[jzx_andy]

Wheels arrived!

[1275]

Great choice for the wheels. Your car is pretty much perfect bud.

What tyres do you plan to run on them?

[Socket]

oooooooooooooooooo nice

[jzx_andy]

[jzx_andy]

I've been lurking for a while as I wasn't entirely happy with my wheel/tyre setup both visually and in terms of how it would drive. This is going to be a long post as aesthetic wheel and tyre fitment is one of my passions when it comes to most cars and really is "make or break" for me.

It felt as if the car didn't have enough negative camber allround to fit the wheels/tyres at least visually, there was a fair bit of poke allround which was not to my liking, front was scrubbing at full lock and the car had a fair bit of a reverse rake with a pretty massive front wheel gap that I set just to make everything work.





I especially did not like the reverse rake, knowing that it would be amplified once the car is rolling or under squat, and could cause rear guard rubbing issues in any event. Rear guards were rolled by a previous owner, so I suppose there is more room if I'm inclined to commit to shaving the rear inner guard lips.

Looking at the front suspension from above and through the tiny ass strut tower holes, my coilovers (ST XTA) looked as if they were maxed out on front camber. This was really bugging me as I only think there was about -2 deg of camber on the front after supposedly maxing it out, with M3 front control arms! My previous alignment specs were set at about -1.5 of front camber, which is pretty close to factory spec afaik. I wasn't too happy about this and started to question whether I bought the right coilovers for the job. Thoughts came to mind such as "WTF have I done...? Have I gone too far with this setup in terms of rear width and offsets?" etc etc. This car really is my pride and joy - I thought I was making fairly sensible choices that would get me toward my end goal of having a fairly balanced car with an aggressive stance.

This whole situation made me have a long and hard think about my build so far, where I was going with it, and whether I was making the right choices. Ultimately, I decided to put faith in my original vision and do everything I possibly could to make this setup work nicely without resorting to pulling guards, etc. I wasn't ready to let the situation defeat me.

I ended up taking the front struts out and thankfully there was wayyyy more room for negative camber adjustment. Note to anyone with KW/ST coilovers with adjustable camber hats - you'll need to take the fuckers out to get a meaningful amount of adjustment. This was a great start.

Dialling in more neg camber ended up making plenty of clearance where the front bumper and fenders meet. This is the usual the area of concern when it comes to aggressive fitment on an E92, especially as the OEM front fenders are made of plastic.

Most importantly, this allowed me to lower the front in the hopes that I'd be able to mitigate the liner rubbing issues under full lock around the oil cooler/aux radiator shrouds. This was fixed quite easily by trimming the inside of the shrouds so they could sit closer to the radiators, and by heat gunning the liners and moulding them to sit further toward the front bumper.

So I moved on to the rear and maxed out the OEM rear camber adjustment, which wasn't enough. This is how it looked.



All in all, the height was fairly decent and just needed a slight raise, so no real dramas there. But it wasn't perfect. To me, it sorta looked like a monster truck with the slight wheel gap and ~10-15mm of poke. I wanted the rear to sit nicer than that.

I ended up ordering a pair of Manzo adjustable rear camber arms, as I was quite happy with their adjustable rear toe arms that were already on the car.



Going for 265 Yoko's on the 10.5" wheels proved to be a wise choice as it allows just enough room for the tyre to not hit the fender under squat, without needing a totally crazy alignment.

After a bunch of trial and error, I got the car looking the way I wanted it to look. Low enough for the advans to look good, but not slammed, and enough clearance for the body to not hit the tyres under small/moderate suspension travel and full lock when parking.

After all the above messing around, I gave the wheels a wash, a ceramic coat with Gyeon Rim, and slapped the Advan stickers on. Took it for a quick test drive and surprisingly discovered that everything paid off nicely, the car drives great! Doesn't rub everywhere on the street like a stanced POS.

The car still does have a fair bit of toe out atm thanks to all the changes I've made, so it will need a professional alignment - I'm hopeful that will also give a tad of extra clearance in the front for good measure.

Here's some happy snaps. Happy to finally be moving on to other aspects of the car.

[jzx_andy]

So... I did a thing today and fitted a pair of F82 M4 front seats. I also managed to snag a full set of Individual piano black interior trims, which should be the last interior mod (touch wood)!



All electrics except for seat heating and light up ///M badges are working. My car did not come with seat heating from the factory so I'm pretty sure I just need some buttons and a bit of coding, the lighting will need to have a bit of custom work done

Super glad I held out for a pair of these instead of settling on a pair of e9x heated seats, these totally change the feel of the car.

[Coupes33]

Originally Posted by jzx_andy

So... I did a thing today and fitted a pair of F82 M4 front seats. I also managed to snag a full set of Individual piano black interior trims, which should be the last interior mod (touch wood)!



All electrics except for seat heating and light up ///M badges are working. My car did not come with seat heating from the factory so I'm pretty sure I just need some buttons and a bit of coding, the lighting will need to have a bit of custom work done

Super glad I held out for a pair of these instead of settling on a pair of e9x heated seats, these totally change the feel of the car.

Do the M4 seats bolt straight up to the floor mountings and does the electrical wiring plug straight up to these seats?

[jzx_andy]

Originally Posted by Coupes33

Do the M4 seats bolt straight up to the floor mountings and does the electrical wiring plug straight up to these seats?

They bolt up but it isn't plug and play - need to swap over connectors and seatbelt buckles from your e9x seats, pin everything correctly and then code out the passenger seat occupancy sensor. Fairly painless stuff for people who know their way around these cars haha

[Hoper]

Originally Posted by jzx_andy

They bolt up but it isn't plug and play - need to swap over connectors and seatbelt buckles from your e9x seats, pin everything correctly and then code out the passenger seat occupancy sensor. Fairly painless stuff for people who know their way around these cars haha

Nice build mate
where'd you source the M4 seats from Andy?

[jzx_andy]

Originally Posted by Hoper

Nice build mate
where'd you source the M4 seats from Andy?

I got them from a local F82 wreck

[jzx_andy]

Fitted the trim pieces. Looks so good. Certainly looks different from when I first got the car

[jzx_andy]

Originally Posted by southwest335i

anything further on fuel issue? i have stock 335i (N55) and dealer in Perth has been chasing engine derate code under moderate throttle...fitted new plugs, coils, injectors, both low and high pressure fuel pumps - the HPFP seemed to do the trick but now its shows signs of being overheated and has spun a bearing, has a bent conrod and questionable crankshaft: i should have stuck with older models - have a neat e36 325i coupe, and e46 325i sedan, both of which have done over 200,000kms and no big dramas- just the usual things like water pump etc.

Hey man, so sorry for the late reply, as I only recently got around to sorting out small things with my car, such as the fuel issue. Yours sounds much more serious since it basically cooked a motor. I'm not sure what a "derate" code is either.

In my case I'd get fuel leaking from the filler neck area when filling up to the brim. This turned out to be caused by the LPFP assembly top hat not being seated in the fuel tank notch properly. Lifted the rear seat base, took the top hat retainer and fuel line out and then seated everything properly.

I don't have any more fuel leaks and can fill up to the brim again (thankfully), but I've also noticed my fuel level sender isn't reporting correctly - so I'll need to sort this out in due course.

[A'PEXi]

Nice build, always enjoy a bit of JDM flare

[jzx_andy]

Been a while since I last posted in here.

I ended up painting my wheel hubs and calipers. Pretty happy with the outcome:







Quite some time ago, I got a bucketed Walbro 450 installed by a local shop who supposedly specialise in N54's. I didn't have the best experience with them at the time due to unexplainable delays and workmanship that seemed pretty average on its face (I found a bunch of loose bolts around the engine bay etc). They ended up giving me a massive discount at the time I picked up my car, so I told myself I'd never let a shop touch my car for anything other than recall work.

Almost immediately, I realised that my fuel would leak when filling up to the brim. I basically stopped filling my car up completely for a while, as I didn't want to go back to that shop, and I had bigger fish to fry in terms of power mods. I mentioned in my last post that my fuel level sender was reporting incorrectly. This was because my car had ran out of fuel on two separate occassions despite not reading empty. The first occassion was about 2 years ago - my motor was starved of fuel when the car was reading ~50km to empty. At the time, I assumed that having an aftermarket LPFP basically meant you should never run your car to that low of a fuel level.

The second time happened during my trip down South. The motor starved when the car was reading a fuel level of about 20%. While 20% is much higher than what it read the last time it was starved, I'd gone through my LPFP install very briefly before the trip and changed things around (see post #78 above).

I was lucky as we had a convoy of cars for the roadtrip, and a service station was 15 minutes away from where the E92 decided to rest. Got a jerry can, topped her up and off we went. Here's a couple of happy snaps from the trip:







By the time I got home, it seemed that a fuel level sender or both of them had some sort of fault. Shortly after getting home from the roadtrip, I disassembled the LPFP and fuel filter assemblies to get to the bottom of the issue. Both senders were working fine and were not obstructed in any way. So I started browsing LPFP install videos to see if the shop who fitted mine had made a mistake. return lines from the fuel filter just hanging around in the fuel pump side of the tank, rather than feeding directly into the bucket. I promptly secured them with nylon zipties, and my fuel starvation issue seems to be completely resolved!!

In more recent news I did a much needed walnut blast and ended up ordering a PI manifold, B58 coil kit, PI injectors, secondary fuel pump, MAC solenoid and a few other small bits. Slowly gathering parts for a single turbo conversion. Leaning toward a Gen 2 BB Precision 6062 or Garrett GTX3582R at the moment.

In the meantime, I'm hoping to sort out the rear end and continue fixing some of the things that I haven't been completely happy with (stock looking calipers and rusted out hubs was definitely one of those things lol). The PR coils are next up on the list as they're bulky and just annoying to live with. Engine cover doesn't sit nicely with the PR coils (you have to remove the engine cover if you just want to top up oil, and remove the coil bracket etc if you want to change your plugs, etc).

A couple of random pics below of usual. Don't mind the dirty valves, that was before we made a 2nd pass and scraped stuff up manually. I forgot to get pics of the finished intake ports/valves that came up quite nice.

[jzx_andy]

Small update.

Noticed a small leak coming from my OFHG area so decided it's time to do some maintenance. Maintenance also includes modifications, right?

List of things that have been done or need doing before the car goes back on the road:

Oil pan gasket swap
Revshift 80A engine mounts
VAC oil pan baffle
GAS 1M/M3 front control arm monoballs
Fresh ofhg and oil cooler gasket
Fresh orings for the mickey mouse fitting and oil cooler lines
Mosselman oil cooler thermostat housing
B58 coil kit
Hydra performance cowl cowers
Turner relocated coolant res
CSF radiator (manual)
Low profile drain bolt for radiator
Fresh waterpump and thermostat
Fresh gaskets for the turbo oil drains (I think one may be leaking, may as well sort it out while the subframe is dropped)
Sort out a loose turbo/downpipe vband clamp
Plumb 335is auxiliary radiator into coolant system
Automatic/DCT oil cooler delete (plug coolant lines that go to heat exchanger, delete heat exchanger and transmission cooler lines)
Change power steering pulley to metal item
PI manifold, phenolic gasket and PI fuel line
M3/1M strut brace kit
Custom cowl modification
Custom length AKG endlinks
Wash/detail engine bay and wheel wells
Fix leaking wiper fluid bottle/line
Fill oil and coolant. Bleed.
Fit BMW performance CF spoiler

Probably missed a few things lol.

Still got a long way to go as the subframe hasn't been dropped yet and I've only done about half of the coolant system stuff. Progress pics:







There is a large cavity near the upper hotside of the motor which will need rectifying courtesy of Garrett or Precision.

[Brule]

Im making kits again from January..Maybe earlier.

[Socket]

Originally Posted by jzx_andy

Small update.

Noticed a small leak coming from my OFHG area so decided it's time to do some maintenance. Maintenance also includes modifications, right?

List of things that have been done or need doing before the car goes back on the road:

Oil pan gasket swap
Revshift 80A engine mounts
VAC oil pan baffle
GAS 1M/M3 front control arm monoballs
Fresh ofhg and oil cooler gasket
Fresh orings for the mickey mouse fitting and oil cooler lines
Mosselman oil cooler thermostat housing
B58 coil kit
Hydra performance cowl cowers
Turner relocated coolant res
CSF radiator (manual)
Low profile drain bolt for radiator
Fresh waterpump and thermostat
Fresh gaskets for the turbo oil drains (I think one may be leaking, may as well sort it out while the subframe is dropped)
Sort out a loose turbo/downpipe vband clamp
Plumb 335is auxiliary radiator into coolant system
Automatic/DCT oil cooler delete (plug coolant lines that go to heat exchanger, delete heat exchanger and transmission cooler lines)
Change power steering pulley to metal item
PI manifold, phenolic gasket and PI fuel line
M3/1M strut brace kit
Custom cowl modification
Custom length AKG endlinks
Wash/detail engine bay and wheel wells
Fix leaking wiper fluid bottle/line
Fill oil and coolant. Bleed.
Fit BMW performance CF spoiler

Probably missed a few things lol.

Still got a long way to go as the subframe hasn't been dropped yet and I've only done about half of the coolant system stuff. Progress pics:







There is a large cavity near the upper hotside of the motor which will need rectifying courtesy of Garrett or Precision.

woah thats quite a list there

[jzx_andy]

I've put about 30 hours into the car over the past month or so. Here's where I'm at so far

Done:
Oil pan gasket swap
Turbo oil drain gaskets
Revshift 80A engine mounts
VAC oil pan baffle
ofhg and oil cooler gasket
o-rings for the mickey mouse fitting and oil cooler lines
Mosselman oil cooler thermostat housing
B58 coil kit
Hydra performance cowl cowers
Turner relocated coolant res
CSF radiator (manual)
Deleted auto/dct heat exchanger
Waterpump, thermostat and the hose that joins the two
Loose turbo/downpipe vband clamp sorted
Plumbed 335is/1M aux rad into cooling system
PI manifold, phenolic gasket and PI fuel line fitted and plumbed in
M3/1M strut brace kit
Washed/detailed engine bay

To do:
GAS 1M/M3 front control arm monoballs
Torque up subframe bolts and control arm bolts
Change power steering pulley
Cap off 2x auto specific rad hoses
Oil level sensor seal
Custom cowl modification
Shorten endlinks by 10mm
Final engine bay detail
Clean wheel wells
Fix leaking wiper fluid bottle/line
Fit BMW performance CF spoiler
Fill oil and coolant. Bleed.

As I needed to make a last minute FCP order, I also grabbed a new valve cover. Turbo and differential aside, this should be the last major bit of maintenance that should be done for a while (assuming I don't blow the motor lol).

Once the valve cover is done, I plan to enjoy the car for a bit, and then sort out the rear end and turbo setup once I'm motivated get underneath the car again.

[Aus335iguy]

That's a lota work but I know it's piece of mind
Good stuff !

[jzx_andy]

Got her back on the road. Ended up painting a headlight cover that was terribly mismatched.

Managed to put about 70km on it today and damn upgraded poly engine mounts do have some NVH. The added NVH is at idle or lower (like when you don't takeoff properly and the revs dip a bit below idle). Mine is set to 1k rpm due to the clutch and fw, but the added vibration from these mounts is pretty noticeable. At this point, I definitely wouldn't recommend if you haven't raised your idle past 600 or whatever the stock figure is lol, it is much worse than what it is at 1k. Hoping it will die down a bit as these mounts get broken in, otherwise I may swap the coldside mount for OEM.



Still to do:

Trim engine cover and cowl, refit
Wash car
Fix leaking wiper fluid bottle/line
Fit BMW performance CF spoiler
GAS 1M/M3 front control arm monoballs
Secondary LPFP and replacement fuel filter install
Valve cover job and head port plugging (will likely put this off for a while)

[jzx_andy]

Put on about 700 k's on the clock over the Xmas break, mostly chilled out coastal drives and hills runs. I love this thing

[Socket]

Originally Posted by jzx_andy

Put on about 700 k's on the clock over the Xmas break, mostly chilled out coastal drives and hills runs. I love this thing

Looking sweeet Andy