Even with the (much louder) Borla mufflers on mine, it's pretty much all intake noise from the driver's seat. The rasp is more of a wake of noise that you leave behind.

it isn't.

it's just a 3 series with a cool engine.

the newer M3 feels, perhaps, more interesting for the pricepoint because it is insanely fast.

My buddy has a F80 m3, now I want to drive it.

That's just it a cool engine but a, it's to pricy for me right now for what I want to spend and b, the E9x makes WAY better sounds. Both important to me.

One of the advantages to having a spare car is that you can take as long as you want to work on it. One of the disadvantages, however, is that you can take as long as you want.

The full detailing process took maybe 8-10 hours total, but it was spread over weeks. The end result? Now I know just how sandblasted the front of my car really looks. But she shines up okay, anyway.

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4221/3...b1b4f8e1_b.jpg

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4251/3...f60f629a_b.jpg

:bustingup

Looking good though!

Beautiful

Just need to swap out those blacked out kidneys. :)

also remove the tint and clears :) But that is just me. prefer OEM(yeah clears are oem in ROW)

Still looks nice. Good job on the detail

Clears are OE on the M3, period. And tint is more comfortable and good for the interior.

You guys are nuts. The tint and clears look great.

And I'm generally not a fan of clears.

I like the tint, the clears and the blacked out kidneys.

I'm still toying with the idea of selling @41400 miles. Just went on BaT, so many auctions going on at the same time. I don't think it's a great time to be a seller. When there are a thousand unicorns out there, are they still unicorns, even if different from each other?

The clears are definitely OE. I do like them, although the corners look sort of aftermarket despite being OE. I think it's because they're so much...erm, whiter, or something, compared to the headlight assemblies.

The car came to me with tint, and while I'm perfectly okay with its extralegal darkness, there is a bit of a bubble towards the top of the left window. I may try to smooth it out myself; replacement is always an option, but I'm terrified that the rear defogger lines will run away with the old tint.

I've thought quite a bit (probably too much) about the black/body colored bits on the car -- the kdineys, the fender grilles, the reflectors. I don't know whether the car is getting old enough that it should be put back to its showroom state, or if it looks better this way. :dunno:

I made some low profile wooden ramps a few weeks ago, and today I rolled the car onto them after a slight modification to keep them from squirting out from under the tires. It's time to tackle the rod bearings and front control arms. (I was going to wait another week or so, but I'm taking the truck to work tomorrow, and it's supposed to rain anyway, so...)

Nick is correct on all accounts.

The market is definitely tight on 6MT coupes. Low miles and unicorn configurations will get noticed. Of course, you could try to wait a few more years and see if they start to appreciate. I all but guarantee they won't depreciate any further, unless you have subframe cracks or bodywork.

:bustingup

:lol:

No, I think then they're narwhals.

Must resist urge to go shopping for an M3...

How many miles do the bearings have?

And no, the blacked out stuff does not look better. :)

yeah, I'd probably swap out the black bits, except maybe the bumper plugs. The corners don't look right because no "egg yolk".

That's it!

Yeah plus no orange reflector

http://rs267.pbsrc.com/albums/ii293/...h=480&fit=clip

https://c1.staticflickr.com/5/4221/3...b1b4f8e1_b.jpg

I'm not a fan of the tinted look, but I understand its practicality--especially for a black car.


E46 M3s still turn my head.

The one Jeff posted looks like it has black headlight bezels. Where those stock?

Mine. With no mods. Not sure if the convertibles were speced differently.

Yes. Only 330s got the weird silver headlight bezels.

To my knowledge the bearings are original, which puts about 103k on them. The car is a 7/03 build, IIRC, and therefore not part of the recall. The car sounds great and the oil analysis came out fine, but a) I don't know how many miles were on the oil before I changed it, and b) I have rod bearing scars. All of this puts bearing replacement higher on my job list than VANOS or suspension.

Grey interior FTW! Eventually, so many people will re-dye or swap out their grey interiors that ours will be the rare ones. :lol:

I admit that the car looks good with the original chrome pieces. I kind of have a philosophical thing against chrome-plated plastic, though, and I also am kind of digging the fockin' blacked-out look. To the point where I've contemplated a set of wheels in black/anthracite.

Looks nice.

I washed my car tonight after a quickie hailstorm rolled through. Not a detail like this. Been contemplating paying someone to do a thorough detail. Been thinking about it for over a year.

I don't LOVE gray interiors, but, oddly, I've had three cars with them. The color was fine for the convertible. Helped keep the seats cool. What I didn't like were the gray plastic bits, because they tended to look yellow over time. The other benefit of the gray was that it masked bolster wear more than darker colors. Black tends to show it more than any other color.

My M240 has a mix of the black wheels and chrome bits. Hard to know which way to veer were I to change any of it. Current style is to go "carbon" on all the accent trim. Had I speced this car from the factory I might have split the difference with the "Ferric Gray" wheels--which are neither chrome nor black but somewhere in between.

S54s are commodity motors, though.

Also, some 2003.5s were recalled.

"Commodity" is a relative term, although there certainly are many more of them around right now. (And I guess they're reasonably priced...again, relative to other more exotic mills.) Still, I'd rather do the bearing job than deal with a broken engine. Broken engines suck. And anyway, I didn't buy this sweet Snap-On TechAngle to torque lug nuts. :D

The dealer service records don't have any mention of the recall, so I don't think the bottom end has been touched since it left Germany.

The whole wash-clay-random orbital (x2?)-wax thing is time consuming for sure. And I fully admit that my amateur job falls short of what I see coming out of the professional shops. However, it also saved me about $1300, and the improvement is apparent.

At some point I might shell out the bucks for XPel or whatever, but the multitude of rock chips on the front end are kind of turning me off to that idea at the moment. Dr. Colorchip is an option, I guess, and would cost way less than a proper respray. For now, as long as there's no rust...

The pro shops also take off way more paint. :)

For a once every 5-10 years, it's probably not much of a problem.

And so it begins...gonna let the oil drain over night. I really don't have the time to tackle this at all this week, besides an hour or so each night, and I'll be out of town all next week. I hope my baller Esco jackstands are up to the task.

What happened.

Nothing. Preventive maintenance.

Based on the paint meter readings that I've seen, a serious paint correction is something that you can't do more than twice.

Lazy is lazy, so I should be covered for any car I ever own.