New M3 owner - Perth

Hey!
I've owned this M3 for two weeks and i'm completely smitten. For the last few years i've owned a Subaru STi - whilst I loved the handling and speed of those cars I've always desired an M3. So i couldn't pass up the opportunity to buy one when it came up. It's space grey, black interior, and manual with sunroof.

It has done 90k km's and is in ridiculously good condition throughout considering it's getting on 9 years old.

I joined up for general advice, performance tips/mods, and to see if there's any cruises happening out west.

cheers

Welcome aboard! Always good to have another manual Space Grey rolling around! I've done a few mods to mine so happy to chat when the mod bug bites...

A few of us get together every few weeks for coffee on a Sunday morning and there's the odd cruise here and there too!

Welcome! The STI's have rod beating issues ('12+ they started building the motors out of tissue paper). People have blown 2 motors (stock) in sub-5k miles for rod bearings. I saw one forum member say he blew original motor at 2.2k and replacement motor 1.7k later. All highway, soft driving. Poor 2015s =(

As a subie/bmw household (2 of each) I completely understand both worlds.


If you came from a tuned STI, the M3 is slow. STI tune is cheaper and way more power for your buck. AWD and lower weight (especially if you are talking 04-07) make the handling better.


The M3 is world's ahead in ride quality, (even with the new chassis on '15+ sti), interior quality, good + reasonable looks (I love having a wing, but meeting for a 6 figure deal in a bright blue, rumbly car with a wing isn't professional) and stock the STI is miserably slow.

Both are a blast. And that is a sharp looking car. My E92 328xi is that color and I love it! Enjoy!!

Ingenio wrote

Welcome aboard! Always good to have another manual Space Grey rolling around! I've done a few mods to mine so happy to chat when the mod bug bites...

A few of us get together every few weeks for coffee on a Sunday morning and there's the odd cruise here and there too!

Welcome to the forum.

Ingenio has done more than a few mods.

I hope your wallet is full of folding stuff with a bank account to match.

Test pipes and tune is a good start.

Welcome to M3 ownership; and that's a nice looking ride too. There are certainly quite a few members over on your side of the country to get in touch with! You'll certainly pick up a lot of info on maintenance and mods on these pages!!

Hi and welcome.
Many many many years ago I owned a few Subaru's before moving across to the world of RWD.

After driving a RWD I can never go back to AWD (or God forbid FWD) and I think you'll be the same.

With regards speed, it's a delusional world you live in if you think you'll always be the fastest car at the traffic lights. Because even if you have the latest and greatest, in a year of two, you'll be superseded and no long the King of the Traffic Light Grand Prix.

What matters is how the car looks, feels and most importantly sounds. And in this department, the E92 M3 is King!

Enjoy a true classic in the making. The last of the NA M3's and a V8 at that !

As I always tell anyone that will listen, get the car to a track and enjoy what the car was engineered to do.. drive fast on the bendy stuff.

Welcome aboard mate and good to see you another Dak Dak owner who has seen the light. Happy to share all my experiences including rod bearing replacement.

I just can't believe this whole rod bearing hype. Just because people took precautionary measures and changed the bearings doesn't mean there is a global problem. Yes there are cars with issues but the this fear-mongering campaign on this forum is unbelievable.

thanks for the welcomes all.

SSJTrunks523: I actually had an world rally blue MY02 (Bugeye) and it came with the EJ207 which was the toughest (fully forged!!) motor to come out the Subaru factory... much tougher than the 2.5L in the MY06 onwards when they switched to hyper-eutectic pistons and less cylinder wall clearance. I had Yoko AD08R's on 17" CR Kai's... it had a phenomenal amount of grip and was a blast to drive. not much on the way of refinement or luxury though of course.
The M3 doesn't give me that turbo kick back in the seat feeling, it's a much more linear acceleration but the sound from 5k onwards .. i could listen do it all day. I thought the boxer rumble was nice but the M3's sound is on another level. Not to mention the refinement, luxury, build quality, oh and how good it looks. needless to say i'm very happy with my upgrade.

I'm probably going to do the rod bearings as preventative maintenance. I do get the impression the issue has been overhyped but having read through Tom @ EAS thread on the forums i just don't think i'd feel comfortable just leaving them in there and hoping for the best.

Exhaust & tune is also on the list. Probably just a catback for a bit of a deeper noise, and stage I for now. BPM sport seems the way to go.

look forward to a meet-up too...

For an extra 300 or 400 bucks removing the restrictive primary cats and getting test pipes is well worth it from a performance perspective.

Re rod bearing issues, I recall reading a long thread on the US forum regarding an S65 engine failure register. It quoted a 0.003% engine failure rate. Of these 25% were supercharged and 36% were modified. If interested search user senorfunkypant and find the thread.

The tread is " Cumulative data on S65 engine failure"

http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=935368

PB wrote

For an extra 300 or 400 bucks removing the restrictive primary cats and getting test pipes is well worth it from a performance perspective.

So test pipes are basically the x section but with cats removed? Bear with me, the exhaust on my Sti was a lot more basic

Yes, you retain the original Xpipe but the primary catalytic converters are cut out and replaced by the test pipes. Combined with the tune it is your best bang for buck performance gain. The alternative is buying a less restrictive aftermarket Xpipe minus the primary cats. This way you preserve your original X pipe which you can put back on later ie when selling the car. Visit M3 world website. Many of us have bought gear from Dave Dee. A stage 1 tune alone without removing the primary cats is kind of missing the boat. From an emissions perspective you still have the seconary cats so no problems there. Good luck.

PB wrote

Yes, you retain the original Xpipe but the primary catalytic converters are cut out and replaced by the test pipes. Combined with the tune it is your best bang for buck performance gain. The alternative is buying a less restrictive aftermarket Xpipe minus the primary cats. This way you preserve your original X pipe which you can put back on later ie when selling the car. Visit M3 world website. Many of us have bought gear from Dave Dee. A stage 1 tune alone without removing the primary cats is kind of missing the boat. From an emissions perspective you still have the seconary cats so no problems there. Good luck.

Thanks mate that's been a big help...

The Rod Bearing thing i'm staying away from. I was just saying that STI's are WELL documented with issues in the MY12+ and 15+. The 15+ chassis is in a different world from the 14 and earlier (having owned both). The luxury and refinement is not even close. Remember the STI is an impreza (sub 20k car) with work done. This is a 3 series (40k+ car) with work done. Completely diff worlds. Funny I saw another guy on here with a Launch Edition 15 here too. Seems they cross over a lot.


All of our other DD cars are AWD (incl my other bmw, but obv not the camaro) and we enjoy rally when we can, so I don't think that will be changing too much.

This car is definitely not a dragster. We all need to accept at some point that anything with 2wd is going to lose to a lot of the performance cars out there. GTR, or tuned Evo, STI, S4, S5, even a 335x will eat us 0-60. I know years ago bmw said they'd never do an AWD m3.

With that said, Welcome!!!

Just get oil samples done if you are worried about rod bearing failures and keep an eye on them every 5000km.

I can't recommend the M3World exhaust highly enough, coupled with the BPM tune (especially DCT tune if you have that gearbox)

PB wrote

The alternative is buying a less restrictive aftermarket Xpipe minus the primary cats. This way you preserve your original X pipe which you can put back on later ie when selling the car.

Like many here, I've gone this way with the X-pipe — see my post > http://www.m3post.com/forums/showpost.php?p=20147821&postcount=53

And my opinion on the tunes here if you are interested > http://www.m3post.com/forums/showpost.php?p=20173604&postcount=59

Congrats on the purchase, hope to see you about in vic park 😁

You should join us. Many of your Bro's there are with our "Family".
http://mflight.org/join.html

Look forward to hearing from you. We are world wide and I even purchased and M3 World exhaust from AU.

Congratz