i_love_cars Posted July 15, 2018 Report Share Posted July 15, 2018 I blame TJ. Woke up this morning and saw that he sent me a link to a very reasonably priced 2005 M3 in the most unlikely of places - WCEC classifieds. Upon brief deliberation, we agreed to go together to the shanty one-horse town of Watertucky and see if this car had any merit. It turned out to not be a piece of shit, in fact it was actually quite solid and fit the bill perfectly for what I was looking for in a new track car. I had almost given up hope that a reasonably priced, non-clapped out E46 M3 existed. Engine and clutch are solid, no signs of subframe cracking, amazingly the seats are like, mint for being 150k miles, and it's quite clean underneath. I will be taking the car to Efab next week for some GC coilovers and camber plates, subframe reinforcement, and refreshing a lot of the bushings. In the meantime I need to scoop some apex wheels because the wheels that came on this car are junk ebay wheels with questionable fitment. This will be my dedicated track car and be parked most of the year, but I don't have any plans to do crazy track prep with it because I don't want to be back in the world of needing a truck and trailer. I want a car I can drive to/from the track, has cheap-ish running costs, and holds its value. I think at the price I bought this thing for, I should always be able to sell it to a broad audience if I had to and get my money out of it. P_Roloff, suspenceful, patsbimmer1 and 5 others 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rekpoint Posted July 15, 2018 Report Share Posted July 15, 2018 Congrats on the purchase! LOOKS GREAT! Here are some APEX ARC-8s back on that WCEC if you haven't seen them already. https://www.facebook.com/groups/wcecforsale/permalink/2197557040514211/?sale_post_id=2197557040514211&ref=messenger_share i_love_cars 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YoungCR Posted July 15, 2018 Report Share Posted July 15, 2018 Congrats! What's the first event? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wasnt m3 Posted July 15, 2018 Report Share Posted July 15, 2018 Couldn't ask for a better car for the money. Glad I can be held to blame for getting the fire lit under your ass haha. Getting to drive it a while today makes me want one now too....must resist. Rekpoint and i_love_cars 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_love_cars Posted July 15, 2018 Author Report Share Posted July 15, 2018 1 hour ago, Rekpoint said: Congrats on the purchase! LOOKS GREAT! Here are some APEX ARC-8s back on that WCEC if you haven't seen them already. https://www.facebook.com/groups/wcecforsale/permalink/2197557040514211/?sale_post_id=2197557040514211&ref=messenger_share love where your head is at. Unfortunately those are the wrong offset. I'm looking for an ET22 for a square 265 setup 1 hour ago, YoungCR said: Congrats! What's the first event? BHF with Badger bimmers on august 13th! Rekpoint and YoungCR 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rekpoint Posted July 15, 2018 Report Share Posted July 15, 2018 2 minutes ago, i_love_cars said: love where your head is at. Unfortunately those are the wrong offset. I'm looking for an ET22 for a square 265 setup I can never get it right :c LOL i_love_cars 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B C Posted July 15, 2018 Report Share Posted July 15, 2018 Sounds like a great Saturday to me! I haven’t seen a black one in quite a while Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
m42b32 Posted July 17, 2018 Report Share Posted July 17, 2018 Nice find!! Looks like the perfect car to build into a track toy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jdesign Posted July 23, 2018 Report Share Posted July 23, 2018 Sweet! Black cars are the best track cars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_love_cars Posted July 25, 2018 Author Report Share Posted July 25, 2018 So I'm leaving for vacation in Tennessee this weekend and my first track day is August 13th at blackhawk. I ordered a lot of stuff that will be getting installed, and also having the subframe reinforced. The mod list is as follows: GC coilovers, camber plates, and swaybars with adjustable endlinks GC rear camber arms solid aluminum RSFBs poly diff bushings RCABS FCABs RTabs PFC direct drive rotors and 08 pads up front PFC 332 pads in the rear Apex ARC8 265 square on hankook RS-4 Some parts have arrived, and here is a comical test fitment of the apex wheel prior to having camber plates installed (it will require -3.5 in order to not rub): One of the main issues the seller had with this car was that he didn't want to pay $560 for a new passenger shadowline trim. The weatherstripping at the rear window was disintegrated so basically the car can't get wet, and BMW doesn't sell it separately. You have to blow 500 bucks on a whole goddamn new trim piece which is fucking absurd to me. So with an $18 weatherstripping kit from 3M and about an hour of my time, I pulled the liner and ripped out the old weatherstripping and just replaced it. The trim that sits along the bottom of the rear window is also crumbling but that's only like $25 per side for new weatherstripping as an OE part so I ordered those to finish the job tomorrow. Jdesign 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_love_cars Posted August 8, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 8, 2018 Got the car back today with all the go turn-fast parts on, subframe reinforced, and aligned at least well enough to get me home. Tomorrow I am dropping the car off at Big Bear for corner balancing and proper damper adjustments, but in the meantime it looks pretty mean with -3.5 camber in front. Will have to see how it is after adjustment but the spring rates are like 650/600 definitely a bit bouncy on the street but still the car handles 1000x better than it did before. There was a lot of tired suspension on that bitch. Had to deal with a couple unknown things because the guibo was totally fucked and looked like it had maybe 30 miles left before it completely fell apart. Also had a stock mid section welded back in because what was on there was completely fucked, so now the car sounds normal again without excessive levels of e46 rasp. and my personal favorite - my shop guy rips all the warning labels off his equipment and replaces them with this: jc43089, SteelBlue, ChrisO and 4 others 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaiserRolls Posted August 8, 2018 Report Share Posted August 8, 2018 How did you end up at the RS4? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_love_cars Posted August 10, 2018 Author Report Share Posted August 10, 2018 On 8/8/2018 at 2:17 PM, KaiserRolls said: How did you end up at the RS4? First and foremost I want to learn the car on street tires before moving to slicks. Beyond that, these tires have a stiff sidewall which I definitely want while I'm learning the E46 on track. I am quite sure that to begin with I'll be pushing the car harder into the corners than it likes because I'm going to be still thinking like I have the E30 which was so light and easy to brake and corner with that the tires never really overheated or scrubbed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KaiserRolls Posted August 10, 2018 Report Share Posted August 10, 2018 10 hours ago, i_love_cars said: First and foremost I want to learn the car on street tires before moving to slicks. Beyond that, these tires have a stiff sidewall which I definitely want while I'm learning the E46 on track. I am quite sure that to begin with I'll be pushing the car harder into the corners than it likes because I'm going to be still thinking like I have the E30 which was so light and easy to brake and corner with that the tires never really overheated or scrubbed. I just meant out of the 200tw tires, why the rs4 over a 615k+ etc etc. I’ll be really interested to see how they last on track! Please let us know!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_love_cars Posted September 13, 2018 Author Report Share Posted September 13, 2018 On 8/10/2018 at 8:24 AM, KaiserRolls said: I just meant out of the 200tw tires, why the rs4 over a 615k+ etc etc. I’ll be really interested to see how they last on track! Please let us know!! They didn't last. RS4 was a bad decision. They greased badly after 7 laps and I wasn't even driving hard. I'm man enough to admit when I've made a mistake. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MPW3RLee Posted September 15, 2018 Report Share Posted September 15, 2018 Nice find on the M3! I loved the RS4 on my E30 for autoX, but I did notice after about 20 min on track they started to get greasy. Same thing when I had an E46 M3. I imagine the heavier car works it that much harder. What’s next on the list for tires? I remember there was a point in time where bimmerworld sold gently used 18” slicks for a decent price, I’ve been tempted to try those. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_love_cars Posted September 18, 2018 Author Report Share Posted September 18, 2018 On 9/15/2018 at 3:39 PM, MPW3RLee said: Nice find on the M3! I loved the RS4 on my E30 for autoX, but I did notice after about 20 min on track they started to get greasy. Same thing when I had an E46 M3. I imagine the heavier car works it that much harder. What’s next on the list for tires? I remember there was a point in time where bimmerworld sold gently used 18” slicks for a decent price, I’ve been tempted to try those. Probably RE-71r. I'm at least going to run those for a few events before upgrading to the track candy. I ran slicks on my E30 and you just carry way too much speed around the track with them if you don't yet know how to drive your car. In my case, the E46 is still new and I need to get all my standard turn-in points and braking zones figured out on Blackhawk and RA where I usually frequent, and then I will probably look to slicks. I always use Jon Berget Racing Tires in Delavan for lightly used slicks since they are local and the price is right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
i_love_cars Posted September 18, 2018 Author Report Share Posted September 18, 2018 Updates: track repairs after brake failure are done. I bought standard (see: non-competition) caliper carriers so that I could fit my PFC rotors, since nobody in the E46 world actually uses the ZCP brakes. New calipers, stainless lines, new wheel bearings, all was well. Then came my Blackstone analysis. Rod bearings completely toasted So now I have new rod bearings. As luck would have it, when I went to test drive the car after bearing install, my cooling system started to take a shit. Temp needle quickly started to peg at the 3/4 mark and discovered my fan was dead. I took this as an opportunity to replace the radiator, water pump/tstat, and have an electric fan wired in to get rid of the factory mechanical fan. I took the car in to my body shop today for an estimate on both patching up the dings/dents, and repainting the entire car. I am for sure going to repair the dents that were on the car when I bought it, but I am still up in the air on repainting it and throwing on a CSL front bumper shroud. I dunno. I love driving the car on the street and like having a full interior despite some track-oriented suspension. It would be nice to clean the car up a bit more and make it more presentable since I think I'm going to be driving it more than just only on track days. Still noodling on that one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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