Bad Om3n "Build"

[Bad Om3n]

Next I'm going to talk about the suspension a bit, since I've already teased this one.

After much deliberation, I decided that the car had to be lower to achieve the look and impression I was aiming for. Not stance nation, just.... fitted. BUT I didn't want to compromise the handling of the M3. After all, this was the whole point of going down this path in the first place. how the car FEELS to drive. I ended up settling on Ohlins Road & Track DFV Coilovers. From my research, they appeared to be an excellent compromise between sharp handling and street mannered. The DFV Technology is perfect for an application like mine. Of course - they were yellow/gold too so you know, there's that.



And I must say, the quality of these pieces is top notch. I found myself just holding them and looking at them. 🤤🤤

I decided to mount the rear shocks using a set of ECS isolated monoball mounts, reinforced with a set of ECS Tuning Reinforcement plates. With stiffer suspension comes more bushing deflection and I want to FEEL the road! but with stiff mounts comes more stress in the chassis - hence the reinforcement plates.

New V Old Rear Shocks. Notice the diametral difference.


Rear Shock Mount + Reinforcements



Front Shock Reinforcements (look closely at the top of the mount) - I'm not sure how much these actually do considering they aren't really much larger than the OE part. Maybe someone can shed some light on this? They were cheap though.

[Bad Om3n]

Lets talk about that shifter now. Shift feel is super important to me and is the icing on the cake after a good shift. This was an area I knew I could elevate the M3's feel.

I did a bunch of research and settled on an AutoSolution kit. I did not want to shorten the throw to be honest, I was never a big fan of short shifters. I felt they compromised feel for ... "speed". The guy behind the AS kits offers a bunch of bespoke options. But generally he offers something called the "Ultra" kit. When I called to discuss it he mentioned something to me called the "AutoCross Kit" which was an evolution of the shifter everyone had been raving about. But I had to go with a 25% reduction if I wanted to get into the batch.

The thing with the AS SSK is that its actually a spherical bearing solution. The reduced resistance overcomes the increased force from the shorter throw. It also has a super beefy billet arm.

Here is the AS SSK next to the ... whatever contraption was in my car. likely a 330 shifter or something.


Look at the size of the main beam. The swivel links in the lower beam are super tight have no play. The bushing at the transmission side is stiffer. The shift rod has a larger diameter.

To support this marvelous shifter, I also upgraded the shifter mount bushing (the rear side one the "spike" goes into) as well as the trans mounts.
For the Shifter Bushing, I went for a polyurethane Turner replacement.
For the Trans Mounts I went with Rogue Engineering mounts. I didn't want gear whine so I didn't want poly. The RE Mounts have a similar durometer to OEM however their geometry is stiffer. This should hold the trans better without impacting NVH.



I don't know if any of you have installed a Turner shift bushing. but its a royal pain. For context, not only did I destroy the first bushing. But I also destroyed the carrier its supposed to slide into.
Here is the Turner bush, next to the OE bush: you can easily see the stiffness.


Turns out its so stiff, that the case will crush before it yields to the bracket - Even with the bracket outside of the car!



After ordering a new set of parts - I still didn't have a plan to get the damn thing in there. I ended up making a press jig thingy like this with the idea being I press around the shell more evenly.


It sort of worked. But not quite. In the end, I shaved the bracket a bit to reduce the interference slightly until it popped in. Then I epoxied it with that hardcore frame epoxy stuff.


Now that the shifter is in, I can tell for sure that it is precise af. At this point, the poor feeling I feel is the transmission itself. In fact, the resistance when moving in neutral from left to right (so between the 1-2 gate and then to the 5-6 gate) is not equal. Its harder to push left than right. I suspect the PO messed up the detents or something. Can anyone with a proper 6MT confirm how this should be? Shifting feels super notchy when you're sitting there, but once the trans is spinning and the synchro's can work its quite nice actually. The shift isn't too short - but its getting close. I think it would be too short with a lower quality shifter.

I topped the shifter off with a weighted alcantara ZHP Shift knob, wearing a Coby Alcantara M-Stitch boot. That boot is also matched on the e-brake and I have a spare wheel I will be wrapping to tie all the tactile driving inputs together. Say what you want about Alcantara getting dirty - you feel Special when you're in a car with an Alcantara steering wheel. At least, I do.





On the bottom side, We have a UUC Braided Clutch line, paired with a CDV Delete. Of course, the clutch pedal was also treated to delrin bushings as well.



The transmission itself was flushed with OE BMW Fluid (again, trusting the engineers here - it has proprietary modifiers in it). By the way, anyone who's used liquimoly - that funnel cap they have is awesome.


With all this in place, there isn't anything left for me to improve shift feel other than the trans and clutch themselves.

Maybe another time. I would like to rebuild and possibly SC this motor someday So who knows.

[Mike0032]

Great Saturday morning read for me, thanks for sharing. That's a great color combo you have there and you've done a great job bringing the car back to it's former glory. It looks like we've done a lot of the same work, just on different cars! Looking forward to further updates.

[Bad Om3n]

Now its time to drive into the meat and potatoes of this whole thing. Time to finally tackle the subframe reinforcement.

For my reinforcements, I did both the bottom and top side reinforcements.
For the underside, I went with Reddish plates. They seemed to have the best design of my options with more weld length and surface area compared to some other kits you can buy. To be honest, I don't know if this is really worth much. I don't think I've ever heard of any style reinforcement plate ripping out afterwards. But nevertheless, for the amount of trouble i'm going through to get these in, a couple extra bucks for peace of mind seemed reasonable.
For the top side reinforcement I went with an epoxy V2 Vincebar. Epoxy was the only one available at the time, no welded batches. but to be honest, epoxy solutions are serious business these days - in fact, if you go to a high end body shop they'll tell you that factory procedure to repair new high end cars is to epoxy panels together now. No more welding. the epoxy you have to use is some obscure industrial stuff you have to order separately because there are shipping restrictions on it or something haha. I went with the vincebar because I like the idea of topside reinforcement - especially with the solid subframe mounts. The vincebar will be hidden out of sight when everythings put backtogether for a clean look.

I'll start with the bottom side plates. They have to be done first since they're welded in and the heat risks cooking the vincebar epoxy if I did it otherwise.

Before any welding happens - I've got to drop the gas tank. Generally, a pretty easy tasks but there are alot of hose connections and plastic barbs. I ended up breaking one of the plastic-welded spigots:


I was wondering how the hell i'm going to fix that. Was I going to cut a patch off the top of the tank and epoxy something on? In the end, I ended up buying some 1/8" brass tube which I sleeved in there.


Sleeved it with some jb weld. added some more JB weld on the outside. So far, So good.



OK, so here are the reinforcements laid out ready to go:


First step is to sand it down to the metal which I did mostly with a flap discs.



Great News! No Cracks!! Like I mentioned earlier, good bones! This is one of the benefits of SMG cars - much less clutch dumping and such. Phew 😅

With the metal clear, I can set the plates in place and start banging them to a rough shape.


A freshly welded plate


Seeing this is a bit sketchy.


Primed and seam sealed:


POR15'd:

In retrospect I could have taken my time to do this more cleanly. I was trying to get everything done in time to drive it last season but it didn't end up playing out that way. At least you'll never see under here and the coverage/sealing is good.

Now that the underside Reddish plates are welded in, I can start on the top side epoxy vincebar reinforcements.

To start, you have to cut some sheetmetal away from the trunk area to expose the subframe mounts from the top side:



*Notice the garbage bag blocking the cabin. Cutting this plate out is going to cause alot of dust that I don't want getting into all the cracks and crevices. you can see a bunch collected on the tape at the base already.

You're supposed to cut and pound-flat the "Upside Down T" shaped bumps where the bolts come through. I went a bit overboard - but at least it gives you guys a good idea of whats underneath:

Above you can see a sort of metal disc. This is a basically a super-thick-walled threaded tube and this is where the subframe mounts from the bottom come through (or, rather, Will come through. From the factory they terminate here).

The VinceBar kit actually comes with plates for the top, which is why I wasn't too concerned about my method:


These plates are supposed to be epoxied in. In my haste, and with the welder out and fired up, I welded them instead. To be honest, I think epoxy is the smarter solution here. The whole point of this is to be a shear panel anyways. Tensile loads will be carried by the bolt. By only reinforcing the edges *welding) I'm leaving room between the edges, and the bolt, for the plate to bow and flex.



With some trimming and several test fits the bar is finally "in". But I'll get the front sorted before finally epoxying and riviteing the bar in.

*I've sprayed the bar in primer to prevent rust before its in the car (and even once its in the car, for areas I can't get to).
You can see I've removed more material than necessary. Fortunately, I can literally just re-use that same removed material to weld it back up!

Moving to the front, you have to cut the sheetmetal again to expose those same threaded mounts but on the front side.

You will also have to grind away the spray damping / sealer stuff and do a bit of massaging to get these guys fitting up right and clearing the seat mounts/bolts.



With all the pieces fitting up, I painted them separately with some chassis black before installing them so they don't rust out on me. Time to get Epoxying!

*You'll notice the primer has been ground back on the surfaces to be epoxied. Be sure to properly clean and etch these surfaces for the best bond. I used POR Metal Etch 💁♂️. You may also notice that the weld beads on my plates have been ground down so I'm not clamping the bar on peaks.


Be sure to torque down the bolts (I used wheel studs, same thread in this case) First, before drilling and riveting so that you anchor it down in the compressed position and avoid pre-loading the bar.





Last step is to hit it all with some rubberized undercarriage paint as I've stripped back more primer than was required for the epoxy joint - I want to seal everything back up again.


Oh yeah, I also came back a while later and closed up those gaps:


With the reinforcements done, I could put the subframe back into the car with the new hardware. Take your time setting the position of the long studs. you can fasten it more than one way so take your time to try and balance the leftover threads. Remember, you only have to do this once. Also: The gas tank goes back in before this. I show nothing about it - but its pretty straightforward. Connect the lines that really only fit one way, and fasten the straps. The one center bolt helps locate everything nicely for you - thanks Toyota!



Victory! This was the whole point of all of this! Now I can have subframe peace of mind + plus some extra driving feel 😁

[Bad Om3n]

Great Saturday morning read for me, thanks for sharing. That's a great color combo you have there and you've done a great job bringing the car back to it's former glory. It looks like we've done a lot of the same work, just on different cars! Looking forward to further updates.

thank you, I'm glad you enjoy it so far!😀

[timmo]

Nice work! I can definitely attest to taking the time and properly isolating the cabin from the trunk. I just had a few towels lying around, which didn't do much. I managed to clean my interior real well but it took some time, and my headliner has some small craters from all the sparks, and the inside of my windshield has a bit of pitting.

Also last summer I ran the corner of a MF towel in that crack between the armrest pad and the "door card" in the rear, the corner came out black with metal shavings lol. And that was more than 3 years after I got the vincebar in!

Odd how the V2 vincebars don't come powdercoated as my V1 epoxy version did. I ended up POR15'ing all the areas that were bonded due to the exposed metal, but the rest of the bar was fine

[Str8f4c3]

Excellent build thread, very well detailed and you're definitely doing this thing up right.

My 2 cents on your transmission detents being uneven: I've found the same issue on my car, but in the opposite directions. It's harder to push towards 5-6 than 1-2. For reference the car is a factory 6mt with 150 thousand km.

I'm convinced the only upside to the 420g is it can handle near 4 digit horsepower without blinking. The feel is trashy and it can't be serviced.

I've considered more than once swapping in the zf 6 speed. It was used in the z4m, the feel is ten times better, and it should fit fairly easily given it was used in 330's. Downside its it's rated for less torque, but in an n/a build I don't see why it wouldn't be a viable option.

[Bad Om3n]

timmo Yeah I noticed some bars in other threads were coated and it "appeared" as if they came this way. The sparks from grinding got your windshield!?!

Str8f4c3 Thank You! I was actually sitting in the car recently and the "dry shifts" felt atrocious. I chalked it up to sitting for so long. I know it feels better once its running so we'll see. At the moment my '90 Miata's shift feels better..... .....

[Bad Om3n]

Now its a mission to put the car back together. In the spirit of assembled cars, here are a couple pics from when it was together:





Poorer quality phone and camera at the time 😅

After the subframe and shifter are in, I can put back some heat shields and the drive shaft. I've got a Febji replacement guibo, bolts, CSB, and pilot bearing (ECS kit).


I looked into some other guibo options. Thinking that a stiffer guibo would produce better response and thus feel. Ultimately, many said it wasn't really worth it on a street driven car. but the thing that sold me on an OEM one is ability to absorb shock inputs in the driveline. If you run something like a revshift or whatever where the put little poly bushes in an aluminum ring - you will increase the peak loads on the gearbox bearings and gears. Things like suddenly gaining traction or dumping the clutch, even the changes in wheelspeed as the car travels over bumps.

With the driveshaft in, we get to move onto a bit of a fun part - the Exhaust! Ah yes what a topic. Let me preface this a bit: I grew up loving big American V8's. hated on ricers. I gotta be honest when I was trying to decide which car to buy at the time, the M3's exhaust note almost drove me away from its litany of positives. "This can't be right" I thought to myself. "No legendary car can sound like That". The aftermarket must have a solution I mused. But alas I went down a raspy hole of disappointment. This was a hard one. After some research, I learned about rasp pipes and resonators and found some appealing exhaust videos. One of which that caught me attention was this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Pkz-fPlECY

So, I went on the hunt for a Status Gruppe SCZA Muffler. It had a somewhat deeper, more aggressive tone. Hard to get your hands on apparently, so I got a gently used one from a gentleman in Quebec who shipped it down to me.



With a piece of wood on the jack, it was pretty easy to install solo. With a friend would be even easier. The new muffler is much much lighter than the stock one. Damn that thing is heavy!😰

The exhaust is pretty quiet at idle, but to be honest - I still want a deeper tone out of it. Right now its all stock except the muffler - catted headers. I will be resonating the unresonated pipe, I know alot of people run AR20's - but isn't it a 2.25" pipe? I think I might be able to find something that fits a bit better, I will update on that front later. And, if i'm going through the trouble I'll probably just replace the oem resonator with whatever one I land on - the resonators aren't too pricey on their own.

As a result of the accident, the Aluminum hood got crunched up a bit.


The Damage isn't too bad to be honest, maybe someone can pop it back out but I looked behind and the two sides of the "C-channel" between the grilles were cracked. Also, Aluminum isn't meant to be worked like that. Sadly, the hood was toast. The grilled wouldn't stay in too well either.
In the search for a new hood, I found a guy with one that had been repainted. I didn't notice until it was home and too late - but the hood had some rivet repairs done to it - no bueno. at this point I have exactly 0 expectation of finding a used Oxford Green hood in good shape lol. I know I'm painting. And if i'm painting, It isn't going to be some rivet repair job. So I kept looking and eventually found another replacement - and LSB! I think LSB is probably the coolest colour on its own. The oxford green only stands out to me so much when its combo'd like this [cinnamon]. Sum of its parts and all. So, here we are:


While we're talking about suitable cored for painting - I should mention the bumper is completely trashed. It has cracks everywhere, can't attach a belly pan properly, clips are broken. this thing. is. a. mess.


So now i'm looking for a new bumper. The obvious choice is to go CSL. Here's the thing though: I don't like the CSL bumper *flamesuit* 😱
Honestly, those two little carbon lips just seem... unfinished to me. I kind of like having fog lights. So I guess OEM it is. Let me tell you it is Damn Hard to find a good clean M3 bumper these days. I ended up deciding the bite the bullet and go brand spanking new OEM front bumper. But hey, if we're doing this, why not get a EURO bumper - the one with no reflectors. Besides, those reflector insert companies literally don't even offer oxford green inserts I'd have to get them painted individually. I suppose when only 430 or so were ever produced...

Here is my shipment, delivered From Germany with help from a firm called Renn-Haus.


I present to you, one fresh Euro E46 M3 Bumper.


Now, you might have noticed there were a couple other boxes. Well, I've always been a fan of the way the CSL Looks. With their help, I was able to get my hands on a genuine set of CSL Wheels. Proper fat fronts (that help combat factory understeer). And these magnesium wheels are Light!


you see, I drew alot of inspiration from this car *not my pics*:




I thought that car looked really sharp. However, I believe that one is on VMR's? No hate for VMR's I think they're awesome. I just nerd out on being able to say I have genuine CSL wheels. Weird flex but okay 💁♂️.

But I'm going to take things up a notch, It turns out theres one other thing I have a soft sport for. Ducktails. I love ducktail spoilers. yummm. and it turns out the CSL has one of the yummiest ones! At this point, I'm kind of invested in some higher shelf stuff so i'm goin for a genuine bmw oem CSL trunklid.

[Bad Om3n]

Back down on the ground, lower on the ohlins now. Was curious to see how far off the alignment would be but it wasn't too wild.



To finish that CSL trunk off, I decided to go for a Status Gruppe carbon diffuser insert. Someone made an argument about tighter corners in the exhaust bumps and I bought it...



I also decided to try something out with the front. I'm not sure if it will stick or not, but I'm willing to try it.

I was deliberating between the two colours above. The yellow is definitely the DTM way, but the Orange matches all the brakes/ohlins/cinnamon stuff. Painted these can lids to compare. I did yellow on one, orange on the other, and then a half coat of orange ontop of the yellow to see if there was any magic to be had in laying the colours.







After several coats, we're here!


So at this point my car has:
- Primer front bumper
- Primer trunklid
- LSB Hood
- Unpainted rear valence insert.

I'm looking at painting almost half the car. Any reputable shop I call basically tells me that they won't touch it unless they do the whole car - with that "vintage" its likely the new parts won't match and I won't be happy after spending all that money.

Thats... an expensive thing I wasn't quite ready for. But after a bunch of deliberation, I decided i'm going to paint this car. The shop I chose is certified in BMW repairs - and I actually got an authentic BMW certificate of repair after it was all done! I was fortunate to be able to save some off the bill by doing the disassembly myself. The car also had a surprising number of stone ships and rash from tire spray. somehow the PO had a bunch of rock chips on the trunklid?? I knew this was all going to bug me once half the panels were flawless.











I also asked them to mimic the paint on the carbon valence, and it came out sooo nicely 🤤

[Bad Om3n]

While the car was getting painted, I got the CSL Wheels wrapped with a set of Pilot Sport 4 S'
245/35 R19 in the front
275/30 R19 in the rear



I couldn't resist test-fitting a wheel



And some E38 wheels for funsies:


So after putting this much into the car, and having it this far apart - I decided to have the whole car treated to a custom PPF treatment using XPEL. I took it to a shop in the GTA Called Elevated Auto to do the wrap. They've worked on E46's before, and have experience doing custom (no stencils available) jobs on cars straight from the paint booth. The guy can wrap a Porsche in his sleep. So, I have to load the M3 onto a trailer and bring it up to the GTA. I rented a uhaul to tow the M3 to toronto but didn't want to expose the fresh paint to all the stones and crap on the highway. I had a California Car Covers fitted car fover for this car and decided to put that on to protect it. I strapped it down and off we went.



At this point, I'm having some battery issues. The battery has gone flat so many times its having trouble keeping EWS happy while cranking. So we have to boost it off the trailer at the other end.



HOWEVER, I discovered an unfortunate accident. One of the straps didn't hold well enough, when it let go in the wind it smashed up some of the fresh paint 😭😭😭



Since the custom job wraps the door and meets two sheets together (butt joint style) under the beltline, Elevated is going to leave the bottom half of the pass door unwrapped and I'll bring it back to the paint shop once we're back home and the rest of the car is wrapped.

Here is the car being left at Elevated



I dropped the car off a week or two before the winter holidays. I went to pick it up after the holidays were over, heres how it looked waiting for me 😍



In typical Bad Om3n fashion, another problem comes my way. It wont start! I drive 4 hours to get it and it won't start. Elevated has made sure to keep the battery charged. I brought a marine battery backup. It has had issues starting before, low EWS voltage. But with a good boost it always started up. So I spent 5 hours at the shop tinkering with the car trying to get it to start with limited tools. A buddy came by with a Carly but it didn't work out.

I'm going back up Tomorrow (at time of writing this) to try the second time. although, there is no Try. Its happening, only question is how. I've packed a winch. My leading theory is EWS/DME Desync. Perhaps when they were rolling codes, voltage dropped and now we're out of sync. There is no mechanical reason why it shouldn't start. I've checked EWS voltages and signals with a multimeter to try and rule out other possibilities. I'm really hoping I don't have to winch it onto the trailer tomorrow that doesn't sound fun. My hopes are in the hands on INPA/NCS.

But I'm pretty excited to get it back home and start putting all the pieces together. I'm on track to enjoy the car this summer. .... 4 years after I bought the car 🙄

[oceansize]

My man. I... well.... but how...

You have grit and patience. Glad you seem to be having fun through it all.

[heinzboehmer]

Oxford green on cinnamon is my favorite combo for these cars. Car is looking awesome, especially with the fresh paint.

Sounds like your starter might be going. Worst case scenario you can push start the car.

[timmo]

Man, that new paint damage really sucks, sorry to hear that. Also, I think I recognize that body shop... is it Formula First Collision? I actually got into an unfortunate accident a few months into my ownership while I was on my coop in Windsor so I had the repairs done to my car there. The work itself was top notch but man they really swirled the hell out of the paint. I was watching one of their employees wash a car and they were using some sort of foam squeegee thing instead of towels for drying so I suspect that was why. Hopefully they've smartened up by now.

And yes, it's unfortunate but the inside of my windshield did get a bit pitted. I'm not too pissed about it though, my windshield has definitely seen better days (has a couple big chips that were filled, and lots of pitting on the outside due to the mileage on it ~200k).

[Tbonem3]

This escalated quickly. Love it!