[B58_Touring]

Originally Posted by Dagstar

AWESOME. I have one but yours are much cooler. I also have a spreadsheet on my computer with dates, mileage, costs, if it's maintenance or a mod, etc. that's numbered to reference the hard copies in the binder.

Yep I'm on board with all that geeky organisation, usually do it all in works time haha.

Have you tried the custodian app? I've started recording all the history for my M3 on there, it's a nice looking page with photos of the car and digital timeline of service history, mods, restorations etc where you can upload pictures, receipts etc.

It's still being developed but they are planning to make it shareable if you were to sell the car, and also have it so you can download your full history profile for the car as an attractive pdf document which would be great.

Custodian Club

[shadowedition]

Loved this thread. Fantastic looking car.

Recently purchased an F31 340i myself from BMW and first thing I did was get the MPPSK done. Now looking at getting spacers and will swap the Pirelli runflats for MPS4S when its due.

Question re. the brakes though as I'll probably be switching the front brakes/discs in the next couple of months. Using autodoc to search for the parts and the Zimmerman 370mm fronts with which pads do you recommend (tonnes of options thats why I'm asking). Or should I just ring up my local BMW garage and ask them for the F80 M3 pads? Apologies if you've addressed this somewhere else. Feel like the M sport brakes are a bit of a letdown.

Cheers man.

[B58_Touring]

Originally Posted by shadowedition

Loved this thread. Fantastic looking car.

Recently purchased an F31 340i myself from BMW and first thing I did was get the MPPSK done. Now looking at getting spacers and will swap the Pirelli runflats for MPS4S when its due.

Question re. the brakes though as I'll probably be switching the front brakes/discs in the next couple of months. Using autodoc to search for the parts and the Zimmerman 370mm fronts with which pads do you recommend (tonnes of options thats why I'm asking). Or should I just ring up my local BMW garage and ask them for the F80 M3 pads? Apologies if you've addressed this somewhere else. Feel like the M sport brakes are a bit of a letdown.

Cheers man.

Apologies for the late reply, I don't get on here as much as I used to. I the F80 pads are the only alternative I have tried to the originals. They do have much better initial bite which I like, they are quite dusty though.

[B58_Touring]

It's been a while since I've posted anything of great significance on this thread, I've just been enjoying the car and keeping it maintained. It had a full set of new MPS4S tyres fitted back in January, had an annual oil service carried out and a scheduled brake fluid change at the local indy.

New tyres going on, and pretty even wear across all four. The fronts had done about 40k and still had a bit of life left in them but had been on the car since 2019 so just bit the bullet and replaced them all. Rears went on two years ago and had done 20k.



A few months back I started to get a clunking noise coming from the front passenger side, I thought 45k miles on the B14's might have taken its toll on some of the bushes so set about locating the noisy one. As soon as I jacked the car up I found the culprit... a snapped spring



I had noticed I'd started getting a bit more rubbing on that corner when I had a heavier passenger sat in the car and thought it might have been down to the fresh set of tyres. I was tempted to raise the car a bit for a more grown up appearance (I'm knocking on a bit now) but didn't fancy my luck given the state of the threaded sleeves. They really haven't held up well to daily use so would need to be replaced. I contacted Bilstein for a price on a full set of springs and rear threaded sleeves. The biggest issue was the 6-8 week lead time on them all, I have use of the m3 while I've got the F31 in the garage but I don't want to daily it in all conditions for that long.

In the end I decided to go with the B12 kit, I already had the B8 rear shocks which are still fine. I just had to buy the two matching B8 fronts and a set of Eibach pro springs. This gives me a fixed set up and a properly coated set of front shocks which should hold up much better to the elements than the B14's did.



Stupidly I sold my original suspension with all of the spring seat rubbers & rear cups thinking I wouldn't reuse them anyway so I had to buy some more of those.



Once I had the parts together it was into the garage to be stripped down



The offending strut assembly removed & in the vice. You can see how corroded the shock body is, the galvanised coating hasn't lasted well at all compared to the rears which still look pretty good despite the odd stone chip





I don't think the person who installed the fronts last time around knew what a torque wrench was because some of the bolts were mental tight, especially on the rear. I removed one of the strut top bolts on the front and it snapped straight away, so that needed drilling and tapping out with a cheap set of easy outs & taps that saved the day





New strut built up, ready to install





Rears are pretty straight forward apart from the incredibly tight bolts that I had to fight out. You can see the state of the threaded adjustment sleeves here.



Eibach spring fitted with new rubbers & cups, I could do with a new set of bump stops for the rears, they were trimmed as per the installation instructions for the B14's.



It definitely doesn't look as aggressive being slightly higher, and it's taken me a month or so to get used to it but it looks more subtle and a bit less 'modified' which as I clock up the years I want to move away from. Not that I don't like how it looked, just sometimes felt a bit boy racer for my age





After a few hundred miles



It definitely didn't feel as dynamic as it did on the coilovers but a fresh four wheel alignment helped with that, and they are slightly more compliant than the coilovers were which is a bonus.

[B58_Touring]

While I had the car up in the air I had a closer look at the vinyls along the sides. These were looking increasingly tatty and getting harder to make look clean. They haven't done bad over 5 years and 60k miles in all conditions to be fair. I know they divide opinion and I don't always like them but felt they suited this car quite nicely, but it was always the plan to run with them for a few years before removing them later for a kind of mid ownership facelift. They lasted longer than I thought they would but as you can see from the close ups there were marks and the vinyl had started to crack so it was time to remove them.





I removed the sill extensions and applied a bit of heat to the vinyl and they came off with minimal effort. As a bonus the paint underneath them is brand new so looks super fresh.



I reinstalled the sill extensions with new tape and plastic rivets & also replaced the self tapping screws that were in the inner side. These things really aren't going anywhere.



And it does look much cleaner, I had the same set up on my 4 series with no vinyl and I really liked that.

[B58_Touring]

As I've no intention to change this car I've been sorting any annoying issues as they arrive so as not to end up with a long list of niggles that tempt me to sell up. Another was a reoccurring rattle from the exhaust. The clamping bush that joins the two sections would come loose after getting hot on a long drive, unable to properly support the two sections it would drop onto the under-brace and make an awful rattle when I started the car up the next morning after it had cooled down. Several times I had retightened this, with replacement lock nuts, spring washers, loctite, but I think the spring had just fatigued from the metal and it would no longer keep its tension on the clamp. My final attempt to 'horse it up' resulted in a snapped clamp. So I replaced that with a new one, and I haven't had an issue since!







Also noticed the back box wasn't as shiny as it once was so that got a quick once over with a bit of polish



Back in January on a very early commute to work a fairly large hare ran out in front of me and couldn't decide which way it wanted to go once it saw my headlights fast approaching. I slammed the brakes on as much as I dared in the icy conditions but didn't manage to avoid him. It wasn't until I filled the car up and was returning from the payment desk that I realised I'd brought him with me...





I bought a replacement grille straight away, but couldn't be arsed to remove the front bumper to change it. Despite the size of the thing there was hardly any damage and you couldn't really notice it unless you were looking. This week I finally found the enthusiasm to do it, wasn't that difficult and was much easier than somehow trying to replace it with the bumper still on the car.





This was the only damage luckily, a bit of cracked plastic and some fur in the radiator.



Bumper removed & old grille taken off





All back together & good as new



Another little niggle off the list! Last one to get after at the minute is a broken rear speaker, it must have had one too many decibels through it and its farting so I need to source and replace that.

[SirBiggles]

Originally Posted by B58_Touring

Also noticed the back box wasn't as shiny as it once was so that got a quick once over with a bit of polish

Looking great mate. IMO the fixed B8s are fine on heavier BMWs.

What polish did you use on the back box?

[B58_Touring]

Originally Posted by SirBiggles

Looking great mate. IMO the fixed B8s are fine on heavier BMWs.

What polish did you use on the back box?

Cheers mate. Yeah it rides fine, the rears are already b8s so made sense to just match those.

For the back box I just used some autosol metal polish and a drill polisher to get the stains off. It was just a quick blast over to be honest. Didn't go full detailer on it or anything

[danb1979]

Originally Posted by B58_Touring

It's been a while since I've posted anything of great significance on this thread, I've just been enjoying the car and keeping it maintained. It had a full set of new MPS4S tyres fitted back in January, had an annual oil service carried out and a scheduled brake fluid change at the local indy.

New tyres going on, and pretty even wear across all four. The fronts had done about 40k and still had a bit of life left in them but had been on the car since 2019 so just bit the bullet and replaced them all. Rears went on two years ago and had done 20k.



A few months back I started to get a clunking noise coming from the front passenger side, I thought 45k miles on the B14's might have taken its toll on some of the bushes so set about locating the noisy one. As soon as I jacked the car up I found the culprit... a snapped spring



I had noticed I'd started getting a bit more rubbing on that corner when I had a heavier passenger sat in the car and thought it might have been down to the fresh set of tyres. I was tempted to raise the car a bit for a more grown up appearance (I'm knocking on a bit now) but didn't fancy my luck given the state of the threaded sleeves. They really haven't held up well to daily use so would need to be replaced. I contacted Bilstein for a price on a full set of springs and rear threaded sleeves. The biggest issue was the 6-8 week lead time on them all, I have use of the m3 while I've got the F31 in the garage but I don't want to daily it in all conditions for that long.

In the end I decided to go with the B12 kit, I already had the B8 rear shocks which are still fine. I just had to buy the two matching B8 fronts and a set of Eibach pro springs. This gives me a fixed set up and a properly coated set of front shocks which should hold up much better to the elements than the B14's did.



Stupidly I sold my original suspension with all of the spring seat rubbers & rear cups thinking I wouldn't reuse them anyway so I had to buy some more of those.



Once I had the parts together it was into the garage to be stripped down



The offending strut assembly removed & in the vice. You can see how corroded the shock body is, the galvanised coating hasn't lasted well at all compared to the rears which still look pretty good despite the odd stone chip





I don't think the person who installed the fronts last time around knew what a torque wrench was because some of the bolts were mental tight, especially on the rear. I removed one of the strut top bolts on the front and it snapped straight away, so that needed drilling and tapping out with a cheap set of easy outs & taps that saved the day





New strut built up, ready to install





Rears are pretty straight forward apart from the incredibly tight bolts that I had to fight out. You can see the state of the threaded adjustment sleeves here.



Eibach spring fitted with new rubbers & cups, I could do with a new set of bump stops for the rears, they were trimmed as per the installation instructions for the B14's.



It definitely doesn't look as aggressive being slightly higher, and it's taken me a month or so to get used to it but it looks more subtle and a bit less 'modified' which as I clock up the years I want to move away from. Not that I don't like how it looked, just sometimes felt a bit boy racer for my age





After a few hundred miles



It definitely didn't feel as dynamic as it did on the coilovers but a fresh four wheel alignment helped with that, and they are slightly more compliant than the coilovers were which is a bonus.

Argh! The corrosion on those shocks is terrible...

I'd asked on your other thread re the B14s how you're getting on; I've just found my answer!

Think that's swayed me to stick with the B12 idea TBH; can't be arsed with dealing with corrosion like that... Terrible quality!

I am tempted with the Birds kit also; but from my reading it doesn't reduce the wheel/arch gap and that's something I want to achieve, albeit a subtle drop and not silly-low

I'm sticking with 18s as much prefer the ride/comfort and handling; but the front arch gap looks a bit silly at times (typical BMW touring)!

Car looks stunning otherwise; I'm not brave enough to run 20s, but love what you've done so far

[B58_Touring]

A small update on the car, I've not carried out any other work since fitting the B12 kit but the car feels like its driving as good as it ever has done.

I'm really enjoying the drive of it at the minute and after a few thousand miles on the B12 kit I feel like its the perfect set up for the car (for me). The car feels solid and composed for a bit of spirited driving on my usual A roads and perfectly comfortable on a long run. I don't know if the B8 dampers bed in as such but it certainly feels like its improved as I've put some miles on it.

To me it feels like what the M Sport suspension should have been from factory. The drop is a lot more subtle than before but I've got used to it now and it looks a bit more grown up.

The car hit 66666 miles on my way to work the other night, so I thought that would be a good point to add an update.

In that time its been as reliable as a wood burning stove. No major issues at all. In January it's booked in to the local BMW specialist for its major service and I'll be having the gearbox service carried out as well.

The only other mod I keep tempting myself with is fitting the LSD, if I didn't have the M3 then this would have been fitted already but the old girl takes up a lot of my resources at the minute!

[B58_Touring]

The car went in for its big service last week, it had just ticked over 67k and was due filters, fluids, plugs and also its MOT. Although not an official BMW service item I had the gearbox service carried out at the same time. BMW claim its sealed for life but ZF recommend servicing the gearbox around about the 60 - 65k mark I believe. The car has been running nice, no noticeable issues with the gear changes or anything, but I want to keep it that way and I'd rather keep everything fresh rather than wait for it to start playing up before changing the oil.

I took it to a local independent for the work, he's ex BMW and has carried out all of my servicing since the service plan I got with the car ended (using genuine parts). The car gets an annual oil change as a minimum when it goes in for its MOT.

A few pictures he sent me of the gearbox service, hopefully that's it good for at least another 6 years/65k miles!

[lllRazorlll]

This is awesome

[Onizukachan]

Enjoyed the read thru. Thanks!

[Bloodshot]

Nice car, enjoying the progress

[B58_Touring]

So the grille that I replaced after the rabbit strike lasted a little over 2 years before the next bit of wildlife was hit. This time a pigeon on the A90 in Scotland. Unfortunately I didn't get away with just a broken bumper grille on this occasion, the bird in question managed to puncture the low pressure radiator.

I booked the car in with BM Zone again and he fitted a new oe radiator for me, I asked him to retro fit the rock guards while it was in. These came on the later cars from factory and mine missed out on them by a month, after two animal strikes and looking at the condition of the old one I was surprised I didn't have a leak sooner as these things are pretty exposed given the large gaps in the front of the car. They're only thin plastic grilles but it would have probably been enough to save the radiator in this instance, its a neat solution and it keeps everything oem in there.

Just shy of 80k miles now and still as happy as ever with the car.





Part numbers below if anyone was looking to fit these:

[ActusReus]

Fantastic looking build!

[Caesar*]

Impressive

[Boznien]

Beautiful wagon. If we had these across the pond, I would be all over them. Perfect car.