Obioban's 2005 IR/IR Coupe

[Obioban]

Harnesses are Profi 3x2s. I like the 3" shoulder straps to minimize stretching over the distance I'm running them, if they should need to really be used (crash).

Sub straps are mounted under the seats using the BK R-9228/R-9229 sub strap mounts. When not in use, I tuck them under the cushion, out of sight-- but leave them installed.



I have (manual) sedan sliders in my car. This means they have an outboard lap belt mount point built into them from the factory. I make this into a clip in point using the clip in point in the BK R-9225.



For my inboard lap belt mounts I have harness attached to the factory 3 point receiver using the Schroth quick fit part built for this purpose. This has a number of benefits:
1) no seat belt light
2) lap belt pretensioner remains functional in a crash
3) quickly installs/removes if I need to, say, get gas mid day.





Lastly, my shoulder harnesses clip into the rear deck shoulder harness mount points created by the BK R-1246. In this picture, only the drivers side harnesses are installed-- so you can see the ring where one of the passenger harnesses would clip in if I had them installed:



In total, it takes me ~3 minutes to install or remove my harnesses per seat. Between events, the back seat remains 100% functional and I can use the factory 3 point belt as if I had a stock seat. There's also no danger in street (helmetless) driving like with a roll bar.

I completely understand that this setup is not as safe on track as a fully caged/fire suppressed/etc car, but it's significantly more safe than a stock, 3 point car. It also means I never think about holding myself in place, at all, while driving on track.

My goal was to make it as safe as possible on the track without compromising the safety or practicality on the street. I think this is about the ideal setup for that goal.

[Obioban]

The Avin really saved my ass this weekend. I don't know if it would have been from a ruined tire or a full on crash, but either way it would have ended my track weekend.

Friday was all day open track. ~1 hour in a siren went off in my car. I glanced at the nav screen, and a warning as displayed that my driver rear was low. I switched over to TPMS view and could watch the pressure ticking down at ~1 psi/5 seconds. As I pitted in it was down to 20 psi, by the time I was able to stop it was down to 10.

It looks like someone lost one of those brake line retaining clips on track.



Inside of my tire:







I caught it early enough that the tire didn't get ruined. So, I borrowed a street wheel from another e46 m3 owner, drove into town, had it patched, and was back on track ~1.5 hours later. Don't know if I would have been comfortable with the patch, if I didn't have the tire pressure monitoring running with audible siren!

Great weekend, overall. Got to meet a bunch of M3Fers, and pretty much no traffic issues. BMWCCA puts on a good, if pricey, event.

[Obioban]

How the car looks with the brake ducts installed:

[Obioban]

Back from Lime Rock. The track was okay, the surrounding area is completely awesome. Great scenery, amazing driving roads.

I sat in a 3 hour traffic jam on the way home, for a 6 hour long total drive, and can confirm the Nogaros remain comfortable

[Obioban]

I leatheriqued the car the other day for the first time in too long. I can always tell when I've waited too long between applications because the car sucks it all in as I'm applying it.

15 years into owning this car, there's few products I enjoy using on it more than leatherique. It's like have a new car interior after every application :agree:



^looks like I didn't get my driver's side seat pad fully reseated :P

[Obioban]

I just got back from a 30 minute test drive of the new Avin wireless car play module, and I couldn't be more enthused. This thing (not so much the unit as the concept-- everything on my phone in a simplified interface on my car screen, without having to take my phone out of my pocket... as well as police locations) is everything I have ever wanted out of ICE but never dared to dream would actually exist in the e46.



.... I think I'm going to have to order Avins for the M5 and M3 wagon, as well, now.

I'm working on integrating a Qi charger into the car to complement it, for longer drives. Though, I’m not expecting a ton of battery penalty from it— when I was using wireless carplay in the X3, it used 12% battery over a 50 minute drive. Not bad for a constant GPS connection, constant internet connection, and constant data linking to the car, on a 1.5 year old phone!

[Obioban]

Drove the car again... and again super enthused about wireless carplay.

I think what's great about this is you kind of get the best of both worlds (android/apple). By default the car boots into CarPlay, and you get the non distracting, seemless, intuitive Carplay interface. If the need for something weird comes along, it's one button press to quit out and, say, pull OBD2 engine codes, check tire pressure/temps, etc. All in a unit that looks quite stock.

I just couldn't be more enthused with the Avin, now that wireless carplay is up and running.

[Obioban]

Been playing with the Qi charger design a bit. The final version will be black-- just using white because I don't like it, so use it for parts that'll end up in the trash :P

Charger I'm using: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Matching the shape of the charger test piece:



Installed in the actual shape, charger properly oriented:



Back plate cover with countersunk screw holes:



slot the phone goes into:



back cover attached at 2 of the 9 screw holes:



The entire thing will fit below the lip of the door card (towards the rear) on the e46, which means it'll be 100% invisible once installed unless you're hovering over the door card looking for it. The taller surface will mount against the outside of the door card, so you'll just slip you hand in and be able to touch most of the phone to remove it.

Net iteration is remove the front bottom, as I realize it serves no purpose in holding the phone and should make getting the phone out easier:

[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:

[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]

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]

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.

[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]

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.

I still have the OEM airbox. It was just a different variant than people are used to seeing— the one evolve copied.

[Slideways]

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.

The first one you are referring to is made by Obi's absolute, favoritest of favorites... VAC lol. The current one is OEM manufacturer Die Wejthe made for Digi-tec.