Latest addition (E92 M3)

[magpie21]

To add to the Tuscan I've just picked up an E92 M3 in the last month. I've had one before and really missed it once I'd sold it.

It's far from standard (cosmetically and mechanically), the looks may not be to everyones taste but I like it

Edited by magpie21 on Friday 23 September 20:14

Edited by magpie21 on Monday 6th August 19:50

[magpie21]

Cheers Jon, my last one had the fox leather the same as yours and I really like that too.

The backbox is a Supersprint race and the secondary cats have also been removed.

[magpie21]

Janosh said:

Looks fantastic

Can you post up the details / photos of the mods?

Stu R said:

Lovely

What non-cosmetic mods has it had done? Much of a difference?

External
Vorsteiner style front diffuser
BMW Performance carbon rear spoiler
Matte black badges (wheel caps, roundels and M3 badge)
Matte black bonnet vents
Matte black side grills
Projex circuit 20 inch alloys

Interior
BMW performance gear knob
BMW performance alcantara gear gaiter
BMW performance handbrake handle




Mechanical
Eibach suspension
Green Cotton air filter
Carbotech brake pads
Evolve Remap
Supersprint race backbox
Secondary cats removed




I need to get back to Evolve for them to fine tune the map and do a power run. I have no idea how much it is at currently. However with these mods the car certainly pulls better from low down and just sings at 8k revs.

Here is a video of the exhaust - http://youtu.be/6ewvcXsXQwo

As you can see from the video the car does have a bit of history which I can expand on if people are interested

Edited by magpie21 on Friday 23 September 19:12

Edited by magpie21 on Tuesday 27th September 10:27

Edited by magpie21 on Tuesday 4th December 14:45

[magpie21]

sinizter said:

Yes, please.

OK then

Back in February a good friend of mine had, shall we say, a slight altercation with a row of trees, after recently having his e92 M3 supercharged

The resulting outcome was this:


He phoned me to tell me his tale of woe and his worry that his pride and joy would be written off. The obligatory pi$$ taking followed.

A couple of days later his worst fears were confirmed when his car was indeed written off. Out of curiosity he asked how much it would be to buy the car back. Now, bear in mind that this is an 08 manual e92, with pretty much every conceivable extra including individual audio and the car had just over 20k miles on the clock. The figure given by the insurance company to buy the car back was 8.5k I knew he already had a new DCT Dakar Edition lined up and so flippantly said "if you can get that back on the road for less than 20k I'll have it".

Being the good mate the he is, we agreed that he would get the car back to being road worthy and if satisfactory I would buy it off him. I had no doubt that it would be as seeing him prep his race bikes I knew no stone would be unturned and the car would become as good as new. We enrolled the services of world renowned Mr Vanos http://www.mrvanos.com/ to project manage the rebuild.

We had all agreed that this was not going to be a botch job and so the car was completely stripped so we could see what we were dealing with. This is what we found












Underside of the carbon roof


Obviously all of the damage was on the nearside of the car with the majority being to the rear quarter. The car is obviously designed to give way in certain areas to absorb impact and this saved allot of the suspension and subframe components.

We needed to buy:
passenger door
rear quarter
side skirt
o/s mirror
o/s/r suspension strut
trailing arms
o/s/r alloy wheel
rear bumper

Everything else was unmarked. Fortunately (or fatefully) there was a new rear quarter and an almost new rear subframe complete with hubs on ebay. These were rapidly scooped up and fitted:







The door lined up perfectly which was a great sign as it meant the car wasn't too bent!!


The next step was to get the car to the bodyshop to start the metal work. The whole rear quarter needed to be replaced. The car was taken to a small bodyshop well known to Mr Vanos who aren't the quickest but do THE BEST metal work. More used to straightening rally cars this was a small job apparently. Look away now if you're feint hearted.......
Not bad.....

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Holy sh*t




For the scrap heap:


I must admit when I saw these photos I was very nervous as to what I had got myself into. However from talking to the guys, this was a run of the mill job to them. If you take a close look at the pictures you will see that they have unpicked the original BMW welds so that they can re-weld the new rear quarter in the same place. Also if you look you can see the rear pillar has been cut through in steps so that when re-attached the welds are not all in line returning the original strength.

Rear quarter in place:








Rear quarter now in place it was time to get it to the paint shop, mad max style.................


The guys at the paintshop were over the moon when they saw the car, the metal work was so good hardly any prep work needed to be done as the original seams had been used to attached the rear quarter and only a skim of filler needed to cover the join in the rear pillar. Their biggest concern was that the swage lines on the repaired side now lined up better than the original side. As I said at the beginning this was to be a top class job and so the seams were prepared and sealed again and the car was re-sprayed inside and out.













Back at Mr Vanos HQ with Supersprint exhaust now fitted






Lights and ancillaries starting to be re-fitted




Bumpers and interior fitted




Glass fitted




Projex Circuit 20" wheels fitted, car MOT'd and the car is ready for collection
















Back home and now with carbon splitter and BMW Performance carbon spoiler fitted








I've had the car almost a month now and the car is like new. No squeaks, no rattles, no vibrations, no warning lights, it's perfect. I had one of the first E92 M3's when they were 1st released and I'd go as far as to say this one is even better.

Although this car is registered as a Cat D there is no way you can tell. The guys at the MOT station did not know the history of the car and were asked to go through the car with a fine toothcomb and mention anything they thought that showed the car had a chequered history. They couldn't and were shocked when shown the pictures of the car with the rear quarter missing. They honestly couldn't tell.

I thought it may be useful to show this project as I know there is allot of scepticism around cat D cars. I'm not saying all are repaired to this standard and I have spent more on this car than needed to get it back on the road again in as new condition. There are lots of corners that can be cut if doing something like this to make a profit however this is going to be a car I take my family in and so cutting corners and botching things was not an option. I haven't done it to fix and sell for a profit (although I have been offered VERY good money for it) this will be my daily car for the next few years and I didn't want any niggling worries in the back of my mind every time I drove it.

[magpie21]

mc_blue said:

Love the modifications you've done and am very impressed by the standards of the repair. How much did it cost you to sort overall just out of interest?

Yeah 20k was the target and we came in (just) under that. This doesn't include wheels, exhaust, pulley, splitter or spoiler though. It could have been done for far less than the budget if we'd bodged repairs and weren't fussy about the final finish. For example the car had a complete front end respray to get rid of previous stone chips, new Windscreen as the old one had a slight crack, new rear bumper rather than repairing the old one etc,etc

I wanted the car as close to showroom as possible and wanted a proper job done so there were no niggles in the back of my head, I was also adamant no corners were to be cut as this is a car I take my kids in and so it needed to be A1!

[magpie21]

Oh and thanks for all of the kind words, hopefully it proves not all category cars need have a bad reputation!

[magpie21]

irf said:

do they all have carbon on the front under the bumper on the sides?

No, I've had a carbon front splitter fitted, BMW performance also do their own version

[magpie21]

Well thankyou

[magpie21]

Thanks guys.

As for the supercharger it's sat on a shelf at the moment. The friend who's car this was originally hasn't put it onto his new M3 as he's waiting to see how shafted he gets at insurance renewal time. This is in the next few weeks.

Depending upon the renewal price it may well be up for sale, in which case I may have to spend all the money I've saved by repairing this one

[magpie21]

Well it's been almost a year I've had this now so thought I would update the thread. The car has gone through the last year with no problems at all, it is booked into the dealership next week as one of the throttle actuators is intermittently playing up which means the engine goes into safe mode, restricting the car to 4k revs. It is becoming a common problem on these now and is almost 1k to fix, however the dealership have contacted BMW UK to offer a goodwill contribution as they have seen 5 e9x M3's in the last two months with this problem.

Anyway, aside from that the only costs have been a new set of rear tyres and new discs and pads all round. Last month I gave the car a bit of an update with some genuine LCI rear lights from the 2010 model onwards and probably the best mod yet, a pair of BMW Performance seats. These seats are sublime to travel in and give far more support than the standard seats. True, they are expensive, but they have really changed the feel of the car and look fantastic to boot!

LCI rears





Performance seats

Edited by magpie21 on Monday 6th August 20:28

Edited by magpie21 on Wednesday 6th March 12:35

[magpie21]

raptor600 said:

Spoof said:

It's a car that doesn't really do anything for me, but with those seats.... I want!

I'm so fickle.

They are just a re trimmed versions of the seats in Clio 197/200's

And the Corsa VXR

[magpie21]

_dobbo_ said:

magpie21 said:

The car has gone through the last year with no problems at all

It is becoming a common problem on these now and is almost 1k to fix

We may differ on what "no problems at all" means...

Haha, true.

I was referring to any problems associated with the repair of the car, however, point taken

[magpie21]

Advice please guys, due to relocation with work I'm now having to consider selling up. I have all of the original parts for the car, apart from one rear wheel. Do you think I should sell as is or put the car back to standard and sell all of the parts separately?
One thing that is definitely being sold separately are the seats, just undecided about the rest of it as not sure if it will make the car more attractive to potential buyers or not considering its history.

[magpie21]

Regrettably due to job relocation now in the classifieds:

http://classifieds.pistonheads.com/classifieds/use...

[magpie21]

Yep all brand new, there is nothing else you can do but buy new ones.

[magpie21]

Sold (for the asking price) to the first person who saw it, hopefully goes to show that if done properly catd cars aren't such a burden to sell on.