[Frank.JD.Perez]

Hey E46Forum members,

im finally posting up my build thread her for my wagon since i've got one somewhat over on my mustang forum, so expect some mustang and x5 pictures to find their way here as well


Back in 2018 when i was still commuting to Santa Clara when i used to work at Intel (weird flex, but ok) i was in dire need of a new car because i just couldn't stand dailying my Mustang anymore on the crappy bay area roads with the horrible traffic that was part of the old commute let alone all the money i had been dumping in the suspension and tires for the Mare. I know 60 miles round trip a day is nothing, but when it can take up to 2 hours just to go 30 miles for half the commute... yea it sucks.

So i bought my BMW!

In mid march 2018 i purchased this 2000 BMW 323iT from the somewhat original owner with just over 172k miles. i say somewhat because the guy i bought the car off of had been using it for the last maybe 8 years or so, but it was originally purchased by his mom, so it was a single family car with the ENTIRE service history like my Mustang had. Of course coming into the car i already had ideas of how i wanted it to look aesthetically, but over the time i've had it i decided what other mods she's will seen and will receive.

I started with the idea of mods such a suspension (full spec E46 parts), "new" rims, brakes, tires, sound system, upgraded seats and steering wheel, ZHP front and rear bumpers, M3 hood and eventually i wanted to do a full E46 M3 drivetrain swap with the SMG, but after owning the car for 5 years now i've altered slightly from these original idea. We're still doing some sway bars and drivetrain stuff, but differing from what most people have done (most suspension, wheels, tires, brakes, seats, bumpers already done). Details on the drivetrain won't be revealed at this time.

A little bit more about the car: it's has the legendary inline 6 motor that almost all BMWs have, the color is Steel Grey Metallic, its an auto with the steptronic shifter - or whatever the politically correct term is - the car is a 2000 (pre LCI baby!), has the factory Xenon headlights and sported some awesome 16x7 rims wrapped in 225/50 tires of some random manufacturer that i didnt really care for, and obviously she's a wagon!

When i bought the car one of the very first things i did was take it to my local BMW dealer to get an inspection and figure out what other little gremlins the car had so i could fix them. I knew that the car needed an alignment and probably needed a cooling system overhaul among interior repairs, but when i got the inspection papers back it let me know i needed to replace my front control arm bushings, replace the lower power steering hose, get some new brake fluid in there and i think a couple other little bits that are escaping me at the moment. The dealer cost to fix all of that was about 5k which i LOL'd at very hard. To be honest though... the VERY first thing i did with the car was i had taken it to Sonoma Raceway. That was only for support car duties though. Since i've owned the car i have taken it out to an autocross event (once, unfortunately, but more to come) and have put almost 50,000 miles on it since 2018. I do miss the gas mileage i used to get in her stock form, but it's all about smiles per gallon, baby!

a few pictures from the car render website of the direction i wanted to go. ironically im still pretty on par with the earlier renders

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

I had picked up a factory ZHP front bumper that was in need of some love, so i took to learning how to do body work. Even if i messed up it was at least a learning curve i was willing to work with, especially since i only paid $50 for the bumper.

Score.

I had ended up learning a lot from this bumper and it led to the work that im doing on the zhp rear (more on that later)

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

ZHP front bumper Part Deux

Phase 4: Painting with color matched paint and stalling the project (more on E46 carnage next)

The one on top is the new paint and the one on bottom is the original paint

After getting a solid base of paint on the bumper this project halted from September until recently

Phase 5: Finishing the project. Paint, Clear, Sanding, Buff, Cut and Polishing

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

Remember that Intel comment? Well that commute, and some brake checking asshole, meant that i got to install the front bumper and do my cooling system overhaul sooner than anticipated!

Proceed with Service Mode and the blurb from FJD Performance!

"We paid – pun intended – a quick trip to Turner Motorsports’ website and picked up a full cooling system overhaul kit for about $500 consisting of: a new radiator, all the needed hoses, water pump, blue BMW coolant, coolant overflow tank, thermostat and housing and also picked up a new fan clutch and water pump pulley. Having worked on a 97 Audi A4, and watched many YouTube videos, I had an idea of what to expect when working on the car, so full destruction ahead!"

"The car was fairly easy to work on, and we actually had the majority of things done within the working day, but due to waiting on parts to arrive the full project lasted 2 weekends. All in all still not too bad; just very involved. In addition to the project we picked up some M Tech style fog lights for the bumper and a cover for the fog lights for us to route some ducts of our own to the new brakes Elise will be getting in the future. We painted, cleared, buffed, cut and polished the new bumper as well, but during this project, on top of the cooling project, was the very unfortunate fires here in the North Bay/Chico area of California, so air quality was very poor, and made for somewhat tough breathing in addition to the painting."

After this we went through a few different sets of rims before we settled on the square 18x9 Style 67 M3 wheels. Including, but not limited to, Staggered style 68s and staggered E36 M Contours with Gray painted middles.

This pretty much completes ownership from March 18 to December 2018


From here the car stayed pretty much untouched minus the M sport steering wheel and headlight film. i had fixed most of the items on the inspection i had gotten from BMW and was on my way to working other things on the car like upgrading to 330 Brakes, ZHP Lower control arms, HD bushings for the control arms, Eibach adjustable camber arms, track spec'd ISC coilover set (10k/12k), and upgrading to the Bavsound stage 1 speakers before installing my sub and putting in heated sport seats (that still arn't heating... separate thread there)


2019

During this time i did a resonator delete, got a borla muffler and a custom dual 3in tip set up for my exhaust, chased down a misfire due to plugs and got a new set from ECS and some suspension bits as mentioned above

The coilovers are 32 way adjustable, so i made holes so i could adjust the rears more or less on the fly. still haven't gotten around to making the covers, but its not really a problem for me at the moment

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

After getting the bigger wheels and coils i went and had a buddy professionally roll and pull the rears while i just took a heat gun and the metal handle from the jack and rolled em myself

Late 2019 my power steering went out, so had to get a new pump and replace that... we've been here before

From here the Bavsound goodies arrived and i got those all installed

After this i got my fiberglass CSL style lip in from Latvia back in late 2019 early 2020

next up i went and freshedned up the trim pieces by giving them a quick sanding with i think 800 grit and then blasted them with satin/matyte black paint followed by my sub install. the box was also ordered from Europe. i believe Poland.

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

2020


Sub install

I wanted to keep the practicality of a wagon while still having a good thumpin’ sub, so i bought the Basser sub enclosure, but there was a catch. Being this is a German car, and all the goodies are in Europe, that means sometime you need to source parts from the EU. Parts like the ZHP CSL Splitter, ZHP touring rear bumper and this Basser enclosure from Poland.

When i got the 10″ sub we found out quickly that there was a fitment issue. The speaker wouldn’t fully sit into the enclosure. Many hours later and a lot of cutting later… i found out that the issue wasn’t inside the enclosure… it was the opening to it. Dumbass. Being that i had clearanced the inside of the enclosure i ended up having some more air space for the sub, so it all worked out for the better in the end, but boy was it a head scratcher! The design of the sub and lack of holes available made us have to get very creative when it came to installing the terminal for the power and ground.

After all of that tom foolery took place i finally got to ripping the car apart and taking care of the wiring. I originally had planned to put the amp where the factory cd changer lived, but eventually came to the conclusion that we had a better, more stealthy option and opted for it. The wiring itself wasn’t too difficult, but i had trouble getting the sub to power up and get sound. Good thing a handful of months ago when I did the stereo upgrade I also got a Line Output Converter which was exactly what we needed when it came time for the sub. I had to splice into the rear speakers in order to get sound to the sub, and man was it rewarding hearing the Wubz!

When the time came for final install I wanted to car to look neat and professional, so I opted to keep the original tray compartment and modify both the compartment and the sub enclosure so that the fit was perfect. Unfortunately I couldn’t keep the spare tire in back, but in the end it doesn’t matter since i have the 330 brakes and the spare wouldnt fit over the calipers.

The wubz are wubby. The sound is crisp. The craftsmanship is perfect. Most of all, the entire sub enclosure can easily be removed and installed in about 10 seconds for Auto-X shenanigans or other needs.

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

330i brake upgrade/restoration/paint install

20 bucks to the guy who guesses the color first lol

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

More brake pictures and next projects

2021

Both my cars and my wifes old RX before we made the following purchase

2022

quick detail immediately after purchasing (basking in period correctness)

in these later pics you can see how much more the car is beat and that is solely from letting my father borrow it once and letting my wife drive it...

as for the X5 i did a whole overhaul on it, got some custom Apex wheel studs for him and installed the factory tow hitch for the below purposes

Fucking STUD this guy.

we got the X5 with about 114k miles and also 1 real owner who was a BMW exec in so cal. VERY well taken care of

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

Finally got my EC7s

18x10 et25 and soon to be powdercoated in silver

of course the bigger, more bad ass, aggressive wheels means i need to widen the body more... so i got some m3 spec hard motorsport flares to accompany the new shoes!
these are only a temporary wide body as i have some custom stuff in the works. these hard fenders are a project in themselves... i feel like ive got ford production tolerances to deal with on these guys! lol

as you can also tell in these photos the kidneys are off as well as the factory bumper is on. i had pulled off the ZHP bumper to fix it and repaint as well as fix the fiberglass splitter. in addition to the zhp bumper i have been body working these hard flares. as for the kidneys, the person on ebay i got them from sent me coupe ones... eventually i just got a oem set in good condition from pick n pull and then we got all fixed up. also scored a ZPP bumper so my car is looking somewhat pretty again

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

WHAT WE ALL HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR...

ZHP rear bumper project

i started out what seemed like an easier way to mock up the hatch slit, but ended up picking up a 3rd wagon bumper and just cut the entire top off

its basically ready for paint where is stands right now, just need to finishing smoothing some more on the sides, prime and fill and then blast it with paint

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

Hard Motorsport Flare bodyworking

Sensitive content, not recommended for those under 18

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theres more progress than this, but these are the last pictures i took of the flares

 

[dullonien]

Very interested to see progress on this. Looking great.

I'm tempted to order a set of the Hard Motorsport flares for my touring. My rear arches are rusty so need cutting out anyway + I've got a square set of 18x9.5+35 wheels to fit, so the original arches would have needed clearancing to avoid excessive camber.

Will you be leaving the fixings etc. exposed, or blending them in?

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

what do you mean by the fixings?

-edit-

you mean the rivets/bolts right? im not entirely sure at the moment, but most likely i will paint match them. just need to see how the paint will hold up on the fasteners

the original arches will support the 9.5 35s with some rolling and pulling and about -3* of camber, but clearly you nee cutting lol. the flares arent horrible, but def not perfect. there is some trimming needed on the gas tank side and only one of the door cards actually lined up properly for the door itself. if you dont mind them not looking perfect, its basically cut and rivet, but im a bit anal when it comes to my cars

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

@dullonien here are some pictures of the rears i just took right now to show the gap/line they follow. the door card part with the tape was significantly longer and has now been cut to be at least somewhat more presentable. i honestly havent spent much time on the rears as the fronts are a higher priority since they need more work

if my wagon were a racecar and not a daily i probably wouldnt care as much, but i would still make changes


and for everyone else here is a quick pic of the repaired csl splitter. still need a bit more attention before its finished, but here is how it sits now

not that anyone cares lol

 

[dullonien]

Thanks for the info, very helpful.

Looks like there'd be a decent amount of fettling to get it fitting perfect which I'd want - kinda expected that with a product like this though. I think I'd want to fully blend mine in, not the biggest fan of exposed fasteners. But maybe I should just stick to my original plan of some standard repair sections for the rear and roll/pull the arches for my wheels - decisions, decisions.

Work on the front and rear bumpers looks great.

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

Thanks for the info, very helpful.

Looks like there'd be a decent amount of fettling to get it fitting perfect which I'd want - kinda expected that with a product like this though. I think I'd want to fully blend mine in, not the biggest fan of exposed fasteners. But maybe I should just stick to my original plan of some standard repair sections for the rear and roll/pull the arches for my wheels - decisions, decisions.

Work on the front and rear bumpers looks great.

Cheers man

Honestly i expected better quality and was definitely mistaken... oh well. At the end of the day its not a huge deal since the actual fenders i have planned will be blended in and look way better. In time though.

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

So... i fiinally got around to installing and painting half of the hard flares i bought months back, but it wasnt because i just felt like doing it... some asshole tboned me in my work parking lot so i had to get creative. Especially once his insurance said they weren't liable, which is completely bull and im still actively trying to argue the case... anyways. I did a lot of trimming and test fitting before i was happy enough to fit it up and paint. Pretty happy with the outcome and paint match!

@dullonien there was plenty of trimming... as for the fasteners i drilled a hole in the body for a M4 bolt and used rivnuts, so i can take the fenders off whenever i need. Also i paint matched the bolts too

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

Up next will be the fronts, but they still need some more body working before paint

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]

 

[Frank.JD.Perez]