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
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.
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.
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.
Big fan of Gliptone cleaner and conditioner. It’s my go to for sorting leather out and will do wonders on steering wheels.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.
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 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!
Keep us updated!
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
Very nice, I’ve always fancied a saloon M3
Mind you, every road round here has been turned into a 40/50 limit.
Court_S said:
Good to hear that it’s treating you well still. I think these still look great.
I’ve never understood the decision to speed up when being overtaken. Chap in a 240 did it to me a while back; he was bimbling along at 45 in a 60, as soon as I went to overtake he booted it.
This seems to be common these days. When I was younger people would over take a lot on A & B roads and now when I see it happen people go into instant outrage like they’re some sort of policing system. It’s almost like overtaking is considered dangerous driving these days.I’ve never understood the decision to speed up when being overtaken. Chap in a 240 did it to me a while back; he was bimbling along at 45 in a 60, as soon as I went to overtake he booted it.
Mind you, every road round here has been turned into a 40/50 limit.
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.
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...
https://youtu.be/oYDKLjoJaYs
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... https://youtu.be/oYDKLjoJaYs
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.
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.
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