ILC's E92 M3

[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.

[i_love_cars]

Ok so everyone else is doing cool builds and as usual I don't have anything unique to add to the conversation - just basic beta bitch mods like bolt-on superchargers. 

I walked away from the deal for the used 625 kit that had the red painted manifold. It looked good in photos but I know it was also a $15 rattle can job. Not a professional paint job like you'd get from iND or something. The guy wanted $6250 for his kit and on top of that you need to drop $1000 to get a new tune from ESS because they are locked to a VIN. I just couldn't fully bring myself to spend that kind of money for a used supercharger kit compared to the price of a brand new one that comes with a 2 year warranty. 

So I called up EAS and they quoted me $7720 shipped for a brand new kit (which includes a tune). It's a no-brainer at that point to just buy it new. The extra $500 guarantees no missing parts and everything works. 

I also ordered a set of BE rod bearings and ARP bolts. They were back-ordered until March 31 (i placed my order on March 22nd or so) and I'm glad I did because as of now they are already backordered again until July 1. Lots of S65 owners are buying up these bearings because they have increased clearance, but not so much that there is any real impact to oil pressure at high rpms. 

The supercharger showed up earlier this week and I'm still waiting on the bearings. Install plans have been delayed because ....well I mean just look outside. It's cold in my garage too. 

I will be outsourcing the rod bearing install to Efab Motorsports in Lake Zurich. They are doing a labor special on rod bearing service for $700 during the month of April. I'll have them throw in new motor mounts while they are at it because for whatever reason the mounts on this car are a 50k mile maintenance item and the subframe will be down already. The shop owner has a VO 1M that I am excited to look at when I go down there.

I am scheduled to drop the car off for RB service on May 1 and pick it up May 3. 

[YoungCR]

Are there no after market solutions for the motor mounts? Every 50k is crazy

[i_love_cars]

YoungCR said:

Are there no after market solutions for the motor mounts? Every 50k is crazy

There are but they all involve more NVH and I'm trying to preserve the street manners of the car since I don't intend to track it ;(

[Daggerty]

YoungCR said:

Are there no after market solutions for the motor mounts? Every 50k is crazy

Higher power luxury cars it is common with the hydraulic mounts.