2002 BMW E46 330i Touring - Not your average daily

[Sf_Manta]

First post of 2023, and the car's had a good deep clean as it was in dire need of it. Wheels off and some rust treated and sealed.

















All done but no polish as the rain decided to stop play right when i finished drying.. ah well

[Dr.AK]

I wish my driveway was flat enough to do a deep clean on jack stands, but it's all crooked and wobbly and I don't even like jacking up the car there lol. Kinda envious.

Love your Touring mate!

[xjdmidget]

gorgeous, I have two E46s myself so have a fondness for them! What the eagle sticker on the front wings?

[Sf_Manta]

Mar 31, 2023 21:42:59 GMT xjdmidget said:

gorgeous, I have two E46s myself so have a fondness for them! What the eagle sticker on the front wings?

That's the 'JustDeutsch' Screaming eagle, given the engine was rebuilt by the owner of the company, it denotes any car he's had a hand in.

[sonus]

That E46 looks superb 👍 I so regret buying a brand new Volvo V50 instead of a slightly used E46 back in 2007. Got my priorities straight after and have had a E91LCI 325d and now a Tanzanite blau F31LCI 340i. In truth the build quality of the E91 felt better than the F31. My ultimate car would be an Alpina B3 allrad touring in Alpina green. Looking forward to your updates!

[Sf_Manta]

Thanks for all the compliments on the car so far.
Small update, and probably the easiest fix to date.
Broken off the leather strap used to lift the false floor up in the boot. Had some spare black webbing strap left over from securing the fire extinguisher so.. 15 mins later, one new strap all secured and ready to work.

[Sf_Manta]

Alright, so spent a good 5 hours or so prepping / cleaning and checking the car over for next week.
Insides got cleaned, car got jacked up and a full deep clean and polish including the wheels.

There's a few minor marks and scratches but she still shines up pretty well.












Also got my show plates through and drilled to fit nicely.

[Fossilfish]

Saw this on track. Looking good my son

[Sf_Manta]

May 20, 2023 17:22:17 GMT Fossilfish said:

Saw this on track. Looking good my son

Any pictures or footage would be welcome,

[Sf_Manta]

Only got 2 pics so far, but do have footage from in car, unfortunately the mic was muted! so have to put some music over it.

[Sf_Manta]

www.youtube.com/clip/UgkxF2owsxhCzOOoKs6K2PhkB9YbjGDPTQsq

Finally found some footage and she sounds / goes well from the line.

[Fossilfish]

Unfortunately I didn't. I recognised the car then saw you flinging it around.

[Sf_Manta]

Well then, it's been an eventful few weeks for me here.

Firstly back at the start of June, I prepped the car for a trip to the south of France to that 24 hour race many of us enjoy watching, and for some like my self had the oppitunity to work at in the past, and this year certainly didn't disappoint. The on track action being absolutely epic as well as getting my car on the PH stand at the Great British Welcome at the 2nd year i've visited as a spectator.

Spent a few days prepping the car for the trip, including an oil change, new brake pads and a fluid flush on the brake system as i had a trackday the day after i got back from Le Mans to attend. This plus my rear washer pump deciding to fail and a quick trip to Euro's to get a replacement





Day before the trip, car was all stickered up at a friend's place with another friend's chariot, a Jaguar XFR Le Mans edition if i recall? Aka 5.0 V8 and supercharged . which made my 261bhp 330i look sluggish. Still both cars were loaded and driven out and back again with only one issue being the jag's washer pump decided to forgo living anymore.



Once back from Le Mans, off i went to Donnington for a trackday there as I'd been invited for a well known Youtuber's birthday bash at the trackday which proved pretty fun.



Morning went well, got some good time in the car and was getting faster as the day wore on till right before lunch when i took someone out for a passenger ride when.. this happened. I caused a red flag for the first time ever in my time doing track days and had to suffer the tow back to the pits as I couldn't select any gears.







This meant no more running for me that day and the slight issue of getting home from Donnington, easily a 70mile drive and no means to select gears.
however, a suggestion of "This your tool box? got a big screwdriver handy?" resulted in some drilling of the remains (hence the hole) and this was the result :rofl:



Amazingly it worked reasonably well, and i got home without any further drama, though also made me think of it as a perfect anti theft device.. how can you drive a manual car if there's no gearstick?

Still i needed to replace it and thankfully I'd kept ahold of my old shifter setup, which after a little tweeking and 2 hours rolling around under the car to wrestle it in means i've got at least something that's looking back to stock for now. I'm already talking to the vendors about a possible discount on a replacement as when I asked about it, turns out they'd had a design change post when i brought my kit likely due to failures of this nature.





Least that's gonna work for now till i can look at a replacement, as I'm having to currently start over with my house hunting as I had to recind on an offer due to issuses and a vendor that refused to budge on price.

[Sf_Manta]

Update time, has been a while since i've had to sort out anything on the car though having to deal with saying goodbye to an uncle for the final time last Friday, house buying shenangians and a heap of test work, things are finally calming down a bit.

House move is due soon so finally might have a garage soon :bounce: and another project thread on something I've had in storage for a while now and getting parts for.

As for the BMW, been having a few issues with the front brakes, and the last set of discs looked like this. :eek:


After some discussion with a friend who's regularly working on older BMWs, the likely culprit was the pistons sticking in the front brakes.
Thusly I've ordered up some parts this week and supplies to sort things out. New piston kit arrived today, hopefully I've got the right size.



Shall post more this weekend once the job's hopefully been completed. Meanwhile got a supercar experience last weekend so got to thrash a Aston Martin round Silverstone

[Sf_Manta]

So the last week or so has been a bit of fun in trying to refresh the brake calipers. What started out as hopefully a routine refresh ended up being a complete replacement.

When stripping the caliper off the car, unfortunately one bleed nipple decided to sheer off despite my efforts.
After this, it ended up being a removeal job which proved quite difficult with the caliper seized on the mounting which got complicated when getting the brake line removed. I ended up stripping that too as well as the banjo :censored:



So i was left with the delema of how to resolve this. Some investigation into options involoveed the following, either getting a pair of 2nd hand replacements and waiting 2 weeks to get them referbished by Big Red, or given it was just the front right caliper being faulty purchasing a new one from a Porsche parts specialist which had a lead time of 3-5 days. It was either £850 or £1010 and no chance of return if i got it wrong.
Some double checking of the part numbers before I made the choice.

Given I needed the car back pronto.. and £200 difference I opted for the latter and got a new replacement, which turned up last Tuesday. Thankfully the research paid off and I was able to get the correct replacement.







I do plan to get another replacement for the left side and pull the old one off when i can afford to and rebuild that one. However this will have to wait till I've got the final pieces of paperwork for the house move as this is due to happen in the next few weeks, and I've got 2 weeks off work to move myself up to my new place. Once I've had some time to settle in, this should mean i can start a project i've had in the wings for a while and plan to do a youtube diary on it.

[Sf_Manta]

Update of 2024.. now 10 years with this car as of the end of this year. which is crazy :eek:

Still, the car had been running pretty well, bar the LH headlight decided to stop functioning just before Christmas.
Given I'd already swapped out the bulb and ignitor for the xenon system, and i was having no life out of it, the 3rd part of the system being the ballast was the logical faulty part. Some checks online showed the price to be anything from £56 to over £400 :eek: with a complete headlight being the thick end of £986!
I last replaced the RH headlight about 8 years ago for less than half that price!

Still, a new ballast was ordered from Autodoc and landed a few days ago so today was fitting it.



Out came the headlight , swapped in the new ballast and dropped it back in. A quick test later and thankfully, it's all working.



Next big job on the BMW is a service, new wheel bearings, rear brake disc sheilds, front left caliper rebuild, headlight adjustment before the MOT is on the cards in May.

[Sf_Manta]

Update time.. kinda?

Been gathering some parts for some work in April , specifically wheel bearings all need doing and a general service and MOT.
So sorting that next month as I'll be getting it to Carpetsoiler for him to work his magic.

As for lately, the car's been to Caffine and Machine a few times at the Bowl near Ampthill as it's not that far away for me. Been to the German night which is growing in popularity, and this tuesday just gone was a good one. Even had Taylor Hetherington of Taylor made cars and AutoAlex fame, drop by with his Z3 Supercharged 1.8.

Had a good chaff about cars, good food, and found out Taylor was a fan of my Touring. There was a brand new M3 Touring in a deep green (maybe a colour choice for the manta.. hmm) there as well and the owner admited my E46 sounded better than his car :hehe:

[Sf_Manta]

Update time this week, I've been off work for the past week though mainly focusing on sorting the house out and knocking off a number of jobs that have been needed doing since i moved in.
One job on the BMW was fresh front tyres as the MOT's due next month and the camber had finally worn the fronts down on the corners. So a fresh set of PS5's went on for the trip end of May to Nords for the N24 and a few laps of the tourist evening after the race.





Car's going for a major service with Carpetsoiler , involving new wheel bearings, the front left caliper getting serviced, oil service and filters and having the MOT done. Hopefully some pictures to follow. I'd do the work myself but with the drive being gravel still, its not a safe surface to jack the car up on.
That's going to be solved this year after the nords trip.