal feel. The friction material had completely separated from the disc. The stock clutch was replaced with a clutch masters kit and it is fantastic. I found the slave cylinder was also leaking and then we replaced the stock shifter with a Rogue Engineering Octane SSK which is really nice.










Just a bit of copper starting to show.




Full Vanos refresh.




And something I have never seen, someone went through all the trouble to replace some of the cam hub bolts, why they didn't do all I don't know.




Installed strut tower reinforcing plates on a S54 Touring.








Bob brought his E28 back in because he was getting a coolant leak from the heater control valve.




We have put (3) on in the last (2)yrs. These are straight from BMW, qc has gone down hill on these! So we swapped it for an E46 valve, which I just realized I don't have an installed photo of. I cut the bracket off of a parts car and mounted the E46 bracket to the E28 and then used some various off the shelf hoses modified and it mounts up very nicely.




We are also planning to replace everything that moves or is rubber in the E28s suspension, but we are still a ways away from doing that. Bob really wanted to see what difference the new OE BMW steering box would do on it's own so we installed it at this time too. The E28 steering box mounting brackets like to tear off the subframe and while bob's wasn't failed we still added the MWrench reinforcement at this time too. For 265k miles this E28 is such a joy to drive.












The shop got a new compressor. I don't use air that much anymore with the invent of such awesome battery powered tools. But there has been a bit more grinding and what not going on so it was time to retire old faithful and step up our air compressor game. This is my trusty workhorse of a truck affectionately named "Ron Burgundy" (Will Ferrell, Anchorman). It was bought new in '95 by my grandfather and was handed down to me about 8yrs ago.




This isn't sketchy at all? My buddy Jesse helping unload it. We ran the straps through the pallet then lifted it high enough to get the truck out from under and lowered it. I'm not sure what we thought he was going to do if this went bad, but luckily it was very stabile.




Ed brought in his E46 M3 for a Vanos refresh and. That's all pretty straightforward you've seen it before, but what is interesting here is that one of the Vanos mounting bolts was broken off in the head. So with the Vanos unit off we set about getting it out and repair. It was broken off in such a manner that no easy method to extract was going to work. We ended up pulling the entire front end of the car off to gain access. But success was had and it is as good as new.




Going back together we found #5 spark plug was loose and burned up. Surprisingly this car had no misfires and ran "properly."










My original customer Charles brought his M5 back in for a yearly check up. I have been the only one to work on this car since 2005. It has just about every Dinan mod you can get and it is a sweet hot rod. Valve cover gasket, engine mounts, windshield washer hoses, a driveshaft guibo and a trunk shocks.










Ryan, who owns the V10 wagon wanted to start moving a little faster on the repair work. We had been just kind of working on it here and there, but he really wanted to get it out and about so with a deadline in sight the race was on. The to do list was essentially get the cooling system operational and make the A/C work. The cooling system was originally on a keyed switch and ran anytime the key was on. I really want to do away with that so we added a dual coolant temp switch to the radiator and wired in a hi and lo speed fan relay. We tucked it up in the control module "condo" behind the fuse panel and used as much of the factory wiring as possible.








Next step was to make the A/C work. The car's A/C was supposed to be operational, but that was not the case. The S85 uses a compressor that does not have a compressor clutch. Instead it uses a swash plate, it is essentially infinitely variable as opposed to and on/off like an E46 clutch. Studying the wiring diagrams I found the IHKA on the E60 controls the swash plate, but since we don't have the E60 IHKA that wasn't going to work. o off came that compressor and we installed a compressor with a clutch. The DME controls the clutch on the E46 but with out MSS65 DME that wasn't an option either. So the first version is the compressor is just individually controlled by a rocker switch. We installed a trinary switch (a hi and lo pressure cut off, which also activates the cooling fan) and everything works great. All new lines were made and an E36 condenser was adapted to work. In the shop we are getting 43* and driving around it's blowing ice.








This lead to opening a can of worms. The P/S hoses were assembled in a rather obtuse fashion so we threw all of that away and made new lines that are much cleaner. And then we replaced both of the aftermarket oil cooler lines as they had some poor quality fittings and were leaking.






The car is originally a 323iT with low options. After the initial test drive we found the car is starting to overheat in traffic. The car has a bunch of coolers on it and the stock bumper is not very wide open so we pulled the bumper and went a drove it around. It was much better so we threw on a ZHP replica bumper and that helped, but ultimately isn't the solution.




Ryan picked it up and made it out to CoTA. The car still has some quirks to work out but it is running really well considering it has very little miles on it. But not only that it is really fast, doing almost 160mph indicated on the back straight. And I must say I've driven it about 150 miles on the street and I never would have guessed how much fun this car is to drive, there really is nothing like it, so much fun!








And with his buddies full S54 conversion IR ZHP.




There's a couple more projects going and some videos I need to upload to Youtube, but I think this is going to do it for tonights update. I'll try to update this soon as we have some other big jobs in progress and of course lots of shiny things getting installed on the Mustang.

[IamFODI]

Some of you have seen some posts about a project I haven't been making much note of, but it's been consuming a bit of time and deserves some mention. I usually don't post about these big projects while they are in process but this one needs to be mentioned. A forum member here asked me to build them a E91 S65 Touring. That project has been a monumental task. The amount of work needed to adapt the two cars in the way I do here is incredibly intense, the work can't be put into a single post here so I'll add an additional post or maybe start it's own thread (even though it's not a E46 some info will carry over for those wanting to S65 sway their E46).

Would love to see this in the E9x section!

[oceansize]

Some of you have seen some posts about a project I haven't been making much note of, but it's been consuming a bit of time and deserves some mention. I usually don't post about these big projects while they are in process but this one needs to be mentioned. A forum member here asked me to build them a E91 S65 Touring. That project has been a monumental task. The amount of work needed to adapt the two cars in the way I do here is incredibly intense, the work can't be put into a single post here so I'll add an additional post or maybe start it's own thread (even though it's not a E46 some info will carry over for those wanting to S65 sway their E46).

Wow, can't wait to see this done sometime in 2027 Kidding of course, should be awesome and this unnamed forum member is crazy in the best way as are you.