S54 ---> Hellrot E36 328I

[PITT M3 RR]

Like I said in your build, I'm here all weekend haha.

So for the alignment, over the last few days Ive been building stands. 18"x16". I took them over to the garage and got the car up. For .44 cents a tile, you can get the peel and stick ones shown below. I spread motor oil between them And placed them under the tires. They removed all suspension hysteresis making it the same as it would be while rolling. you can see how much the rear tires slid outward when lowered.

using the specs of 56.6" rear width and 56" front, I set my string up to be 13cm from the rear hub and 13.82cm from the front. The difference was calculated from the .6" wider rear = 7.62mm per side added at the front to make the string parallel. From here you measure from the front and rear of each rim to the string. The difference is the toe in or out. My fronts were WAY in and rear had one in and one out.

I set them all to right at 1.5mm toe in...which should be near zero degrees, maybe .5 degrees. This was pretty easy and I am happy with the visual result. I'll take it for a ride tomorrow and report results. This showed as 6.85mm at front of wheel to the string and 6.7mm at the rear of the wheel to the string.

This is should make adjusting the pss9 much easier.

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[PITT M3 RR]

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[PITT M3 RR]

Before and after measurements.

[PITT M3 RR]

So I dropped the car after installing the cross brace.

First, the cross brace needs minor modification. The half circle indent / dome that allows access to the E36 oil pan needs removed. It hits the braided oil line in the S54. It can be notched, but with minor motor movement / vibration, I didn't want to risk contact with the line. Once it's removed, there's no issues. The heat shield needs slid over the CA first, and provides nice protection under there.

Impressions after driving are the car is crazy fast. If the bearings were not broken in, they are now ha ha. As for the Xbrace, it added a significant amount of NVH. Im going to check to see if maybe the oil pan is slightly resting on the cross brace, but I'm fairly certain it's just from the nature of what it is.

For the alignment, it's spot on as far as I can tell. The car tracks straight, no hands even under hard accel. Steering is good. I completely lost the twitchy sporadic movements that I had. It's amazing the difference it made.

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[PITT M3 RR]

During drive

[bimerok]

Unless undertray touches engine or suspension parts, it shouldn't produce any NVH. it connects subframe with unibody, which are both solid mounted/part of the chassis. There is no nature of negative NVH of what it is.

[PITT M3 RR]

Edit, the brace was indeed rubbing at 2 points. I corrected the issue and all is well.

it was the exhaust and the corner of the oil pan. I used an angle grinder to shave the area that is near the oil pan and a cut off wheel at the part that's touching the exhaust. .

[squashman702]

Nice progress!

[M52 POWER!]

Looking good, nice find on the rubbing parts. I was going to say I have the brace on my S52 M3 right now and there was zero difference. I wonder if having euro headers will clear the brace any better?

[TH3 Shifty]

so overall, how is the car doing? whats left to do? hows the engine, what RPM have to taken it to?

[PITT M3 RR]

Thanks guys, I think I need to remove a tiny bit more from under the exhaust on the cross brace. Under hard accel there's a hint of NVH still. I took the car out again tonight and it's damn good. Motor is strong. I have always babied my cars but screw it... Im gonna drive it like it was meant to be. I've touched upper 7k's off and on after
motor is warm. I went over to a twisty road near by and ran it a few times and had a blast even at speed limit.

Looking good, nice find on the rubbing parts. I was going to say I have the brace on my S52 M3 right now and there was zero difference. I wonder if having euro headers will clear the brace any better?

I don't think euro headers will be any different, dimensionally they should be the same at that point. It nbd to notch it though.


As for what I need to do:
1.) electric primary fan
2.) support bracket for intake (bungee now haha)
3.) figure out mileage adjustment ( may just take the code on the title) the true mileage means nothing now. And I'll tell the potential buyer if ever, the truth.)
4.) inspection / emissions by 4/1/17
5.) wire a 4V led to sport light
6.) install pss9 / suspension camber stuff.

Today I finished building the custom adjustable rear sway bar endlinks, got some new to me rear tires mounted and check it!! Picked up a BMW sunshade AND genuine 3 series cover with bag for $25.00 on CL!!!



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Pics

[PITT M3 RR]

I worked out a solution to the sport light for the swap today. I went to radio shack and bought $8 worth of LED's and parts. As I stated earlier sport on / off differs in voltage from .09V off to 4V on. This is the reason it is not as simple as sending the signal to a 12V bulb behind the sport indicator on the cluster. 4V does nothing to illuminate 12v.

Instead I used an led assembled in a threaded holder and mounted it under the foglight button. I ran the signal from the DME to the + and grounded the -. Then to activate / deactivate sport mode, I removed the on/off switch that was sent with my harness and replaced it with a contact button. Sport is engaged by a temporary ground contact, not a switch. If you push the button it grounds for a split second and you enter sport. Press it again, it grounds for a second and returns to the normal maps. Again, a toggle switch will not work with sport mode. You'd need to switch it on then off quickly for sport and do the same to leave sport.

Anyway, here's the results. I stuck with the green LED, though it was not as bright as the ultraviolet one I purchased as well. The Ultraviolet one was rated at 3.7-4V and the green was 2.9V... Whatever it is, the green is about half as bright. I'll be picking up a free one with the proper voltage rating soon.

Alternatively, due to actual sport light on my cluster coming on with the foglight (that's the fog indicator position on E36 cluster) I may get a 4V relay to send 12 to there with the sport button and the the led I put under the foglight button as s foglight on / off indicator. I'll post when I make that change. Won't be for awhile.

[MPWRCPE]

Just code that bad boy to be in sport 100% of the time. You'll thank me later.

[gpeterson]

Just code that bad boy to be in sport 100% of the time. You'll thank me later.

Or change the curves - I'm happy with the ones at the bottom of this post: http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/showp...59&postcount=1

[PITT M3 RR]

I actually hate sport throttle feel haha - I just wanted it functional just to have an indicator. I also found that Kassel was supposed to give me sport "on" tune. But it's not. When I start the car, the light for sport is illuminated, but the car is in a normal map. The when I press the bottom, the light goes off, but the throttle is much more aggressive. I will probably just go into msstuner when I have time and flip maps then adjust as needed.

Im looking into an E46M at the moment as well. I miss owning one.

[M52 POWER!]

Im looking into an E46M at the moment as well. I miss owning one.

After all that work! Is the S53 E36 just not doing it for you?.... cause I was kinda hoping it would for me too since I used to own a E46 M3 too...

[PITT M3 RR]

After all that work! Is the S53 E36 just not doing it for you?.... cause I was kinda hoping it would for me too since I used to own a E46 M3 too...

no no this car is awesome, and I am most likely keeping it. 1. Because it is awesome and 2. Because to me this is a 20K+ car now and well...who would pay that? As for the E46...I want something to drive while this has downtime and the other way around. I have a ton of specialty tools, the knowledge now and the experience. Owning an E46M this time would be far more fun...less worrying about the unknown. In PA I get a solid 7 months or driving weather before the car is garaged. With work, a project like an oil pan gasket takes away from that time and so on. Honestly it would just be a fun car to complement the E36. I'm taking about a 10K 185K mile E46M I can build back to great condition.

I got a few exhaust tone vids in different speeds and loads, you need bass when you listen to get a full effect of the muffler. The car rips. Only WOT was up hill toward the end of this first vid. The rest is just messing around town.




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[TH3 Shifty]

quick question, you may or may not know it...

is there anywhere (website or anything) that tells us what the sensors on the car should Ohm on a multimeter to tell if the sensor is bad or not?

In the world i came from (GM engines) you could usually put a multimeter on a sensor (like a throttle position or fuel injectors ect) and get an Ohm reading and use that to see if its within spec of its electrical output. I have not yet seen anything for BMW. The engine i have had 176k miles on it, but some sensors look newer than others. Instead of replacing all the damn sensors or putting all the sensors back on then firing the engine only to find out the damn crank position sensor is out, i was wondering if there is a way to check them first.

the cam position sensors on this S54 are damn expensive

[PITT M3 RR]

Ive found different values scattered for some stuff. Throttle pos sensors for example,
I know that value is out there. If there was more than two sensors, I just tested them to see if they were all with in spec.

My .02 is get the motor in and cranked over before adding additional expense. At 110K all mine are perfect. I cleaned the CPS and replaced the oring, didn't touch the crank sensor, knock or TPS. I have no codes and the car pulls well. After you get it all buttoned up, use INPA to see if anything is throwing a code.

On another note, I got a damn E46M in Atlanta. I'm flying down to get it on 3/8. It this point in time I'm keeping the red car as well and MAY go more "all out" with it now and use it as a track / street racing experience car. Just for fun though. Pics of that below.

Also going to be installing an oil temp gauge today, and I got at the PSS9 stuff in. Once they're assembled I'll post up.

[LSxDreamer]

That E46M looks clean! Congrats!

[JayhawkM3]

Very cool!

[TH3 Shifty]

nice E46.. can i borrow your money tree for a day? lol jk

[M52 POWER!]

Wow, awesome E46 M3. I had that same color but with the M alcantara interior.

[PITT M3 RR]

Thanks guys! No money tree ha ha just didn't want to miss out on the combo I've been looking for for awhile now actually. I told the gf no more beef jerkey HAHA saves $40 a month!!

anyway, VDO oil temp installed (temporarily). I could not find a clean location to mount it so I settled on picking up an eBay pillar pod. Right now it's at the bottom of the stock pillar I have. Basically you need an autometer metric adapter, VDO's sender and alittle bit of wiring.

Here are some photos of the progress. Installing items one at a time has prooven "messy" as far as wiring. Once I get the E46 in to drive around, I'm taking all my additions (gauges, diagnostic, sport light / button) and tightening everything up under there for a more professional look. What I'm thinking is a power terminal mounted to the fire wall on the inside.

5 block for hot at all times, 5 block for hot in run and start and s ground block. That way, any additions will always be clean and also removable! This is recommended by me. So yea.

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[PITT M3 RR]

Forgot to add NRG steering hub and an eBay 350MM wheel. It's a cheap wheel, BUT, a member here recommended it and has been running it with NO issues. No bending, wear etc...for awhile. I'll report with that next weeks

heres the rest of the gauge install.

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Does anyone know what the marks are between 200/260? Specifically?