my 330i

[nick.e46.330i.]

The engine is finally painted. It took longer than I wanted to but that’s because we ran out of propane and and when that happened I lost ambition. Haha. My buddy came out to my shop and put the primer down Saturday night. Then came out tonight to lay down base and clear. 

Also since my last I got the spacers to space out my power steering pump. 

I also put new seal on the vanos pistons and put the anti rattle kit in. I don’t have any pictures of the process as my phone died when I started. 

Now when @Tkuhn has time he will be doing the wire tuck.

[Jdesign]

Damn looking nice! Moving along steadily!

[nick.e46.330i.]

Thanks! All I have to do is buy a few gaskets, the oil pump, and send some parts though the paint line at my work and the engine will be ready to go in!

[nick.e46.330i.]

Falling a bit behind schedule, but I got the engine back in this weekend! 

I’m back down to one job so I’ll have time during the week after work to work on it.

[P_Roloff]

Bay looks great, looks clean enough to eat off of. Excited to see more progress!

[B C]

Is that engine position stock? Looks tucked back a bit.

Keep up the amazing work Nick!

[nick.e46.330i.]

P_Roloff said:

Bay looks great, looks clean enough to eat off of. Excited to see more progress!

Thanks!

snap said:

Is that engine position stock? Looks tucked back a bit.

Keep up the amazing work Nick!

Yea. That’s the stock position. The rad support and radiator assembly just takes up a decent chunk of space. 

I’ll try to! I just can’t wait to drive this thing.

[Jdesign]

Bay looks awesome!!

[nick.e46.330i.]

Little update.. Since the s54 ofh does not have tabs to mount the power steering reservoir my brother made one that we ended up mounting by the driver side motor mount arm.

 

We ended up converting the lines to -6an and instead of using the stock ps cooler I bought an auto trans heat sink and mounted that in front of the steering rack. After a couple trips to behling I everything I need to make my oil cooler lines, Vanos line, and power steering lines. We shaved the top of the core support so there was a decent mounting point for the oil cooler. 

And I had my buddy that painted the engine bay paint the brake booster as well. 

But it there’s quite a bit more to do to make the euro district deadline.

[nick.e46.330i.]

After getting my car done and on the road at 1:30am Friday morning, my car ended up making it to euro district with no major problems. There were something that were half finished and not done that I wanted to be done so my car will be going back into the shop to get finished up!  

Here are some pictures that I’ve found from the show that people have taken. 

[nick.e46.330i.]

I haven’t had much ambition with this thing in the last couple months. But I did do a couple things with it. In may I put the car back to coilovers. I went back to the Isc coilovers that were on my car before I went on air. Emailed Isc for replacement parts so I could adjust ride height in the front again as one on the fronts were seized from driving on them in winter years ago. 

Over the 4th of July break I deleted the ccv and now running a radium engineering catch can. I have the car it’s first good wash since last year.  

Also I ended up trading my Volk III wheels for a set of BBS MK Motorsport mk2 wheels. They are 18x8.5 et13 with 235/40 up front and 18x10 et20 with 265/35 in the rear. The tires rub pretty bad in the rear so my current plan is to order some 215/40 tires for the front and use the current front tires for the rear. Once I get the tires situation done I’ll mess with the camber a bit to make them actually fit decent. 

Hopefully I can get the tires before ls brewhaus and get the car there!

[patsbimmer1]

Why did you end up dropping the air?

[nick.e46.330i.]

patsbimmer1 said:

Why did you end up dropping the air?

I would like to do more track events and I felt the air wasn’t going to handle as well as my coilovers did previously.

[patsbimmer1]

nick.e46.330i. said:

I would like to do more track events and I felt the air wasn’t going to handle as well as my coilovers did previously. 

Makes sense.  By track events i'm guessing drift events or do you have timed events planned?

[nick.e46.330i.]

patsbimmer1 said:

Makes sense.  By track events i'm guessing drift events or do you have timed events planned?

I would like to do the fall Shawano auto-x event this year. Maybe next year do a few more events of that nature.

[patsbimmer1]

Awesome!  It'd be a great car to see on track!  Certainly one of the more stylish in a setting like Auto x.

[nick.e46.330i.]

Been a very hot minute since I’ve posted anything here. Winter 2018-19 through the summer of 19 I was doing engine work on my motorcycle. And just had low motivation to work on the BMW. But I started to tear into it during COVID. I ended up pulling the whole interior, going to be going with an all black interior. I acquired most of the swap from the parts car I had 4 years ago. The dove grey interior that was in it was pretty shot. But since about this past May I haven’t really touched it til this last month or so.

I had Troy rewrap my engine harness. 

I’m also planning on going back to air. Picked up some bulkhead couplings today. Ran the front airlines today. And got the black carpet in as well. 
 

Im starting to get a good amount of motivation for this thing again. So I may be posting more in again.