So the long awaited big items arrived today. Thank you to the Evolve guys for a great packing job. A thing to point out is that the bumper comes with the gasket, splitters, and tow hoot cover. So I have a spare tow cover, 2 extra splitters and a spare seal. Kind of nice but at the same time could have saved the funds. Ok as usual images below. Items all packed up and delivered All the miscellaneous parts needed to install and complete the bumper installation. Last of the interior parts from BMW were in this order. One step closer to getting the car to the interior shop. I hope to be able to pick the seats up next week as they are in. The bumper itself. It comes painted which is kind of a bummer as I need to repay it. The bumper also seems to be some sort of carbon fiber? First time seeing a OE CSL bumper off a car. I have 2 pairs of splitters. The splitters are super light and seem to be a thin carbon fiber. I will do a write up OE vs VS splitters. OE grill so nothing to unusual here. The final piece of the intake puzzle. Only bummer part with this order is you can only order it with the servo. I am going to see what it might take to get it to work. Nice thing about having a mechanical / electrical engineer as a father =)[p]
Today’s parts update was a woohoo and a damit moment. The Recaro Profi XL seats are at the shop along with the install brackets. We installed the drive side seat and epic fail. The seat with the bracket sits taller than the stock seats so my head was holding the roof up. We are looking into either new brackets or having to make custom ones to drop the seat low enough. So I have sets but not in the car. While at the shop I wanted to get a base dyno before all the big moods. Again another damit moment. We were only able to get to 2nd gear for the dyno test. We were able to at least use all the revs so we got a descent set of numbers. Max power was 317 and the consistent number was 312.4. Not too bad for a starting point. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNIuVAIZzSk&feature=plcp
HOLLY COW. Finally after almost a year I have both cams at last. Car is going in to have sub frame reinforcement installed and diff upgraded. After that it is going in for the intake and cam install FINALLY.
I am off tomorrow to get the car smoged for the last time hopefully. I had an O2 go out just before I had a test section made. The last few week I have had o drive the car around with a test section in that is bouncing around a little under the car. It is freaking me out a bit that it is going to break something as there none of the brackets are installed. Car hates having to work through 100 cell race cats and 2 high efficiency cats. Car is also being dropped off tomorrow for rear sub frame and diff upgrade to 3.91s So I have had some parts installed a tad out of order. I had custom seat brackets made to have the Recaro seats installed. I had to have them made as I am using the sliders so the wife can drive the car still. I sit about the same height as the stock power seats. The goal was to drop weight and sit lower. I could get about a inch lower if I went to a non fixed slider but as mentioned above the wife needs to drive the car. Here are some quick pics of the seats installed. Can you say Pile Of Parts!
Car is back after being gone for the weekend. So here is the latest and greatest. Got the car smogged for the last time WOOTTT. As you can see I am cleaner than a prius… 4 cats can do that HAHA. Anyone needs a test section I will loan it out for $30 bucks. After I got the car smogged I took it straight over to the fabrication shop to have the rear sub frame done as well as have the diff upgraded to 3.91 gears. Trying to time work when things can be done together. My car had started to show signs of spider cracks on both sides. The frame had not "completely cracked" but if I had not done the reinforce kit it would have eventually done so. Here is some images of the car at the fabrication shop. From what I have found and what the shop believes as well is the reason the frames are cracking is fatigue failures. Same issue with aircraft hulls and the pressure changes. The metal eventually begins to fracture with the constant pressurization and un-pressurization. The fatigue part in our cars is the loading and unloading going around turns. This constant flexing causes the area to fail. Bad job by BMW not to beef this up for that is the reason for the cracks. Stiffer suspension only acerbates the issue faster. As the car has 59000 hard miles on it from back roads driving and being on CA roads I guess I am not surprised to know I would potently have the issue. Last of the recent changes is the 3.91 gears upgrade. Already I can feel a change in the car and I don’t even have them broken in. I t made sense to do the diff work now as I had the sub frame out. Pics are of the old 3.61 stock gears.
Loaded all the parts up and car is off to the shop to get all the major goodies installed. I will post some more images of the parts later tonight. Never got around to doing detailed images like I wanted to but at least I have images of everything before it goes on the car.
I know most of you have seen these parts before but here are the parts at some different angles. Hopefully you will see some things you never noticed before. Such as the center console has some side flares that I never noticed in the images I have seen. I grouped the images based on item. CSL Intake Main Air Collector images
I recently drove an E46 CSL in Germany and was quite pleased. . . although SMG II felt rather primitive compared to the DCT in the GTS and the CRT. . . (Do I have the best job in the world, or what?)
I love the SMG 2. DCT might be faster but SMG II does what I need and the car drives like a dream. To each their own. In either case I have the upgraded ESS software for SMG II as posted and it make the car drive great.
The car is now back at home after two months of being on vacation LOL. The shop I took the car to was kind enough to take images of some of the work as they did it. I need to give a major kudos to the shop for doing the work and doing an AMAZING job. IPB-Autosport - Independent Sacramento Audi, Porsche, BMW, Mini, VW Specialist. Address: 1206 C St, Sacramento, CA 95814 Phone: 916-453-1465 They had to do some learning in order to put it all together as well as do some customizing in order to make a factory fit and finish. They made it all come together so if you want to do something crazy like this in CA than this is the shop. They also have all the Evolve stuff as well as they programed the car for me. Next step is to paint the front bumper and break in the diff and cams for 500 miles =) Car the day before surgery No the images you all have been waiting for. Here is a LARGE compilation of images of an OE CSL INTAKE, OE CSL Air duct, and OE CSL Cams install. I will make NO apologize for the in-depth amount of images of the install done. Thank you again to the shop for taking the time to document =)
Other parts that were installed while the car was in the shop. Paddles, Mirror fix and the OE CSL Center Console.
Last update images. Samco hose installed, and the final images of the car back at home before scheduling a time to take it in for paint.
