Sufs' 330d M Sport w/ SMG Paddleshift retrofit but otherwise generally falling apart body ....

[The_Judge_]

Thanks McPikie, trying to get some estimates together first ... i know sometime so has claimed of the council in the past who is gonna help out.

 

J15, my folks still live in Aston but I live down south now. I was indeed driving in brum at the time ...!

[Ashley1995]

Bad news Suf

Glad there wasn't more damage and  no one was hurt though. 

 

[The_Judge_]

Latest news:

Supposedly balljoints are not replaceable on the E46 I've been told by my mechanic - they're manufactured as part of the wishbone? So anyway - both wishbones need replacing (turns out someone in the past did not fit the correct wishbones to the car at all, they fitted standard ones instead of the ones for M-Sport, and a bunch of other stuff. Job is done, but now the wheel camber is way off, something still bent .. investigation continues ....

Edited March 23, 2016 by The_Judge_

[mjn]

Use MeyleHD arms, they have replaceable balljoints.

[The_Judge_]

So, finally the car is back and I've spent too much money on it. I think this is the end ... these cars aren't worth that much anymore  This whole incident has made me think about scrapping or trading up .....

Mechanically, I had to replace both front wishbones, suspension (again) and a few other bits. I then had to get the front wing replaced and lots of fettling, tinkering to straighten other bits of metal ....

It's not perfect, but it will do, I had to put new tyres on the rear too because a screw badly damaged one of them - I've opted for Uniroyal Rainsport 3's, huge improvement over the Vredesteins so far - the steering has become lighter too (this was definitely from the tyres as I had it done days after the repairs above)

Edited January 1, 2018 by The_Judge_

[rasa]

11 hours ago, The_Judge_ said:

So, finally the car is back and I've spent too much money on it. I think this is the end ... these cars aren't worth that much anymore  This whole incident has made me think about scrapping or trading up .....

Mechanically, I had to replace both front wishbones, suspension (again) and a few other bits. I then had to get the front wing replaced and lots of fettling, tinkering to straighten other bits of metal ....

It's not perfect, but it will do, I had to put new tyres on the rear too because a screw badly damaged one of them - I've opted for Uniroyal Rainsport 3's, huge improvement over the Vredesteins so far - the steering has become lighter too (this was definitely from the tyres as I had it done days after the repairs above)

i went for the rs 3 tyres on my st,wonderful tyres at nearly the price of budgets,i paid £227 for 4 tyres 225-40-18,when my e46 330d needs new tyres im getting the rs3,i was out yesterday in the pouring rain in the st and so much confidence in the wet,obviously any tyre can let go if your driving stupidly,but im well impressed with uniroyal.

[TriggerFish]

I had the rs2 on my old polo gti, and they were very inpressivr then. Very quiet too. 

If you do scrap it, will you be breaking it for parts? 

[The_Judge_]

Yeah, most likely parts ..... however, it still drives great so I'll keep it for a year, or 2 maybe !

[MRyan]

That's some crap luck with the wishbones mate! At least its all mended now.

[The_Judge_]

Decided to get Rainsports on the front too, made a huge difference, my vreds must have been pretty low on tread .... Tramlining is gone, steering is much lighter  In fact I had no tramlining over winter with the winter wheels, only in the summers I had vreds ...

 

Edited January 1, 2018 by The_Judge_

[The_Judge_]

On 4/19/2016 at 21:12, MRyan said:

That's some crap luck with the wishbones mate! At least its all mended now.

Let me know when you're selling your MV1's ..

[MRyan]

I'll keep you in the loop if/when I do mate! We need to sort another Blackbushe meet now it's getting warmer too.

[Bacon]

I'd be up for a meet missed the last one  

[JasonK]

Good to see you back on the road, Suf!

Sent with Tapatalk (the crap Windows Phone Version!)

[The_Judge_]

The car feels so much better now than anytime in the past that I've owned it, I'm not sure what has caused it  - oh yeah I remember now ... new wishbones, new suspension all round, new tyres, poly bushes .... These cars are expensive to run !!! Anyway, feels much more planted now

I've settled on the OEM paddles, the aluminium ones were a bit too lethal, and I've managed to sell my old manifold and ALU paddles, so all good

Edited January 1, 2018 by The_Judge_

[The_Judge_]

Another cheap day today ... I was wondering why my A/C wasn't working recently. Turned out the a/c belt had snapped off and the tensioner was on holiday, so replaced it and alternator belt, one of those jobs I wish I'd done myself but hey ho ....

I suppose this should increase my MPG atleast ...... 

[McPikie]

I'd love a set of paddles for my 330

[The_Judge_]

If anyone is interested, I'm organising a forum stand at National BMW Day in Gaydon on 14 August. I went a few years ago, it's a really good event.

If you want to come along, have a look at this thread and add your name to the list.

Including photos from the previous E46Zone stand. 

[The_Judge_]

Got fed up of having Egg Yolk on the side of my car so switched to Chrome side bulbs:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00L8SF3PA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

p.s. have I mentioned I'm organising a Forum Stand at the Gaydon Event? 

 

Edited January 1, 2018 by The_Judge_

[The_Judge_]

Looks like fixing the aircon belts etc finally improved my MPG. I've gone from typically getting 28-30Mpg to 35-38Mpg, woohoo

 

Actually 42Mpg if you account for the fuel in the tank remaining after the yellow light came on

 

and as always, the OBD reported higher values, 55MPg

Edited June 3, 2016 by The_Judge_

[The_Judge_]

My tramlining& general 'loose ' steering is back,  sigh .... I Assume it's the coupler which needs replacing.....  Question is,  is it worth the money to investigate and/or fix.... 

Edited June 17, 2016 by The_Judge_

[The_Judge_]

Because there was a bit of sun this morning (and because I need to distract myself as much as I can while I'm fasting!) I decided to whip off the intercooler yesterday, jet wash it and fit it back this morning. At some point in time of the life of the car, LOTS of a black oily substance split all over the bits around the engine and into or around the intercooler. I think it may have been because of damage my mechanic & I spotted when we first bought the car (faulty return fuel line near an injector). Anyway, my intercooler was pretty black - I didn't take any before pics but here is afters, and generally a view of some of the recent additions under the engine (new belts, wishbones etc)

It's made a difference, bit more response on the throttle

I'm also very glad I kept my old car mats:

 

Edited January 1, 2018 by The_Judge_

[TriggerFish]

Is that the original intercooler still? I recall you trying, and not succeeding, to replace it at my place?

Edited June 19, 2016 by TriggerFish

[The_Judge_]

15 minutes ago, TriggerFish said:

Is that the original intercooler still? I recall you trying, and not succeeding, to replace it at my place?

Still the original!

[The_Judge_]

So I decided to bodge a lot this weekend and fitted my rear parking camera. Day one was running the wires and day 2 connecting the power, thanks to Tim-Ci for advice: 

As per usual (and because I still haven't practiced soldering ..) this is a lot of bad wiring, please look away if you have an aversion to messy work ... (!) Since my headunit is an Xtrons, I bought an Xtrons camera: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/331584190568?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

There are cameras "designed" to fit the E46 but I've read of people having to shave bits of these and create channels in plastic with a dremel to make them fit so I skipped these and went for the above. The camera has a single cable directly attached to it which then feeds a wide splitter/transformer(?) that splits the cable into two connections, one with a female phono and the other a female power. In addition the box contained:

• an extremely long phono cable which plugs into that phono from the camera and then runs to the front of the car. 
• another shorter cable used for grounding and power in the boot.

The camera comes with some screws, different types of backing plate to connect to the car and also some strong sticky pads. I connected everything up more or less as per pic 1 here: 

My first problem was running the cables from the camera into the boot. I decided to drill a small hole in the rubber/plastic area which is the boot release handle, in such a way that the angle should prevent water ingress. I then had to split the camera cable, remove the trim in the boot lid and feed the cable out from the boot lid and then re-attach the camera cable outside of the boot:

Exposed copper was then taped up separately, then the whole thing was taped up to try and neaten everything. Removing the trim in the boot lid gave me an excuse to try the Neilsen trim removal kit I bought after recommendation from Mr.Xen - huge improvement over my cheap orange ebay ones - they have now been banished to the bin:

Ideally the two other cables supplied should run down the inside of the boot lid (or should have been if I could find a neat way of doing it ...)

I wanted to feed the long phono cable (going to the front of the car) down the rubber grommet with the OEM wires in the lower right of the boot lid after reading another thread on the zone, but gave up. So again, I snipped this wire so I only had to make a route for the cable (and not phono head) and made a delicate/small drill hole in the rubber grommet leading into the boot (near the boot strut) and had to push the cable through it (with a lot of effort .... so the hole was as small as it could be and a tight fit around the cable).

Once this was pushed through the rubber into the boot area, I removed the trim in the boot near the battery; I then removed the rear seats and threaded the other part of snipped phono cable through the back seat into the boot area. I then re-attached the two snipped bits of phono cable in my best bodgy style as above in the boot and taped up the joins, re-fitted the boot lining and seats and ran the phono cable along the side inner trim and up into the dash, under the steering wheel and then plugged it into the xtrons unit in the dash.

Today, I finished off the job by connecting the power and ground. I opted to use the small lighting cluster next to the number plate and tapped into it's wires, basically using the reverse light bulbs' cable as power and brown for ground then taping up after:

and then lo and behold, my landlords bins' were visible:

I can't work out the best position for the camera, luckily it's easily movable. However, I am drilling two small holes into plastic each time I move it, I'll get my trusty silicon out at some point to cover all holes ... For now I've settled on sightly off-centre:

Thanks for looking, now to fix my outside temp sensor which fell off ......

EDIT: I think I found out why the outside temp sensor is reading as -40.0C

I really can't be asked to buy a new one or fix it, I'm just going to code out auto rear de-mist below 3 degrees with NCS (which by the way is HHS_AUTOMATIK in the IHK file ....

Edited January 1, 2018 by The_Judge_