RozeTheHornet
Active Member
Hi anyone reading this, stop now, this will be a very slow and boring build thread, with the first post basically being a life history. DO NOT READ THIS! Seriously, it’s really long and really boring. I thought about doing separate threads for each project, but its just so much easier for me to deal with it all on one.
I will use this thread really to simply keep track of what I am doing with my various projects and try keep myself on track as I keep just abandoning my projects and leaving them to get rusty . And so I can look back and see progression.
A simple start is to introduce all my cars:
My dream car has always been a black E46 M3, with black interior, on silver OEM 18" wheels.
So obviously, when I could afford one... I bought a seriously overpriced but super clean E46 318ci...
I then decided that I was going to learn to drift in this car… completely stock. Which did not go well, I obviously blew up the diff at Santa Pod, and snapped a rear coil spring, and got towed back home by the AA.
I then got a new diff and took it to DSI (now Carson Performance) to have it welded, installed that, replaced the rear coil and carried on trying to drift it.
(I have no footage of this, but here is a clip of the welded diff)
A year or so went past and I finally saved up enough money to buy an M3. I started searching for one and after a month or so, and many different cars, I found my ideal car for sale. An incredibly clean, 69k mile Manual coupe, non-sunroof, with not a scratch on it and full BMW Service history.
I fell in love and bought it. And suddenly had 2 very clean Black on Black, Manual E46 Coupes.
My intention was to keep this clean, pristine and only drive it on weekends and take it to shows. That all fell apart about a month later when the 318 developed a misfire, and then died completely. I decided to try fix it, couldn’t solve the issue, so thought sod it, I will buy a cheap, ragged 330ci, learn to drift more in that, and use all the super clean 318 parts to make a raged 330ci nice.
Hopped onto eBay and found the cheapest, “Drift Ready” 330ci (also known as a stripped, plasti-dipped 330ci, with an eBay wheel, eBay coilovers, eBay hydro, the dodgiest of all dodgy MOT’s, a very sketchy history, and all of the rust in the world). As terrible as the car looked, it surprisingly ran great, was and has still never given me any reliability issues (other than me getting excited on a roundabout and bending a lower arm) and the car has grown on me massively.
I swapped all of the removable body panels from the clean 318, and put them on the 330, cleaned it all up, sorted the dodgy wiring, re plumbed the hydro, fully serviced the car and ran it as my daily / drift car for almost a year.
Lots of drift footage of both the 330 and the 540 on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHZYzzMwQ6oLmm6kw3dI3g?
At the same time the M3 had developed / shown many, many issues. The front callipers were warped, the car kept going into Limp Mode because of a dodgy throttle position sensor, a rear coil spring snapped, then the other one snapped, cracking was discovered on the boot floor, the high-level brake light died and a speed sensor died. The garage I bought the car from however fixed everything that went wrong on the car free of charge, which I cannot recommend them enough for. Only thing I paid for was the subframe reinforcement because obviously that may have happened after they sold the car. This is something I had planned on doing to the car anyway at some point as it is a common issue.
When the 330 MOT came round it failed because of corroded brake lines so I parked the car up on my drive, and started using the M3 till I could find time to replace all the brake lines. This went on for about 3 months or so. I then had a motorcycle accident and could not move much at all for a month or so, and was on a wheelchair then crutches for another month. Whilst stuck at home doing nothing, being bored, I could see a mostly gutted 318 out my window, a 330 on axle stands with the rear subframe completely removed, and an M3 gathering dust, so I decided to buy a 540i/6 manual that popped up for sale as a replacement for the 330.
Went to go see it with a friend whilst still on crutches and bought it. I did a separate build thread on that here: https://www.driftworks.com/forum/threads/e39-540i-manual.264456/
Today my 318 is still on my drive, not even a rolling shell really. The 330 is all fixed and needing an MOT then a new home, and the 540i has just sat on my drive for about 4 months now.
The good news is I Bought a set of HSD MonoPro Coilovers and will hopefully be installing these to the M3 on Friday. Will update not long after that in theory…
This thread is to try make me actually start doing the things I want to my cars, and get them all running and drifting again, or sold, or burned… Really just do anything with them to be honest, I am just tired of having 3 non-road legal / not properly running BMWs on my drive, and the M3 slowly deteriorating .
Apologies if you actually read all of that…
Hopefully the next post will be me actually doing things to one or any of the cars.
I will use this thread really to simply keep track of what I am doing with my various projects and try keep myself on track as I keep just abandoning my projects and leaving them to get rusty . And so I can look back and see progression.
A simple start is to introduce all my cars:
My dream car has always been a black E46 M3, with black interior, on silver OEM 18" wheels.
So obviously, when I could afford one... I bought a seriously overpriced but super clean E46 318ci...
I then decided that I was going to learn to drift in this car… completely stock. Which did not go well, I obviously blew up the diff at Santa Pod, and snapped a rear coil spring, and got towed back home by the AA.
I then got a new diff and took it to DSI (now Carson Performance) to have it welded, installed that, replaced the rear coil and carried on trying to drift it.
(I have no footage of this, but here is a clip of the welded diff)
A year or so went past and I finally saved up enough money to buy an M3. I started searching for one and after a month or so, and many different cars, I found my ideal car for sale. An incredibly clean, 69k mile Manual coupe, non-sunroof, with not a scratch on it and full BMW Service history.
I fell in love and bought it. And suddenly had 2 very clean Black on Black, Manual E46 Coupes.
My intention was to keep this clean, pristine and only drive it on weekends and take it to shows. That all fell apart about a month later when the 318 developed a misfire, and then died completely. I decided to try fix it, couldn’t solve the issue, so thought sod it, I will buy a cheap, ragged 330ci, learn to drift more in that, and use all the super clean 318 parts to make a raged 330ci nice.
Hopped onto eBay and found the cheapest, “Drift Ready” 330ci (also known as a stripped, plasti-dipped 330ci, with an eBay wheel, eBay coilovers, eBay hydro, the dodgiest of all dodgy MOT’s, a very sketchy history, and all of the rust in the world). As terrible as the car looked, it surprisingly ran great, was and has still never given me any reliability issues (other than me getting excited on a roundabout and bending a lower arm) and the car has grown on me massively.
I swapped all of the removable body panels from the clean 318, and put them on the 330, cleaned it all up, sorted the dodgy wiring, re plumbed the hydro, fully serviced the car and ran it as my daily / drift car for almost a year.
Lots of drift footage of both the 330 and the 540 on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeHZYzzMwQ6oLmm6kw3dI3g?
At the same time the M3 had developed / shown many, many issues. The front callipers were warped, the car kept going into Limp Mode because of a dodgy throttle position sensor, a rear coil spring snapped, then the other one snapped, cracking was discovered on the boot floor, the high-level brake light died and a speed sensor died. The garage I bought the car from however fixed everything that went wrong on the car free of charge, which I cannot recommend them enough for. Only thing I paid for was the subframe reinforcement because obviously that may have happened after they sold the car. This is something I had planned on doing to the car anyway at some point as it is a common issue.
When the 330 MOT came round it failed because of corroded brake lines so I parked the car up on my drive, and started using the M3 till I could find time to replace all the brake lines. This went on for about 3 months or so. I then had a motorcycle accident and could not move much at all for a month or so, and was on a wheelchair then crutches for another month. Whilst stuck at home doing nothing, being bored, I could see a mostly gutted 318 out my window, a 330 on axle stands with the rear subframe completely removed, and an M3 gathering dust, so I decided to buy a 540i/6 manual that popped up for sale as a replacement for the 330.
Went to go see it with a friend whilst still on crutches and bought it. I did a separate build thread on that here: https://www.driftworks.com/forum/threads/e39-540i-manual.264456/
Today my 318 is still on my drive, not even a rolling shell really. The 330 is all fixed and needing an MOT then a new home, and the 540i has just sat on my drive for about 4 months now.
The good news is I Bought a set of HSD MonoPro Coilovers and will hopefully be installing these to the M3 on Friday. Will update not long after that in theory…
This thread is to try make me actually start doing the things I want to my cars, and get them all running and drifting again, or sold, or burned… Really just do anything with them to be honest, I am just tired of having 3 non-road legal / not properly running BMWs on my drive, and the M3 slowly deteriorating .
Apologies if you actually read all of that…
Hopefully the next post will be me actually doing things to one or any of the cars.
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