Stephen's Steel Grey on Imola - Slow but Steady

[skristedja]

Well it’s about time I start a journal for my M3. I’ve owned this car since 2011 and it has been my daily driver ever since. I picked it up with just over 50k miles and as of writing it sits with 124k miles now. It’s a steel grey e46 m3 on imola red interior. The build date is 11/02 and it’s a 2003 model equipped with SMG.
Here are the current modifications:
Brembo GT front and rear brakes
Stoptech 355/345 rotors
Koni Yellow shocks
Eibach Prokit springs
VAC 90mm stud kit
Ground control street camber plates
18x9.5 et22 Apex Arc-8s
AC Schnitzer exhaust
AC Schnitzer diffuser
OEM Euro front bumper
AFD flexfuel conversion
Redish RACP reinforcement
Vincebar epoxy kit
OEM LED Taillights

I got the car with a brembo gt kit, ac schnitzer exhaust, acs diffuser, and acs suspension. It came with the 19 inch alloys which I kept for a pretty long time. My ownership has been pretty representative of the e46 experience. So far, I’ve had all three of the major issues arise in my ownership: VANOS failure, RACP failure, and near rod bearing failure. I’ve also had my share of SMG issues that I managed to ameliorate via the resistor mod.


Here's one of the first pics I took of the car, with my old e30 in the background.

[skristedja]

The first significant event in my M3 ownership was unfortunately a Nissan Altima that just couldn’t figure out how to back out of a parking spot.


The bumper and diffuser were replaced with OE parts. The body shop managed to do really good work repairing the rear quarter panel, but there is still some orange peel from the respray that I need to wetsand.

The first big service was when I took it to Kaiv for a valve adjustment around 2013 and 75k miles. I don’t have any pictures of this as it was so long ago. He discovered that my vanos exhaust hub has broken a tab, but that it was luckily still in place. A few hundred dollars later and I had a new hub along with a quick service of the vanos bolts which are notorious for backing out.
The first mod I decided to play around with was the exhaust and I got a Rogue Engineering EVC kit back in 2013. Here are a couple videos with it.

It was fun to play around and open the valve every now and then, but eventually, the valve deteriorated and it wouldn’t stay closed so I swapped the Rogue section 2 with the evc back for a stock section 2. I actually prefer the tone of the exhaust with the stock section 2. It removes some of the rasp and gives it a cleaner sound in my opinion.

[skristedja]

Used to rock a roof rack as I was an avid surfer for a while there



Here's a shot from an m3f meetup waaaayyy back in the day.



Here's a shot with my old roommate's old sti

[skristedja]

The next mod was a square set of 18x8.5 VMR CSL reps. I loved these wheels- they immediately changed the feeling of the car to make it more responsive and planted. I don’t remember the exact set of tires I had but it was 245 all round. I had kaiv install a set of the 90mm vac studs to help ease swapping wheels.
Playing around with ambers when that was a thing…



Here's a shot at kaiv's place in San Diego before he had a full shop!

[skristedja]

Next big mod was a set of Apex Arc-8’s that I had always wanted. I got the 18x9.5 et22 as a square set. Knowing this would require significant camber, I went ahead and sprung for the ground control camber plates. I run these with a 20mm spacer in the rear. This also required me to change my strut bar, so I went with the RE bar.
The wheels were wrapped with the Firestone indy 500s in 255/35R18 all around.

[skristedja]

Around this time, the car had around 100k miles and the shocks were pretty done so I went with the koni yellows and eibach pro kit springs. During the install, my mechanic noticed some cracks in the RACP, so I bought the redish reinforcement plates and the vincebar epoxy kit. I had kaiv perform the reinforcement.

He did a great job as always and I can sleep easy now knowing my RACP is 100% safe. A funny story about this though- on the way home from the reinforcement, I started hearing horrific metal scraping coming from the rear end when I would accelerate and decelerate. My heart sank as I fear that somehow the reinforcement had failed and my RACP was tearing itself to pieces right before me. I pulled over and inspected and it seemed fine, so I texted Kevin asking him if there was anyway it could be failing. He replied in shock, and stated that he thought it should be ok. I kept driving and the sound only got worse, but I was about 2 minutes from home so I decided to just get home. Once I got home, I opened the trunk and looked in the spare wheel well. I had a spare water bottle and my front license plate that Kevin had moved to this area and the water bottle was rolling around and pressing the license plate against the well as I was driving, thus creating the sound of metal scraping! My heart came back into my chest and I let Kevin know all was good. Sorry for the scare, Kevin!

Bushings:


Plates:

Vincebar and plates primed:

Cracks forming:



Prep work:




Reinforcement plates welded on:

Vincebar install:

[skristedja]

I finally grew tired of the pre-facelift tails and installed some LED taillights from an e46 coupe.


My front end suffered a minor incident when a truck backed into me on a one way street (guess he didn’t hear me honk), so my insurance let me install a new OEM euro bumper. I love the way this bumper looks without the reflectors, very clean look. Insurance also replaced the hood with OE.




I also went ahead and did the AFD flexfuel conversion since there is an e85 station near me that I always wanted to try. The kit was pretty easy to install, but in hindsight, I wish I got the APE kit as it has more tunability with respect to the injectors. Since I’m on stock injectors, I never fill up more than a half tank on e85 so that I don’t overwhelm the injectors. No pics from this install.

[skristedja]

During my last oil change @120k, I collected some oil to send to blackstone. Here’s the report:

I was overdue for a bearing job and the report seemed to indicate that there was some copper starting to show, so I had kaiv do my rod bearings just this past weekend. I went with OE bearings without a coating. He also fixed a bunch of other stuff while he was in there. Apparently I had the “leakiest, dirtiest oil pan” kaiv had ever seen. Whoops.
See below for the old bearings, and it looks like I was not a minute late.
The crank looked good though so the new bearings went in and off I went.
At the shop:

[skristedja]

And that finally brings us to now! I have lots of plans for this car still and they do not include ever selling it. In the works is a karbonius box with map sensor and MSS54HP conversion, 280/272 shricks, euro headers/cats, manual conversion, MCS shocks, a sunroof delete, and LOTS of little maintenance items I’ve neglected over the years while putting myself through school.

Here's a shot from yesterday after the rod bearings with my wife's glc in the background:


Big thanks to Kevin for helping keep my m3 in top shape! 124k miles and many more to go!

[Loopyspec]

I've learned that maintenance is key with this platform. Glad it was addressed and excited for your future plans!

[8000RPM]

I enjoyed reading your journal. Still looks great after all these years! Reminds me, I need to tackle my rod bearings soon.

[freshprince2421]

Nice journal. I also am looking to upgrade from a Koni/Eibach kit... any particular reason you're leaning MCS, besides being top notch? Unfortunately I can't justify the cost benefit over KW's, PSS10, FA, etc... on my daily 😩

[skristedja]

I've learned that maintenance is key with this platform. Glad it was addressed and excited for your future plans!

Thank you! Maintenance is certainly a LARGE part of e46 m3 ownership if you plan on keeping it as long as I did!

I enjoyed reading your journal. Still looks great after all these years! Reminds me, I need to tackle my rod bearings soon.

Thanks! The secret is covered parking and making sure you wash it right. (3 bucket method)

Nice journal. I also am looking to upgrade from a Koni/Eibach kit... any particular reason you're leaning MCS, besides being top notch? Unfortunately I can't justify the cost benefit over KW's, PSS10, FA, etc... on my daily 😩

The koni/eibachs have just never offered the ride quality I want for a DD, no matter what softness i put them at. I'm tired of messing about with the suspension and I remember reading rave reviews about the MCS's ride quality so I'd rather just pay the premium and be done once and for all.

[skristedja]

I've been getting started on modifying an MSS54 to a full CSL MSS54HP (with H-Bridge and new pressure sensor) for use in my car to run a Karbonius airbox. I ordered a whole bunch of electrical components this week and started prepping my DME. I practiced by removing the EEPROMs from this MSS54 which was bricked and sent to me as a freebie by mleveroni. I used Chipquik to remove them and it was super easy.




Set up my bench harness to practice reading/writing tunes

[cbean]

Nice Build . . . We are neighbors We should start our own car club hang out!!!