Tyler's 2011 Slicktop E90 DCT Jerez/Bamboo

2011.5 E90 M3 with 48k, 1 owner, slicktop, Jerez/Bamboo purchased Feb 12, 2022 Southbay, CA

c. 2022 - While I loved having 2 E46 M3s, again daily-ing an E46 M3 (my 2004 is a garage queen atp), I took advantage of the market and flipped the cheap pre lci 2002 m3 for great profit after fixing it up.

The market has also been on fire, as you all know, so I figured now was a fine time to sell. I also was starting to think it was a now or never situation with buying the only other BMW that I have real interest in, the e9x or e60 with f1 derived n/a v8 or v10 as their values are rapidly rising, but more laws/restrictions coming in.

Initially, I wanted to go big with the v10. My friend bought one around this time as well, but it has been problem after problem. I already own an E46 M3, so I'm no stranger to high running costs and "fixes," but this was going to be my daily car and a car I'd hopefully keep for years, so I shied away from the older and troublesome E60.

The only other car that would have a chance at making me as happy as an E46 does was the e9x with S65. I wanted 4 doors, dct, lower mileage this time around. My normal criteria of low options was still in play as I'm not a fan of much, even for a daily, but after 4 BMWs in black, silvergrey, tiag & steelgrey, I was ready for some color this time. Unfortunately, the e60/e9x generation's color pallet was very German, less colorful than e36/46 IMO. So me and my friends started looking at listings, and it didn't take long to find something local AND a bit special.

My friend sent me a link to a craigslist ad, in a city only about 1.5hrs away. The ad was not that well done, which probably helped keep it available, but the price was great, given this climate, for the mileage and year.



2011 with 48k for $36k? Car is unmolested, original owner! Engine bay looks like owner took care of the car:



Car seemed immaculate and well priced, almost too good to be true being only one owner, 48k, slicktop, not white/black/silver/grey. I had to go check it out. Ran a carfax, which only served to increase my excitement:



Confirmed original owner, socal original, bought and serviced at the same Southbay dealership, it even got the 1200 mile oil change, not to mention a slew of maintenance/inspections.

So I drove down with my buddy, and test drove the car. It still had pilot sport tires from 2013 lol. Female owned, always garaged, and it showed. A stack of original receipts that matched the carfax was provided as well. 2 keys, you know, the kind of purchase you want. Bought it for $35,400 after tax/title, and drove it home!



The bamboo novillo leather is really growing on me. I love the supple feel of this leather. The e9x seats are incredible. These have full heat/lumbar (like 4 lumbar adj lol).

I think I'm only going to swap out the trim. The bamboo really suits the jerez nicely. Very classy. No, not as cool as mtex on LSB, but sophisticated and luxurious, especially at this mileage/condition.

I know it's Jerez BLACK, but this color is amazing. Very similar to Carbon black, a favorite of mine, this paint is a little darker and more purple than CB in most lighting. Then, at times, it appears very blue, like this:



Here's the vin decoder information on options:






Seems like I not only lucked out on it being an original owner/slicktop, but it's an 2011.5, which is pretty important. I knew it had to be an LCI, either e60 or e90, but the 2011.5 also has more upgrades like the combox for ipod/usb. This is very, very important to me as I want to play high quality .WAV files for music (30 gigs or so, on a thumbdrive, no less). This Hifi (m3 base) stereo, with the combox, is perfect because it's the easiest and cheapest to upgrade. And because my CIC will put out 5 volt low level signal AND will play .wav files, I only have to upgrade the amplifier! Ya, and probably speakers too, knowing me.

Can't get over how clean this engine bay is. The valve covers don't even have any oil weepage yet.




Play nice you two! 😁



Found some janky wiring on battery and followed it to a lojack. Yay weightloss!



First mod - Bumper reflector deletes




The bamboo leather has really grown on me. I'm glad it's just the seats and doors, not the dash or even lower half of the dash. The wood trim is really killing me, plus there's tons of glare from the sun because the trim is gloss and quite large in size as compared to E46, so I'll be looking to swap it out or wrap it.

The Blue/Purple Jerez paint (in the sun) really pairs nicely with the bamboo, esp for me at this point in life. Fox red would look cool too ofc, and fetch more upon resale, but I like the jerez/bamboo combo a lot.



I happened to be driving the E90 when I went to my friend's house who has an E46 in Carbon Black (normally, I'd be in my sg E46), so I took some pics of them together.

Jerez is the 2007+ version of carbon black basically, like how tanzanite has superseded Jerez in the F series I believe and there's Azurite. I really love CB, so it was cool to put the 2 together.

You can see that Jerez is a touch darker, and a little more purple in it than CB's blue-r tone.




More comparisons or should I say "no comparison" lol

I never took to the E60+ "bangle" styling from BMW, but I have to say 2 things - 1) they look much better in person, esp the M models with the wider bodies & 2) they are very German looking, very muscular, angular and handsome I would say, if I'm being nice.

However, nothing holds a candle to the E46. I really love this E90, it's a rockstar, but I'm sure glad I still have an E46.



I just get to enjoy the best that both have to offer. I also am learning to change how I take pictures (settings, distance, angle, lens choice) since the E90 can look quite a lot better or worse whereas the E46 looks good no matter what you do lol

Next, I'll post pics of and maybe describe a bit about the mods and maintenance I do on this wonderful GT car.

Second mod: Lowering springs and spacers of course! (I haven't changed the formula since my first bmw I got in 2003 - a 94' 325i)



Just to hold me over while I figure out what coilovers and wheel I'll eventually want.



I have never ever seen a pair of lowering springs result in such a perfect drop like this I'm blown away. For E46, Eibach drops the rear perfectly, but not much up front. H&R is opposite, half inch drop rear, but then dumps the front 1.2". Dinan is an even drop, but too conservative imo. Other E9x springs seemed to suffer similar fates. The Swifts were the favorites, and I can see why.

The ride - pretty amazing. Not bumpy at all. Just firmer, still very well controlled. Feels factory for sure. Doesn't look it!

*After living with them for a while, my final judgment is that the Swifts lower the front just a hair too much for the spring rate increase; rears are perfect.

After the springs, I got an alignment. Pulling the pins up front, I was able to get -2 camber all around with typical toe settings:



Then, as I always do with my cars, I installed some audio components. Luckily, this car is an 11.5 so it got some further upgrades, the most important to me, being able to play hi fidelity .WAV files. So, this time, I don't need to upgrade the headunit, just the amp and speakers.

The stock amp is so tiny lol. Even just installing an aftermarket amp will do wonders for the base "hifi" system. And what's more, hifi si still analogue and puts out high voltage. So with a Technic harness, you can hook up RCAs to your aftermarket amplifier, though it does need to be able to handle "bridge-tier-load" aka balanced differential signal - that's where the audio signal is both positive and reverse polarity to clean the signal.



Most people, thus, run Alpine amps as they can handle that and the newer class D tech is very powerful, but with much smaller footprint and easier on the battery (e9x era is hard on the battery). I have always preferred class A/B, but the higher quality class D has come a long way.

Because I care so much about the "color" of the sound, and had bad experiences with older class D, I went with a very musical amp in the ARC audio 850. It provides the warm sound I love, but big time power (2 stereo channels, and a mono for sub running at 2ohm) and small enough form to fit nicely in the driver side corner - but I would need to make my own bracket for it.



Brackets:

Shelf:


Amp installed, some passive crossovers to create a band-pass since this is a 3-way system. Custom (Technic style) harness as well.



Everything fit perfectly where I can then re-install the liner for a factory look




Then I have the sub from my E46 that will still do the job I need. Nothing crazy, a 10" DVC4 ohm run in parallel to present 2ohm for the mono channel on the amp and I'll LPF it at like 65hz (only 12db slope - I would normally prefer 24hz/db @ 80hz)



Unfortunately, I lost all the picture files of the CDT components I installed

You can see the 4" midranges behind the grill. I went with the CL4 rather than the HD4s I had in my e82 last year because the CL carbon treated paper cones are a bit stiffer which work better for the guitar sounds I like, plus crisp vocals. The tweeters are the typical oversized 26mm silk (I hate alloy). The 4" are thin enough to fit without any real modification.



First, I tried some 4ohm Logic7 midbase (versus 8ohm hifi).



You can see the older style ferrous magnet versus the fancy neodynium (right). These are very much just mid-bass speakers, only reproducing around 120-240hz, tapering off down around 60hz so no real authority in the bass zone - you need a 10"+ sub.

Then scored a nice set of Audiotec Fischer MATCH underseat subwoofers off ebay.

These were the only stock speakers left in the car, so now everything has been upgraded. Still need to tune it a bit, but it's the same resistance and similar specs to logic7 woofers, just more bass/power. The goal would be to have such good bass response that I could ditch the 10" sealed sub in the trunk, but it's just not really possible from a shallow 8" I still will take the better bass response from these around 200hz - 80hz.



And that's it for stereo, I'm very happy. I load WAV files onto a thumb drive and can do a bit of tuning as well with the CIC idrive. I wired it up so when I use the fader (front to back) it actually controls the sub level Pretty clever

My next favorite thing to do: Paint work!

Man this orange peel is egregious. Oh well, still very pleased to have a car with all original paint again, and in such good condition.



For now, I'm just doing a single step - Blue LC hydrotech pad that has good cut and good finish, but on a DA, it's not that powerful. There's no reason to dig too deep anyway - this car has no oxidation, no real etchings, barely any RIDS etc. I have plenty of sealants I can use to lock the paint until I do a final polish with a softer pad.



Then front end restoration. Wet sanding the headlights, then polishing them and the front bumper/grilles. OP's front plate holder marred the bumper pretty bad.

The headlights were in surprisingly bad shape for a 48k mile garaged car, particularly the driver side. I was warned not to dig too deep so as not to ruin the UV protecting layer. And you can't simply replace the plastic lens like you can on the E46. However, the damage was severe enough to need to level the plastic. I figured with the car being out of the sun a lot, and with my periodic polishing, I'd be able to keep the headlights always looking pretty new, and avoid having to replace them, so I went forward.






Then a final polish:



Finished the one-step on the whole car. How she sits at this point:



New rear badge:

Congrats, very clean project!

Thanks! I've got a couple more years of content to upload here soon, just wanted to finally get started on creating this thread.

Well I'm not going to get a V8 and not let her sing. A friend of a friend had a "2 pipe" or a "4 pipe" (he wasn't sure) modified OEM muffler on his comp e92. I was in my E46 and we did some pulls (my e46 was faster ;p ), but holy shit, his car (at wot, top end) literally sounded like the F1 cars from around 2010 (v8s). This was a year ago when I was contemplating selling the older E46 and getting an E60 M5 or E9x. His car sold me, just on exh sound alone (since I already had the best sounding induction in the E46 ).

Anyway, I kept my eyes open, after taking ownership of my E90, for a modded muffler. Did some reasearch and the 2 pipe was not much of an increase, unless if you were also doing primary cat delete. I knew I was leaving the cats alone for now, being in Cali and this being my daily, so I wanted the 4 pipe. Turned out the guy I knew had a 4 pipe, not a 2 pipe. So that was that.

Luckily I soon found one only 30 minutes away!



But I had to change the tips. I like single wall, 76mm-83mm diameter, straight cut or slash cut, but no rolled or double wall. It was actually difficult to find tip options that were direct fit. EAS had some nice ones, but they were NLA. Finally stumbled upon Burkhart Engineering in Germany. They had what I was looking for, in both straight cut and slanted. I already had slanted on E46, so figured straight would be better on E90. Came with rivets too! 2 day shipping via DHL, I couldn't believe it! Total cost was only a bit over $200. (no vat, no duties, just shipping)








Boo-ya!




Unbelieveable. For $250, I've turned the car into a veritable exotic super car. That's not much of an exageration, honestly. It sounds so fking good. It has completely ruined any desire to hear the E46 exhaust. I'll be removing my scorza and going back to stock on the E46 to just hear the engine and induction. I can't stop driving the E90 now!

Younger me would now want to delete the secondary cats (there's a youtube vid of that setup and it sounds insane), but I'll probably just leave it alone. This, alone, is extremely satisfying. I have zero desire to buy a $2k akro or dinan or eisenmann.

I'll upload some vids to youtube (@tbonem3). There are also many other OEM modded muffler videos out there. I can't believe this mod exists. I can't get over the sound. DCT downshifts are like a rifle. They scare people even more than the E46 induction barking does!
As I had mentioned at the beginning, I really didn't like the wood trim. After a while, I found a nice condition brushed alu set from a m3post member:



So much better! I feel like the blurple against the bamboo cut with the silver aluminum is a very pretty, but sophisticated match and something I'd expect to see in a brochure from BMW. Very pleased.

The DCT knob was in mostly good shape, but the top was strangely worn, badly, so I replaced it - yikes so expensive



Even with 48k, there was some marring on the soft touch center hvac/radio/cupholder surrounding strip pieces. Though not very bad, because my E46 has all new parts, yet is almost twice the age and quadruple the miles lol, I had to replace the parts in the E90 duh!

So it was both the face plates, one around the radio that goes down to console area, the one around the HVAC, and the long horizontal strip around the cup holders. Luckily the cup holders are in good shape.




Now the car is up to my standards, and looks like a low mileage car.