Liam821's Phoenix Yellow

[Ob917]

Great build, love the color. I'm really interested in the brake feel and suspension review. Thanks for posting it all.

[liam821]

Few more beauty pictures

[Epsilon]

Very nice! looking forward for the suspension review. I'm looking at ohlins or FA Muller at the end of the year.

Same!

[enjoy_m3]

Very nice! looking forward for the suspension review. I'm looking at ohlins or FA Muller at the end of the year.

[liam821]

That Phoenix yellow, OMG, I am totally in love. This is an incredibly epic post, thank you for taking the time to share this. I have so many questions, but will ( am ) sound like such a noob Subscribed, cannot wait for the next set of pics.

Thanks!! If you have questions, feel free to PM me. And you won't have to wait long for an update, because here you go!



I've had almost zero time in the last few weeks to work on the car, unfortunately. Work has been just out of control...but I snuck out of the house a few times late at night while everybody was asleep and was able to get a few hours in here and there.

Finally got the rest of the engine put back together. Nothing super exciting here just cleaned all the throttle bodies, cleaned the icv, refilled the coolant since I swapped out the whole hvac system, reconnected and checked all the bolts, etc etc


Next on the list was putting back together the whole underside of the car. Again, nothing exciting, just getting the driveshaft back in, exhaust, all the underside panels. The hardest part was remembering where I put all the screws and bolts... haha Finally back on its feet for the first time in 6 months. You'll also notice I removed the shark fin antenna from the roof since it was painted black and half the paint was falling off.


It was probably like 3 in the morning at this point, but I couldn't wait. I connected the battery, put the key into the ignition, crossed my fingers, and turned. To my surprise, it started right up on the first crank! A little bit of a rough idle but smoothed right out and purrrred away. Amazing! Then it promptly sputtered and ran out of gas. Oh yeah, I drained the tank when I removed the gas tank.

The following day I got a few gallons of the good stuff, poured it into the gas tank, and reversed out the garage. I did not set the ride height or do the alignment at this point. I just made sure the left and right sides front/rear were set about the same and figured I'd see where the car is and go from there. She's a bit low..


First drive!! Amazingly, everything just worked great. A few lights on the dash, they just need to be cleared. But drove perfectly. Thankfully the stalling issue it had was gone, pretty sure that was caused by a vacuum line to the bottom of the intake manifold that wasn't plugged in. The suspension was pretty low but still rode pretty good. I don't have a review on the Fortune Auto Mullers yet, but my first impressions are positive. More to come on that. The only problem I had is there is something loose in the rear right suspension - a clunk. Sounds like a shock strut isn't tight or something. I'll have to do a bolt check and figure out what it is before I drive it again.


Quick stop into Fred Meyer... hrm, yeah, it's really low. I also forgot to remove the tint off the front windows since the windows were down and the car didn't have a battery for the longest time.


Took a few beauty pictures by our lake in our neighborhood




Hard to see, but I replaced the black M3 badge with an OEM one.


I gotta say, Phoenix Yellow is an amazing color. It's really grown on me!


So what's left? Lots. Gotta adjust the ride height, an alignment is greatly needed, install the PureTech Sweden subframe X-Bar, do the BMW subframe foam injection, bleed the brakes (again, there is still air in there somewhere), remove the halos and restore the headlights to OEM, replace the smoked corner lights with OEMs, and weld/fix the crack in the rear driver-side fender area.

The next big thing will be picking wheels and tires. I'm not really sure what I want to do yet. Do I restore the 19" ZCP wheels? 18" Enkei NT03+Ms? Apex ARC-8s or perhaps SM-10s? The rear Michelin PSSs are basically old and shot, and on the front one side is a PSS and the other side a Contential... Hey, it's what the car came with. My top two choices right now are keeping the ZCP wheels or the NT03s. I think I'd rather an 18, but I gotta say the ZCP wheels look great.

[timmo]

Yup, had the same cracks on my ZHP. When I had the plates welded in, I made sure to have them also weld that split seam back up:

[cbean]

That Phoenix yellow, OMG, I am totally in love. This is an incredibly epic post, thank you for taking the time to share this. I have so many questions, but will ( am ) sound like such a noob Subscribed, cannot wait for the next set of pics.

[liam821]

Yeah, those Redish RACP videos are pretty helpful in displaying all the common failure points.

The OE grills and side vents make the front end look showroom fresh 👍. Are the bumper and headlights staying?

I'll give them a watch. I had a pretty good look under the car and found no other damage, thankfully. I'm going to remove the angle eyes and put them back to stock - the driver's side one has fallen out of place and is sideways anyway. The bumper is not an OE bumper but fitment is good and the paint match is excellent and I like the CSL style so I'll keep it on for the time being.

I'm planning on doing a slicktop conversion and will replace the trunk with an OE CSL trunk at the same time since I'll have to paint the roof might as well do it all at once. So I may do the bumper with a Mile End or something ...not sure yet.

[Slideways]

Yeah, those Redish RACP videos are pretty helpful in displaying all the common failure points.

The OE grills and side vents make the front end look showroom fresh 👍. Are the bumper and headlights staying?

[RoyalFlushness]

They are brand new. I bought them from Scuderia Car Parts USA which is a US importer of Aston, Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc parts. You can get them, brand new, in yellow, red, black, grey, and silver. Mine are silver. They are direct from Aston and include the two brake pad pinch hardware and spring plate.

https://www.scuderiacarparts.com/par.../151/659/23823

Make sure to select a right and left caliper. I paid $394/each plus shipping and duties. Came out to about $975. I was going to get them used, but after shipping, I was looking at $600-800 and then would most likely have to replace all the seals and have them repainted. So it was a wash. I'm not sure keen on the Aston Martin logo...I wanted them to say Brembo, but I'll deal with that at a later date. The calipers are also used on the V8 Vantage as well as the DB9, also the Audi TTRS 8J model or RS3 8P model (but you will have to flip the calipers since they are reversed from Audi).

You can also buy them from Vagbremtechnic (the place you buy the brackets from) and they come out to about the same price, although shipping might be a bit more. But they'll do custom colors and logos if you want.

https://www.vagbremtechnic.com/front...lipers-bk0014/

For the money, I think this kit is hard to beat. With new CSL/ZCP rotors & pads (from FCP with a lifetime warranty), you're looking at under $1500 all in. The Aston calipers have the same piston size as the older $4000 Brembo 355mm 4-pot setup for the e46m3 and you don't have to machine the calipers like you do with the Porsche. They also look better, IMHO.

Buildjournal has a nice review here: https://thebuildjournal.com/reviews/...e46-m3-review/

Appreciate the detailed information sir. Yes, they look like a great way to tackle to the front brakes on these cars. Perhaps once you get them fitted you can get them painted during the off season.

[liam821]

The Aston brakes look brand new, do you mind sharing where you picked them up? Thinking about doing something similar on mine.

They are brand new. I bought them from Scuderia Car Parts USA which is a US importer of Aston, Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc parts. You can get them, brand new, in yellow, red, black, grey, and silver. Mine are silver. They are direct from Aston and include the two brake pad pinch hardware and spring plate.

https://www.scuderiacarparts.com/par.../151/659/23823

Make sure to select a right and left caliper. I paid $394/each plus shipping and duties. Came out to about $975. I was going to get them used, but after shipping, I was looking at $600-800 and then would most likely have to replace all the seals and have them repainted. So it was a wash. I'm not sure keen on the Aston Martin logo...I wanted them to say Brembo, but I'll deal with that at a later date. The calipers are also used on the V8 Vantage as well as the DB9, also the Audi TTRS 8J model or RS3 8P model (but you will have to flip the calipers since they are reversed from Audi).

You can also buy them from Vagbremtechnic (the place you buy the brackets from) and they come out to about the same price, although shipping might be a bit more. But they'll do custom colors and logos if you want.

https://www.vagbremtechnic.com/front...lipers-bk0014/

For the money, I think this kit is hard to beat. With new CSL/ZCP rotors & pads (from FCP with a lifetime warranty), you're looking at under $1500 all in. The Aston calipers have the same piston size as the older $4000 Brembo 355mm 4-pot setup for the e46m3 and you don't have to machine the calipers like you do with the Porsche. They also look better, IMHO.

Buildjournal has a nice review here: https://thebuildjournal.com/reviews/...e46-m3-review/

[RoyalFlushness]

The Aston brakes look brand new, do you mind sharing where you picked them up? Thinking about doing something similar on mine.

[liam821]

Excellent build! Makes me want to redo a build thread on mine lol. Would highly recommend getting rid of those stock subframe bushings. They're probably the worst designed thing for this car. Originally when I had reinforcement plates welded in I went OEM because I didn't know better in the early days. Well a few years ago I went solid aluminum in the subframe and pulled the oem ones which only had 40k on them. Believe it or not they already had play in them! Aluminum with oem diff bushings was the best thing I ever did.

Okay, yeah I'll for sure check that out. I have stock bushings in the rear. The RTAB are OE style with the sandwich plates on each side.

No problem, I wish it were easier to see before you bolted up the subframe, but you could most likely get at it with the damper removed.

You were spot on. Check out the pictures below. I'll have to remove the damper to get it all welded up but that easy enough.

I'm pointing to the crack


Had a bit of time late one night to work on the car a bit more, got the front suspension and brakes on.



Here are some pictures of the Vagbremtechnic Aston caliper brackets, really high quality




The brackets come with a spacer, so you can use both a standard M3 328mm rotor or 345mm ZCP/CSL style rotor. I'm using the larger ZCP/CSL rotors.


I removed the fake carbon fiber front kidney grills that came with the car and replaced with OE BMW chrome grills

Old - I'll put them up for sale, decently high quality and no broken tabs


Gotta say, I love the stock OE chrome grills on Phoenix Yellow - ignore the disaster which is my garage




I also replaced the side-vents with stock OE chrome ones


Only thing left to do is put the driveshaft, exhaust, and intake manifold back on. Oh and bleed the brakes. Almost have a moving car!

[thegenius46m]

Excellent build! Makes me want to redo a build thread on mine lol. Would highly recommend getting rid of those stock subframe bushings. They're probably the worst designed thing for this car. Originally when I had reinforcement plates welded in I went OEM because I didn't know better in the early days. Well a few years ago I went solid aluminum in the subframe and pulled the oem ones which only had 40k on them. Believe it or not they already had play in them! Aluminum with oem diff bushings was the best thing I ever did.

[Slideways]

Good call, you were right it is cracked right there. I didn't even notice it. Doh! I'll have that fixed. Much appreciated.

No problem, I wish it were easier to see before you bolted up the subframe, but you could most likely get at it with the damper removed.