New build! E90 M3

[Jdesign]

[patsbimmer1]

I had a chance to throw my GoPro on my car and get a video of the center caps in motion or lack of motion I guess.  I may be a bit ignorant but I expected these to spin while in motion so I was a little surprised that the weight actually keeps them centered while in motion!  I still love these stupid things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS4py3eR5jM&feature=youtu.be

[patsbimmer1]

Late Model Throttle had their annual dyno shootout so I stopped by this morning and figured I'd make all of the LS guys feel better about their dyno numbers.  My engine is bone stock other than Borla mufflers which adds approximately zero horsepower.  My best run was 337whp/247wtq which seems to be in line with the rest of the stock s65's so that's good.  Torque is basically flat from 2k-ish rpm's to redline.  My butt dyno has always told me this car is fast enough for me so this was really just out of curiosity and to hear it run to redline from outside of the car.

[YoungCR]

Glorious!

[m42b32]

Sounds awesome! It's so weird watching the center cap stay perfectly still the whole time

[B C]

I bet the centercaps were a great conversation piece. This is one of the only applications of a Borla muffler that sounds really good to me. I have usually preferred Magnaflow in the past, but that was also back in the 4 cylinder days

[patsbimmer1]

m42b32 said:

Sounds awesome! It's so weird watching the center cap stay perfectly still the whole time

B C said:

I bet the centercaps were a great conversation piece. This is one of the only applications of a Borla muffler that sounds really good to me. I have usually preferred Magnaflow in the past, but that was also back in the 4 cylinder days

I had two guys come up and ask me how I got them to do that lol.  It's still the dumbest thing I've put on this car and I love other peoples reactions!

[suspenceful]

Car sounds great!

What was the highest BMW/Euro power at LMT that day?

[patsbimmer1]

suspenceful said:

Car sounds great!

What was the highest BMW/Euro power at LMT that day?

Friday there was an 08 335i that put down 701whp/712wtq and that ended up being the highest euro 2wd or 4wd.  There were a couple F80's on Saturday that were 570 and 590 whp respectively.  The one that dyno'd 590 actually ended up on the Burger Tuning instagram page.

[GunMetalGrey]

patsbimmer1 said:

This won't be much of a build thread and more of a "look at the silly cosmetic things I bought"

This thread is delivering as expected.

I wasn't creeping too hard, just came here to remind myself what color your car is.

[patsbimmer1]

GunMetalGrey said:

This thread is delivering as expected.

I wasn't creeping too hard, just came here to remind myself what color your car is. 

If I do one thing well it's setting low expectations then delivering on those expectations!

[patsbimmer1]

I have a few plans for the car over the next few months and it's starting on the interior right now.  For Christmas I received the Colby Wheel parking brake boot and DCT boot.  Over the weekend I was able to install the parking brake boot and I'm happy with the look.  If like to get the interior a little brightened up without exploding with color and I think this helps.  The DCT boot is a little more labor intensive so I'll be doing it this week.

[straight6pwr]

that looks great!

[patsbimmer1]

I took a moment today to knock out the DCT boot today from Coby Wheel.  It's not exactly as simple as the parking brake boot was and I reached out to Coby Wheel for some direction which he provided quickly.  Part of the instructions included cutting my old leather boot off... which I wasn't really thrilled about.  I was fully prepared to do this when I started the project but later figured out I didn't need to.

First step was removing the shift decal and face plate from the knob.  I used a small blade screwdriver to pry the decal off then used a torx to take the screw out holding the face plate.

After this I removed the leather boot from the frame using a flat blade screwdriver.  Now, this is where you would normally cut the leather boot off of the base of the shift knob then ziptie the new one on.  I decided to try and slide the leather boot through the alcantara one and have the new alcantara rest on top of the leather boot.  I did this in order to easily revert back to stock without having to buy a new knob/boot assembly.  Once I had that done there is a piece of boot that you can slide under the face plate and sandwich in order to have a more seamless look.

Here it is with the face plate resting on top and the alcantara boot resting over the leather boot.

To be honest, once I got to this point I was actually disappointed about the fitment.  It looked really frumpy.  I decided to put it in the car and see if being on the shift lever helped.

I used some double sided tape to install the decal and popped her in.

I'm much happier with it installed!  It's still more bunched up than the leather boot was but I don't mind it at all.  I'm really happy with the boot and it was a quick 30~ min DIY that's completely reversible.

[Rekpoint]

That feeling in your stomach when you ruin a perfectly good part and can never go back to stock again

Looks great though!

But that feeling though :"D

[patsbimmer1]

Rekpoint said:

That feeling in your stomach when you ruin a perfectly good part and can never go back to stock again

Looks great though!

But that feeling though :"D 

Many cars I have had no qualms about cutting, slicing, etc. but this car I just couldn't bring myself to say "fuck it".  I did have the fabric scissors sitting next to me just in case but i'm glad I was able to do it without ruining the original leather.

[patsbimmer1]

I bought a few things recently and yesterday one of them showed up!  I ordered a set of VRSF catless downpipes from Extreme Power House last week since ECS will not sell catless parts.  I originally wanted Rogue Engineering test pipes from Bimmerworld because the price is great but they were out of stock and when I called it in they told me Rogue was terrible with in-stocks and they estimated at least 2-3 months.  I did some searching and found that VRSF made a catless downpipe and it was only $20 more than the Rogue option on sale right now.

I had used VRSF in the past and trusted they would have a quality part at a great price and I wasn't disappointed.  The installation was pretty straight forward.  Remove the exhaust, measure where to cut, cut out cats, attach new pipes, floor it.  The benefit is extra horsepower and increase in eargasms.

There's a few useless pictures and the video doesn't do this mod justice.  I have it paired with the Borla Atak mufflers and in my opinion, it sounds phenomenal.  It has added more bark and volume to the sound in the mid to upper rev range and added more depth and complexity to the overall tone through the range..  Apparently, without a tune, it has added more power but I can't honestly tell if it "feels" like more power because the noise has changed or if there actually is until I get it back on a dyno.  I was worried about it being too loud but at cruising rpm's there is a only a slight increase in volume and it doesn't get loud unless I want it to.

[straight6pwr]

those downshifts, tho 

[P_Roloff]

That sounds excellent! It's funny, I saw an identical silverstone e90 m3 sedan yesterday driving through a neighborhood near me and wondered if it could be you. It definitely wasn't, it certainly did not sound like that!

(and the license plate is different as I now notice)

[patsbimmer1]

straight6pwr said:

those downshifts, tho 

That's my favorite part!  The crescendo of explosions coming out of the back as I run to 8300rpm is nice but... the rev matched downshifts are my favorite!  One of my favorite things is driving around town and downshifting when people are walking around or have car windows open and watch the heads whip around to see what's making such an archaic noise and the confusion when they see my car then the joy that usually follows.