Mursalin's Street & Track Carbon Black E46 M3 Build

[fullyflaredd]

Track day was awesome, however it was cut quite short as the car has a couple of issues that need sorting. First and foremost, the brakes are garbage. I somewhat anticipated this as I didn't have the time to swap out to race pads prior to the track day, but did not expect them to be so bad. Had zero confidence going late into corners.

Also the car has developed a pretty nasty ticking noise. It sounds valvetrain related and I'll be pulling the valve cover off this week hopefully to dive deeper into it and resolve it.

As for the brakes, I am between either the 996 kit, or the AP racing cp8350 kit from Essex. I'm leaning towards the AP kit simply because of the lack of rotor options aside from the drilled OEM rotors for the 996 kit. Essex also has a rear caliper kit that mates to the stock rear rotors, so if I were to decide to also do the rears, I could go that route in the future. The AP Racing kit is also significantly lighter than the 996 kit, and 14lbs lighter than stock, which is another factor that makes me lean towards it as I'd like to get this car as close to 3k lbs as possible. I have not had it corner balanced yet, but with its current mods I'd guess it's pretty close to 3200lbs. The next major weight savings are going to come from either a carbon roof or sunroof delete, and deleting the rear seats. Current weight savings are from the recaros, lithium battery, supersprint headers / section 1 and 2, and the wheels.

[fullyflaredd]

Hello everyone, I've decided to document the build of my latest purchase from a forum member on here.

A bit of background. I am a BMW fanatic, not the greatest with a wrench, but always happy to tackle a new challenge and learn along the way. I've owned an E30 M3, 4 E36 M3s, an E90 M3, a Z3 M coupe, and an E46 M3 (prior to this current one). I've also had a S2000 CR and an Elise. However I can't get away for my love of BMWs and I'm back in another E46. I am a bit of an impulsive person, and bought this car the day after it was posted because I was filled with regret after selling my S2000 CR so I needed to get another toy ASAP 😂. Probably wasn't the smartest decision, but smart financial decisions never make for fun ones.

I purchased this car from a forum member because it had a good chunk of what I wanted to do already out the way. The big 3 were addressed, it has a CSL airbox + 280/272 cams, and SSv1 headers + 63.5mm section 1 + 2, 3.91 diff, and a few other goodies. However there are still quite a lot of things on the car that I'd like to change as it's not exactly to my liking.






First things first, wanted to get rid of the stock 19s. Found a good deal on the forums on a set of 18x10 ARC8 with 265/35/18 RE71R. Plan is to go to some 275 once these are worn out.





Next up, some Recaro Pole Position ABE in artificial leather / suede.



and some PCI mounts to go along with it.



Installed one seat in the car, however it isn't quite centered. Looks like I'm going to have to slot the bottom mounting points where the slide/side mount attaches so I can center the seat further.





Next I purchased an Aim Solo 2 and made a custom mount above the steering column. I am going to purchase a separate trim piece so that I can drill into it (it is currently double sided taped on) and am going to use a magnetic phone mount for easy removal and attachment.

And a nice little size comparison pic before my Elise is sold.



Going to Buttonwillow this Friday and will have some better pics with an actual DSLR instead of my crappy phone pics.

Waiting to go on - AKG DTM shifter, OMP steering wheel. Will also be ordering some nice 2 way coilovers and a BBK after setting some baseline times. Will update soon.