A purists nightmare - E46 drift build

[Tkuhn]

To quote all of you.

Number one I would only do the fenders if I did "fake m" rear overs, also the vents would be shaved. 

Also the musk kit gets me going soooo bad haha but its insanely wide (65mm over stock M) and with wide fenders comes wide wheels and wide wheels mean needing power to spin those wide wheels. Which I'd love to do but I dont want the car to be down multiple summers due to being built or budget problems lol I'd rather be in the seat. 

Musk and a few others have made fake m rear overs and that's what I'd be looking at. A few other companies made their own wide body kits but again much to wide for me right now.

I know about ththe hard motorsport flares but I'm not a flare guy, although the price is nice so if I needed just rears due to wanting to run front M fenders (for track width reasons) I'd consider them only for the bang for the buck. But again we are back to cutting up a clean car. Which I must say I dont mind but I also dont see the need to yet and would feel a little bad haha

It's really just a big round about circle that ends me back at DONT DO IT. Lol

[Tkuhn]

Finally test fitted the clear tails

[Jdesign]

Tkuhn said:

Finally test fitted the clear tails

Love it. Looks 

[Tkuhn]

Jdesign said:

Love it. Looks 

Thank you sir! Should look even better with the planned color change this winter.

[wasnt m3]

Tkuhn said:

Thank you sir! Should look even better with the planned color change this winter. 

Care to spill the beans??

[Jdesign]

UUMMMMM I hope its white. Otherwise I retract my tailight compliment.

[Tkuhn]

@wasnt m3 @Jdesign

Jason wins haha I'll spill the beans to you boys here. It will be white, at least that is the plan.

[Jdesign]

Tkuhn said:

@wasnt m3 @Jdesign

Jason wins haha I'll spill the beans to you boys here. It will be white, at least that is the plan. 

What did I win?  

[Tkuhn]

SMALL UPDATE.

My awesome girlfriend got me this HoldFast usa steering wheel that I've wanted for awhile.

I've also been wanting to get rear door panels back in the car, never really liked the fully stripped look and honestly never felt like dealing with it last summer lol. But with that being said I messed around and found the perfect way to fit the rear panels with my harness bar! 

was able to use a hole saw to create a round section on the bottom and then my badass new m12 milwaukee dremel to cut the straights These panels were the ones that came with the car so I did the same as the front panels. Removed the arm rests and used interior paint to make them black. Kinda hack... I'm aware. But I didnt want to cut into my pristine black panels I got with the M stuff. Plus since the fronts were sprayed black they will match better. I'll save the other black panels for when a cage is put in the car in the future sometime.

And since it was 40 degrees and January I decided to back her out of the garage to sweep up while I had the chance. 

I have mostly everything off the car as I am getting ready for the color change.

[Jdesign]

Looks damn good from here!

[Tkuhn]

UPDATE.

Rolled the front fenders and rear quarters a bit, I never rolled them before and I wanted to get a little out of them. Not worth showing photos they are just rolled fenders lol.

But I got the rear panels put back together and installed. And I am hyped to have rear panels back in the car.

Also got a start on making a rear seat delete panel. Made up a good ole cardboard template.

Gotta pick up some plastic to cut out but that's it for now.

[Tkuhn]

Firmiliar sight here. Got pretty much everything disconnected to pull the engine and trans out. Planning to check things over along with replace the clutch. 

Found out I'll need to replace an axle as one of the boots is starting to seap grease. Also need a new driveshaft because the damn u-joint has some play in it. Wish these u-joints were serviceable

[Tkuhn]

New bumper came in today

And I opted to not do what every non M e46 owner does and get a M bumper lolol 

Quick mock up because i was excited. The bash bar and rad support are not on the car.

[Tkuhn]

Bumper is all trimmed up where it needs to be and mounted nicely. Not a whole lot of progress lately, slowly but surely.

[jc43089]

Looks good!  Any progress is good.  Especially with the cold weather.

[Tkuhn]

jc43089 said:

Looks good!  Any progress is good.  Especially with the cold weather.

Thanks! And definatly difficult without a heated garage that's for sure, I have a heater but not one to keep a constant temp in the garage all winter long

[Tkuhn]

Made an exciting discovery that I can't believe I never thought of before. I've been wanting to get projectors in the low beams on my headlights, after doing some research i found that the OEM stuff can be transferred between housings and all the housings are the same with the same slots and markings for holes whether it was a halogen housing or not.

It just so happens I still have both of the xenon headlights from my 330i along with one of the ones with a broken housing.

I started by taking apart the broken one for investigative purposes. Things looked good like they would work!

Stock halogen coupe headlight before:

Took this existing light completely apart and deep cleaned it (it came with my car so it had 200k plus of road shit that I couldn't completely scrub put before). I dont have a before photo but here it is all cleaned up.

I cleaned up the rest of the parts then drilled a hole for the igniter wires to come our of the housing which then connect to the ballast. 

The ballast slid right into the coupe housing just like on the original pre-facelift sedan headlights. (No photo but you get the point).

Once the igniter was secured in and all the wires were ran I cleaned up the projectors and the reflective housings. Installed them into the coupe housing and put the shroud into the housing.

Now that I know it works I have to do the other headlight but I was extremely happy to find I had basically all the parts to do this.

Next up is to order some new lenses to get rid of the nasty faded ones, I tried to polish them out but new ones are cheap enough.

[Jdesign]

Thats good to know, and it looks great!

[Boris3]

Looks good! I don't have the expertise to ask the question correctly but is there any need to reflash the LCM/ECU, or will the changed setup just plug and play?

[Tkuhn]

Boris3 said:

Looks good! I don't have the expertise to ask the question correctly but is there any need to reflash the LCM/ECU, or will the changed setup just plug and play?

That has crossed my mind lol. I believe the my will still work for sure. Just not sure how the car will react, like it might think that the headlights are burnt our or something since the data being sent back would be different. It might just say theres a headlight burnt out or something. I need to do the end of that research yet. Either way I know it can be coded in if that is a problem, just need to do the research to get that knowledge. I was going to try and plug it in but the battery is not in the car since my garage isnt heated and I didnt want the battery to freeze up haha