When I got back from Bimmerfest I ordered the H&R Sports Spring Kit with Koni Yellow Adjustable shocks. I went with this kit at the time because one, there was only one coilover kit option at the time, and two I did not want a slammed look which most people were doing with the coil over kit. This kit is still something I remember on how well the car drove and would recommend this kit to anyone with an E46 M3.



In June I went ahead and ordered some more power upgrade for the car. I ordered the Confrti Shark Injector from Turner Motorsports, the Rouge Engineering Power Pullies, and ignition solution plasma coils with Denso Iridium spark plugs.

 

We are now into the first part July of 2004 and it is time for the Lake Tahoe Drive. This time I lead the entire drive from start to finish. There was a good size group this time and the new performance modifications we definitely a help at altitude compared to last year.

 

At the end of July I headed down to the Bay Area again for another one of the Stanford Mall meets. I finally got a rolling shot of me in my car for once.

 

In August 2004 I purchased my CSL trunk from Bekkers. This part seemed to start a trend of me having a story around a parts install. When I was driving to the shop to have the trunk installed I was pulled over and got a no front plate ticket. Not how I wanted my day to go to say the least. I get to the shop and they install the trunk but when they were backing the car out they backed my car into a Z06 corvette that the other tech was backing up. The look on my face must have been I am going to kill you because the guy turned pail white. Car was ok other than the paint in the right light showing some spider marks. I have yet to repaint the rear bumper and will need to do it sometime in the near future.

 

Late August I went down to the Bay Area again for another Stanford mall meet. If I remember correctly I believe this is where I took over the meets to include an after drive activity.









After organizing the meet and drive I was driving back over the Bay Bridge and hit some debris in the road. I just side swiped it enough to cut the tire and take a chunk off the lip of the rim. I was able to limp across the entire Bay Bridge as it happened right as I entered on the San Francisco side heading east. I have no clue how I survived not getting rear-ended.



At the time I took a chunk out of my rim, I did not know you could fix them so I ordered a new CSL rim. It was not until recently in the last few years I found out you could repair rims. I have had the damaged rim fixed along with another front rim and a rear rim. Joys of driving on crappy California roads. At any rate now I have a “spare” tire in case I need it.

 

November 2004 I organized the NAPA drive again and was now starting to get the hand of organizing meets and drives.





December 2004 I organized another Stanford Mall meet and drive. This event was also combined with a toy run for Toys For Tots. I did this so we could give back to those who were less fortunate than us that year. On the way down someone took one of my favorite rolling shots of my car going through the tunnel on Treasure Island. The first image is the Sacramento meet up point for the drive down.

 

2005 Same old different year

The next big purchase I did was order the SuperSprint Headers, SuperSprint Race Cats and SuperSprint Center section with resonator in February 2005. This was to replace the RaspX system and start the path down a more performance based setup. There of course is a story behind the install. I had the local dealer do the install and they did a **** poor job. So bad in fact they use vice pliers to remove all four 02 sensors that needed to be replaced. Needless to say I had to work through that issue with them but it was all worked out in the end.

 

Sadly I did not think about making a build journal about the car till more recently. That means a lot of images I have taken have been lost over the years because I did not think of them as being important. By February 2005 I remember I had Discovery Automotive race software installed to take advantage of the new SuperSprint setup. I also decided to do another Sacramento State photo shoot as I had the trunk installed this time around.

 

Throughout the year I was organizing meets and drives for the NorCal BMW gang. By this point in time I had become a seasoned organizer and was continually looking for new roads to drive on for our regional meets. One of the only images I have of the meets of 2005 is a picture of me driving to either the Bay Area or Napa. Not sure which.



In June of 2005 I ordered up some serious stopping power. I spoke with Will Turner no less and ordered the StopTech 355 mm BBK in Yellow. The kit included stainless steel lines and ATB super blue which made for a nice package. I have had no issues with the StopTech brake kit and could not be happier with the purchase. The only thing I wish I did was go with the slotted rotors to get a little more bite and braking surface. Even with the cross drilled the car stops on a dime with change to spare.

 

One thing that I had to order in a pinch was a set up 10MM turner front spacers. Reason for this purchase was I needed them to clear the break calipers.



The last images I have from 2005 are of a drive I lead up Ice House Road. We call this road the “don’t F-Up Road” as there one section is a 2500 vertical drop off the cliff and did I mention there is no guard rails. The other half the road is more of the same cliffs and sheer rock wall on the other side. Saddly there is a story about the rock wall later down the time line. The road after the zero tolerance areas is smooth and a sheer blast to drive.

 

2006 Majors Changes and All Most Lost The Car

The start of 2006 was the same as the year past. Setting up meet a drives and still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with the car. This year was also the year a lot of changes would happen to the car and not all of them were good. But before we get into the good, the bad and the ugly of the year, let’s start off in January with a nice bath.

 

In March of 2006 I decided I wanted to do some major changes. At the time the hot shop for BMW’s was EvoSport down in Long Beach CA. I contacted them to do an install of a Vorsteiner Carbon Fiber roof with sunroof insert. I made the choice to do this option in order to be different as there were people already with CSL roofs. Below is the start of the CSL Sunroof install and the start to many other problems.









Besides the carbon roof I had some other changes made to the car under the recommendations of EvoSport. This would turn out to be a big mistake and was a life lesson to always, always do your own research. The first of EvoSport recommendations was to install their headers as they were “supposed” to be similar to CSL headers. These were also supposed to provide better low end torque.

 

damn. seeing this thread makes me miss my e46m. the transformation of your car from inception to now looks like quite a journey. Good luck with your build and I look forward to seeing the final outcome.

 

have you replaced the company wheels?

 

The last power mods I had them install was an AFE stage 2 intake and Powerchips performance software. The AFE was supposed to be superior to the GrouppeM as it allowed more airflow compared to the smaller GrouppeM filter. Supposedly this was also the setup they ran on their race car which at the time was doing very well on the race circuit. The Powerchips software was the race software tune to take advantage of the new intake, headers and exhaust system.



The last of the work I had done while the car was in Long Beach was to install a set of Ground Control lower control arms and differential shims.



Before I show the finished install pics, the story associated with this stall was when I drove to LA and started to make the track over the Grape Vine it started to lightly snow over the summit. Now for you folks in snowy areas you are like ok and this is special cause? You forget this is California and that white, wet water stuff is a myth unless you live in the Sierras HAHA. And to note it also snowed on me over the summit on the way home as well so I have seen double snow. Images as flows are of the car being picked up at the end of March 2006.