I've taken a little break from internet forums for a bit, but as I'm back to sell a few bits and bobs I may as well tell the tail of why I'm selling them.
I found myself sat up late on the Sunday night of the Easter bank holiday weekend. I had just been out for a drive in my M3:
I had really enjoyed the drive. Over the winter I had finally had the 'ring damage repaired and she's had a service, a new radiator and she's running sweet
I really wanted to have that level of fun every day and whilst there was nothing wrong with my Z3 3.0 Sport:
...I don't know, maybe I was just fancying a change. That night I decided to sell both cars and purchase an M car for daily use. My first port of call was a Z4MC, I thought that might be a good one to go with. One of the mechanics at my local BMW specialist once described them as "way too much for the road, too twitchy, too much power, they're just mad". That sounded like my kind of car!
So on bank holiday Monday I found one, called up to arrange a test drive and drove over to look at it:
I liked the look of it and I was chatting to the sales guy, then half an hour later I was still chatting to the sales guy... and at the end of it he announced that unless I agreed to buy it today if it drove OK he wasn't willing to take me for a test drive. I was a little miffed to say the least! Still, I went back to browsing Autotrader, that wasn't the only M car up for consideration.
Then I noticed something... Z3M Coupes. Hummmn, I like my Z3, I love the way it drives... why not eh. So I found one I liked, drove down and drove home in it:
She's on a few more miles than I really wanted (82k), but she ticked a lot of boxes... I love Dakar yellow, the Z3M with the S50B32 comes without traction control or a fly by wire throttle - two things I hate. She's just had a new clutch and flywheel at BMW, new VANOS at Munich Legends (if the service history isn't BMW it's ML!). Then I was talking to my serivce guy at BlueBell BMW and he brought up the cars history. At 75k she had a £4-5k boot floor replacement! Awesome! Someone has spent a lot of money on this car.
I put the strut brace from the 3.0 on it:
Fitted some BMW plates and refitted the rear plate holder - it was in the boot as the dealer had thought it easier to just pull it off and stick a plate to the boot. Before:
After:
I've also carried over the blue/orange front indicators and silver side/rear indicator bulbs, the Bosch aero blade wipers, the e46 Clubsport gearknob (the light didn't work on the one in the car so I figured why not!), BMW sport aerial... that's all I can remember.
I can't tell you how much fun this car is to drive... if any of you are fancying a change then I strongly suggest trying one of these... unless you've got one of these and you're thinking about selling, then you're just mad and I'd have to suggest you ask your family to have you taken into care.
Plans are to keep her very standard. No suspension tweeking, no messing around. I'm gonna put braided brake lines on her (she's already got a braided clutch hose) and some decent DOT5.1 fluid, and then maybe a remap... but other than that I cannot fault the way the standard car drives. I might even keep this one clean... I've bought something called a clay bar... but that's a lot of time I could be spending driving..! Haha! I've just got some seat bushes to put on at some point as there's a bit of a rock in the seats. I've been constantly on the phone to BM getting little bits and bobs for it!
Then came the time to sell my M3... but I couldn't. She's so stripped and track focussed no-one would ever want her in that state, so the thought of selling her for £3k or so was too much, I've decided to keep her and just build a car port over the Z3MC!
Guess I need a new signature picture now..! Thanks for reading
