Liam821's Phoenix Yellow

[liam821]

That would be insane. I'd be up for one. Looking forward to updates.

Cool. I'd love a bling bling carbon one, but honestly, a wrinkle black one that sounds/performs the same for 1/5 the price doesn't sound bad. I really want it just for the sound...it sounds soo good!

[liam821]

Update time! I found some time to work in the garage on Saturday, amazing amazing.

New front brakes finally came in the mail. I'll be using the Aston Martin DB9 front calipers/CSL rotors for the front, and Porsche 911 calipers in the rear. I was looking to buy a used set of Aston calipers and rebuild/paint them, but they're actually only $380/caliper brand new so by the time you find used ones and buy all the seals/paint you're spending more. They're going to stay silver.





Prepped the Porsche 911 rear calipers for paint. They were fairly clean when I got them


All clean ready for paint. They'll be painted silver to match the front. Hopefully I can find some time to get them painted this week.


I was not a fan of the carbon wrapped roof, so off it goes






The paint is fairly good under the wrap, thankfully. I was a bit scared as I've never actually seen the paint before


I'm not one for dark tint, and I think the e46m3 looks better without the tint. Instead of pulling all the tint off and cleaning all the windows I just all the windows with my blue car since it was tint-less. The rear window, however, I had to pull the tint off. It left a nasty glue mess. Hard to see, but look at the lights you can see all the streaking.


000 steel wool and windex cleaned it right up


Woo, clear windows again


Finally started to put the interior back together. First up is the carpet and seat belts.


I had to replace the seat belts anyway, so I wanted to add a little something. m-sticking!


The rear plastic lower window trim thing that the parcel shelf connects to was dove...the last piece leftover from when the car previously had dove interior.


I bet I have a black one from my blue car...oh umm that's gonna take some cleaning...


Cleaned right up though


Rear parcel shelf, new seat belts, and headliner all back in


My car was originally an SMG and had an SMG accelerator pedal. I hated how it had the kick-down to go full-throttle unlike the manual cars, let's fix that.

Undo all the screws


The kick down just slides in (on the right of this picture). Pull that out and put it back together, no more kick-down to go full-throttle.


All for now...

[liam821]

More boring interior stuff...

Finished putting together the rear seats.


My old ZCP trim off my blue car and OEM Alcantara armrest pads


Got most of the center console back together. New cubby, center console, etc


Getting there! I have all new Alcantara gearshift and ebrake boots from Coby. I'll put that in last so it won't be damaged. I somehow lost the center heater vent, I'm sure it's in the garage somewhere, so I'll find it eventually. But it's keeping me from putting the rest of the trim on.


All that's really left in the interior is putting the door cards back on and the front seats. Oh, and the A & C pillars need to get done. Then I can get back to work on putting the front and rear suspension/brakes/subframe back together...you know, the fun stuff.

[Tbonem3]

Great work! Ugh I want rid of my tint so bad. So ghetto.

[liam821]

Great work! Ugh I want rid of my tint so bad. So ghetto.

I think the e46m3 looks so much better without the tint. Especially if roll with the OEM chrome grill.

[Tbonem3]

Yes. I've been spending so much time/money on new OE or OE+ parts, but I never reverted the windows to OE doh!

[liam821]

It has a pulse! Was able to test to hvac system (at least with the engine off). Blower fan/ducts/vents all seem to work correctly. Stereo works.



Just holding up the door card to see what it looks like

[James31]

im liking this thread.

[liam821]

The car has HK audio but came with upgraded Boston Acoustics front speakers in the doors and HK speakers in the rear. I'm not really sure what I want to do with the stereo yet, swap back to the stock HK speakers or whatever. Either way, the front door card Boston speakers are fairly expensive and sound decent. The previous owner decided that just wrapping the speaker wires around the speaker terminals was enough to make it work - haha - so I fixed that of course.

Anyway, tldr, I got the speakers in the door cards, got the door cards all mounted correctly. Just a few odds and ends to finish up the interior than on to the fun stuff like putting the suspension/brakes/subframe back together.





Stereo works, Bluebus works (thanks Ted!)

[sdmcoupe]

I want to do an full interior swap like this on my pheonix yellow car as well, but after looking through these pictures, I think I'm going to learn to love dove grey instead. :-)

[liam821]

I want to do an full interior swap like this on my pheonix yellow car as well, but after looking through these pictures, I think I'm going to learn to love dove grey instead. :-)

haha it's not hard, honestly, it's not, but it's just a lot of little things and takes time. A lot of the parts are fiddly like getting all the door card clips aligned so it goes on correctly - not hard, just fiddly.

[liam821]

I attempted to paint the rear Porsche calipers silver. Perhaps I'm just not good at painting (I'm not) but I think I put on too much paint each layer so it came out really uneven. But we'll see what it looks like in the morning. Worst comes to worst I've wasted $50 on paint and a few hours of my time.

First coat


2nd coat


3rd coat




Doesn't really much different that the above picture, but bolted down all the seats and put the door trim back in on both sides. I also finished the dash trim and got that all back together


All that's left of the interior is the steering column plastic covers & bolting the wheel down/installing the airbag, the shifter and ebrake boots, installing the accelerator pedal, and the A & C pillars. And perhaps a good vacuum.

[Titaniu//M]

Try the VHT caliper paint. It comes in silver and goes on super smooth. I'm terrible at painting too and was pleasantly surprised at the results I got with it.

[liam821]

Try the VHT caliper paint. It comes in silver and goes on super smooth. I'm terrible at painting too and was pleasantly surprised at the results I got with it.

It should be fun removing all the paint that's on there now...ugh

[Tbonem3]

What paint did you use? I find that sanding down, once fully dry, with a red or green scotch pad, results in a really nice, smooth template for new paint. I wouldn't clean the calipers again unless the paint were really bad like bubbling or gumming up.

The VHT silver is very nice and sparkly. HOWEVER, as soon as you put the VHT caliper clear over it, it gets a little yellowish and you lose a lot of sparkle, though you get the glossiness of the clear (once baked).

I would either not clear them (if no decal) or try the VHT engine enamel clear as it's much more translucent and should allow the silver to still sparkle well.

I just went through this on a pair and scrapped it because of how lifeless they looked after clearing them, despite them looking so good with no clear

The other nice silver is VHT engine enamel nu-cast aluminum. Very sparkly. They have a cast iron as well that's a little darker. You can find pics on google search (images).

I would not bother with dupli-color silver. Not any better than VHT and lower temp rating anyway.