Obioban's 2005 IR/IR Coupe

[nextelbuddy]

i didnt read the entire thing just the first 2 pages and then the last 2 lol. what happened to the OEM airbox? i saw it but then saw a different box at the end.

[Obioban]

Made some changes to the suspension, which included eye balling the ride height (with a tape measure). Spent 2 hours setting up and leveling my scales, only to sit down in the car and find the cross weight was already at 49.9%. Le sigh.

Interestingly, though, I did notice that the cross weight stays identical to the .1% when I'm in the car or not-- which I believe means my COG is exactly centered between the front and rear axles in my natural driving position. Kind of cool.

[Obioban]

I saw that it was now possible to run the OE performance steering wheel in the e46 a couple of weeks ago, as seen here: http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/showthread.php?t=611535

The thing that held me back was that the while OLED display in the center really doesn't jibe with the e46 gauges/instruments. The gauges in the center are also a lot less useful for us, as our clusters already have useful gauges . At the end of the day, all I really wanted was the shift lights.
... which led to an offline conversation with Terraphantm about them, or, specifically getting the OE cluster shift lights to strobe at redline (allowing them to be more noticeable in peripheral vision-- which I don't find the default shift lights to be). Which, happily, he was able to do by writing a little program in the program space. He's still dialing in the pulse speed of the lights, and going to be making a thread with the details on how to do it, but in the short term, upgraded shift lights in the cluster:

Now that I'm running this in both M3's, I no longer have any desire for the shift lights on the steering wheel.

[Obioban]

Chaning things up for this winter. 25 lbs stiffer on each front spring, stiffer front sway, will have a rear sway again.

Setup:
350 front left
325 front right
700 rear left
628 rear right

Ground Control 7 gauge race front sway
CSL rear sway with some adjustable end links I made myself

Puts me at 1.89hz front, 2.07hz rear, so 1.1 bounce ratio (10% flat ride).

Depending on where I set the sway adjustment I can set the front roll couple to be pretty much anywhere in the 70-80% range-- going to start it in the middle and dial it in by taste.

Front roll stiffness is ~double stock (over/under depending on where I end up setting the sway), rear roll stiffness is ~50% more than stock.

I really enjoyed using flat ride in 2019, but the rear end feels slightly off without a sway. I'm hopeful this new setup will be bang on perfect.

If it is, next winter I'll have the Ohlins rebuilt/revalved for my specific corner weights/spring rates. They're coming due for a rebuild anyway, and my corner weights are pretty finalized (not much significant weight left to take off the car).

[Obioban]

Because of the fresh baby, I haven't really done a ton of car stuff since June.

I also got a new job, that I'll be starting next Monday. Assuming I like it as much as I'm expecting to, we'll be moving closer to it come spring.

So, this weekend I went on a drive with some of the locals in the area we'd be looking to move to. HOLY SHIT they have some good roads. Traffic free, no people, turns upon turns upon turns. I can't freaking wait to live in an area where every drive is amazing again. :agree:

Cleaned up and ready to go:



Random spot we stopped for some pictures





Back gathered for lunch after:



And then when i got home I put new gas with fuel stabilizer in the car and started taking her apart for this winters project.

CSL sway removed, and shipped it off today: