Eta-to-M50: Build thread

[ck_taft325is]

Not much choice. Gotta work around when I have time and money.

So true! I was hoping to have the S50 a bit more polished up by the Picnic but it's looking like it'll be showing up half ready for paint and still needing my spare VANOS unit installed.

[Simon S]

Anticipation = killin me

lol

[Wh33lhop]

Pissed I'm gonna miss the picnic :(

[Jand3rson]

It's not going to be there, anyway. The guy doing the exhaust totally botched the entire thing. More details later.

[nando]

Oh, damn!

[parkerbink]

It's not going to be there, anyway. The guy doing the exhaust totally botched the entire thing. More details later.

I feel your pain (and I am sorry) my engine build has had more bad mechanics than you would believe.

[Jand3rson]

Ok, so let me hip you all to what happened. This guy had my car for a WEEK. He did all the work Thursday night in 3 hours, starting at almost 9pm. I had to have my car aligned the next morning, and we were leaving at 3pm for the drive to Washington.

So I get out there, and he's got the OBDI E36 M3 pipes and cats temped up under the car where they're going to go. The X-pipe and cats are hanging WAY low, but I figure it's just temped in place and he will sort it out. So what he does is this. He welded two 3" long pipes between where the M3 pipes meet up to the headers, no flanges or anything to make it removable. There are HUGE gaps almost all the way around the top of the connection, so there's a huge exhaust leak, and the whole system is still as loud as it was with open headers.



Next, for a hanger in the middle, he welded a piece of steel strap to the pipe, ran it through the opening in the rear subframe where the diff/driveshaft passes through, and then welded the other end back to the pipes. So there's just this piece of steel strap hanging loose through my rear subframe holding the pipes up.



Then, at the muffler, he didn't tuck the muffler up into the cavity under the rear valance, he just welded it straight and level off the M3 pipes. At the tips (the inlets/outlets on the Magnaflow are kinda far apart), he didn't do any kind of sweeps to space them in toward each other, so the tips are just tacked onto the outlets, with like 3" of space between them.





On top of that, there was NO room for the 02 sensor to thread into the X-pipe where it goes, so it didn't get threaded in properly. About halfway home, it rattled itself out of the bung, and bounced along the ground the rest of the way home, pretty much destroying it.

[Ian Bowers]

Wow. Holy fucking shit, I'm sorry.

[nando]

Ok, so let me hip you all to what happened. This guy had my car for a WEEK. He did all the work Thursday night in 3 hours, starting at almost 9pm. I had to have my car aligned the next morning, and we were leaving at 3pm for the drive to Washington.

So I get out there, and he's got the OBDI E36 M3 pipes and cats temped up under the car where they're going to go. The X-pipe and cats are hanging WAY low, but I figure it's just temped in place and he will sort it out. So what he does is this. He welded two 3" long pipes between where the M3 pipes meet up to the headers, no flanges or anything to make it removable. There are HUGE gaps almost all the way around the top of the connection, so there's a huge exhaust leak, and the whole system is still as loud as it was with open headers.



Next, for a hanger in the middle, he welded a piece of steel strap to the pipe, ran it through the opening in the rear subframe where the diff/driveshaft passes through, and then welded the other end back to the pipes. So there's just this piece of steel strap hanging loose through my rear subframe holding the pipes up.



Then, at the muffler, he didn't tuck the muffler up into the cavity under the rear valance, he just welded it straight and level off the M3 pipes. At the tips (the inlets/outlets on the Magnaflow are kinda far apart), he didn't do any kind of sweeps to space them in toward each other, so the tips are just tacked onto the outlets, with like 3" of space between them.





On top of that, there was NO room for the 02 sensor to thread into the X-pipe where it goes, so it didn't get threaded in properly. About halfway home, it rattled itself out of the bung, and bounced along the ground the rest of the way home, pretty much destroying it.

dude, that sucks. if you were up in my area, I could hook you up with a great shop. The guy that did mine knew WTF he was doing, 3" pipes hug the body, no weird shit, no scraping, vbands everywhere.. he even modified the stock muffler mounts to work with my aftermarket stuff.

[bimmerteck]

Josh < WOW! You certainly have more restraint then myself, I woulda killed a MF.

[samiam3356]

You had to be fucking irate. I wouldn't have paid shit for a job done like that. Sorry man

[Bishop]

Tell me you didn't pay this fool

[parkerbink]

Sorry Josh that it beyond b.s. I hope you did not pay for that shoddy work.

[Jand3rson]

I'm not going to pay him. I still have to go back out to his house to get my jackstands, too. On top of that, I just spent $30 with Levent for that new exhaust flange and the gaskets, plus I'm out another $80 for a new 02 sensor. Totally wasted my friend's time having him take it out there for me on his flatbed, and wasted 3 hours of my own time standing out at his house while he did this shit to my car. Fucking blows. So I have an appointment to take it in to an awesome shop here in town, we already know what we're going to do, but they're booked out until the 11th.

We're going to use the Magnaflow shown there in place of cats up front, then a Y-pipe out of that to a single 3" all the way to the back, into a single in/dual out new muffler, probably another Magnaflow.

[MR 325]

WOW! Bad welds are one thing but having absolutely no common sense is amazing!

Glad you're taking it somewhere good, cheaper isn't always better. :)