YoungCR

Took the X5 on a trip up north to Mille Lacs Lake for the weekend. Being able to toss all our crap in the ski box and have the whole back open for the dogs was awesome. Only put about 1k on it, but loving it so far.

Visited a friend in Minneapolis this past weekend and one of the days we drove the course of the 2020 OC Rally down to Suncrest Gardens pizza farm through western WI. All in about 1k miles over the weekend. I’ve done about 3500 miles on the car this summer with really no issues. 
 



 
On the X5 I replaced spark plugs, coil packs, air filter, intake duct, and fuel vent tube. Running awesome. 🤌🏻

Looks great! 

So, the honeymoon period has worn off with my free bike (I also picked up a bunch of dead laptop batteries thinking I'd Maguiver it into a free e-bike...). The moment of truth came when my BMXer turned reluctant mountainbiker ass tried to pull some body-bike seperation shit to transition from a road to a sidewalk (two opposing 90s within an arms span). The bike and I both survived unscathed, but the bike felt like it was about to turn itself into origami underneath me. Not sure if it's the road wheels, or if that what people call "liveliness" when they talk about steel frames. Regardless, I wasn't into it. The bike will be going to my friend at work Buna who is moving away this fall. He's in his 50's and cheap AF (1st generation American from Cambodia who hasn't been on a bike in 30+ years), so I'm pretty stoked about it. I think it will be a great fit for him.

Considering the limited quantity of prep that was done on this I'm pleased with the way it turned out. 

Seams sealed

Hoping to shoot paint Saturday or Sunday

personally I always get "warm white" LED's when I can, I can't stand bright white either

Hadn’t seen the wheels on the car yet, didn’t have much to do today, so I did a test fit on one side. 
 



Between these and the style 225’s, I think the E9X had some of the best M sport wheels. Looking forward to these being on the car full time. Just waiting till winter(currently on snows as stated in previous post).
Think I am going to do some ST coil overs next year to get rid of just a little bit of the wheel gap. 

Congrats! We all have X5’s now, It’s like the newer twin to mine.

Congrats! We all have X5’s now, It’s like the newer twin to mine.

Yep, original clutch. That’s the plan if they have to pull anything at all, it still grabbed well but I could tell it was getting to the very end of the clutch range it felt like. 
 
Honestly wouldn’t be that upset, I have a whole pile of parts for them to replace if they do the clutch so it wouldn’t be that bad of a thing to happen. And then it’d be done and good to go for another 100k+!

Got some new wheels. Style 193's from a coworker who was moving and no longer needed them, got them for a good price. They came on Michelin Pilot Aplin winter tires. I am planning on keeping these off until winter, running them with the winter tires, and then next spring, swap the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S's I just got onto them to be my spring summer tires.
 

Congrats! I got plenty of grills and headlights. condition isn’t great but I have a full blue interior.

I finally decided to put on the side mirror caps. Looks much better, but also out of place. I think forged carbon would be a better fit with white. 

YM f83 m4 🔥 🔥 

Spotted in Wautoma! It’s been so long since I’ve seen a 528e in the wild.

I were going to build one then i figured that I can set up the canopy thing outside but I got some stupid neighbors who would certainly call code enforcement cops so decided to move it inside. 
 
Paint came out great. Engine bays are not my favorite thig to spray. There are bunch of angles, crevices and spots that are hard to get. I got couple of spots with that dry spray texture. I did not bother using a tack cloth after I preped the bare metal so there is bunch dust spots. Its good enough tho for the engine bay.
 
The floor around the drivers side torque box rusted out so this will get fixed next. I need to paint the driveshaft center bearing supports and diff mounts. Also will get the rear fender lips touched up since they cracked pretty badly when I pulled the fenders. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

After couple of weeks of engine bay paint prep. I am ready to paint it. I build a beautiful spray booth in my garage with two box fans and shoot some epoxy primer followed by some seam sealer and more epoxy. Today i will finish it with single stage urethane in original safari beige.
 
 
I got the intercooler figured out. Wiring is next on the list.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Bumper repair.
Could I have left this alone? Yes. Does it look better than before? Yes. Does it still bother me? Yes.
Just a temporary fix until I get an M Tech bumper next year and don't have a roached out bumper.
What it started as:

Disassembly:
 
As this being a temporary fix, I did what I could to make it look presentable, but not have this take multiple days. Used 220, 400, and 600 grit sand paper.






I chose not to use body filler with how flimsy these bumpers are and didn't want it to crack. And once again, temporary fix.

Needs wet sand and polish, but looks decent.


Polished up the side markers using the headlight restore kit.

M3 style trunk lip added.


Replaced the angel eye bulbs with LUX V4 ones. Tried my best to polish up the headlights, but they are still kind of pitted. Passenger side is cracked in the top, top corner. So it needs to be replaced anyway. Lenses look much worse in this picture than in person.

 

#lowlife #racecardaily

Ok, so I spoke too soon.  I'm not 100% sure what I hit but when I was driving home from Appleton last night I heard a loud flapping noise so I pulled over at a Kwik Trip and was surprised to find out most of my front lip was missing.  I'm not 100% sure but I'm fairly confident it was not another squirrel. I was right though, the spot that I just fixed held up! 🤣
I don't think I can fix this one so the car is naked for the time being.

Today was my 2 year anniversary with this car and the weather turned out nice tonight so I ripped the drivers seat out and got go work. What a disgusting mess.

The rain left a slew of mold, coins molded into the carpet and some pretty heavy staining. I knew the grey carpet wasnt going to look perfect given the amount of time I had to do this job and the lack of proper tools I had but I tried my best to get it clean and looking slightly better.

Not perfect, but substancially better. I cleaned up the rest of the interior following the carpets and I couldnt be happier with the car now.

M12 3/8 stubby impact is a beast, ratchet is still on my list. Nice work! People always dismiss the factory tools as silly or expensive but you end up saving so much time because that’s what they were designed for lol. 

Been a while again. Been messing around with a few projects the last couple months and finally got around to getting the E46 back in action for the year.

After a hard winter of this thing sitting outside the whole time (my now ex-fiancée talked me into storing her car last winter instead of mine) upon everything melting and the super cold and rainy spring we had here, I discovered a major water leak on the driver side of the car. There was a roughly 1 inch deep puddle front and back, which pushed me to start vacuuming and drying. Vacuumed it out semi regularly over the last few weeks and left it in the garage with the windows open for over a month and worked on other stuff in the meantime. Once it was plenty dry I got it over to my work and had the guys start looking at it. One of the techs let me know that one of the sunroof drains got unplugged and was leaking water from the A-pillar pretty good. Got that fixed and now she's bone dry!

Another issue that I finally got around to dealing with was the suspension. When I had the car in the garage I pulled the front wheels off to get a better look at everything underneath and put together a parts list of what I might need. Started looking at my coilovers and realized that there was literally no pre-load at all and the shock collar was able to move freely with just my hand. Likely due to my negligence when throwing the car together in the garage last winter, I properly set the preload, raised the front suspension to a nicer height, and tightened up the collar adjustments. Since then the vehicle rides a lot nicer and is a lot more confident in the corners than it used to be.

Going forward I have a lot of work to do on the interior of the car due to some mold that showed up in the carpet from the flooding, and I plan on taking some time and ripping the seats out to really clean everything properly. The seats also very badly need a lot of love so I am going to try to condition and save them, but we will see.

In the meantime though, enjoy this picture of my 2 main projects right now.

Get some black sport seats and you’ll basically have a 335is interior, that was they trim they came with. Looks great.