Car Sales Vehicle Purchase

So finally after months and months of searching I was able to find a pretty decent E46 M3 on CarSales.com.au. It was a nice 2003 Titanium Silver example, originally UK registered and now Personally Imported to Australia so as a result it had a few of the setbacks that come with European cars that have been driven during winter (ie extensive underside rust). There was also no evidence of Vanos or Subframe repairs or failure but I already intended on sorting these out myself.

It is hard to find a decent 6MT model here in Australia so I jumped in to this one head first and would address any of the missing preventative maintenance or repair work as I go. Here are a set of pictures taken just prior to purchase that I pulled from the CarSales advertisement:

I managed to negotiate to a reasonably agreeable price which I was pretty happy with given the other E46 M3's available on the market and their condition.

The car was very straight, with good service history and was basically stock aside from the AP Racing BBK.

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Goodridge Fuel Sample Point

As part of the Targa Australia Regulations the car must be fitted with a Goodridge G-Link quick disconnect coupling (shown above) for fuel sampling as per M5 of the Targa Australia Regulations: Luckily thanks to my previous install of the Radium Automotive Fuel Rail I now had an AN connection at the back of the fuel rail and at the outlet of the Fuel Pressure Regulator. Now due to the clearance it was not possible to neatly install a take-off at the rear of the fuel rail where the current AN fuel line connects to so the easiest place to setup a take-off for a fuel sample point was off the Fuel Pressure Regulator. So to achieve this I purchased a SpeedFlow Tee-Piece (-06AN female to male with a male off-take). As you can see in the below photo I was then able to off-take from this point for the fuel sample connection. The fuel sample line then follows the fuel rail line out from the Fuel Pressure Regulator and then splits off and follows the Oil Dipstick Tube up to the Left Hand strut t

Department of Transport Modification Application

As I mentioned in the previous post I wanted this car to remain street legal and as a result I was going to have to get a Modification permit and approval for the level of modifications I was looking at. This means that all of my modifications were going to have to comply with the National Code of Practice for Light Vehicle Construction/Modification . The initial stage of the process is to complete a Modification Application which outlined what I planned to do. This stage is relatively simple and is just so they can stop you from starting anything that they will reject straight away. All you get at the end of this stage is "in principal" approval to continue with your modifications. As an engineers report and thorough inspection are required to get the final approval. I wanted to get this stage started as quickly as possible as it had to be submitted by mail so I knew the processing and response times would be slow. As a result I did some rather quick and high level resea

///M Clubsport Door Sills Search

Whilst starting the preparation and install for my Karbonius CSL Carbon Fibre Roof I started thinking about the final overall style of the car again. It particularly came to the front of my mind when a friend, who was working with me on the roof install, asked what the deal with the CS badge on the boot was. I realised tat whilst that choice had made sense to me it may not really land with others who are unfamiliar with BMWs and understand the history of the CS badging or the idea of what the Clubsport moniker encapsulates. From previous research and investigations into Clubsport branding from BMW that I could use to keep the style I knew of the somewhat rare E46 330i Clubsport so i thought I should take another look to see if there was anything from that that might help pull the theme together at all. It was at that point that I came across the ///M Clubsport door sills that are used on the E46 330i Clubsport. They struck me as perfect to help tie the theme together. They are an off

WBM346Z Build Journal

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