WBM346Z Build Journal

Given the age of the car and the condition of the steering rack I decided that I should investigate a rebuild or upgrade. My research brought me to a great thread over at M3Forum written by forum member Volke -  Comprehensive Steering Information Thread  (updated to NAM3Forum link). It seems as though the dead feeling I had been experiencing on my stock rack was due to the progressive nature of the stock E46 M3 rack. An "upgrade" or remedy to this would be the CS/CSL steering rack, E46 330i steering rack or a few options from the Z cars. Taking my research back over to M3Cutters (as M3Forum better serves LHD cars and my car is a Euro, hence RHD) I found that the E46 330i Steering Rack is normally noted with a "Purple Tag" on RHD cars and so a common upgrade is the Purple Tag Steering Rack upgrade.  As I dug further it seems that as this steering rack came off a more standard car they were cheaper and easier to come by - especially refurbished/rebuilt - and showed co

There was a fair few things that bothered me when I stripped the car. The main one was the use of "push-on" fittings which were a pain to use and most of which had perished to the point of requiring destructive removal. Given this and the terrible state of all the power steering hoses I knew straight away that I wanted to find an after-market alternative to replace the aged hoses and try and remove the "push-on" fittings from the system. During my research I found that there was a fair few people out there that had hose companies make them up replacement hoses instead of getting OEM replacements. As much as I liked the idea of this it still left me with basically the same hose setup so I kept looking and stumbled across the Hack Engineering Power Steering Lines Sets (for E46 M3) . There were three options to chose from: Replace the lines but keep the "push-on" connectors to the cooler Replace the lines and upgrade the cooler to AN fittin

After deciding on an purchasing a Evolve Carbon Fibre intake I wanted to look into an Oil Catch Can to protect the new intake from vented crank-case gases. There are multiple generic options out there ranging from ECS Tuning, to Mishimoto and there is obviously the option to build a custom kit, all of which would meet the brief. Although, as usual, I wanted a ready to go kit for this car. After a bit of research the only ready to go kit I could find for the E46 M3 was the Radium Automotive Oil Catch Can Kit . Checking out their website I also found a few other E46 M3 parts/kits they had on offer; Fuel Surge Tank Kit , Fuel Rail Kit and Fuel Pump Install Kit . Unfortunately I fell in love with their high build quality and marketing material as very quickly I found myself wanting it all. So as a result I set out to justify why I might need all of it. The Fuel Pump Install Kit was the easiest to justify in some ways as I was at the level of mileage where it would be prudent to re