So, I was finally able to walk again, albeit shakily. I had the chance to drive the car a little bit, and it was the manifestation of delayed gratification if there ever was one.
The first thing I did to the car after the mats was install a motorsport hardware 75mm stud conversion, 12mm spacers all around, and swapped the shift knob to the f10 M5 one, which made a huge difference in shifter feel, surprisingly. I also wrapped the reflectors with some white vinyl I had kicking around to hold me over until I found some painted ones. It isn't a perfect match, but it looks better I think in most cases.
the car looked a little more serious with the spacers and it was a nice simple look.
I seem to have misplaced the pictures I took but I refinished the steering wheel and drivers door window switch trim. I stripped the soft touch, sanded down to 1600 grit, primed, sanded down to 1600 again, and sprayed a matte paint on them. It turned out pretty nicely for a few dollars and hours of my time, although in the future I would like to replace it. I wanted to just try and repair what flaws I could on the car for minimal cost until I get around to replacing each piece that needs attention, same ideology as the reflectors.
The e46 ended up selling around here, I happened to get a picture of them together before it left. Two truly special cars. Timeless really!
I installed one of my old Zeta 2's that I still had in storage. The Bride mounts for e9x are a nice quality piece. I had Brey Krause solid floor mounts in the e46 which were amazing and could go too low for even a 6'3" guy like me, but I missed having sliders in that car. I found the Bride rails used for a decent price and figured I would try them out until I get the seats I actually plan to run in this car. Everything bolted in quite nicely, with the exception of the seatbelt pretensioner. The e46 BK mounts had a proper bracket for the pretensioner, and with the supplied hardware it was not going to work on the Bride rails. I ended up getting a rear seatbelt receptacle from a lower model e92 at a wrecker and was able to mount that safely to the rails. I lost the safety feature of the pretensioner, but I still have a properly engineered receptacle that actually fits through the belt hole in the seat. I figured this to be the lesser evil out of my options. with the BK mounts in the e46 I had to run the belt on top of the seat shell and it never felt all that safe. I feel much better about this solution until I get my hands on a set of Recaros that allow for factory belt use. Below are some pictures of this solution.
Because I removed the factory seat and receptacle, I now had SRS lights on the dash, and my seatbelt butlers were going crazy every time someone opened the door. It was time to learn to do some coding! I was able to use this site as a resource and I coded out just the airbags and receptacles that were affected so that all of my other safety systems were functioning. The best part was getting rid of the dash lights! big accomplishment that day. I coded out the seatbelt butlers and I also took that opportunity to code double impulse hazards and a couple other little things I wanted. I don't have any pictures currently but I swapped out the signals and sidemarkers with LED's from a company I came across from reading old threads here. I can't remember the name of the website at the moment! the new LED bulbs look awesome with double impulse hazards, just like an emergency vehicle or maybe a garbage truck blocking an alleyway..... ha!
At this point I took the car on a short weekend trip. I really loved driving the car even almost completely stock. They really do not make them like this anymore! The road to the mountain resort I was visiting was incredible with a dozen or more switchbacks that you had to be in 2nd gear for, and given my automotive history I couldn't resist making sure it would do at least one fat smokey powerslide... You know, for science...
Some tire boogers from said misbehaviour:
It's still a small car, see!
A fun milestone on the trip:
The trip, especially the twisty back roads really hammered home how much better a car is to drive with a proper seat! The stock ones aren't too bad, but they really let me move around a lot, and worse than that were way too high for my height. I was really enjoying the car like this.
I had to remove the headlamps to swap the LED signals in anyway, so I took the chance to polish the lenses. they were fairly pitted when I got the car and it bothered me a lot. I want to get new assemblies eventually, but I feel like while the job isn't perfect, it is a major improvement. Here are some before and after shots!
RTD Shifter had a 20% off sale at some point this summer, and I had driven with the shifter once in a friends e36 M3 about 6 years ago and the experience had always stuck with me. I knew at some point I had to have one and the sale was as good a reason as any for me to pick one up.
I knew it was a decent sized job to install the shifter and I figured while I was in there it was a good time to service my drivetrain. I replaced the driveshaft flex disc and center support bearing, changed trans and diff fluid, did an oil change, and installed the shifter with DSSR. I had to modify my shift boot to work with the shifter, and i actually hemmed it in by hand LOL! I think it turned out acceptably. I used a ziptie inside to keep the boot nicely secured.
While I had all of the underbody panels off, I took them to the car wash to try and clean them up. A bit of engine bay cleaner and a paintbrush to agitate did wonders for freshening things up. I have to say, throughout my time working on this car I am really finding this car is aging well. The build quality is quite durable on everything.
After the drivetrain refresher and shifter install the interior was looking pretty great in my opinion! I had gotten my hands on a full set of the carbon leather trim before the maintenance and it completely transformed the look! I absolutely love how it looks at twilight in the interior. The orange glow of the instruments will always scream BMW to me.
The car was coming along great but it was desperately needing some extra volume. The S65 is the centerpiece of the car and I find it sounds beautiful when it is uncorked a little bit! My friend and I got to work on making a backbox delete out of stainless steel. I could have modified the muffler but I wanted to keep everything I take off the car in factory condition in case I ever feel like returning it to stock. Here are a couple progress pictures, you can see we wanted it to be true bolt on so we flared the tubing to work with the OEM socket joint. I estimate we saved nearly 50lbs off the back of the car, the stock suitcase is heavy!!
The car sounds AMAZING now. It is a little droney on the highway in certain situations, but I drive it for pleasure and compared to my past cars it is very tame. Here is a video link for a sound clip and some more misbehaving at the end... tsk tsk...
I was really loving the car at this point, just in time to put it away for winter. I got out for a quick autumn drive to take a few pictures of it before it went into storage.
At this point I had some parts ready to go on the car and a laundry list of parts I still needed. Up next was the winter parts haul.
I had some NT03+m wheels in 18x10 to put on the car sitting since just after I had bought it. I was waiting on coilovers and some other stuff before installing them so I could fit them properly. I also made a pretty massive order through FCPEuro. My BE bearings and bolts also showed up in January after ordering them in June! Now that the weather is warming up I will have to book it in for service soon as its been on my mind since I got the car and holding me back from driving more!
I was ready to dig in over winter! More coming in the next post...