ILC's E92 M3

[YoungCR]

Daggerty said:

Im sure with the right pads and brake fluid they would do alright but seriously if your selling a car for 90k put some decent calipers on. If Ford can put fixed brembos on a 40k focus, I think Bmw can sacrifice a little money for the upgrade.

They gotta make it comfy for 90% of the first owners that buy it as a status symbol and not a track car. Logically you'd want a 328/335i for that but we all know it's not how it really works haha.

One of the sales guys asked me about upgrades for his e92 back in 2012. Really all there was were AFE intakes and he simply asked why BMW just didn't put the higher performance intake on from the factory. Not everybody wants to hear the glorious induction noise while taking business calls. #firstworldprobs

[jc43089]

Daggerty said:

The car should've came from the factory with fixed calipers.

A pure performance car that is going to be tracked shouldn't come with single piston fixed calipers just because they have a good stopping distance after one run. 

Im sure with the right pads and brake fluid they would do alright but seriously if your selling a car for 90k put some decent calipers on. If Ford can put fixed brembos on a 40k focus, I think Bmw can sacrifice a little money for the upgrade.

I agree.  My Volvo has 4 piston Brembos and 330mm rotors at all 4 corners from the factory, and the R is never really meant to be a track car anyway.  They are perfectly comfortable on the street.  Downside is 400$ each to replace them.

[Earl]

jc43089 said:

I agree.  My Volvo has 4 piston Brembos and 330mm rotors at all 4 corners from the factory, and the R is never really meant to be a track car anyway.  They are perfectly comfortable on the street.  Downside is 400$ each to replace them.

That's why you rebuild them instead=)

[jc43089]

Earl said:

That's why you rebuild them instead=) 

Yep, I have a couple kits to do that this summer.

[i_love_cars]

Daggerty said:

The car should've came from the factory with fixed calipers.

A pure performance car that is going to be tracked shouldn't come with single piston fixed calipers just because they have a good stopping distance after one run. 

Im sure with the right pads and brake fluid they would do alright but seriously if your selling a car for 90k put some decent calipers on. If Ford can put fixed brembos on a 40k focus, I think Bmw can sacrifice a little money for the upgrade.

I agree that BMW should offer better caliper design, to an extent. For new drivers who aren't gonna go that fast or push that hard, the car will be safe on track. For someone like me, it'll cook the brakes in 2-3 laps though. If you want to roll an M3 off the showroom floor and take it to the track, then it doesn't matter what kind of caliper they give you - street pads are going to fall apart and overheat quickly at the track. There's no getting around it. So yes, a good race pad and fluid is honestly all you need in the e92 to do well at the track with braking (the e46 was the real weak link). Which is why I said buying this BBK is kindof overkill, but at the price I just couldn't say no. 
Bottom line is, you're gonna need a good race pad no matter what if you want to go through a day of braking at the track without issues. 

Also, "Brembos" don't really mean much. The 135i comes with 6-pot brembos in front and they come with sacrifices like shitty piston material that has literally been known to start on fire and melt during hard braking at the track. You need to drop another $400 to upgrade the pistons. They also didn't do that great at the track. Hell even my Acura TL-S came with 4-pot brembos in front standard and they were just not that great. You are still getting generic, mass-produced parts that are only slightly better than what a regular caliper would be. 

Also, remember that piston counts don't mean anything. These PFCs I bought have 4 pot and they will stop better than any 6-piston caliper you can buy for this car. There is math and science behind why that is.

Daggerty said:

But over kill is just saying your tires have room for improvement.

For sure I've now got more braking than my tires can make use of. In order to fully extract what this bbk is capable of, I need to run r-comps at the track, which will be next year. I jumped right into the E30 with slicks and it was very easy to manage because of how light the car was. I am going to run the M3 on street tires for a few events to learn the car a bit - r-comps just carry so much more speed through corners and with how heavy this car is, I want to get a feel for the weight transfer.

[bk335]

i_love_cars said:

I agree that BMW should offer better caliper design, to an extent. For new drivers who aren't gonna go that fast or push that hard, the car will be safe on track. For someone like me, it'll cook the brakes in 2-3 laps though. If you want to roll an M3 off the showroom floor and take it to the track, then it doesn't matter what kind of caliper they give you - street pads are going to fall apart and overheat quickly at the track. There's no getting around it. So yes, a good race pad and fluid is honestly all you need in the e92 to do well at the track with braking (the e46 was the real weak link). Which is why I said buying this BBK is kindof overkill, but at the price I just couldn't say no. 
Bottom line is, you're gonna need a good race pad no matter what if you want to go through a day of braking at the track without issues. 

Also, "Brembos" don't really mean much. The 135i comes with 6-pot brembos in front and they come with sacrifices like shitty piston material that has literally been known to start on fire and melt during hard braking at the track. You need to drop another $400 to upgrade the pistons. They also didn't do that great at the track. Hell even my Acura TL-S came with 4-pot brembos in front standard and they were just not that great. You are still getting generic, mass-produced parts that are only slightly better than what a regular caliper would be. 

Also, remember that piston counts don't mean anything. These PFCs I bought have 4 pot and they will stop better than any 6-piston caliper you can buy for this car. There is math and science behind why that is.

For sure I've now got more braking than my tires can make use of. In order to fully extract what this bbk is capable of, I need to run r-comps at the track, which will be next year. I jumped right into the E30 with slicks and it was very easy to manage because of how light the car was. I am going to run the M3 on street tires for a few events to learn the car a bit - r-comps just carry so much more speed through corners and with how heavy this car is, I want to get a feel for the weight transfer. 

Nailed it. Even though the 135i has 6 pot calipers, they're a big downgrade from the single piston 335i brakes in stopping power. I think a common misconception is more pistons are always better.

Daggerty said:

The car should've came from the factory with fixed calipers.

A pure performance car that is going to be tracked shouldn't come with single piston fixed calipers just because they have a good stopping distance after one run. 

Im sure with the right pads and brake fluid they would do alright but seriously if your selling a car for 90k put some decent calipers on. If Ford can put fixed brembos on a 40k focus, I think Bmw can sacrifice a little money for the upgrade.

Any street car sucks on track without track pads and fluid (excluding hyper cars, etc.). The F80 4 piston brakes are terrible on track as well. Also, the E9x M3 started at ≈$58k IIRC, not $90k.

[i_love_cars]

Something is happening in Spring 2018.

[KaiserRolls]

i_love_cars said:

Something is happening in Spring 2018.

I sure hope so!

[B C]

This is gonna be awesome!

[YoungCR]

Yasss!

[B C]

Marina!

[i_love_cars]

Things are happening. Xpipe arrived today and I have sourced the below ESS 625 kit. Fortuitous timing given the color-matching. The seller will be shipping it out to me either next week or the week after. Once the salt clears and the car is out on the road, I will also be getting the rod bearings replaced.

As it turns out, I've already got a head start on the install because I saw a bunch of fucking coolant under the M3 a couple days ago. Car hasn't been touched since Nov. 4th. I couldn't find anything wet in the front of the car. Pulled the intake manifold and found a bunch of standing coolant on top of the block below the thermostat housing where there are some coolant elbows that go to the heads. Seems to be the likely culprit that one of those seals failed somehow. I'm borrowing a coolant pressurizer kit from a friend to verify.

[YoungCR]

Very excited for this. I got to drive a ESS E92 M3 at the dealer once, the noises were incredible!

[GunMetalGrey]

Oh boy! That will be fantastic! 
Can't wait to see the install and final product!

[KaiserRolls]

[m42b32]

That color matching looks fantastic!

[patsbimmer1]

#rollraceking

[jc43089]

Are you sure the coolant was mixed strong enough to prevent freezing? Could have frozen and that's what caused a leak just sitting? Doubtful because it's such a new car though, likely it hasn't been touched yet.

Sent from my 831C using Tapatalk

[Jdesign]

WOWza. This is awesome.

The coolant leak sucks but I assume that's just your engine crying for more power anyways, so I think you are making the right choice here.

[i_love_cars]

jc43089 said:

Are you sure the coolant was mixed strong enough to prevent freezing? Could have frozen and that's what caused a leak just sitting? Doubtful because it's such a new car though, likely it hasn't been touched yet.

Sent from my 831C using Tapatalk
 

The prior owner had coolant flushed on annual basis at the dealership (kinda weird?), and I had 0 problems storing it last winter but then again it wasn't nearly as cold last winter compared to the huge cold snap we had this year in Deember/January. 

I borrowed a coolant pressurizer from Dan Frodl and couldn't reproduce a leak anywhere. That said, the thermostats on these cars are a common failure at my mileage anyway so I picked up a new thermostat and a couple of orings for the elbows that go to the cylinder heads off the thermostat housing (which is where the coolant leaked from). I've put several hundred miles on the car over the past month without any issues so I'm almost 100% sure it was only due to the extreme cold we had and orings shrunk. Either way I'm not leaving it to chance. This stuff is going on when the supercharger goes on since the manifold will be off anyway.