E90 M3 - V8 saloon
Discussion
helix402 said:
It’s nice to see an M3 thread which isn’t just “I put black grilles on and a black badge”!
M3 Cutters may be worth a look to sell the susp on.
M3 Cutters may be worth a look to sell the susp on.
Or 'ambers', or those stupid M stripe grilles everyone seems to have these days...I'm going to pop over to the Cutters forum and stick them up for sale now
Nunga said:
What’s wrong with amber lights? I thought that was still very much in the minority?
Love the car and the spec (manual sedan, perfect), and I dare say the OEM suspension will ride a lot better than the HSD stuff.
I conditioned my leather with Glyptone’s Liquid Leather, as well as recolouring it, and it was like new afterwards and stayed that way with semi-frequent conditioning. If you’re not happy with what you’ve already used, I can only say good things about the above.
Nothing wrong with amber lights per se, they're just suddenly trendy now and loads of people seem to be changing original clear indicators for the orange ones. You can bet if BMW put them on there in the first place everyone would hate them and change them for clear ones. I prefer the standard look Love the car and the spec (manual sedan, perfect), and I dare say the OEM suspension will ride a lot better than the HSD stuff.
I conditioned my leather with Glyptone’s Liquid Leather, as well as recolouring it, and it was like new afterwards and stayed that way with semi-frequent conditioning. If you’re not happy with what you’ve already used, I can only say good things about the above.
I've only heard good things about Gliptone and I may well try some out. My seats do look better now than those pictures I took as the conditioner has had time to settle in. I'll have to take some more pics!
A quick update, not entirely M3 related, but it's a good beast to go to war in. I had to do roughly a 300 mile round trip to see a man about my Escort RS Turbo restoration project. He did the welding and paint work for me as originally I didn't have the space to get it done myself, and wanted it sorted out. Now I don't have much time due to baby GPM! Anyways, he messed the job up, admitted it, and then took the car back to sort it out. I hadn't heard anything for a month since he'd had the car back, yet it was supposed to have had a 4 week slot in his shop to get all the problems and repainting done. Oh, and I was supposed to have been more involved in the reparations to build trust back up... One surprise visit later, zero work done on my car, much shouting and swearing and we'll see how things go now 
Now I'd firmly made clear I was a tad unhappy with his total lack of communication, (which has been a running theme for over a year, just to put things in to context) I decided to make the most of the countryside location and take a few shots of the car, to prove it does actually move from my drive occasionally!
An excellent drive there and back, marred only by traffic levels and cameras on the M25. On the M40 some numbnuts in a Touareg thought he'd speed up while I was overtaking and try to block me. That didn't work. I prodded the pedal in 6th and then decided I should actually change up a cog just to be sure
Someone in a Golf R estate obviously felt he had to prove himself on a slip road out of the services, except he had to cut the white hatchings early, cut someone up to get out to lane 3 and then disappeared up the road. I left him to it. No point playing with idiots! I did spot a nice E63 AMG estate that trundled past me on the way home. Very nice understated car. Also spotted a couple of new Dodge Challengers on the way home too. They look superb on the road. Piloting an M3 all day is a good way to spend a tank of petrol and do some car spotting at the same time. It was a shame about the original purpose of the trip, but I had a good day otherwise
Now I'd firmly made clear I was a tad unhappy with his total lack of communication, (which has been a running theme for over a year, just to put things in to context) I decided to make the most of the countryside location and take a few shots of the car, to prove it does actually move from my drive occasionally!
An excellent drive there and back, marred only by traffic levels and cameras on the M25. On the M40 some numbnuts in a Touareg thought he'd speed up while I was overtaking and try to block me. That didn't work. I prodded the pedal in 6th and then decided I should actually change up a cog just to be sure
Someone in a Golf R estate obviously felt he had to prove himself on a slip road out of the services, except he had to cut the white hatchings early, cut someone up to get out to lane 3 and then disappeared up the road. I left him to it. No point playing with idiots! I did spot a nice E63 AMG estate that trundled past me on the way home. Very nice understated car. Also spotted a couple of new Dodge Challengers on the way home too. They look superb on the road. Piloting an M3 all day is a good way to spend a tank of petrol and do some car spotting at the same time. It was a shame about the original purpose of the trip, but I had a good day otherwise Pizzaeatingking said:
I love these so much, a relatively small car with a big old V8 in there is winning for me, rareness factor is an added bonus. I really love the saloon compared to the coupe too. I'd love one as a little weekend toy in a year or two, hopefully before they go up too much in price.
Keep us updated!
Cheers! Yes it's a good recipe for a fun car, isn't it Keep us updated!
I'll definitely keep updating here as I go.Time for an update! Not much has happened recently with the arrival of baby GPM, but I finally got around to doing a few bits that I've been wanting to do for a while.
I bought some new lower arms a while back for the front end of the car. I'd had the ball joints off while changing the suspension and decided they probably wanted changing at some point. Having checked against my new parts, they probably don't need changing, but what the hell, they were sitting there and I might as well have lower arms that havent done 143k miles and aged 11 years! I bought some track rod ends too, but I'll save these for another day when they do actually need to be changed.
A box of shiny parts:
I enlisted a couple of friends, Andy and Nick, too. We'd spent the day before taking suspension apart on Andy's 996 Porsche and decided to spend some of the next day sorting out bits on my car.
Here's nick getting busy with the track rod end. Taking this off let us spin the hub around without having to jump in the car and steer every time you wanted to make a movement.
The lower arms pretty much fell off. The design is really good, making access easy and ball joints that don't stick in the hub. Here are the old bits lined up next to the new ones. Literally the same parts but in a TRW bag with the 'BMW' or '///M' lettering ground off! Oh, and a third of the price from a dealer...
'Rear' lower arm out, headlight level sensor dangling as it secures via the same bolt:
'Front' lower arm out too. No corrosion because of the nice aluminium sub frame:
Close up of that mounting point for the 'front' lower arm. I can imagine a German designer sitting in his office somewhere who decided the nut wasn't very accessible, so designed a clip to hold the nut in place, meaning you only need to undo the bolt from the easily accible side. Excellent design!
Fully assembled and back together:
We swapped the tools to the other side of the car, everything came off and went back on very easily too. We even had time for tea breaks
Next thing to do was swap my leaky oil cap over. I was hoping the design on this may have changed over the years, so I bought a brand new cap. Alas, it's exactly the same, but hopefully the rubber seal will do the job this time.
Here's the rocker cover. The missing paint probably won't help but I don't think it's the actual cause of the leak.
Last job of the day was to inspect slightly binding rear brakes. I've had my suspicions that I had a sticky caliper, but on closer inspection it seems the handbrake was out of adjustment on one side.
Here's the rear end with no wheel:
Caliper and disc off, revealing the brake shoes that work on the inside of the disc as per a standard drum setup. Clever design again if you ask me.
It looks a bit grubby in here but not too sorry. The shoes on the driver's side are clearly grooved and rather worn. These are probably original to the car and weren't changed along with the pads and discs the day before I bought the car:
Here's the inside of the disc, you can see there's not much contact this side from the worn shoes. The passenger side was binding slightly and I had a nice shiny drum part of the disc from too much contact. I think a new set of shoes and a general clean up is in order:
I still need to see if the adjustment has fully cured the slight binding problem. I'm wondering if the mechanism needs a clean up too as I think the shoes might not be releasing properly when you take the handbrake off.
I'll have to go and drive it a bit and find out
I bought some new lower arms a while back for the front end of the car. I'd had the ball joints off while changing the suspension and decided they probably wanted changing at some point. Having checked against my new parts, they probably don't need changing, but what the hell, they were sitting there and I might as well have lower arms that havent done 143k miles and aged 11 years! I bought some track rod ends too, but I'll save these for another day when they do actually need to be changed.
A box of shiny parts:
I enlisted a couple of friends, Andy and Nick, too. We'd spent the day before taking suspension apart on Andy's 996 Porsche and decided to spend some of the next day sorting out bits on my car.
Here's nick getting busy with the track rod end. Taking this off let us spin the hub around without having to jump in the car and steer every time you wanted to make a movement.
The lower arms pretty much fell off. The design is really good, making access easy and ball joints that don't stick in the hub. Here are the old bits lined up next to the new ones. Literally the same parts but in a TRW bag with the 'BMW' or '///M' lettering ground off! Oh, and a third of the price from a dealer...
'Rear' lower arm out, headlight level sensor dangling as it secures via the same bolt:
'Front' lower arm out too. No corrosion because of the nice aluminium sub frame:
Close up of that mounting point for the 'front' lower arm. I can imagine a German designer sitting in his office somewhere who decided the nut wasn't very accessible, so designed a clip to hold the nut in place, meaning you only need to undo the bolt from the easily accible side. Excellent design!
Fully assembled and back together:
We swapped the tools to the other side of the car, everything came off and went back on very easily too. We even had time for tea breaks
Next thing to do was swap my leaky oil cap over. I was hoping the design on this may have changed over the years, so I bought a brand new cap. Alas, it's exactly the same, but hopefully the rubber seal will do the job this time.
Here's the rocker cover. The missing paint probably won't help but I don't think it's the actual cause of the leak.
Last job of the day was to inspect slightly binding rear brakes. I've had my suspicions that I had a sticky caliper, but on closer inspection it seems the handbrake was out of adjustment on one side.
Here's the rear end with no wheel:
Caliper and disc off, revealing the brake shoes that work on the inside of the disc as per a standard drum setup. Clever design again if you ask me.
It looks a bit grubby in here but not too sorry. The shoes on the driver's side are clearly grooved and rather worn. These are probably original to the car and weren't changed along with the pads and discs the day before I bought the car:
Here's the inside of the disc, you can see there's not much contact this side from the worn shoes. The passenger side was binding slightly and I had a nice shiny drum part of the disc from too much contact. I think a new set of shoes and a general clean up is in order:
I still need to see if the adjustment has fully cured the slight binding problem. I'm wondering if the mechanism needs a clean up too as I think the shoes might not be releasing properly when you take the handbrake off.
I'll have to go and drive it a bit and find out
Thanks all!
I went for a drive yesterday. New lower arms highlighted that the tracking's a bit out. I knew that anyway, and now I've got the suspension fully up to the spec I want I'll get a proper four wheel alignment done. I was getting dragged in to puddles on the near side of the road a bit too easily.
The handbrake seems to be behaving itself for now, no feeling of being held back when pulling away and improved MPG by the looks of things too. I still want to change the shoes and clean the mechanism up so it definitely releases 100% every time I use it.
I went for a drive yesterday. New lower arms highlighted that the tracking's a bit out. I knew that anyway, and now I've got the suspension fully up to the spec I want I'll get a proper four wheel alignment done. I was getting dragged in to puddles on the near side of the road a bit too easily.
The handbrake seems to be behaving itself for now, no feeling of being held back when pulling away and improved MPG by the looks of things too. I still want to change the shoes and clean the mechanism up so it definitely releases 100% every time I use it.
I got around to ordering some new brake shoes!
Lets get stuck in then Off with the old kit:
Here's the bare hub assembley. Not too bad, but a bit of cleaning required:
Brake cable end is still in good nick, but the mount point for the lever is a bit crusty:
As you can see, cleaning with brake cleaner made almost no difference:
I tell a lie, the small back-plate that the shoes rest on did clean up reasonably well, apart from the rusty bits around the outer edge.
Below is the root cause of my problems. The handbrake shoe lever was a bit sticky because it was corroded. Thus, it didn't always go back to its start position when the handbrake was released, meaning the shoes couldn't retract properly.
Comparison of old and new shoes:
And here's the whole mechanism built back up again. A little bit fiddly to do with the hub sitting right in the way but not the end of the world:
Same story for the other side, though the shoes were more worn and the lever not as sticky. You can see the grooves in the shoes on this side. I think the old discs must have corroded rather well and worn the shoes out:
You can see the groove in the new disc from where the old shoes were wearing themselves in to the new surface. Nothing horrific and I'll carry on using this disc, afterall, the shoes are only ever used for parking and occasional hill starting, though my car does have 'hill assist' which is actually much more useful than I thought it would be!
Passenger side built back up and ready for the disc again:
I adjusted the shoes so the disc had a bit of friction but not too much, which should nicely bed everything in and also make sure the handbrake works properly when you put it on. Guess what happens if you don't adjust the shoes out enough at the top... Yep, car rolls forwards on your drive and starts to make a home in your garage Who would do a silly thing like that? 
Next small job was being annoyed with whoever refurbed the wheels before I bought the car. They weren't done brilliantly well, and the hubs were painted which I think is probably what's giving me some wheel wobble at motorway speeds. Also the wheels were difficult to get off and put back on because the spigot also had paint on it, so that needed to come off:
Cue one of these:
...and one of these:
This ended up with the hub face on the wheel looking like this:
The other three were basically the same so no pictures of those. I thought I'd offer them up to the car and go on a test drive to see if I'd made a difference. The wobble is now worse than before... I took a wheel back off to see if there was an obvious issue, and there definitely was:
You can see the contact patches between wheel hub and brake disc are all over the place, suggesting the hub face of the wheel isn't flat at present. I didn't have a strip and clean disc to hand to get the rest of the paint off the hub face and didn't want to use the sander as it would've taken a while. I'll get a strip and clean disc and try again, but the obvious answer is to take the car to a wheel refurbishers and get the hubs machined flat.
In other news, another quick job was attended to; the driver's sill plate. It had some sticky adhesive residue on it which looks like it had gone mouldy too:
A quick clean with some brake cleaner later, and we have a much improved sill plate. Unfortunately it's seen better days so I'll probably replace it, but for now it looks a lot better than it did!
I'm having a full four wheel alignment done tomorrow morning so it should be driving straight and true, but my wheels will have to wait until I have more time to play with them.
Lets get stuck in then
Off with the old kit:Here's the bare hub assembley. Not too bad, but a bit of cleaning required:
Brake cable end is still in good nick, but the mount point for the lever is a bit crusty:
As you can see, cleaning with brake cleaner made almost no difference:
I tell a lie, the small back-plate that the shoes rest on did clean up reasonably well, apart from the rusty bits around the outer edge.
Below is the root cause of my problems. The handbrake shoe lever was a bit sticky because it was corroded. Thus, it didn't always go back to its start position when the handbrake was released, meaning the shoes couldn't retract properly.
Comparison of old and new shoes:
And here's the whole mechanism built back up again. A little bit fiddly to do with the hub sitting right in the way but not the end of the world:
Same story for the other side, though the shoes were more worn and the lever not as sticky. You can see the grooves in the shoes on this side. I think the old discs must have corroded rather well and worn the shoes out:
You can see the groove in the new disc from where the old shoes were wearing themselves in to the new surface. Nothing horrific and I'll carry on using this disc, afterall, the shoes are only ever used for parking and occasional hill starting, though my car does have 'hill assist' which is actually much more useful than I thought it would be!
Passenger side built back up and ready for the disc again:
I adjusted the shoes so the disc had a bit of friction but not too much, which should nicely bed everything in and also make sure the handbrake works properly when you put it on. Guess what happens if you don't adjust the shoes out enough at the top... Yep, car rolls forwards on your drive and starts to make a home in your garage
Who would do a silly thing like that? Next small job was being annoyed with whoever refurbed the wheels before I bought the car. They weren't done brilliantly well, and the hubs were painted which I think is probably what's giving me some wheel wobble at motorway speeds. Also the wheels were difficult to get off and put back on because the spigot also had paint on it, so that needed to come off:
Cue one of these:
...and one of these:
This ended up with the hub face on the wheel looking like this:
The other three were basically the same so no pictures of those. I thought I'd offer them up to the car and go on a test drive to see if I'd made a difference. The wobble is now worse than before... I took a wheel back off to see if there was an obvious issue, and there definitely was:
You can see the contact patches between wheel hub and brake disc are all over the place, suggesting the hub face of the wheel isn't flat at present. I didn't have a strip and clean disc to hand to get the rest of the paint off the hub face and didn't want to use the sander as it would've taken a while. I'll get a strip and clean disc and try again, but the obvious answer is to take the car to a wheel refurbishers and get the hubs machined flat.
In other news, another quick job was attended to; the driver's sill plate. It had some sticky adhesive residue on it which looks like it had gone mouldy too:
A quick clean with some brake cleaner later, and we have a much improved sill plate. Unfortunately it's seen better days so I'll probably replace it, but for now it looks a lot better than it did!
I'm having a full four wheel alignment done tomorrow morning so it should be driving straight and true, but my wheels will have to wait until I have more time to play with them.
-Z- said:
This thread makes me miss the one I had back in 2008, was the press car. If you've seen the e90 M3 Saloon 5th Gear clip that was my car! Had it 2 yrs but 15mpg average did me in the end. Looks much better than the coupe and lovely tail happy balance
I did Vmax 2009, there was a rumour that the top speed limiter didn't kick in in 5th gear, I can confirm that's b
ks 160mph radar verified is where the limiter kicks in in either gear.
At the time Pistonheads was gripped by the mapped 335d beating everything meme so I set out to prove that wrong
Fond memories...
The engine noise is special isn't it! Loved your video, makes me want to have a go with mine on a day out like that. AFAIK they're limited to 155mph. My E46 topped out at 166 on the clocks on an autobahn, my friends E46 hit 170 on the clocks. No idea on real speed though. I've not been to Germany in my E90 yet so I don't know what the top speed is... I did Vmax 2009, there was a rumour that the top speed limiter didn't kick in in 5th gear, I can confirm that's b
ks 160mph radar verified is where the limiter kicks in in either gear. At the time Pistonheads was gripped by the mapped 335d beating everything meme so I set out to prove that wrong
Fond memories... marky911 said:
Lovely car GPM and some good maintenance going on.
Personally I’d get your RS Turbo out of that place as in my experience if I haven’t been happy with someone’s work first time around, I still haven’t been happy after they’ve had another go.
If that’s the level they work to, it generally doesn’t improve much.
I’ve a real soft spot for RS’s though. I hope it turns out ok.
Thanks! There's a little more to come in another update too. Might even have time to type that up in a minute Personally I’d get your RS Turbo out of that place as in my experience if I haven’t been happy with someone’s work first time around, I still haven’t been happy after they’ve had another go.
If that’s the level they work to, it generally doesn’t improve much.
I’ve a real soft spot for RS’s though. I hope it turns out ok.
Re the RS. Yep, I've the same gut feeling, but it's effectively free from my point of view for him to have another go and I've not lost anything apart from time. I wanted the car back on the road last summer, but another year isn't really going to make much difference I guess! The current progress on body work actually does look much more like what I was promised. Jury's still out on the shape of the rear aches though, but that appears to be the only sticking point now. I hope... I really need to pull my finger out and get a thread going about that car. I've had it 10 years now
This morning I got up early because I bought a strip and clean disc the day before and didn't have time to wield it in anger. I decided those wheel hubs needed cleaning properly before I went for a full alignment and wheel balance.
This was the result:
Much more like it, I think you'll agree. On the journey to get my alignment sorted the wobble felt a bit better but still not brilliant. This was confirmed by the garage, who rebalanced all four wheels. I was cheeky and asked to take some pics while it was on the ramp having the alignment checked:
It's all looking pretty clean under there. I'm happy with that. Only real corrosion is some surface stuff on the rear sub frame, some slightly crusty unions on brake lines, and some very minor surface corrosion here and there on the underside of the body shell.
The alignment was a tad out:
Not surprising really, given a full suspension swap, new arms at the front, one at the rear and a camber setup by eye
All easily resolved with a Hunter machine:
The car now drives arrow-straight and the wheel wobble is 99.9% gone. I do seem to have a bit of a brake wobble now though...
This was the result:
Much more like it, I think you'll agree. On the journey to get my alignment sorted the wobble felt a bit better but still not brilliant. This was confirmed by the garage, who rebalanced all four wheels. I was cheeky and asked to take some pics while it was on the ramp having the alignment checked:
It's all looking pretty clean under there. I'm happy with that. Only real corrosion is some surface stuff on the rear sub frame, some slightly crusty unions on brake lines, and some very minor surface corrosion here and there on the underside of the body shell.
The alignment was a tad out:
Not surprising really, given a full suspension swap, new arms at the front, one at the rear and a camber setup by eye
All easily resolved with a Hunter machine:
The car now drives arrow-straight and the wheel wobble is 99.9% gone. I do seem to have a bit of a brake wobble now though...
helix402 said:
You’ll probably need rear brake pipes soon. A whole lot easier than the E46 and cheap even from BMW if you don’t make your own.
Yep, they're not looking box-fresh any more so they're on the longer term maintenance list E46 rear pipes are a pig to do properly, a friend who just restored his made sure to renew all the brake pipes while the rear sub frame was out. They'd been replaced on the cheap in the past but he put it back to OEM.Just a quick update - the brake wobble seems to be more or less sorted. I took the front discs off the other day to have a look and found a load of stuck on 'gunk' on the passenger side. I guess the pad had left some material there and where I've not been using it much a bit of a ridge formed. I cleaned it easily with sand paper and put everything back together and I've been using the car a bit. It's pretty much bang on now. Always nice to have a free fix.
At some point I think I'll have to change the prop centre bearing and flex disc, I still seem to have a bit of vibration in the cabin but it's really minor now. Of course, I'm being a perfectionist too, but I like my cars at 100%
At some point I think I'll have to change the prop centre bearing and flex disc, I still seem to have a bit of vibration in the cabin but it's really minor now. Of course, I'm being a perfectionist too, but I like my cars at 100%
I did a little bit of exhaust polishing the other day and was pleasantly surprised by the results:
Before:
Half way through:
Finished for now:
I didn't think they'd polish up that well as I'd not bothered since owning the car but they look pretty decent now and set the car off a treat. My shed Golf currently has a broken starter motor so I'm just having to use the M3 every day... Once the new starter comes in the post I'll be back to shedding but I'm currenty enjoying V8 noises all the way to work
Before:
Half way through:
Finished for now:
I didn't think they'd polish up that well as I'd not bothered since owning the car but they look pretty decent now and set the car off a treat. My shed Golf currently has a broken starter motor so I'm just having to use the M3 every day... Once the new starter comes in the post I'll be back to shedding but I'm currenty enjoying V8 noises all the way to work
m20b25 said:
fantastic cars, I'm straight onto ebay looking for another. I had a juddering on mine at motorway speeds; an alignment improved it and rear brakes got rid of it. I put the standard 18s on mine and loved the look of them
Cheers! You must like your BMW's going by your username My juddering at motorway speed has all but gone, I'll probably take the rear discs off and clean them up as per the fronts, they've probably just got a bit dirty on the insides from where I didn't use the car much over winter. It's a second car and I'm making an effort to use it slightly more now. I've been using it for work this week as my shed Golf's starter motor has only just turned up in the post.
I've been thinking about getting 18's for mine too. I love the look of them, they'll be easier to look after as they're not diamond cut and the car will ride slightly better on them too if they're anything like my E46 was on 18's...
I could even be persuaded to sell my car for the right price as I've still not ticked the 911 box yet. Too many cars, such little time
rainmasterb said:
Looking good. What did you use?
To answer your question properly, I dug the polish back out of the cupboard and took a picture for you!
As it was such a nice day today I thought I'd better clean the flies off the font of the car. It's just served me very well for the last 500 miles while my Golf shed was waiting for a starter motor to turn up in the post. I had time to wax it too so I thought I'd reverse off the drive and take some pictures in the sun. It's wearing its 145,000 miles well
I've saved possibly the best picture for last. My phone applied some sort of filter to this picture but I quite like it
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