2005 BMW M6 V10

[James B]

aberdeenelvis said:

James B said:

Tyres will be Michelin Pilot 4S if I can get them in an acceptable size. If not then I know the MPSS does the factory size.

I’ll look into the pads. I’ve got experience of Performance Friction, Racing Brake and Porterfield but I’m not aware of Hawk.

As for tyres I have Goodyear eagle F1 asymmetric 2 all round on my e60 M5 and I can't fault them. Just away to order 2 new rears.

Thanks for that. I’ve not run F1’s since my RS2000 4x4 but they were great at the time. I’ve done a lot of fun miles on MPSS and 4S and really rate them as a great all rounder and particularly impressive when pressing on.

[James B]

aberdeenelvis]od200SX said:

Just noticed youre in aberdeen! Hadnt noticed the username will keep an eye out!

There's a couple v10 BMW M cars kicking about town at the moment, love seeing people going for the slightly left field options [/quote.

Normally on the road for M5 Friday and the weekends.

Don't tend to see that many v10s out and about around aberdeenshire.

I have been keeping an eye out and have seen very few. There is/was an M6 that parked on Rosemount a lot. It had a huge rear wing on it that looked rather out of keeping. I used to see a nice M5 Touring too but not for some time now.

[8bit]

James B said:

I have been keeping an eye out and have seen very few. There is/was an M6 that parked on Rosemount a lot. It had a huge rear wing on it that looked rather out of keeping. I used to see a nice M5 Touring too but not for some time now.

I've seen the M6 with the massive wing on one of the streets near my work, either Westholme or Northburn Avenue I think.

Glad to hear you're on the mend BTW. You thinking of going to any of the RDSF events coming up? Cars and Coffee meet yesterday was pretty good, some lovely metal there.

[James B]

8bit said:

James B said:

I have been keeping an eye out and have seen very few. There is/was an M6 that parked on Rosemount a lot. It had a huge rear wing on it that looked rather out of keeping. I used to see a nice M5 Touring too but not for some time now.

I've seen the M6 with the massive wing on one of the streets near my work, either Westholme or Northburn Avenue I think.

Glad to hear you're on the mend BTW. You thinking of going to any of the RDSF events coming up? Cars and Coffee meet yesterday was pretty good, some lovely metal there.

Yes I've seen it parked up Angusfield Ave a few times too.

Thanks, all good with me now. I was meaning to head out yesterday too but my grandmother was up so we spent the morning with her and had lunch too. I'll get out to one sometime soon.

[James B]

Little bit of updating to do now.

The brake lines and brake fluid (went for Motul RBF 600) is ordered. I still intend to do this swap myself as it should be interesting.

The car will go into the specialists to have the headlights checked. They have the full BMW kit so can check the full functionality of the headlights and pinpoint any issues.

I have decided i'm going to have a longer tem project in fine tuning the handling of the car but will only use the BMW Competition Pack parts.

As i understand it the M6 CP came with uprated ARB's front and rear, stiffer and lower springs and revised EDC settings on the shock absorbers.

I'm keen to retain the car's great manners on the road and therefore plan to phase the changes to see if there's a happy medium but still dial out a little of the front end lift. My plan is therefore;

Stage 1: New tyres. May go slightly wider and am going to stick to Michelin Pilot Super Sport as i really have liked them on previous cars. Sizes will likely be 255/40/19 & 285/35/19

Stage 2: Fit the Front and Rear Comp Pack ARBs.

Stage 3: Fit the Comp Pack springs

I'm very happy with the way the car sits at present look-wise so there's no need to lower for cosmetic reasons. Therefore i'll make the other changes first and see how the car feels and then as a last phase the springs can be added if required.

A quick comment though. It hasn't been too easy to get the information needed from BMW as not having a Comp Pack car means they can't see the Comp Pack options. I needed to get the VIN from a Comp Pack car to do this and have made the acquaintance of a very nice French gents who has a stunning collection of cars inc a Comp Pack M6 in Frozen grey. He gave me his VIN and hey presto I can get the parts from BMW.

FYI the costs for all this will be approx;

Brake Pipes: £70 (fitting myself)
Brake Fluid: £65 (fitting myself)
Tyres - £870 fitted
ARB's - £380 (fitting myself)
Springs - £560* (fitting myself)

• this is just BMW's price. I haven't tried to find anywhere else at this stage.

I'm going to finish off the tyres on the NC500 and will then get set on Stages 1 & 2.

[Mikeeb]

If you use

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/partgrp?id=EH92-EU...

You can work out the Comp Pack parts. The dampers have a different part number too.

I found exactly the same on the brake front as you. I had a 645 before the M6 and the pedal was much firmer and gave better instant bite.

On my M6 I replaced the hoses with braided, I used Castrol racing fluid and bled the system using the BMW diag tool. Fitted new genuine disc and pads and then replaced the pads with EBC Red Stuff pads. The car also had replacement wheel bearings.

All of this made next to no different to the pedal feel. The EBC pads were great in their dustfreeness but didn't feel much better than the stock pads.

I concluded it is down to the the different Bosch ABS/ESP system that the M6 uses over the 645 which gives the poorer pedal feel.

[8bit]

Mikeeb said:

The EBC pads were great in their dustfreeness but didn't feel much better than the stock pads.

I've got Redstuff pads in my XKR, as you say they are maybe only slightly better than stock when cold but they work a bit better once there's some heat in them. No idea what OEM BMW pads are like but the stuff Jaguar used were very dusty so the almost complete lack of dust is a welcome upgrade. Yellowstuff are supposed to be a more bitey pad but not as clean as Redstuff.

Jurid do a part ceramic compound pad now too, apparently more effective than RedStuff but similarly non-dusty, they're called Jurid White.

[e30m3Mark]

I wouldn't use EBC. Performance wasn't great but the pads themselves simply broke up and fell apart. Hawk are similarly priced but much better performance. They're fast road pad gives very little brake dust and don't squeal like the EBC used to.

[Mikeeb]

e30m3Mark said:

I wouldn't use EBC. Performance wasn't great but the pads themselves simply broke up and fell apart. Hawk are similarly priced but much better performance. They're fast road pad gives very little brake dust and don't squeal like the EBC used to.

It's interesting other peoples experiences.

I had no squealing or pad break up in 10,000 miles on the Redstuff including a track session.

[sbk1972]

Hi Guys,

Im not a M6 owner but a petrol head, so I do love reading the updates here.

Your issue with brake travel / feel. I have the same issue with my Ml55, the brake travel did seem rather long and I had to adjust my braking style to suit it, i.e. brake earlier to compensate for the travel.

I replaced the disks / pads, install braided hoses, bleed the system 3/ 4 times and it didn't improve much, if at all. I brought a code scanner which also provided live data feeds so I suddenly noticed my brake psi sensors on my master cylinder. I noticed that the first sensor was considerably lower than the second. Turns out the seals in the MSC were leaking. I brought a new set of seals off eBay and that definitely improved travel, although I still would like it better. Might be worth taking a look at that.

I read that some cars, when bleeding brakes, need to have the ABS pump put into a bleeding mode. This allows the little valves to open / close which removes any air bubbles. Not sure if this is applicable to the M6, but worth asking.

Lovely car, keep the updates coming as reading them fills a boring afternoon at work :-)

SBK

[James B]

Mikeeb,

Thanks for that link. I had seen that before but had totally forgotten where to find it again. Now bookmarked!

What is the BMW Diagnostic Tool needed for in brake bleeding? Does it run a cycle? I was just going to use the good old manual way. Should I be reconsidering?

I must admit that I've never been much of a fan of EBC pads since I fitted them to my Escort GTi (Gti in trim only...it was slooooooow) back in the day and the pads were noisy and also began to disintegrate. I probably wouldn't choose to fit to the car now as there are options. That said I do know others who swear by them and the simple fact they are still trading means people must have good experiences and buy again because they can't be surviving on one-time customers only.

[James B]

sbk1972 said:

Hi Guys,

Im not a M6 owner but a petrol head, so I do love reading the updates here.

Your issue with brake travel / feel. I have the same issue with my Ml55, the brake travel did seem rather long and I had to adjust my braking style to suit it, i.e. brake earlier to compensate for the travel.

I replaced the disks / pads, install braided hoses, bleed the system 3/ 4 times and it didn't improve much, if at all. I brought a code scanner which also provided live data feeds so I suddenly noticed my brake psi sensors on my master cylinder. I noticed that the first sensor was considerably lower than the second. Turns out the seals in the MSC were leaking. I brought a new set of seals off eBay and that definitely improved travel, although I still would like it better. Might be worth taking a look at that.

I read that some cars, when bleeding brakes, need to have the ABS pump put into a bleeding mode. This allows the little valves to open / close which removes any air bubbles. Not sure if this is applicable to the M6, but worth asking.

Lovely car, keep the updates coming as reading them fills a boring afternoon at work :-)

SBK

SBK,

Glad you're enjoying the read.

That's interesting to hear your experience. I'll still make the changes to the brake pipes and fluid as they're still potentially 12yrs old so its more of an insurance policy than anything. I'll do some measuring of the pedal travel too in the coming days so i can benchmark for any improvement and also in case anyone else was able to measure the same....hint hint

[Mikeeb]

James B said:

Mikeeb,

Thanks for that link. I had seen that before but had totally forgotten where to find it again. Now bookmarked!

What is the BMW Diagnostic Tool needed for in brake bleeding? Does it run a cycle? I was just going to use the good old manual way. Should I be reconsidering?

I must admit that I've never been much of a fan of EBC pads since I fitted them to my Escort GTi (Gti in trim only...it was slooooooow) back in the day and the pads were noisy and also began to disintegrate. I probably wouldn't choose to fit to the car now as there are options. That said I do know others who swear by them and the simple fact they are still trading means people must have good experiences and buy again because they can't be surviving on one-time customers only.

Hi James

You can flush the fluid through without the diag tool but you don't replace the fluid in all the passageways in the ABS block. Some are only used when the vehicle ABS's or ESP's, ie the solenoid valves in the block are operating. You can replicate this by repeatedly causing the ABS and ESP to operate but you can't be 10% sure you have got all the solenoids to operate for sufficiently long enough to flush the fluid through.

I can only give you my experience of the EBC pads and from a wheel cleanliness point it was good. From a improved repeat stopping point of view, I would have like to fit Ferrodo DS2500's but they don't seem to make them to fit.

Cheers

[TwoStrokeNut]

Excellent thread and a lovely M6 there.

To bleed the brakes properly, you need something that will drive the ABS Pump correctly for each corner at a time, whilst bleeding. It's well worth the trouble getting ISTA/D running on a laptop and following the guided procedure on there.

If you are not introducing air into the system and are just changing the fluid, you can get away with conventional bleeding and remove almost all of the fluid, but if you are replacing hoses / pump etc, you'll just end up with air in the pump and a soft brake pedal. Over time (and a few cycles), it might improve. Better to do the job properly in the first place.

The braided hoses won't help with brake travel, however it's always worth putting in fresh quality fluid.

[James B]

Mikeeb said:

Hi James

You can flush the fluid through without the diag tool but you don't replace the fluid in all the passageways in the ABS block. Some are only used when the vehicle ABS's or ESP's, ie the solenoid valves in the block are operating. You can replicate this by repeatedly causing the ABS and ESP to operate but you can't be 10% sure you have got all the solenoids to operate for sufficiently long enough to flush the fluid through.

I can only give you my experience of the EBC pads and from a wheel cleanliness point it was good. From a improved repeat stopping point of view, I would have like to fit Ferrodo DS2500's but they don't seem to make them to fit.

Cheers

Mike,

Thanks for that. Very useful to know and I'm going to the bother of getting the pipes changed and good fluid put in so I should just go the whole hog and do the rest correctly too. I do have an OBD tool. Is this capable of doing it or is there a special BMW-only tool needed?

[James B]

TwoStrokeNut said:

Excellent thread and a lovely M6 there.

To bleed the brakes properly, you need something that will drive the ABS Pump correctly for each corner at a time, whilst bleeding. It's well worth the trouble getting ISTA/D running on a laptop and following the guided procedure on there.

If you are not introducing air into the system and are just changing the fluid, you can get away with conventional bleeding and remove almost all of the fluid, but if you are replacing hoses / pump etc, you'll just end up with air in the pump and a soft brake pedal. Over time (and a few cycles), it might improve. Better to do the job properly in the first place.

The braided hoses won't help with brake travel, however it's always worth putting in fresh quality fluid.

Ah! You've answered my question. I'll look into that and see how i would manage it.

[James B]

Right, i've just had a quick read about ISTA/D and I am suspecting that it may be a bridge too far for me! I'll read up more this evening but for this task I'll maybe just get the BMW specialists to do a full brake flush and replace with the RBF 600. I'll swap the hoses and will manually bleed the small volume to keep the car mobile but they can do the proper job when they're doing the headlights.

[TwoStrokeNut]

James B said:

Right, i've just had a quick read about ISTA/D and I am suspecting that it may be a bridge too far for me! I'll read up more this evening but for this task I'll maybe just get the BMW specialists to do a full brake flush and replace with the RBF 600. I'll swap the hoses and will manually bleed the small volume to keep the car mobile but they can do the proper job when they're doing the headlights.

If you're ok with installing / uninstalling software and have a windows laptop to use, it's not too bad. This link helps a lot: http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=...

I think you might also be able to use INPA, which is easier to get working. I'm not sure if it supports your M6 though. M cars can be tricky with different ECUs to the cooking stuff.

[sbk1972]

Hi all,

If I bleed my system the good old fashioned way, `press brake pedal..... open screw... bleed..... close screw.... release pedal`, I realize that some of the channels in the ABS pump wont of `flushed`.

So, If I then drive up the road and cause my ABS to enable, i.e. brake like a git at 30mph causing the system to work, will this then clear out the old fluid / air ? if I did this 4/5 times, then come back and rebleed the brakes, will that do the job ?

Simon

[Mikeeb]

sbk1972 said:

Hi all,

If I bleed my system the good old fashioned way, `press brake pedal..... open screw... bleed..... close screw.... release pedal`, I realize that some of the channels in the ABS pump wont of `flushed`.

So, If I then drive up the road and cause my ABS to enable, i.e. brake like a git at 30mph causing the system to work, will this then clear out the old fluid / air ? if I did this 4/5 times, then come back and rebleed the brakes, will that do the job ?

Simon

Yes it you repeat it enough it will flush through with fluid from the reservoir. BUT the old fluid is being returned to the reservoir, so you may want to drain and refill it.

However, this wont flush the ESP channels/valves, so you will need to drive in a spirited enough way to get these two extra valves to operate too........