An alpine obsession, my e90 journal

[Stylo328]

Pardon the long post... I will be more succinct in future entries. Here is the story of my alpine white obsession (all of our vehicles are white).

It all started about a year ago, when while driving home from dinner with my wife, that my 997 threw a rod, cracked a piston and suffered a catastrophic engine failure. I had the Porsche towed to a local race shop where it was determined that the engine was beyond repair. I spent some time considering putting a rebuilt engine in as the 997 had a Brembo bbk, coilovers, and a Host of other nice options and upgrades. After evaluating the cost of a rebuilt engine and the headaches involved, I decided to sell the Porsche to a local shop and began my quest for an alpine white e90 LCI, slick top, single hump with speed cloth. I wanted a stripper!

Every day since then I searched auto trader, eBay, m3post, and a host of other sites with the hope of finding what was proving to be a very elusive car. A few weeks back, I was starting to get desperate and tired of searching. I had found an alpine white e92 stripper in Georgia. A 2009, but it had two doors fewer than I wanted and had 115,000 miles with no known service history. I resigned myself to the fact that I would never find what I was looking for. So, I spoke to the seller and started trying to get comfortable with the Im idea of a risky purchase.

Then, the night before I moved forward with the deal for the e92, I decided I would make one more check of all my usuals, and there she was. DanMPower had listed the e90 I had been searching for. While she (all of my cars are female) did not have speed cloth, she was perfect in every other way. Within three hours of his initial listing we had spoken extensively and I had tentatively agreed to purchase the e90 at asking price.

Over the coming days we hit all the requisite transactional milestones and within two weeks she arrived. Better than advertised. Better than expected. And, perfectly what I wanted. Now begins my journey with the e90.

This thread will serve as a journal of upgrades, pictures, and hopefully a place where I can post questions for this community to answer. Thanks in advance for tagging along.

Here she is on the evening she arrived:

And today at lunch:

[derbo]

Congrats on the purchase!

I hope to see more posts about the journey!

[timothy2001]

Congratulations and welcome, that's a beautiful car. Just goes to show tenacity pays off.

[Stylo328]

Originally Posted by derbo

Congrats on the purchase!

I hope to see more posts about the journey!

Originally Posted by timothy2001

Congratulations and welcome, that's a beautiful car. Just goes to show tenacity pays off.

Thanks to you both. I'm really enjoying driving and getting to know the car. I have not owned a BMW since my E36 days, hence the username, a carry over from the old bimmerforums.

[aaa335]

Beauty, congrats!! You got the best color ��

[shimmy23]

Ride height is perfect

[Merlin_83]

Originally Posted by Stylo328

Thanks to you both. I'm really enjoying driving and getting to know the car. I have not owned a BMW since my E36 days, hence the username, a carry over from the old bimmerforums.

Congrats on finding an excellent combo - ZCP E90's and so clean like this are rare. Very well done sir.

Cheers,
Merlin

[Blindside_137]

Not a long post at all!

These cars sure are special. It's almost impossible to hold out for every last detailed spec that you would want if you could order new today. I wanted a red E90 low mileage sub 40k but stumbled across my Silverstone E90 ZCP at a local Chevy dealer 60k miles at a great price and after seeing it in the sunlight that first day I never looked back. Came to find out mine was actually an October build in 2011 which was the last month of production. So I think it's pretty cool to have one of the last few ever made.

Sounds like this one was exactly the right one for you. Congrats! It looks stunning. Is it lowered?

[Deebo]

Great find- I remember the hunt for mine was similar and all consuming, also culminating with a ZCP AW E90. Looking forward to your progress!

[DanMpower]

I look forward to seeing the progress on it Armando.

[Stylo328]

Thanks for all of the positive comments. This excerpt is from the first sale listing. It covers recent maintenance and aftermarket mods.


All preventative measures-

Full Rod bearings serviced (MRF Engineering)
New motor mounts
Throttle actuators changed (Mpower Motorsports w/lifetime warranty)
Fuel breather valve changed
All fluids changed (Brake, transmission, power steering, diff, coolant)
All filters changed (air/oil/transmission/cabin)
New Spark Plugs
New battery installed and coded.



Aftermarket-

Bilstein B12 (pro kit)
AlpineMSS motor tune
Autosolutions shifter
UUC Corsa exhaust
K&N drop-in filter

As part of the purchase, I also secured the brand new OEM 359 wheels and Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires.

[Stylo328]

First new purchase for the E90 arrived! Tomorrow I will order a set of pedalhaus pedals in black along with the matching heel pad.

[TPS65]

Very nice mate! Looking forward to seeing more pics and updates!

[Drifter2090]

All those parts and mods and we only get a floor mat picture! Haha can't wait to see what you do next

[Stylo328]

Today I replaced the angel eye bulbs to Lux H8 189 bulbs as one of my bulbs had stopped working.

Here are a few pics.

[Stylo328]

The interesting thing was the condition of the wires when I opened the lid of the light compartment. The wires were exposed and in poor shape. I went ahead and wrapped them in electric tape, but need a better solution.

[Stylo328]

Originally Posted by Stylo328

The interesting thing was the condition of the wires when I opened the lid of the light compartment. The wires were exposed and in poor shape. I went ahead and wrapped them in electric tape, but need a better solution.

I couldn't add the picture To the last post.

[derbo]

This is typical BMW insulation. I've seen it time and time again on older E46s.

[ForTheLoveOfTheDrive]

Congratulations on locating this awesome spec! I look forward to reading your journey 🍿

[Stylo328]

Originally Posted by derbo

This is typical BMW insulation. I've seen it time and time again on older E46s.

Originally Posted by ForTheLoveOfTheDrive

Congratulations on locating this awesome spec! I look forward to reading your journey 🍿

Thank you both.

[Stylo328]

Today I finally got around to washing her and installing the new floor mats and Pedal Haus pedals. It was a bear at 6'5" crawling under the dash to drill the holes. Not exactly crazy about the alignment of the brake pedal. I'll tinker with it again in a week or two. Nevertheless, here she is cleaned up with new mats and new pedals.

The folks at Pedal Haus are really stand up people. I had purchased the pedal set and the heel pad. A week or two later I received an email that I had a refund from them. The note attached to the refund read "the set you purchased went on sale and we issued you a refund for the difference to the sale price". Who does that? I couldn't believe it. Really happy to see that a company would do something like that unsolicited.

[Helmsman]

May be biased but that AW E90...gorgeous man!