BenFenner's 2000 Black M-Coupe

[BimmerBreaker]

Thats pretty funny, hope they didn't kick any rocks up though!

[BenFenner]

I wasn't laughing at the time.

It's been a year since it happened though, so I'm almost over it.

[BenFenner]

Loose hatch latch | Album

When I first bought the car the rear hatch needed to be shut forcefully to latch properly. Even when latched, it rattled more than expected. After setting the rubber hatch adjusters properly and assessing the situation, I determined a loose latch was the culprit. It was probably slowly getting worse for some 2-3 years. I put off the fix because I thought a lot of interior bits needed to be removed. Once I got into it, I realized that was not the case. I thought I needed access to the nuts, but it seems they are blind and self-holding so the bolts can be tightened without access to the nuts.

I took some pictures of the back of the interior bits while they were out in case anyone wants to know how they are assembled (I was curious myself).

[BenFenner]

Hide dash cam wiring | Album

If you've been reading my dash cam thread, you'll know that I picked one up and have been using it. I got really sick of having the wire dangling there. I thought I was going to have to take the headliner down to run the wiring where I wanted, but one day while particularly annoyed with the wire I realized I could hide it easily without removing the headliner. I still want to wire it into the car some way, but for now it still goes in the cigarette lighter. I ran the wire up along the top of the windshield snugged above the headliner, down the passenger's side A-pilllar trim, and behind the glove box and center console where it comes out right by the cigarette lighter provision.

[BenFenner]

Oil change | Album

This time I bought filters in bulk now that I knew which ones to buy. The car also loses a bit of oil between changes (mostly through the CCV system I think) so I ordered some extra oil. The racing oil you'll see in one of the pictures is for the SE-R, not the M Coupe. I don't have the price of this oil fill on record, but it was likely similar to the $86 I paid for the previous filter and oil change so that's what I'm going with for my records.

[Fumanchu282]

What is your lifting strategy there? Are those rear jacks on the jack points/pads?

[BimmerBreaker]

Look to be under the subframe. Be careful under there...! Considered getting another set of ramps?

[BenFenner]

I wanted some hockey pucks before ever using the jack pads to protect them from the jack (I know they sell items exactly for this purpose, but hockey pucks are way cheaper), and I didn't order them until a good bit after this job.
Even with the hockey pucks, I'll only lift by the jack pads. My jack stands are a "V" shape on top so I won't use them to suspend by the jack pads even now. (I know they sell flat-topped jack stands. Maybe some day I will get some. But if you lift by the jack pad, how do you then transition to a jack stand in the same spot? )

Without using the jack pads, I have two techniques I tend to use to get the rear up. I think I've described those techniques, and ones for the front in this thread: Theory - Jacking from the rear differential.

Neither technique uses the rear diff, as I'm admittedly irrational about not using it to lift the car.

I'll use these spots to either lift or suspend the car in varying order based on the phases of the moon.

1) The rear trailing arm immediately next to the wheel knuckle. Always protecting it with wood on the jack or stacks of rags on the "V" headed jack stands. (If this method is used to suspend the car, the wheels will sit at ride height. This can be adventageous depending on what kind of work you're doing. If you notice the images above show the suspension at full droop, which means I probably lifted here and suspended elsewhere.)

2) The outer edges of the rear subframe. These have a long bolt sticking down through the middle of them, so I never left from here with the jack, but I will suspend the car from here with the jack stands. This is what I've done in the images above. One leg of the "V" head fits very nicely inside the circle of the junction and avoids the center bolt.

3) The center of the rear subframe where it bows down to clear the driveshaft. I don't like to suspend from here for obvious reasons, but I sometimes lift or lower the car from here. If I do, I need blocks of wood under the rear tires to give me the clearance for my jack so I don't do this often.


I've considered getting another set of ramps, but they would be useless for getting all four wheels in the air. I'd have to drive forward onto all four ramps at once, which means before I move the car I'd have to get a set of ramps UNDER the side sills of the car which I don't think I could do at stock ride height, let alone where I am lowered now. (Even now to get the front flippers to clear the ramps I need some sections of 2x6 to lessen the angle of the ramp.)

I take safety very seriously. These are 10-ton ramps (the widest I could find for those wide rear tires in the plans) and 4-ton jack stands with locking pins (no ratcheting jackstands for me). I believe I am very knowledgeable about where to put them (hard points only, spread far enough apart to prevent tipping) and I always chalk the tires with bricks if they are not in the air. Cheers for looking out! And I'm not perfect so if there are better ways, I'm all ears.

[BimmerBreaker]

When I use four ramps I drive up on the fronts, jack up the rear and slide the ramps underneath so that the ramps face inwards, to prevent any possibility of the car rolling off. Just a thought

[BenFenner]

I've done similar when raising just one end of the car. I will store that away in the old memory bank. =]

[BenFenner]

Replace magnetic spats | Album

My spats where getting stiff, and the magnet was deteriorating after I think 5 years of use. Some was even stuck to the car so badly it needed to be taken off with the clay bar. I didn't wax properly which made things worse. I thought the previous owner purchased Roadster Solutions spats (because why would you buy anything else?) and put them on the car, but it turns out they were another brand, which explains maybe why they weren't doing so well. How do I know they were a different brand? Well, when my new spats arrived from Roadster Solutions, they were a little thinner, and a completely different shape. They fit so much better than the ones on the car before. I know of two other suppliers of spats, but I don't know which one these old ones are so I can't name names.

There are comparison images below of the old shape versus the new shape with the bottoms lined up to show the difference.

I don't love the look of spats (espeacially on a black car), but I feel the protection is necessary, so they were $44.90 well spent.







This is the old spat on top, with the magnetic side facing up. The new spat is below it with the magnetic side facing down. Notice how the top-left edge is lined up and the units are parallel, yet the bottom edges don't land in nearly the same place. The Roadster Solutions spat on the bottom fits the rear fender arc perfectly, whereas the other brand of spat was not a great fit.




This is the same configuration. Old on top, new on bottom. This time I have lined up the bottom edges as best I could at the left corner. The old spat has a shallower arc that doesn't follow the fender arc when the flat edge is parallel to the rocker panel.

[BenFenner]

Hooning in the snow | Album

Two winters ago (holy mother of God I am behind in updates) we got some decent snow so it was time to head out and see what kind of trouble I could get into.
The video below is very short, because the wipers froze and didn't clean the top part of the windshield anymore which made most of the video useless.
I learned a few things and relearned a few more.

1) ASC doesn't work magic. It doesn't have full control over the throttle plate, so it will not save you if you're determined in the snow.
2) With ASC off and 275 wide "extreme performance summer" tires it is much too easy to gather speed. Available forward traction was much greater than I was expecting.
3) ABS is absolutely horrid in the snow. I knew this, but had forgotten since I've never owned a car with ABS until this one. With way more accelerative traction than braking, I ended my excursion early. I must locate the fuse for next time.
4) I miss the wide open beach parking lots of my youth.

[BenFenner]

Rear tire swap | Album

The inside of my rear tires were getting toward the end of their life (damn lowered BMW camber). Since the tire tread pattern is symmetric, I can swap them on the wheels and get much more life out of them. I had a track day at Barber Motorsports Park coming up soon so I made sure to get this done first.
I only have pictures after the swap, so the outside has all the wear now in the pictures.
It was $41.30 to swap the tires.

[BenFenner]

New Apex ARC-8 wheels arrive | Album

For those not familiar, Apex hit the BMW scene hard relatively recently with the holy trinity of aesthetics, price, and quality (light and strong) in a modern cast package. They are selling wheels hand over fist, and everyone is loving it. Every winter they run group buys for most of their offerings, which I jumped in on two winters back and they arrived around February 13th, 2014.

I'm a bit behind in updates, which is why I'm just getting to this now. I took a bazillion pictures, so check the album if you'd like. I like to confirm the specs of the wheels when I get them, so a lot of the pics are me checking the diameter, width, and especially the offset.

I bought these wheels mainly because I hate the stock Roadstar design, and the wheels I really want are not available. After 2 years of trying to buy my dream wheels, I've sort of given up and gone with these instead. In the event that I ever do get a 3-piece wheel of my liking, I will be able to use these wheels as a much better gauge for what size and offset I'd like. So in a way, these are a trial run for a different set of wheels to come later. In the meantime, they will allow for more rubber which is my main goal, and they will look good doing it.

Specs:
(2x) Apex ARC-8 | 17"x9" . . .| ET30 | Concave "Profile 3" | 5x120mm PCD | 72.56mm hub bore | Hyper Silver | 17.0 pounds | $264
(2x) Apex ARC-8 | 17"x10.5" | ET27 | Concave "Profile 3" | 5x120mm PCD | 72.56mm hub bore | Hyper Silver | 19.2 pounds | $299

Total with group buy discount: $1,001.00


Pics:

[Fumanchu282]

more updates, you laggard!

[spacecowboy]

They look like the TSW Hockenheim's I had on my MKIII VW VR6.

[BenFenner]

They look like the TSW Hockenheim's I had on my MKIII VW VR6.

You mean Apex's classic "Y" spoke design looks similar to every other classic "Y" spoke design ever?

more updates, you laggard!

Thank you. I am pushing through the updates as fast as I can.

[BenFenner]

Track day - Barber Motorsports Park (BMP) | Album

I'll post some pictures first, then the compilation video.











































*continued in post #245*

[Fumanchu282]

do go on...

[BenFenner]

*continued from post #243*

Here's the video I promised from Barber Motorsports Park. The highlights don't include anything from the last session, because I show that session in its entirety at the end of the video. Watch until (or skip to) 11:39 to catch my lurid slide.
The description of the video on YouTube has all of the day's notes.

[BenFenner]

New front tires arrive | Album

A few updates back I showed the new wheels (Apex ARC-8) so there must be tires not far behind.
The fronts are the famous Dunlop Direzza ZII (which I've wanted to try for a while) in size 245-40-17.
25.8 pounds on the milligram calibrated, NASA certified bathroom scale.

[BenFenner]

New rear tires arrive | Album

With the front tires ordered it was time to make a decision about the rears. I have my own theory about choosing tires when needs and available widths are so different from front-to-back. If you'd like to pick my brain on that, by all means, just ask.
Along with that theory, I'm also seriously limited with tire choices in my desired size (295-35-17). I even started a thread about it you can check out if you want: DOT legal tire options for 295-35-17 size? Rare tire size talk.
The short answer is that there is nothing really available, nor anything in a 285 or 305.

I don't have any idea of what size and model to settle on for a rear tire but I want these stock wheels off the car ASAP. As a temporary solution I went back to the ol' Sumitomo HTR ZII (in a tall size of 275-40-17) because they are devilishly cheap, and I can use them to hold me over while I figure out what I'm really going to do about rear tires.
27.8 pounds on the milligram calibrated, NASA certified bathroom scale.

The Sumitomos I get shipped tend to have grey dust and rest marks on the sidewalls for whatever reason, so I also color those in a bit so they don't look goofy for the first few weeks while the oils work their way to the surface.

[BenFenner]

Raise the rear with thicker spring pads | Album

I'm not happy with the inside of my tires wearing so drastically compared to the outside. As it stands, I have to have the tires swapped on the rear wheels just to use all of the tread throughout their life. And before I put brand new wheels and tires on, I wanted to improve the situation.
Obviously this path is well worn by Z3 owners and most BMW owners at that so I won't get into the details. The car is lowered about 2" in the rear which causes the camber gain. It is time to raise it up some.
As a bonus it will also look better to me. I like my tire-to-fender gap to be equal all the way from the front to the top to the rear at ride height. As it stands right now, I have a little bit of the infant-in-a-WWII-helmet look going on.

I considered stacking the new spring pads with the old ones, but ended up getting the height I needed by just swapping them.

My old spring pads seemed to be the 5 or 7mm versions.
The new ones are 14.5mm (usually called 15mm on most sites) and often get left off the list of available options so the part number is hard to come by. The BMW part number is 33531094754.
I paid $40.36 plus shipping for the pair.

Replacing well-settled spring pads with new ones ~7mm taller produced a ride height gain of ~26mm (~1 inch). I realize this doesn't exactly mesh with the motion ratio of the rear, but the extra gain must be due to the new pads lacking grooves aged into the rubber. As they settle I'm sure the car will drop a bit in the rear. If that happens enough I will end up stacking in the old pads as initially planned.

Notice one of the images shows the tread width gained (via dust marks from the shop floor) by reducing some camber.


And the pics:

[BenFenner]

Document the stock undercarriage | Album

While the car was on the lift for the spring pad swapping, I took some pictures of the undercarriage for kicks and stitched them together with 9,000 hours of MS Paint.
The image has already been put to use by those looking to see if their exhaust is stock or not.

For more like this, Randy has a couple nice ones with aftermarket exhausts:
http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/sh...7#post27621907

Source images:
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https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...54767767_o.jpg
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https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...11026514_o.jpg
https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...22097365_o.jpg
https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...98239634_o.jpg
https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/hphoto...72644072_o.jpg

[BenFenner]

Mounting and balancing new tires onto new wheels | Album

After waxing the wheels it was time to get the tires mounted. As usual, I loaded the wheels and tires into the coupe and made multiple trips to the tire place. Keeping busy shuttling things back and forth also keeps me from hovering over the tire guys like an expectant father.

The finished fronts weighed in at 44.0 pounds each and the rears at 48.2 pounds. If you recall the front wheels weigh 17.0 pounds and the rears 19.2, and the front tires 25.8 and rear tires 27.8 pounds.
Doing the math shows that each front wheel/tire combo gained 1.2 pounds in the process, which is down to balancing weights, valve stem, and air fill.
The rears gained the same 1.2 pounds each as well.

Mounting and balancing for 17" wheels runs me $82.59.

I took more pictures than any normal person would, so check the album if you want to see those. I will try to post only a few.