Amazing a update after so long being MIA. I know I have been a bad M owner. Car sat for about 3 months as I am starting a new adventure in life with leading offroad groups on top of being a new dad. Needless to say the M3 got little love so I fully expect 10 lashings for it.

So what is new? Well all those little finishing touches that always linger and don't take a long time to do.

1. Removed the standard roof rail. Was a pain as the shop glued the old rail in but got it out.


2. CSL Roof rail in


Vanity items so flame away
3. Side emblems on


4. Door sills


5. After going around with the side airbag connections going on and off I finally said F-it and went fully committed to the to the removal. Cut off the OE connectors and soldiered the jumpers in. No more light thanks to Terra resting it yet again.


New adventure
For those who are not off roading you will be like big deal but for those of you who offroad I have fully built the Raptor with a 3.5 shock setup all the way around along with other goodies.

 

So this is silly. All waxed, wheels cleaned and wax, brakes even waxed for a 600 mile drive to socal... Yes I am silly but oh well. It was really clean for 10 miles at least right??

 

Recently myself and another M3 had a article done for BMW Performance Magazine out of the UK. It was a joint article as we both went the way of OE CSL. The article was in the April edition of this year. Below is the article scanned in.

 

This last weekend I lead a drive to Bimmerfest in SoCal. Drive down the car was running flawless until I tripped a airbag light again UG. Found out later passenger side was the cause so need to fix that now GRRR.

I also recently installed a Frank Smith Tune. OMG does it wake up all the CSL parts. Car power delivery feels effortless and the car has more than enough power to reach.. well let's say I went pass the "limiter". Thanks to Ejaz an 0-60 Motorsports for the tune.

This leads me to some disappointment. Not in the car but in what I thought Bimmerfest was about. At the urging of my friends I entered into the battle of the bimmeres modified M division. Let's say I am never doing a judging event again. The judge had no clue what a CSL was and only judge the car on what he could see. This is where the disappointment comes in. Judging at a "enthusiasts" event you would think they know the cars and ask questions. Nope FLASH and non BMW bolt ones with big stereos win all the top places. Rather sad to see that stance and crap mods is what from my observation is the state of a lot of BMWs. Now I know that we on this forums are a small percentage of the BMW modding group, and going the CSL route is even a smaller set of that. But was kind of sad to see the car walked passed without a second glance for a E36 325 with a wide body, airbags, and wrapped in some sort of razzle dazzle geometric pattern. Oh well I enjoy the car and that is why I built it.

Here is some images of the drive down and back

 

Battle of the bimmers. One person besides me got a pic of it and was in our Norcal drive down group =)