[M3] Evo wing and new steering wheel

[note: this post, like an air-cooled 911, is back-dated to when these events occurred] 

Today I picked up the wing (and car) from the paint shop. The wing was not fitted to the car when I retrieved it, so it wasn't until I got home that I could check the paint match and how it all came together.

I started by assembling the flap and the wing off the car.



In addition to finishing and painting the wing, they re-cleared the top of the carbon flap and buffed it to remove some swirls and crazing marks it had picked up from years of getting moved around.



The awkward no-wing M3 look... been there, done that.



Before:



After:



Before:



After:



It's hard to see in the photos, but the stock wing had been refinished before and the paint match was not quite right. The stock wing had a bit larger/more pronounced flake, and a bit of a blue tint to the silver compared to the decklid, which seems to have a little bit less luster in the clear coat and a bit more of a yellow tint. The new Evo wing matches the decklid very very well. I was holding my breath as I bolted it up, and when I stepped back I was extremely pleased!



There is a bit of dried up wax and stuff I need to clean up at the base of the new wing.



The fit of the wing to the decklid is very good. They also cleaned up the wing base very well. There are still a couple little nicks, but compared to what they started with it's transformed.





One thing I am not super keen on is the exposed fasteners. They are more noticeable than I expected them to be. I am going to order a different style of fastener, in black, and see if I can make them "disappear" a bit more when seen rear-on.



With the car back home, I was also able to fit something very special that I'd ordered from eBay Germany a couple months ago.

Before:



After:



It's a new-in-box (well, not anymore) 1985 Italvolanti Indianapolis in red, 365mm. It replaces a 1983 Italvolanti Formel in 360mm. It's so over-the-top and I absolutely love it.





The color match to the original interior is uncanny! Fitment was not quite plug-and-play. The black wheel uses the Momo-style mounting system, with 6 smaller bolts; the red wheel uses a 3-bolt system. The former type of hub is readily available for E30s, the latter is not. The solution was an adapter piece, purchased here. The +5mm increase in wheel diameter, plus the small offset of the adapter, bring the red wheel a bit closer to the driver than the black one, and have fixed the issue where the black wheel obscured the top of the instrument cluster. Due to the orientation of the fasteners through the adapter, I had to offset the Momo hub 30 degrees on the spline to have the new wheel aligned correctly. As a result my left turn signal does not cancel. Annoying.



Next up will be some clean-up items, and I'd really love to get my 16" wheels refinished one of these days...

[M3, Focus, Skyline] Taste of Alpha-N, paint shop quoting, back road drivin'

[note: this post, like an air-cooled 911, is back-dated to when these events occurred] 

Big update tonight!

First up - a couple weekends ago, I gave Kevin a lift when he dropped his car off for storage. He has A-N and a carbon airbox, and he generously swapped seats to let me try it out.



The A-N/airbox combo was fantastic and cemented my decision. His car is also just so damn nice. Always a pleasure to be allowed behind the wheel! Here's a video of Kevin's car he posted on YouTube showcasing the induction noise:

A week ago (last Monday), my car went to the shop to have the Evo wing painted. I've not had paintwork done before so I found the quoting experience interesting. I'll share my thoughts here for those who are curious or inexperienced as I am. I took the car, the wing, and the carbon flap to four different shops in the bay area that were recommended to me by local M3 owners and my company's car club. All of the shops quoted in terms of hours of prep required on the wing, and hours of paint required. The hourly rate at all of the shops was around $110/hour, with the exception of shop A, which was $80. I told them I was looking for good paint color match, and a "cars and coffee" level of quality. I told them I was NOT trying to hit the lawn at Pebble Beach. This is how the quotes came back:

Shop	Prep time quote (hours)	Paint time quote (hours)	Total quote
A	0.5	3.5	$490
B	6.0	6.0	$1635
C	2.5	3.5	$715
D	3.0	3.0	$810

Apologies for formatting slaughter...

The prep time at shop A was a red flag. I don't know body work first-hand, but I know that wing needed more than 30 minutes of love. The quote from shop B... I'm not sure what that was. I would say that it was their way of no-quoting my business, but they could have said that when I first showed up. Shop C had reasonable time estimates, the shop was clean, the quote guy friendly, and an air-cooled 911 in the back. Shop D the quote guy's attitude immediately turned me off. I ended up going with shop C.



I left the car with them to let them ruminate on the paint match. They sprayed out a magnetic test 'chip' that I came and looked at with them before giving the final OK to paint out the wing. More on that in the next post.



On Sunday Ted and Jon came down and I led them on some great roads I've discovered in the south San Jose / Morgan Hill area. With my car out of commission, and my GT-R doing its best Audi impression only running on five cylinders, I had to call on my Nitrous Blue daily driver to lead the charge.









We had perfect weather and clear roads for most of the journey! Being the nice guys that they are, Jon and Ted helped me isolate the misfire issue on the GT-R and identify a bad fuel injector on cylinder 3. I think Ted was intimidated when he saw all those cylinders and all that turbo piping but he gained his footing pretty quickly! Haha.

[M3] Drilling the Sport Evo wing carbon flap, alignment, Memorial Day drive

[note: this post, like an air-cooled 911, is back-dated to when these events occurred] 

 

Car went for an alignment, or should I say an expensive front toe adjustment. I have to say, it feels really good right now to drive. It all just gels. The short shifter is taking things to the next level, and I hate to say it but I'm loving the stock 15s for look (from some angles) and feel on the road.



I went out for a drive on Sunday with Jon - starting from Alice's, the old 84-Pescadero-PCH-84 loop. This is apparently the only photo I took. I should have known better than to go out that way on Memorial Day weekend, it was a total zoo. Jon and I were shooed from the Alice's restaurant parking lot - no loitering if we weren't ordering anything. On the way out on 84 we were stuck behind Subarus and CRVs with bike racks, lollygagging out to the trails. We had Pescadero to ourselves all the way out to the coast, but highway 1 was slammed with people trying to escape cabin fever. The beaches are closed, and the off-road parking near them is closed, but some of the higher lookout pull-offs remain open. So there were cars strewn all about, people crossing where they pleased, and walking on the small shoulder of the (50mph) road all the way down to the closed beaches. We saw motorcycles, groups of all kinds - the BMW GS touring kind of guys, the Japanese sport bike guys, the Ducati guys, the Harley guys, packs and packs of them. As we got back to the Skyline/84 junction there were car clubs ripping in every direction, dozens more motorcycles, bicyclists. Alice's entire parking lot was motorcycles, I've never seen so many. Cars were parked along Skyline wherever they could fit and three police cars were there, I learned later from Facebook that they were handing out no-front-plate tickets and running a speed trap. I got out of there quick.

I am planning to visit body shops this week to get quotes for the Evo wing job. I thought before that, I would take a crack at drilling the mounting holes on the carbon flap, since none are present (like the CF replica front splitter). The problem is that the holes are blind so I needed a way to transfer the hole pattern to the flap. I tried a lick of paint on the holes but the surfaces are not line-to-line so that wasn't successful. I considered measuring carefully from one piece to the other, no way. I had seen someone turn a screw down to a point before, on a different application, but I don't have the means to fabricate that at home. Enter this wonderful M8x1.25 transfer screw set. $15 shipped to my door in two days.







They thread into the wing base and have little points. Line up the flap and press them together, you've got your pattern.



The bolts are M8, I ended up drilling all of the holes to 10mm to open up the tolerance a bit and get a good fit. The bolts are not on the same plane, and the parts don't have the identical contour, so it makes the whole thing a bit easier.





Nailed it. Very pleased with myself.



And that's that... it's a big empty Bay Area out there right now. I expected to be home for a while, but as I enter week 10 of working from home it's kind of amazing to know that I'll be here another 7-9 weeks at least based on my employer's return plan.

[M3] Suspension bushing refurb, short shifter, Sport Evo wing mock-up

[note: this post, like an air-cooled 911, is back-dated to when these events occurred] 

[also note: I have condensed multiple forum posts into this entry, please forgive awkward transitions]

I'm in the middle of my bushing job over here. On Saturday I pulled the front control arms, sway bar, and tie rods. I wasn't going to do the tie rods originally but you know what they say... while you're in there... I order my parts from Pelican because they are nearby and shipping typically takes two days, the only thing they didn't have in stock was the front sway bushing and ECS has taken their sweet time getting it to me. It's just as well I guess, because I have my control arm bushings at the machine shop to get the new ones pushed in and I forgot the little locking tab plates for the tie rods anyway. Aiming to reassemble this weekend.

The ball joints really put up a fight. I rented a fork-type tool to bang them apart - worked last time - but it wasn't enough for three of the joints at the hub. I had to go rent the other tool, the "non-destructive" ball joint tool. This one was successful with some hammer convincing. Top tip, try that one first. The fork destroys your ball joint boots.





I've got a list of awesome parts and projects I'd like to do on this car, unfortunately the big remaining items are quite expensive. KW V3s, Alpha-N and carbon airbox, some really awesome 17" wheels. However, there are still some relatively low-cost things that will deliver maximum bang for the buck. One of those is the wheel refinishing project, if that guy ever gets back to me... another is a short shifter. I have a Rogue Octane kit in the mail. One more is the replica Evo wing I have been lugging around for 5+ years.

There has been some commotion over on the Facebook group about aftermarket wings and the quality of fitment. I received this wing when I bought my first M3, and I was told it was from Markus. Like my Sport Evo splitter, I have moved it from house to house and shed to garage across the years and I think now's as good a time as any to mount it. Before doing that of course, I fitted it up to the trunk. One of the studs is a bit off-kilter, which makes fitment look dodgy as you first start to insert studs to holes, but when inserted with a little squeeze it lands home. I've never had aftermarket body parts on a car so I'm not 100% sure what they 'usually' look like. This one will need a little bit of refinishing but it looks within the realm of normal paint shop stuff. Seems someone was a bit over-eager with the grinder when removing the parting line. The fitment to the trunk lid is good overall and I think it will come out really nicely.











I am very picky so I have anxiety about getting this wing to match the rest of the car. I'm going to take the car to a couple of body shops next week once it's back together for a quote. Tips and guidance appreciated... are there certain things I should look for, or ask about? I'm not up on the latest body shop tech. I also welcome input on what I should expect to pay, as I have no benchmark.

[one week later...]

Bushing job finally completed. I hit a huge snag when I realized that it is NOT possible to push the control arm bushings onto the control arm by hand in situ under the car. I'm not sure why I didn't catch on earlier, considering I did this job on my old car back in 2015 and called out in my old notes that I had used a tool for the task... in any case, I lucked out and a local member had the tool and I was back on track without too much delay.



It appears that I didn't take many photos.





This job is simple, but not easy. There are not many fasteners to remove, but access is restricted and it's a lot of short wrench strokes and ball joints that don't want to pop free. I didn't have a blast, but it's done. I set front toe "by eye" and must have not have gotten very close - it drove a bit wonky on the test drive - but it will receive an alignment before I do any more driving. Summary of suspension work completed:

• Front control arms replaced
• Front control arm bushings replaced
• Front sway bar bushings replaced
• Rear sway bar bushings replaced
• Rear sway bar end links replaced
• Rear lower spring pads replaced (10 > 15mm to increase ride height/decrease camber)

I received the Rogue Engineering Octane short shift kit and installed it while the car was in the air. I only have test drive miles under my belt but it feels really nice, short stroke and very solid. Fitment was spot-on and quality excellent. I've only driven my M3s with the long and notchy stock shifter so this is going to take some getting used to.

Next up: alignment, and visiting paint shops to see about this wing.