SteelBlue

These are much better than our collector plates. The blue and red is horrid.
Doing a vanity plate with a collector plate is also a nice option that we also do not have.
This is a great color combination as well.

These are much better than our collector plates. The blue and red is horrid.
Doing a vanity plate with a collector plate is also a nice option that we also do not have.
This is a great color combination as well.

160k
After much thinking and hunting around I finally came up with a solution to put 5x7 speakers in the rear parcel shelf without cutting big holes or looking like someone landed a UFO back there.
 
Before I did anything with the speakers themselves I figured now's the time to refresh the parcel shelf itself. I had a spare standard speaker parcel shelf so I used the markings on the back and opened up the speaker cutouts and moved the mounting clips to the premium speaker layout. Since every parcel shelf is now faded to a lovely shade of light blurple I gave it a couple coats of black duplicolor vinyl/fabric dye and cleaned up all the plastic parts.

 
Once that was done (and after letting it dry for about 3-4 months), I got into swapping things out. With the old parcel shelf out, I added some sound deadening over any holes in the sheet metal and a few spots that made a lot of noise  when tapping on it. My thinking on doing this was it should help the speakers perform better/keep more sound in the cabin/maybe reduce some road noise bleeding through from the trunk.

 
Side note: I've always hated the tan rear seat in my car ever since I put it in. Its in really good shape and the original plan was to dye it eventually, but I realized I have a perfectly good black sedan back seat sitting in my basement. My car is a coupe so the seat isn't a perfect fit, but I also happen to have the rear carpet section from that sedan so I swapped that in as well to get everything looking as factory as possible. While it still isn't blue, it looks so much better. 

 
Back to the speakers. After much hunting around and thinking, I came across these speaker grills from a 90's ford van/ranger/etc. that had an identical grille pattern to the kick panel speakers in the front. I found someone selling NOS ones and ordered a pair. With the new decklid in place, and the grill/speaker (Polk audio DB+ 5x7 coaxial) in hand, I designed and 3d printed the adapter to make it all work. 

 
The adapter has slotted holes to screw into the factory e30 parcel shelf premium speaker clips so you can shift them around and maximize speaker clearance, matches the profile of the ford speaker grilles, and spaces the speaker up high enough to require no hammering/cutting of the sheet metal underneath. It is printed in ASA which is UV stable and should have zero issues dealing with the heat inside a car parked in the sun. To finalize the fit and finish, I screwed the speaker grille to the adapter and sanded the outer profile as a unit to get rid of layer lines and align everything perfectly. 

 
I obviously didn't want a gray speaker cover, so that got scuffed up and sprayed black with adhesion promoter and SEM trim paint. The adapter was then sprayed with adhesion promoter and filler primer, sanded smooth, then another coat of adhesion promoter to re-coat any exposed plastic, textured black paint, and a final top coat of SEM trim black. I did this same process on the tweeter pods and it's held up perfectly so far. 
 
With everything painted it was time to mount it all up! Here is the adapter mounted to the parcel shelf: 

 
Then the speaker gets mounted to the underside of the ford speaker grille. To fit the speaker I did have to remove a trim ring/spacer from the top side of the speaker and use a tin snips to remove the outer mounting tabs/trim a bit of excess material on the other mounting tabs. Also, because of the placement of the wire connections, I bent the connectors outwards 90 degrees so that they would clear the parcel shelf without having to cut a notch in it. 

 
I then mounted the speaker assembly to the adapter in the car and went back and did the whole thing a second time!

 
Couldn't be more stoked on the end result! It looks very factory and the sound improvement over the previous 5 1/4" coaxial speakers is huge. 
 

Yup! Same spec as OE, I guess G48 is the BMW name. Didn’t realize they switched specs in 2018 so maybe that’s the reason for availability changes too.
“This is the familiar blue-colored coolant that has been in use since the 1990s but is only approved for cars up to the 2018 model year. It's known internally as the G48 formula and is specific to BMW/MINI cars”
https://www.bimmerworld.com/Fluids/BMW-Coolant-Antifreeze/Genuine-BMW-Blue-Antifreeze.html

This car got a lot of love recently.
Full suspension refresh featuring Bilstein B8's with H&R Sport springs, strut and shock mounts, hardware, etc. Pretty much everything involved with the suspension was replaced. New wheel bearings at all 4 corners as they were getting loud for the past 2-3 months. New differential fluid, transfer case fluid, transmission fluid and filter(gasket and other hardware as well). New driver rear brake caliper as it was beginning to seize and drag. All of this was completed by @MPW3RLee, so thank you to him again.
In an event to entertain that I also can still swing a wrench, I replaced the serpentine belt, idler pulley, and tensioner. Not that there was any sign of failure, but I didn't know if or when it had ever been replaced, so wanted to do it for peace of mind. Belt ended up being dated 2011 so it was probably original to the car, but was in good condition. Same with the pulleys, neither of the bearings were bad, the idler did spin pretty freely though.
Nothing is easy though. While pulling the electric fan out, it snagged the coolant line that runs from the upper radiator hose to the expansion tank and ripped the nipple off the upper hose. Decent amount of coolant on the ground, sweet. By the grace of god, Auto Zone had a Rein one in stock in town and was able to replace it within the hour. If you have pulled a fan from one of these cars, you'll know what I'm talking about when it's almost impossible to not hook the hose when pulling this out with how much you have to twist the fan. Filled it up with just tap water as I did not have the correct coolant on hand, it wasn't a lot of coolant so I am not super concerned about it. I planned to do a coolant flush soon anyway. Bled the system 3 times. Bleeding with the electric water pump is super nice, just press the gas pedal and let it do its thing.
Car looks good with the slight lowering. I was throwing around the idea of a G30 540 next year when I was without the car for a couple weeks, but as soon as I drove and cleaned it after the suspension, bearings, fluid, etc. that I think I'll drive this for the foreseeable future. It looks good, drives good, does everything I need.
M sport bumper and Xenon's soon?

This car got a lot of love recently.
Full suspension refresh featuring Bilstein B8's with H&R Sport springs, strut and shock mounts, hardware, etc. Pretty much everything involved with the suspension was replaced. New wheel bearings at all 4 corners as they were getting loud for the past 2-3 months. New differential fluid, transfer case fluid, transmission fluid and filter(gasket and other hardware as well). New driver rear brake caliper as it was beginning to seize and drag. All of this was completed by @MPW3RLee, so thank you to him again.
In an event to entertain that I also can still swing a wrench, I replaced the serpentine belt, idler pulley, and tensioner. Not that there was any sign of failure, but I didn't know if or when it had ever been replaced, so wanted to do it for peace of mind. Belt ended up being dated 2011 so it was probably original to the car, but was in good condition. Same with the pulleys, neither of the bearings were bad, the idler did spin pretty freely though.
Nothing is easy though. While pulling the electric fan out, it snagged the coolant line that runs from the upper radiator hose to the expansion tank and ripped the nipple off the upper hose. Decent amount of coolant on the ground, sweet. By the grace of god, Auto Zone had a Rein one in stock in town and was able to replace it within the hour. If you have pulled a fan from one of these cars, you'll know what I'm talking about when it's almost impossible to not hook the hose when pulling this out with how much you have to twist the fan. Filled it up with just tap water as I did not have the correct coolant on hand, it wasn't a lot of coolant so I am not super concerned about it. I planned to do a coolant flush soon anyway. Bled the system 3 times. Bleeding with the electric water pump is super nice, just press the gas pedal and let it do its thing.
Car looks good with the slight lowering. I was throwing around the idea of a G30 540 next year when I was without the car for a couple weeks, but as soon as I drove and cleaned it after the suspension, bearings, fluid, etc. that I think I'll drive this for the foreseeable future. It looks good, drives good, does everything I need.
M sport bumper and Xenon's soon?

Glad you could get the part locally. I recently discovered O’Reilly’s and Fleet Farm aren’t stocking the Pentofrost NF anymore but O’Reillys does have this instead.
https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/c/zerex/zerex-1-gallon-blue-50-50-antifreeze-coolant/

Car looks classy, I really dig the 193s! Agreed don’t replace the E90, it’s the perfect daily. Relatively easy to work on, cheap to maintain, reliable, and the hydraulic steering feels great!
Mine has BC coil overs and I’m really itching to replace them with s bilstein kit. How’s the ride quality feel?

Nicer pic of the setup once the suspension settled a bit

Well, got the break in oil dropped in and did a thorough look over of everything. I ended up using the old tune from the last setup for start up. Other then lower compression and different turbo this new setup wasn't much different from the old setup tuning wise. I figured it would probably run a little rich but still ok for idling and light throttle. Pulled the coils and plugs for ease of priming the motor and got a solid 15 psi of pressure shown on the gauge before re hooking up the fuel pump relay. Did another check over everything and then hopped in and started cranking... 
Video was cut short as we noticed a coolant leak and shut it back off to correct that before letting it get up to temp. Once it was up to temp, I got the front valance re-installed and the car lowered on the ground. Being that the engine was running well and the afr's were looking good I wanted to get it out on the road and get some more load on the rings to break em in better. The tune obviously wasn't dialed in enough for this setup to see any kind of boost but some light to medium acceleration would be fine. Went down a few country roads near the shop and besides some trouble to stay idling at a few stops, the car ran really well!
Drove it around about 15 miles before returning to the shop and draining the oil right away and changing the filter.

Also went ahead and popped the valve cover back off to re-torque the head studs. I did notice that the gasket had some coolant seeping out which was not ideal to see. I originally torqued the studs in three steps to 75 ft lbs as per arp's recommendations. I did some searching around and found that others had similar issues and followed ces motorsports recommendations of upping the final torque to 85 ft lbs to correct the issue. Re-torqued the head to 85 ft lbs and also checked the torque on all the cam caps before re-installing the valve cover.

So not to much left besides wrapping the wires up and getting things buttoned up. Got my tuning date scheduled but unfortunately that's not gonna be tell June 30th. Wish it could have been sooner but by the sounds of it everyone is booked out atleast a month for dyno tuning. Gives me plenty of extra time to really go through things so it can be fully ready to go.

These have been sitting in my garage for years, tried selling them awhile back with no luck.
Free to any WIBIMMER members who want to pick them up in Appleton.
Turner Motorsports Coolant Pipe Adapter.

Condor Speed Shop S5X motor mounts. These were installed in the calypso car, but were never driven on.

That E36 fucks

These have been sitting in my garage for years, tried selling them awhile back with no luck.
Free to any WIBIMMER members who want to pick them up in Appleton.
Turner Motorsports Coolant Pipe Adapter.

Condor Speed Shop S5X motor mounts. These were installed in the calypso car, but were never driven on.

SPORT MINDED!!
https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/624376986169600/?mibextid=6ojiHh

Got the car out of storage two weekends ago when it was warm just to circulate the fluids and what not. Car started in half a crank, so no issues there thankfully. Also, very little fluid underneath the car for sitting in the same place for almost 6 months.
 
Really no big plans for the car this year other than some continued maintenance. I addressed a big portion of things on top and front of the motor last summer. Aiming to target the lower portion and the rear.
 
Now that I’m thinking about it, I still have this Ireland Engineering cat back I bought last summer and never had installed, so that will be a big thing I’ll look to have done. 
 
OFHG for sure, and possibly looking at having the RMS and crank seal done. Have the trans resealed, new guibo, trans mounts, slave cylinder, drive shaft CSB, etc. Starting to build out the shopping cart on FCP.
 
Hopefully just a lot more miles this year. I’ve owned this car for 4(5?) years now and I think I’ve only put on like 2-3K miles. 
 

 

This thing is going to absolutely shred.

I bit the bullet and had Partee Racing do the bottom end as well.  Shipped the heads back to Partee Racing for them to assemble the motor. High compression pistons, Arrow rods, all new everything.  Almost ready to throw it into the wagon!

They are 15x7 in front and 15x7.5 in the rear. The 16" RS definitely come with a premium. But I've always like 15s on the car better. 
 
Had the car out for its first test drive and it was pissing transmission fluid. Engine and transmission had to come back out. It ended up being my fault - I put the input shaft seal cover on about 90* off which just so happened to line up the fluid return hole on the transmission to be lined up with an open hole on the cover. So it literally was pouring out. Fixed that. Drove it around this weekend some. Realized I forgot to tighten up the nut on the driveshaft where it splits. Sooooooo one more fucking time on the lift to do that, but then it should be all set!


Other notes: 
This winter I also made rear speaker boxes and front door tweeter pods and fitted in Focal component speakers in the front and rear. I installed an Infiniti Basslink Mini under the front seat. The sound system is now fantastic and sounds like what I've always been chasing. 






Interior is exceeding my expectations. I love them. The seats are so comfortable. Also finished the e-brake handle boot. 


Also able to test my H1 LED high beam kits. Since the caps on the euro smilies can't really accommodate the larger LED bulbs or the wiring, I wanted to make these since I don't have my US Ellipsoids anymore. I am not disappointed with the performances of the MLED projector and LED high beams. 



 
Made a stop at Fermentorium in Cedarburg with our youngest while the older two and my wife were at a birthday part. After Fermentorium, I used the e30 to pick them up and continue on to Sahale in Grafton. What a family car. 


 
 

S54 is at 103k miles and had the bearings replaced with WPC! Everything looked pretty normal wear wise for this mileage, and crank was in great shape. 
 

I was in the womb at the 93' Indy 500 2 months before being born, seemed to have worked for me.

I was in the womb at the 93' Indy 500 2 months before being born, seemed to have worked for me.

Well, it's been fun but it's time to park the M3 for winter. 
I did get rid of the shitty aftermarket radio and installed an old C33 I had laying around. I have some good tapes for the car, so Ill be hunting down a casette tape holder for the center console. So far thats really all I've done in terms work on the car. It runs and drives amazing.

Snapped a quick pic awhile back of the current lineup. 

 
After the M3 is parked and I have a minute, I'll be dropping the entire rear subframe to get ahead of e36 problems. First, front diff bolt will be swapped out for a 14mm and I'll be going with stiffer diff bushings (probably condor). Next a little weld reinforcement because why not. Also I'll be doing some upgrades to make things a little less compliant while trying to keep the car street friendly. I'm doing my best to stay away from poly bushings and looking more into the solid rubber pieces for most stuff, condor plastic bushings for some stuff, and maaaaaybe poly inserts for the rubber bushings where applicable. I have a bunch of other plans but the rear subframe will be first because I have most of that figured out. I have a lot of shopping carts loaded on a lot of websites.  Just waiting to pull the trigger when all the end of year sales start kicking off.

😆

Houndstooth Recaros are gone. Euroweaves are gone. 
 
Replacement No. 1 here is here.