Danny's 330ci

[Will]

Great work! That cooling system was a ticking time bomb.

[dannyzabolotny]

Good progress here, glad to hear the cooling system is fresh now. Did you replace the headlamp lenses ? They look very nice on recent pics.

I haven't done anything to the car cosmetically aside from washing it. In certain lighting and angles the headlights look okay, but they're still noticeably kinda yellow.

That before/after pic of the cooling system parts is surprisingly sexual

Haha, thanks! I took my time to arrange the parts neatly for the pictures, it was super satisfying in a weird way.

Wow, good stuff. Love shiny new parts!

Best part of owning an old BMW (aside from driving it) is bolting on shiny new parts. I live for it!

Great work! That cooling system was a ticking time bomb.

It was doing a little more than just ticking, it was actively leaving puddles everywhere. Miraculously it never overheated as long as I kept the coolant levels topped up. Since finishing the cooling system yesterday, I've put like 150 miles on the car and it's been flawless.

[fredo]

I have a good cooling system story. My E46 323i had a leaking radiator at 150k miles. My shop told me "we will replace it and refresh other parts while we are there." Six months later I sold the car to a guy from Houston (3 hours far from here). He didn't make it back home, the car broke down outside of Austin city limits due to a water pump failure.

He was cool about it (no pun intended) and asked me if I had water pump issues before. I said no, then I realized the shop didn't replace the pump along the radiator. It was not included in the invoice.

[dannyzabolotny]

Ah, bummer about that. Water pump is an absolute must when doing any cooling system work... for how cheap they are, it makes no sense to not replace them. I replace the water pump on pretty much any BMW if I don't have recent records of it being done.

[johnrando]

Def a bummer.

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[dannyzabolotny]

A few weeks back I did the front brakes. The pads and rotors didn't look too bad visually and appeared to have lots of life left in them, but they shook horribly upon braking, especially when they got warm. I don't see brake rotors warping too much on BMW's, but in the case of this car, that's exactly what happened. New Zimmermann coated rotors + Jurid pads made things feel nice again. The brake job went so smoothly that I was a little suspicious... I'm used to customer cars fighting me a bit. I like to imagine that the E46 is enjoying being fixed, so it's being very cooperative.



Last Friday I walked up to my car in the morning and saw this:



Apparently my tire got a huge gash in it somehow. My friend tried to patch it at his tire shop, but it did not work out because the hole was too large and diagonal. Kind of a bummer because it was a brand new tire with barely over 1000 miles on it.



Thankfully I was able to get a new tire in the right size the following day, which was great because later that day I took an impromptu trip to the edge of the state (400 miles round trip) to go look at a car that I ended up not buying. I averaged 26mpg on that run, which is not bad at all considering that 1) my torque converter doesn't lock at all, and 2) the average speed was around 90mph most of the time.

The next day I went to autocross, which was a blast despite the heat (105º in September, nice). The new cooling system did its job extremely well. I wasn't super fast but I definitely set some personal records for myself, which was very encouraging. It was my first time autocrossing an E46, as I had previously only done it in my violently underpowered E34 wagon (non-Vanos M50 with a bad head gasket and low compression). I fit reasonably well in the E46 with a helmet and the stock seat, which was a concern I had.





I was with my friends and their much more modified E34's— the white one is a 1990 535i with coilovers, camber plates, sway bars, and sticky tires, while the blue one is a 1992 525i with an S50 swap, headers, and an aggressive tune. Both have a lot of my work on them, so it was cool to see em in action on the track.

Since I got this car less than a month ago, I've put on about 2000 miles, and it's been excellent. I briefly pondered selling the car (and wrote an ad) and then decided that was a stupid idea... I always fix up a car and then sell it for some reason, so this time I decided to keep the car and enjoy the fruits of my labor. I'm excited to do more stuff to the car to make it better to drive and better on the track.

[t.er]

Sorry to hear about the tire, that sucks. Brakes - lol mine never go smooth because some idiot mechanic stripped the threads on the slider pins, then tried to repair it but somehow drilled the threads out too big for a helicoil. It still snugs up but can't be torqued, and everytime I remove the caliper from the carrier the helicoils come along with it.

26 mpg is pretty reasonable for that cruising speed, pretty sure mine would be the same.

2000 miles in less than a month - at some point your temp paper plate will need to be reprinted!

[Will]

Bummer about the tire, but look on the bright side at least the new one will be similar in mileage/diameter/age to your existing one and didn't have to replace two.

...my violently underpowered E34 wagon ...

Lol. I laughed this this description way more than I probably should have.


Great updates, glad you're enjoying the car!

[johnrando]

Bmr re tire. Great updates!

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[dannyzabolotny]

Sorry to hear about the tire, that sucks. Brakes - lol mine never go smooth because some idiot mechanic stripped the threads on the slider pins, then tried to repair it but somehow drilled the threads out too big for a helicoil. It still snugs up but can't be torqued, and everytime I remove the caliper from the carrier the helicoils come along with it.

26 mpg is pretty reasonable for that cruising speed, pretty sure mine would be the same.

2000 miles in less than a month - at some point your temp paper plate will need to be reprinted!

Oh man, bummer about your brakes. Is it the caliper bracket that got borked? At least that can be replaced with relative ease.

Regarding the temp tag, it's not based on mileage, but on time. Arizona recently switched to a new system where you get a paper tag and then the metal plate gets mailed to your address, as opposed to instantly getting a metal plate upon registering the car. Believe it or not, the paper tag on my car is valid for a year!

Bummer about the tire, but look on the bright side at least the new one will be similar in mileage/diameter/age to your existing one and didn't have to replace two.

Lol. I laughed this this description way more than I probably should have.

Great updates, glad you're enjoying the car!

Yeah, the tire thing sucked but it all worked out. I'm glad I didn't settle for a mismatched tire or a used tire.

Speaking of my wagon, here's a great photo a friend took of me at the last autocross with it. It had so much body roll that it looked super fast despite being slow.



The other day I got my permanent metal plate in the mail, so no more duct-taped temp tag, yay. I had to go to the hardware store to buy some M5 x .8 bolts to mount the plate, and to my dismay the top two bolt holes in the plate bracket were aggressively stripped out. The plate is still secure but I'll probably order another plate bracket in the near future to mount it properly, otherwise it'll bug me.



One thing that's always bugged me about this car was the wheels being chrome, so last night I remedied that. I found a set of stock finish style 68's locally on Marketplace, and bought them. I got the whole set of 5 with some usable tires for a very reasonable price.



Earlier today I got my new tires swapped onto these wheels, and swapped the so-so tires onto the chrome wheels, as I figured it would make selling them easier. As a fun bonus one of the leftover wheels became my spare, so I have an all-matching set now.

Before, with chrome wheels:



After, with stock finish wheels:





Now that I've got the wheels figured out, I need to get some spacers to correct that sad fitment.