Laminar's M3 5.0 swap: Fünf-Null

[Laminar]

Wife came home on a Thursday, "Should my brake pedal go all of the way to the floor? Can you take my car around the block and see if something's wrong?" I turned it on, pressed the brake pedal and felt it go all the way to the floor, then turned it off. It's broken. She helped me bleed the brakes to see if that would help as the fluid was getting orangish by now. No change. So it's 10:30pm and suddenly I have to DD the M3 so she can take my car. Welp, guess I'll have to fix the exhaust some other time. I took her car off the lift, got the M3 up, slapped the exhaust back on but didn't start the car up because it was 11pm by then and I like my neighbors.

The littlest one got to ride in the M3 for the first time.



She likes the sunroof.

In the meantime, I got wife's car back up on the lift:



Triggered the ABS bleed routine, no change. The forums all say the dealer replaced the master cylinder and that didn't fix the issue and they ended up having to do the ABS module. My MC was replaced under a TSB just a couple of years ago so I figured it was good.

Grabbed a used ABS module from the junkyard on Saturday, installed it on Sunday. Had to reprogram it for her car (it was from a 2013, hers is a 2011). Bled the system, ran the ABS bleed routine. No change. Ford recommends pressure bleeding at 40-60psi.

I have a pressure bleeder with an adapter for the M3, Motive wants $27 for the Ford adapter. So I went to the junkyard on Monday and bought a spare cap, grabbed some fittings from Menards and made an adapter. Except it leaks at like 5psi because it's a simple three-prong twist-lock, not a threaded cap. I still tried to bleed and run the ABS bleed routine but mostly ended up with a quart of brake fluid under the car.

Fine, Motive gets my $38 (with Priority shipping). Adapter shows up Thursday. Seals great, bled at 30psi, got a bunch of air out of the lines.

Pedal still doesn't firm up.

Ordered a new master cylinder, showed up Saturday. Installed Monday. Pedal firmed up.

In the meantime, I also ordered some centercaps for my stock M Contour wheels as the stock ones broke and fell off. Also ordered a single fog light block plate. The passenger side feeds the air intake but the driver's side doesn't need to be open. I installed it, but since it was black, it still just looked like an open hole. So I made it...extra.



You can also see where the 1 yo found a sharpie and doodled on the car a bit.

Overall I think I'm averaging about 15mpg, which is way down from when the engine was stock. And no AC hurts a bit on these 90 degree days, but it's kind of fun to DD. At least I'm not rushing to get wife's car back together and my regular DD back.

[motorV8ed]

Wow, that is a lot of humping. I bet you are now 100% glad you got that lift!

[Laminar]

Totally - I mean I don't want it to be so handy, but it is.

Test drove her car last night, everything's great. I also threw a new axle on it, and the thing drives like a new car. Her passenger CV was clicking about a year ago and I found a leaky shock, so I went ahead and did both axles, axle seals, and suspension all around. I used Ford suspension parts and seals but aftermarket axles ($50 vs. $120 each). Turns out that if you don't use Ford axles, the car vibrates like crazy from 20-35mph. So it's been shaking for a year. I did the passenger side axle in June, hoping one would do it, but it didn't. So I finally got around to the driver's side axle. Drives like a dream. I just need to get that screw out of the back tire, planning to take it in over lunch today.

Also, DDing the M3 prompted me to do a little more work on it - I worked on the idle a bit more and got it to the best it's ever been, so that feels good. I also got the block test kit from Autozone and checked the coolant for any trace of combustion gas. It passed with flying colors, which was a relief. Before I had the heads redone it was taking coolant and heating up too fast. Looks like that's cured now. It's been in the 90s this past week and even when I got stuck in stop and go traffic on the interstate it didn't get above 195.



I mean, I was all sorts of sweaty but the car was fine.

[Tim Mc]

The littlest one got to ride in the M3 for the first time.

Were you on the throttle making some noise when this was taken? The little one looks a bit perplexed...or was enjoying the experience that is M3!

:-)

[Laminar]

I think my kids are immune to g-forces. We'll be going around an onramp with the tires howling, my wife will be clenching her door handle, and both kids are in the back just gazing out the window.

If I'd had to drive the M3 for another week, I would have pulled out the racing seat and put the stock seat back in. The racing seat doesn't add that much more inconvenience or discomfort to driving, but having the harness installed means no one can sit behind me. The six year old got to sit up front (with a belt and booster) but it still felt weird and lord only knows what the airbags in this car would do if someone pulled out in front of me. Who knows if they're even there!

[Laminar]

Racing coming up this weekend. Need to get the car up in the air and give it a good lookover.

One thing I've noticed is a lot of play developing in the steering. The shaft is tight into the rack and the inner and outer tie rods are new, so I think the rack is wearing out. Quick history of my steering racks!

1. Rack the car came with - possibly original to the car. Leaked a lot. Replaced with...
2. A rebuilt Z3 rack from Detroit Axle on eBay, which turned out to not be a Z3 rack at all. They refused to admit it, even though the part number was wrong, along with the action. Still slow, still 3.2 turns LtL. No worries! In less than a year, this one started leaking like crazy, too. So I found:
3. An actual used Z3 rack on eBay. Slammed it in place in March 2017 and it's worked leak-free since then.

When I had the M3 and Z3 racks out and side-by-side, I took measurements of the travel and made this little chart, which I don't think I ever posted here.



You can see here that "lock to lock" turns don't actually tell you anything about steering ratio. The M3 rack is more turns lock-to-lock, but it also has more travel for a higher steering angle.

This chart also tells a story. It's a map of how many degrees you have to turn the wheel to get 1 mm of steering rack change.



It's clear that the M3 is much slower directly off center than the Z3, and that the Z3 has a slightly faster deg/mm ratio throughout the whole range.

So now I'm looking for a 330i ZHP rack - one of the yellow tag 712 part number units. They were on the 330i ZHP and also some random E46s. Unfortunately, everything on eBay goes by the compatibility, and of course they say that every E46 rack is "compatible" with the 330i ZHP, so that's not helpful. And almost every seller is using stock photos. And then most car-part.com listings show pictures of wrecked E46s, which is fun in its own right, but not helpful when I'm looking for the tag on the rack itself.

[Tim Mc]

We chose Rack Doctor for the ZHP rack with new tie rods. Cost was $432 shipped to our door. Uneventful install and still going strong when we stored it.

https://shop.rackdoctor.net/addtocart.sc

I'd expect a serviceable rack with clean fluid to last many years.

[Laminar]

False alarm. It was just another inner tire rod going bad. Luckily I still had the old original rack sitting on a shelf with two good inners. That’s on, tire pressures are set at 28 all around, front ride height is 12.5, rear is 11.5 per the advice from this thread. Ready to go for tomorrow!

[Kevin325i]

Should work well for you, have fun.

[Laminar]

WAY better! Waaay more grip than before. The front sway bar is in its middle setting, the rear is tight. Most E36 advice I see says either loose on the rear sway bar or ditch it. Maybe my front setup is way off, but with the rear tight, the car actually turns. No more uncontrollable pushing - the rear end is part of the party now.

Between having so few races this year and continuing to mess with my setup, I felt like I was relearning the car. The runs were: 43.3, 41.2, 42.7+1, 42.4, 40.8, 39.9. Those middle two runs I overcooked a corner and got thrown off. But in general I was able to push harder and harder every time. My last time was good for 11th/81. There was a BSP E36 M3 coupe I beat by a couple tenths, an E46 M3 that had me by half a second, and a supercharged S52-swapped 318ti that had me by a few tenths.



Also got a clip of that launch:

https://www.instagram.com/p/B1SJAjUA..._web_copy_link

Just judging by the first slalom on the launch, I could be waaay tighter on the cones.

I also need to do something about the brakes. I'm not ready to drop $400-500 on brake pads yet (currently running PFZ fronts and stock rears), but I have way more brakes at the end of the run than the beginning. I want to block off the brake cooling vents so they get up to temp more quickly. I also had an ABS light turn on like 10 miles from home, so I'm going to have to see what that's all about.

[Tim Mc]

Would a stock type pad be better for autocross? I don't recall what you have currently.

May suggest putting your Go Pro behind the front tire and you will see what distance you are allowing. I've done this and it is quite surprising for me, just how much extra turning I was indeed doing - significant waste of time.

Glad you are getting things sorted - image looks great (except for the port-a-pottie ;-))

[Laminar]

Would a stock type pad be better for autocross? I don't recall what you have currently.

Fronts are PFC Z-rated, rears are stock. Inexpensive, low dust, decent bite. But I could certainly get a lot more aggressive, but then we're talking ~$220 per axle and it feels weird to spend about a quarter of the car's value in brake pads.

A couple more thoughts - that course was almost entirely above 40mph, which was great. Since we lost the airport venue, our courses are small and I end up in the weird 30mph spot where it's too fast for 1st gear and too slow for 2nd. The car puts power down very well, I can be pretty ham-footed with the throttle application even while the car is still turning and it will take it. It's fun watching the datalog jump 40-50 in an instant when I stomp on the gas. It really shines from 3500-5500 and has enough headroom to carry up to 6500 when needed - I saw 65mph on this course at one point. I'm honestly not well-versed in the "high-speed" stuff, and it was a lot of fun. I think that's why I kept picking up so much time on each run - I still never really found the limit on some of those elements.

Also, this is the only course I can think of where I didn't need to move my hands on the wheel because of a tight element. It was a nice feeling and just a result of having to design a course on top of an existing track.

I wish I could have gone back for day 2 to build on what I learned, but we had a little family trip out of town Sunday-Tuesday, so that happened instead.

One more thing - I was bored and looking into cooling options and found Purple Ice. So I grabbed some and threw about 8oz into the cooling system. Noticed no difference on Saturday. On the highway in 91 degree ambient temps, it ran right above the thermostat. During each autocross run it'd get up to about 200 then drop back down to ~193 per the cooling fan setup. I suppose the real test would be an actual 20 minute track session to see where temps would level out. During the track day last year in ~87 degree temps I was seeing 230 by the end of a session, which is higher than I'm comfortable with. Since then I've added some ducting to better direct air into the radiator. I suppose I need to go do another track day to see how it's doing now. Not becaue it'd be a blast, of course, but simply to advance science.

[Laminar]

Crazy week.

Last weekend was the last event of the season!

It started with getting the car jacked up and doing the pre-race inspection.



Nothing was out of order. I did mess with the idle settings again. When I'd push the clutch in, it would about 50% of the time sit at 1600rpm and refuse to enter closed-loop idle. I dumbed the system down a bit and set static initial values for the idle valve and got it to work a lot better. But now occasionally it will die right after startup - it's supposed to ramp from cranking idle position to running idle position over a few seconds, but it seems to jump there and it's enough to kill the system. Still need to figure that out, but for the most part it works well.

Based on the last time I co-drove the car, I had a TON more braking power once the brakes got warm. So I blocked off the brake vent ducts. Useful for on-track, but not so useful for autocross where they're undoing any heat we can get into them.



Showed up Saturday morning and got teched. Had some other interesting cars show up:





It ended up being an awesome course - 70-80 seconds per run. We only had about 42 cars show up, so we got 8 runs in and were out by 3pm. I picked up time on almost every run as I got more comfortable throwing the car into the elements. Even on my last run I took another 8 tenths off my previous best run, which was good enough for 4th in raw.

Based on the markings on my tires, the rears were definitely rubbing on the inside of the fenders. I decided to raise the rear up a half inch or so to prevent that rubbing, which ended up being a good decision.

Sunday I had a co-driver, the same guy that broke the car last time. He was much more gentle with his 1-2 shift this time, though we did get the car airborne. The course was almost the same as Saturday, with just a couple of tweaks to make it even faster. One of the crossovers was a little bumpy but led to a nice straightaway, so maximizing speed paid off. After a couple runs he asked if I was flat through the crossover, which I was - I think that was him asking permission to go hard, which he did. By the afternoon, the front tires just felt wiped out, and the car would push in the tight turnarounds. My fastest time was in the morning, I couldn't get within a half second of that in the afternoon. On Sunday, a Z06 on Hoosiers showed up that wasn't there on Saturday, and its drivers took 1st and 2nd raw, I ended up 6th.

Here's Saturday's fast run from inside the car, and some video of the Sunday run from outside:



Overall an awesome weekend. I took Monday and Tuesday off of work, and decided I didn't want to stare at the rust spot all winter, so I tore the rear bumper off and started in on rust repair.



But then suddenly Tuesday morning someone wanted to buy my wife's car, meaning she was going to be driving my car and I'd have to daily the M3. So Tuesday became a scramble to get the car in shape to DD and carry two kids. I ended up:
- Putting the winter tires on (checked the date code and they're from 2005...I need new winter tires)
- Jacking the coilovers all of the way up for max winter ground clearance. Finally my exhaust doesn't scrape on my not-steep driveway.
- Pulling the racing seat and reinstalling the stock seat, which meant welding the stock seat where it tore apart at the seatback connection, then redoing the upholstery.
- Reinstalling the stock seat belt so I could get rid of the harness and put a kid behind me.
- Fabbing up some car seat LATCH mounts to attach a baby seat on the passenger side.
- Move the rear passenger seat belt to the driver's side, since I only have one seat belt back there.
- Get the rear bumper, plastic inner fenders, and mudflaps reinstalled.

I managed to finish all of that up by about 7:40pm. Wife was out of town for work, so I loaded up the kids for a quick test drive/snack run/fuel-up/Redbox return.





Some old guy at the gas station in a brand new F-250 parked across two spots came up to me and said something like, "GOD DAMN WHAT ENGINE IS THAT? IT DON'T SOUND LIKE NO FUCKIN' BMW!" So that was cool.

[Laminar]

So then the wife needed a car. I'd been keeping my eyes peeled for months for the right car, and I had it narrowed down to three by Friday. I pinged their sales guys and settled on the one I wanted - it was in Oklahoma, which was a good 6 hour drive away. So Friday after work I headed out to grab a one-way rental car. The closest Enterprise is at a Ford dealership. I pulled in with the M3 and yet again had someone stop and ask me what the hell kind of engine was in that car. I had reserved a "premium"-level car since I knew I'd be in there for a long time and it was only $25 more than a Nissan Versa.

I showed up and he offered me an Impala or...this.



2SS package, which is the 455hp 6.2L V8 and heated/cooled leather and all that junk. Not what I was expecting from a rental Camaro.

Bombed down to Oklahoma by 9PM and swung by the dealership to check out the car.



Went back first thing the next morning and bought it.



Heated/cooled/massaging seats, factory tow pack, 2.7 TT EcoBoost, all the cameras, CPO with 100,000 mile warranty. Was originally $64k new, I got it for less than half that with 36,000 miles on it. I love Lincoln depreciation.

Wife wanted a sunroof, I got her a sunroof.



Made it home by 6PM. Turns out the Camaro did better on gas for the same route - 24.4 vs 25.1!



Guess I need to LS swap her car now.

[95maxrider]

Glad to hear the car is running well and going fast! I seem to miss a lot of email notifications from this thread, not sure why. Did you do any rally-x events this year?

[Laminar]

No.

They have a new venue not too far away that's pretty hard-packed. They even reported gaining time by running 200TW tires in the afternoon! But every time they had an event there this year it was either the same day or the weekend before an autocross and I try not to desert my wife too many weekends in a row. I haven't given up on RallyX, I need to make one of those events still.

[95maxrider]

No.

They have a new venue not too far away that's pretty hard-packed. They even reported gaining time by running 200TW tires in the afternoon! But every time they had an event there this year it was either the same day or the weekend before an autocross and I try not to desert my wife too many weekends in a row. I haven't given up on RallyX, I need to make one of those events still.

Sounds like a venue built for your car! Hard packed stuff is the best, our last event was full of "moon dust" and I couldn't use any of my power. I get the time limitations, I haven't run an auto-x in like two years. I keep saying next year, next year...

[Tim Mc]

Love to see a V8 M3 put thru its paces!

Nice driving...

[Laminar]

Pics from the event!





The photographer caught the car landing after the crossover jump...

[Laminar]

Well I got tired of the rear quarter panel rust and didn't want to spend another winter staring at it, so off came the back bumper and out came the angle grinder.



Last time I tried to do some repainting I paid $50 for two aerosol cans of color-matched Arctic Silver paint. It didn't really match.

So this time I just grabbed Duplicolor Galaxy Silver, which someone said was pretty close. It's not that close, but I keep the car dirty enough it won't matter, and it's better than rust.







There was a bunch of rust along the passenger door sill and along the bottom of the passenger door, so I cleaned that up as well.

I also grabbed new cowl trim pieces, the old ones were falling apart.





And in an attempt to not get a headache every time I drive the car, I looked into sealing up the cabin better. I knew there was a lot of heat coming in from the trans tunnel and I don't think my rubber shift boot was sealing on the shifter very well. So I installed a new boot and added Noico sound deadening over everything in the area to keep the toxic fumes out.



Dropped my real car off to get snow tires installed yesterday, planned to drive the M3 to work today. Then checked the forecast and saw snow, uh-oh. Finished up the M3 and got it on the ground at 9:45PM. Got woken up by the school calling to say there was a 2 hr delay today.

The plow hadn't made it to my street yet but I still made it to work on time. I kept it at about 45 on the interstate, I still have the sketchy autocross alignment that's really eager to turn. Combine that with ample torque at low RPMs and the thing reeeeally liked to be sideways. It's on Blizzaks, but they're old and down to ~4/32.

[tptrsn]

Good stuff!!

[95maxrider]

I'm curious to see more pics of the rust repair. How much did you cut out? How did you patch it up? My car has rust in the same areas. I think my rear quarter rust is only on the PS, but the sill rust is on both sides.

[Laminar]

Ideally I'd have the time (and motivation) to do the job right - cut the whole area out, weld in new metal. But as it seems to go too often, time is short.

I actively try not to get pictures of the car from an angle where you can see the rust, but here's a shot that someone caught:



I took a flap wheel to the rust spot and when it was all gone, ended up with a hole about 1/2" by 1.5". The other side was similar, just a little further back. Also the wheel arches were pretty rusty where the paint had flaked off after I rolled the inner fenders.

In this picture, you can see the rust creeping up the bottoms of the doors:



I used the fiberglass-reinforced Bondo to fill in the hole and sanded everything smooth first with an angle grinder, then 80 grit, then finer grits.





I also decided that I hate myself and want to suffer, so I pulled the sideskirts off.



All of that got ground down, but luckily it was just surface stuff. It got etching primer, paint, and rubberized bedliner coating to protect it underneath of the sideskirts.

The body got primed and painted with the Duplicolor Galaxy Silver, which is apparently a GM color.



It's not a perfect match, but in the right (dim) light, it looks okay and does what I need it to.

So the driver's side got the rear quarter under the bodyline up to the rear door. The front got the same, plus both doors under the trim. Clearcoat is Rustoleum 2X Ultra Gloss Clear.

I had to drive the car Monday when my real car was getting its snows installed. When I went to pick up my real car, I decided to just leave the M3 at the tire place and let them throw some Blizzaks on it, too.





And I dropped the wife's winter wheels off for Blizzaks as well. All four rims fit in the trunk of my normal car, but with the tires installed, I could only fit one in the trunk. So I ended up having to throw a couple in the backseat of the M3 also.



I went with a 215/50R17 to get a little more sidewall. The winter wheels are a 17x8 so there's a little bit of a stretch, but it's not bad, and I wanted the narrower tires anyway. Here's the stock 245/40R17 vs. the snows:



I'd considered going with a 215/55 but I'm glad I didn't, that may have rubbed a bit.





You can also see that the paint is a decent enough match - in the above pic the new stuff is below the (missing) door trim, and in the below it's the rear quarter under the body crease:



My coilovers are currently at max height. I'm thinking about picking up some softer 8" springs vs. the 525lb/700lb 6" springs I have now. It's a little harsh in over rough ground and I wouldn't mind a little extra ride height. And with new snows and some ride height, I could always get back to RallyCross...

[Laminar]

Just decided to address some steering issues. There's definitely play in the rack still, even after new tie rod inners and outers - I can more the steering wheel an inch or so either direction on the interstate. The power steering pump gets reeeally whiny after a run. And steering ratio is still really slow, even with the Z3 rack.

I ordered a 330 ZHP yellow tag rack - 13.7:1 linear ratio. I'll measure stroke like I did for the M3 and Z3 racks to see how it measures up. The Internet tells me it should be nice and quick, faster than the Z3. The Z4M Coupe is 12.8:1 but those are hard to find.

I already have an E46 steering shaft, which has a different guibo/coupler than the E36. So I nabbed a urethane guibo, and new Lemforder inners and outers for good measure. I'll nab a new PS pump from the parts store when it's time.

[95maxrider]

Just decided to address some steering issues. There's definitely play in the rack still, even after new tie rod inners and outers - I can more the steering wheel an inch or so either direction on the interstate. The power steering pump gets reeeally whiny after a run. And steering ratio is still really slow, even with the Z3 rack.

I ordered a 330 ZHP yellow tag rack - 13.7:1 linear ratio. I'll measure stroke like I did for the M3 and Z3 racks to see how it measures up. The Internet tells me it should be nice and quick, faster than the Z3. The Z4M Coupe is 12.8:1 but those are hard to find.

I already have an E46 steering shaft, which has a different guibo/coupler than the E36. So I nabbed a urethane guibo, and new Lemforder inners and outers for good measure. I'll nab a new PS pump from the parts store when it's time.

Please post up your measurements, I'm very curious. I installed the good Z3 rack in my car and it wasn't as fast as I had hoped for. I take it the E46 steering shaft is required to use the ZHP rack?