1M/// the car I have been working on.

[mikeedler]

thought I would post this up here, the car belongs to a soldier who bought it from our dealership, received the keys, NEVER drove it,
and handed them to me to do a few upgrades to it.

I am hoping to have this project wrapped up by mid Jan.--- so he can finally drive his new car.
enjoy, its a ton of pics, and the car is incredible.

I would trade my E30 M3 for one of these things in a second! on to the build.






Hi, I just wanted to post a few pics for you guys here to let you all see the progress as it comes along of a 1M I am putting together for someone.

You all have seen some pics from the dealership here in Bamberg. Now it is at my house and is receiving a few goodies before it goes off to Stuttgart.

Well as you guys already know it was wrapped in Oracle foil in the Lambo color. The wheels were sprayed Nogaro Silver-- because its an E30 color and I am an E30 guy. (for those of you who know what one of them old things are)


before I type too much and make this boring!
Here is are a couple pics of the wheels painted and back on the car......














So the first part to be installed happened this past weekend. There are alot of parts to be installed some are here already, some are still on the way.

So, before this post gets boring, here are some pics. It kinda hurt my feelings to cut holes in the trunk linings on a car with less than 30 miles on it, but I just gotta stay hard I guess.

The bar is from BRracing- a very nice piece, with very nice fittment.











a couple more of the bar installed. The color of the bar matches the stitching VERY nicely.






and a quick teaser of the next parts to go on. ( grand am)




should be getting the fronts on this week, waiting for the mounts still for the rears.

question, does anyone have this setup on their car here? or a rear coilover?


moved this up to the first page:


Update number 1



So, not much was getting done on the car due to It being here in Germany, and the parts coming from the U.S. Some of the parts aren't arriving, and some sadly are the incorrect parts. well, that's all in the works and seems to be moving along.

I decided to install the Cat delete pipes (BTW) very pretty pieces! Well, the solution for the ECU has not arrived, but I figured we can get the exhaust rolling.

forgot my camera, so there are no actual install pics...... but here is what I have of them.



here is what I first needed to remove.




not bad looking but kinda restrictive compared to the new parts.

here are a few pics of what you can see of the new pipes installed.








and to make this post much more enjoyable/exciting, here is a quick little clip of the music it now makes. Not a hue amount of difference, but it will with the few extras that are to come in the next week or 2 with the other fun noise makers.









here are a few more pics of the car that I happened t snap today of the car just to see a few other angles.











and a pic with a few hidden treasures in the background.





So, a whole bunch more of the parts are now in.... So this thing needs to start rolling again. The wheels were some of what came in and I mounted the stock 245-265 tires on the wheels-- just to see what kind of space we have for larger tires.
It seems to me a 285 will fit in the rear as the front 265s will prob fit in the front.
the wheels are ADV.1 10 3 piece. off the top of my head, I have no idea anymore what the offset or the width is.

IMO I think the 265s look kinda dumb on the wheels- but the are not on ther for good, just fitment purposes.

oddly enough, I don't find the quality of the wheels up to the price they ask for them. they don't really seem that light, and on the balancing machine you can see a pretty good untrue to the wheel. they balance out good 30-60 gramms per wheel, but I still feel my 20y/o BBS RS wheels are of a better machining/finish-- just my opinion.

so on to the pics.............












right side has stock wheels-- offset/wideness diff.

















I have an E30 M3 as well as a couple of other non Ms, not really important here, but I do love to whore out pics of it at times too- here is a pic of it

[mikeedler]

well, once again found some time to get this thing rolling along.
lets start with the exhaust. The install is the rear section from Meisterschaft. question for you guys, why are all of these products named with "german sounding" names, and no one over here even knows of them?

the exhaust is now catless and rear mufflerless. Next to come is the middle section resonaltors are also to be cut out and pipe welded in there too.

here we have the stock stuff, not to bad to me.










and here is what is now on the car. nice shiny stuff for under the matte finished top of the car?






packaged up really nice for the journey across the pond!

and on the car from the bottom.




the sound is amazing!!!!! reminds me of the old deuce and a halfs from the 80's army days, pure awesomeness!






next on the to-do list was finally get the AST 5200 Grand Am stuff on the car-- This has been a real hassle....... long story.

so on to the suspension install.





with the spring compressed.

the rear 1M stock suspension minus the spring.



spring out!

thought I would still put this pic in there even though it was incorrect. The pics and info are all over the place different. come to find out I have a 7" spring and the helpers are for the front.......... lack of communication and me assuming.




let's get them turner upper shock mounts in.


shock is in, now time to run them sticking azz hoses into the trunk.






Well, time to empty out the "tub" I have seen pics somewhere on the net where someone just cut huge holes in this thing to fit the remote adjusters through, I didn't like the idea of the huge holes, so went about doing this the "harder way"




as of now the adj. are just laying on the airpump/toolbag, will get them secured tis week.







next up was front suspension.

here we go.



strut out.



factory, not factory!


not stock/stock!
well, this is as far as we got here. once again, wrong pieces, or missing pieces
I would like to say that this has really been quite the hassle with the suspension, not sure if its ASTs fault or the vendor, but there has been nothing but alot of lost time and incorrect parts/missing stuff from the get go. not happy about it, but what to do?

the strut is too skiny to fit in the receiver/knuckle... part missing, or incorrect part?

now put it all right back together- also have to stick that helper spring in there too







after the suspension set-back it was time to move onto the engine compartment.



les' go and remove that bumper and see what's hiding back there.







I think we need to pull that little thing out of there.


on the ground, so now lets compare the 2. interesting, stock has 3" ports, new only 2,5"?






well, lets get that thing in there.







and here is what is leftover from the massacre. once again cutting on a new car.....ahhh it hurts me more than the car!




lets get that bumper back on. looks stock!










now on to the charge pipes, my favorite part, nothing like the sound of a BOV early in the morning. I had the same on on my turbo M20powered E30 BMW a few years ago, I always caught myself playing with the go pedal just to hear it make some sweet music.

orig. uglyness, i always wondered why BMW put those crappy little hoses in the the way they did when I changed the 100 or so high pressure pumps this summer!


I must say this part is beautifully crafted too!





here it is installed, pretty straightforward and simple.

IF YOU HAVE AN N54/N55 YOU NEED TO GET THIS ASAP!





as I was putting the engine comp. back together there was one other piece to put in there too. I do not understand this part at all. to me its not worth the crappy warped plastic it's made from, whatever. fitment is crap, and it is not sealed well at all, seems like it's going to be pulling in plenty of hot air through all the cracks in it.




and the 100 or so stickers they sent with it I would'nt even put on my toolbox!











and to the last update for today, the front CF splitter. I have no idea who made it, but fitment is great. I like it, hopefully it lasts a while.

on to the pics.












I glued it on also with a ton of windshield glue, it's not going to come off on the autobahn!!!!


and a rear shot.








and a bonus sound clip, sorry the batteries died in the camera.

[mikeedler]

so, that's where I am as of now. still a few more parts to come and things to get finished up.

[pacmanE30]

the car looks good. it looks like its worth the money, but is it?

[Cronopoulos]

Sweet jesus, this is amazing... Can you run staggered tire setups safely with the AWD system?

** edit I take that back, I guess if you calculated the rolling diameter to be less then 5% difference its ok and im sure the electronics in the bad boy really play a part in this too.

[Ian Bowers]

Sweet jesus, this is amazing... Can you run staggered tire setups safely with the AWD system?

dot...

dot...

dot?

The exhaust is so porn, I'm envious. The car looks amazing, and your attention to detail as you work on it is impressive. I like the towels tucked in as you're installing the roll cage. Props, man.

[Vince30]

I absolutely love those cars, and you do great work! Thing is crazy awesome.

[ohthejosh]

i wish i could lay pipe down like you ;)

[schtozo]

Amazing! Great work... Drop that bitch

[Galactodactyl]

Sick! What an awesome opportunity.

[M-technik-3]

Few questions Mike. You moonlighting at dealer? Because I am very surprised that the dealer would allow the exhaust modifications to the car. I know it's not registered in the TUV system but it still has to pass the on base inspection. We were not allowed to remove any Cat if the car was equipped with them oem.

I hope he kept all the original parts? If he were to sell it in the future, having the oem stuff would make it more desirable.

Frozen Grey huh that must have been a tough order through the system.

[A.J.]

Wow, beautiful car....all the right upgrades. Nice work!!! Thanks for posting.

[OniKyan]

I'm impressed and trust me, that doesn't come easily.

[mach schnell]

Excellent post, but I think the 1M looks like a clown car. Just a bit overdone in all areas. Too much wheel. Too much stretch. Too much aero/bumper/air curtain/air intake stuff. Just too busy. Like it's trying too hard, visually. Not as clean and classic as an E46 M3, for example.

[blocke]

Is this a US Soldier?
Not knocking our armed services, but how the hell does a soldier afford this car, let alone all of the modifications? All the friends I had in the Marines and Air Force barely made money at all.

Car is sick as hell though. Nice work.