Final Part to a Year of M3 Loving. Or Expenditure

I would have thought that my tales of living with an M3 would have put a few people off! Did it? If not it is my duty to keep rambling on about how the first year of ownership with an E46 M3 can be!

However I can report that after the Evo Triangle trip April was actually going surprisingly well! The car was behaving and drive the best it ever had done under my ownership! The tramlining had completely gone, the car thanks to the Michelin tyres actually gripped in wet conditions very well and it was a joy to drive on back roads as much as it was on long motorway trips. But with a trip planned to Germany in the Eiffel region it was not a time to sit on my laurels.

This was taken just after the cooler fix.  Things were looking up!

Sure, the car had the Rear Axle Carrier Panel (RACP) reinforced with uprated bushes and new tyres all round and a general clean bill of health. But what about things like spare brake pads, oil and other consumables? It would be wise to take them, especially given how the car would be pushed to its limits! It was time to get ordering!

The first thing I would order and fit would be a power steering hose.  I had a hose made up by a known face in the industry with it being a very similar design to what BMW sell.  Suffice to say it did the job well and allowed me to change the PAS fluid at the same time.  Compared to the old hose the new item was a great improvement.

 

Pads supplied by ECP.  But with a non-M compound.  Sometimes brand names aren’t everything

After extensive research and previous experience with brake pads I decided to go with the expensive but great Pagid RS29 fast road brake pads for the front. A Renault Clio 220 Trophy from Rent-A-Race-Car had these on when I went to the Nurburgring in October where they performed well! With the front pads sorted it was time to look to the rear brakes ; stock items were ordered from Euro Car Parts. The issue? They were from a 330i after looking up the part numbers more closely ; they would fit but the compound would be wrong. Had I known this earlier I would not have purchased these from ECP. However, with limited time I needed a backup if my rear brake pads died. As I learned previously at Silverstone the M3 if the DSC is left on can be very hard on the rear pads ; I managed to have them smoking there!). With a bottle of Super DOT 4 brake fluid thrown into the boot the car was ready on the parts side. Oh, and some Brexit number plates to make the car more Euro friendly when abroad:

Before this I had the alignment checked by BT Tyres in Rugby.  Ross has treated me well in the past and I knew the car would be in good hands.

All that was left to do was to clean the car, check the levels and the pressures, pack some tools just in case and then sort out myself. OK, may there was more to sort than I realised! A friend of mine in a Clio 172 cup also prepared in a similar fashion, but a chap in a Clio 220 Trophy? He just sat back, and seemed to think that we were fretting for his own pleasure! Or so it seemed.

 

Then came the Monday morning. With no sleep at all and a 3am start we set out towards Folkstone. Much to my surprise the car went there without a hitch, despite me enjoying the derestricted Autobahns along the way! It was then time to sort out accommodation. My friends stayed at the superb Blaue Eke in Adenau found at this website while I was at a great appartment within Adenau called Haus Sonja ; it had plenty of facilities and was great value. While my car was fine, Dev’s would require some attention. This would only be changing the wheels over. While three of them were relatively simple one was a nightmare! Even a 2 foot breaker bar struggled to break the nuts off! But we got there! Mechanics. You have to love them. With the wheels now tightened up with a torque wrench at least they would no longer be such a chore to remove.

After a meal later on that night it would be time to hit the Green Hell. So, to put it another way, I am in a car with north of 300BHP, with a Marmite gearbox, and forecasted rain.  How bad could it be?

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Spring Lows & Highs ; M3 Ownership Part 3

Looks good?  Appearances can be deceptive

It is fair to say that there were undercurrents of bad vibes in the last blog about my old M3. After all, it was beginning to falter and start to empty my wallet out, leaving me feeling more dejected about the car. The car did seem like it was trying to win me back however. With all of the repairs and servicing carried out it pulled a lot better than before and generally drove more like I expected an M3 to and not a large 330i. It also sounded superb with all of the noises that engine made really getting me excited.

The first way I decided to reward the car was to get the SMG CSL software update done. What this does is to change the SMG’s working to becoming similar to that of an M3 CSL. I was apprehensive about how bad this would be. After all, I didn’t find the SMG that bad at all and got to work or master its quirks. I even managed to heel and toe with the SMG as well; yes really! But many spoke about this modification being a gamer changer. After I bought the software I did not realised just by how much.

The Software I did not bank on changing the character of the car!  Many thanks to ECUWorx/Martyn Thomas

The gearbox now worked as it should have done from the factory, and really opened up another dimension to the car! Was I regretting not buying a manual? Not a chance! The ‘drivers’ could keep their ‘porridge stirrers’ as another friend put it! I really loved driving the car again and was gelling with it more.

Another treat I had in store for the car was to book it in with ETA Motorsport for the Rear Axle Carrier Panel (RACP) reinforcement to get around a problem area ; the boot floor or RACP from cracking too much. With some poly bushes ordered you would have thought the car would behave. If only it stayed like that.

SuperPro were used for the subframe bushes.  Previously on other cars these have been spot on.

Upon coming to top the screenwash up one day I noticed an oily damp patch on the undertray near the pulleys. I initially thought the power steering pipe was seeping. It was dirty after all. However, it was the oil cooler. Damn! At £300+ they were hardly cheap either! After the cooler saga I had with the Triumph Stag I was through taking chances on coolers. The cooler seemed to have become porous which is why it was not leaking too much.

Blood from the enigne.  Not what anyone likes to see

That said the day came a few days later where I took it into ETA for Mike to work his magic. 2 days after dropping the car off the plates were fitted, the subframe bushes replaced and the car was ready. Wow this thing drove differently! It felt tauter than it ever had done. While the reinforcement may have helped I suspect the poly bushes aided things massively.  If you guys own an E46 3-Series this is definitely an area I consider looking at, even if using stock bushes:

 

 

 

With me getting slightly soft towards the car I decided to change the front two tyres, something my MOT tester reluctantly passed ; I felt he was being harsh personally.  So off I went to the great BT Tyres (www.rugbytyres.co.uk) where I picked up a set of newly released Michelin Pilot Sport 4 Ss at a great price and superb service from Ross as always. These tyres were very impressive from the moment I saw the first roundabout! They certainly get a massive thumbs up from me! The joy however would be short lived

 

 

Why? The oil cooler saga was far from over. Seeing that Mister Auto were selling an OE branded oil cooler I decided to take the risk and buy one from them. A week after placing the order I was greeted with a faulty oil cooler, complete with wayward fins but worst of all a large chip present in one of the cooler pipes. Attempting to source a replacement from Mister Auto seemed fruitless ; they were only interested in refunding me. As was attempting to get a new cooler sent over from them within a week with extra money offered for faster postage. It was strange how they managed to restock another oil cooler on eBay once I had returned my faulty item. Would I use them again? No chance. The lesson had been learned. But I had an iffy cooler and I needed another cooler fast with less than a week left until the weekend.

 

 

It looks like a spot….

But it was a true chip

Yup, it’s definitely a chip!

Why did I need the car that soon? I had organised a weekend months beforehand to take our cars to the famous Evo Triangle in North Wales. With that in mind I begrudgingly ordered an oil cooler from Rybrook BMW after begging them to give me some discount. Within the next day it arrived. Great!  With the two coolers side by side things were looking to be on the up! Or so I thought.

 

 

Upon removing the old oil cooler I came across a problem ; the oil cooler connections had corroded onto the cooler along with the bolt joining the two together doing the same.   This was not what I needed 2 days prior to travelling to the Evo triangle. After seeing the prices of poorly ended oil cooler pipes on Ebay I went once again to BMW to beg and borrow once more! Being at work with no possibility to get the time off I was left with the Friday night and Saturday morning to fit them. Pleased was not a mood I was in!

Where the car would rest for a day  Or rather a week.

The silver bit on the end?  That’s mean to be on the oil cooler, not on the cooler pipes!

Instead of going down for a beer with the usual friends on the Friday I was on my driveway messing around with the oil cooler. It is fair to say that my language was colourful at that point in time. With the cooler put into place as well as me giving the car an oil and filter change while I was there it was time to fire the car up. Hallelujah! The car was now leak free for the first time ever! Suddenly it looked like I might be able to make the Evo triangle trip.

The moment the BMW could leave the ramps.

Of course, Saturday morning was spent doing the same thing as Friday night. Somehow, by 11am I had an assembled and running car again. My friend’s ambitious start time of 11am from Hopwood services was never going to happen. Despite the car now running better than ever and being leak free the atmosphere was very sour around me. After all, I had thrown £1800 at the car in the space of a few weeks with a lot of hassle around it! You can hire a quick car for less than that over a month with a warranty!  While I was asked to clean it I really did not have the time or even the heart to do so.  It had been needy, and far too much so.  It was time the car to stop bleeding me dry and give me something back!

This is never a good look.  Never for an M3

The bad mood did soon begin to ebb away however. The more miles that I piled onto the M3 the more I began to enjoy it again. After all, it was now a sorted car with it now driving better than it ever had done. With some good company, great weather and roads that looked like they had been crafted by God himself things were certainly looking up! The car even managed a respectable 31MPG over the trip! OK, that figure did drop around the roads in Wales but still!

But enough of that.  It was time to enjoy what the M3 was built for ; enjoying the roads.  With the SMG gearbox update, the subframe bushes and decent tyres this now felt like the M3 it should have been!  The gearchanges were spot on (way better than a manual now), the chassis felt like it was part of the car and it felt like it wanted to be driven.  Hard!  It finally became the part time grand tourer and part time out and out backroad machine!

So, I changed the rear subframe bushes, reinforced the RACP and fitted new tyres. The former bits probably did not need to be done. But why was I doing this? Simple. I was heading to Germany in May.