Hey all, for those of you who don't remember me or my car, I was on m3forum.net before the website nuked itself.
It's unfortunate that I likely lost all the pics and pages of information that I had about the car but I will try and post everything that I still have archived.
Back in 2016, I didn't want to go and spend the money to buy a LSB that was already sorted and what-not so I searched everywhere for a deal/project. I had to have LSB, it was the color E46 M3 that I remember seeing all throughout middle school and high school, I absolutely loathed over it.
Sure enough, after waiting for what seemed like an eternity, I finally stumbled upon a 2002 Laguna Seca Blue E46 M3 on Copart.
It had slight damage on the right rear quarter panel of the car that didn't look terrible. I carfaxed it prior to bidding to check owner history and to make sure the car never made its way up to the rust belt. According to carfax, it only had 2 owners and it thankfully lived in Texas all its life so the undercarriage was really clean and didn't have any rust on it.
Here are the only pictures that I had to base my decision off of from Copart. It looked decent, but the interior was trashed. I was planning on swapping it out for black (hopefully m-texture one day) anyway so I bit the bullet and placed my bid.
I ended up winning the car and having it shipped out to Chicago.
Here's pics of the car off of the transport truck, the first and only time its ever seen snow! Check out the damage as well, I'm surprised it was totaled out, but being older cars insurance companies go by the KBB amount which is really low and inaccurate for our cars. So a few hours on a frame machine can total these out quick!
Since the car was wrecked, I brought it over to my fathers body shop for some much needed work.
My original plan to fix the damage was to pull the quarter panel out and "reshape it" to OE specs. I ended up not liking the way that it turned out and replaced the quarter panel at a later date. We’ll get to that later but for now here’s some pics of the first time around.
After some pulling and metal work.
After some paint and TLC.
Check out that grey interior, oooof, I have to swap that out.
I drove the car like this for about a year before starting to get the itch to modify it and make it my own.
I always wanted LSB/Cinnamon so I did what I knew best and hopped back onto IAAI and Copart to search for a donor M3 with a cinnamon interior.
I ended up finding one up in Wisconsin for a good price so I pulled the trigger.
The interior ended up being 100 times better than my grey, but the drivers seat definitely showed more wear than I would have liked. My fault, I was too eager to have it.
I got lucky and found that the Topaz car had a bavsound stage 1 kit so I quickly swapped that over to my car.
My original plan for this car was to part it out but instead I found a guy who wanted it after I removed the interior to make it into a track car. Perfect scenario for both parties.
Bavsound stage 1!
This took forever, lots of swearing, sweat and broken clips.
Cinnamon
After selling the topaz car and swapping the interior and bavsound speakers to my car, I once again was satisfied with the car for maybe 3 months until I got the itch again, haha guess that’s E46’s for ya.
Before this LSB M3, I actually owned a 2002 Steel Grey Metallic E46 M3 that I actually rebuilt as well from IAAI. That M3 came with a set of BBS RG-R’s but sadly one of them was ruined from the accident. I ended up calling BBS to order one wheel since one of mine from my set was damaged.
I wish I never sold this M3, it was a 6 speed and had 70,000 miles and a DINAN stage 1 package. Whatever, live and learn I guess.
I’ll add more pics of that car later, but here’s a pic for now.
It's unfortunate that I likely lost all the pics and pages of information that I had about the car but I will try and post everything that I still have archived.
Back in 2016, I didn't want to go and spend the money to buy a LSB that was already sorted and what-not so I searched everywhere for a deal/project. I had to have LSB, it was the color E46 M3 that I remember seeing all throughout middle school and high school, I absolutely loathed over it.
Sure enough, after waiting for what seemed like an eternity, I finally stumbled upon a 2002 Laguna Seca Blue E46 M3 on Copart.
It had slight damage on the right rear quarter panel of the car that didn't look terrible. I carfaxed it prior to bidding to check owner history and to make sure the car never made its way up to the rust belt. According to carfax, it only had 2 owners and it thankfully lived in Texas all its life so the undercarriage was really clean and didn't have any rust on it.
Here are the only pictures that I had to base my decision off of from Copart. It looked decent, but the interior was trashed. I was planning on swapping it out for black (hopefully m-texture one day) anyway so I bit the bullet and placed my bid.
I ended up winning the car and having it shipped out to Chicago.
Here's pics of the car off of the transport truck, the first and only time its ever seen snow! Check out the damage as well, I'm surprised it was totaled out, but being older cars insurance companies go by the KBB amount which is really low and inaccurate for our cars. So a few hours on a frame machine can total these out quick!
Since the car was wrecked, I brought it over to my fathers body shop for some much needed work.
My original plan to fix the damage was to pull the quarter panel out and "reshape it" to OE specs. I ended up not liking the way that it turned out and replaced the quarter panel at a later date. We’ll get to that later but for now here’s some pics of the first time around.
After some pulling and metal work.
After some paint and TLC.
Check out that grey interior, oooof, I have to swap that out.
I drove the car like this for about a year before starting to get the itch to modify it and make it my own.
I always wanted LSB/Cinnamon so I did what I knew best and hopped back onto IAAI and Copart to search for a donor M3 with a cinnamon interior.
I ended up finding one up in Wisconsin for a good price so I pulled the trigger.
The interior ended up being 100 times better than my grey, but the drivers seat definitely showed more wear than I would have liked. My fault, I was too eager to have it.
I got lucky and found that the Topaz car had a bavsound stage 1 kit so I quickly swapped that over to my car.
My original plan for this car was to part it out but instead I found a guy who wanted it after I removed the interior to make it into a track car. Perfect scenario for both parties.
Bavsound stage 1!
This took forever, lots of swearing, sweat and broken clips.
Cinnamon
After selling the topaz car and swapping the interior and bavsound speakers to my car, I once again was satisfied with the car for maybe 3 months until I got the itch again, haha guess that’s E46’s for ya.
Before this LSB M3, I actually owned a 2002 Steel Grey Metallic E46 M3 that I actually rebuilt as well from IAAI. That M3 came with a set of BBS RG-R’s but sadly one of them was ruined from the accident. I ended up calling BBS to order one wheel since one of mine from my set was damaged.
I wish I never sold this M3, it was a 6 speed and had 70,000 miles and a DINAN stage 1 package. Whatever, live and learn I guess.
I’ll add more pics of that car later, but here’s a pic for now.
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