Another Build . . . . . abused and trashed E92 build

Lets kick off another track build - the theme is, as much:

• home designed
• home built
• home installed
• family, friend, and customer inspired

Lets start off by saying this is going to be a long, drawn out, pieced together mess, if someone want's to help write this I'm ready!!
I've never done any crazy write up and generally skim through some of the other great build threads out there. . . . . Here we go and here's my attempt at writing and building something epic.

When I started out as a BMW tech back in 2009 (injury retired in 2015) my obtainable dream daily driver was and has been an E92 M3 with DCT.
This particular M3 and I have some history before my ownership. When the previous owner had the vehicle I replaced the throttle actuators, a bunch of random suspension bits, A/C condenser - I believe my old YouTube channel has that video (gentry101) and I did front end PPF, roof PPF and ceramic coating.

Lets get back to the vehicle and the build. High mileage 170xxx 2009 White M3 Coupe with DCT, EDC, NAV, black leather, CF roof. Such great potential for a daily driven vehicle.

Previous owner, customer and friend called me up sometime in 2023 and said "I need help" he mentioned something had happened to his beloved M3 and wanted me to help. I didn't get much more information other than it would show up to our shop on a flat bed
Before it arrived he sent in some sneak peak pictures and wow was I shocked and had 1000's of unanswered questions.
Here's the photos sent to my cell phone

edit I think I compressed these pics

These photos may be too large and I may need to resize, if so, like mentioned earlier any and all help is apricated . . . there are more attached and more coming

So the vehicle came in and the team and I saw the M3 roll in on a flatbed and it felt like time stopped and we all turned and looked at each other and I swear all had F&F flash backs where Brian towed and dropped off the Supra to Dom.

We didn't want to try and start the vehicle not knowing the potential extent/damage from sugar in the tank. Our first order of operations was disconnecting and prevent fuel pump activation so we could plug in to out old and trusty protool to see what faults we had . . . yea the obvious voltages concerns, kombi, and all the thousands of warning, SRS ect were all there.

We started by quoting all new injectors, removing tank, new fuel pump - the works to at least get us somewhere for the diagnosis and repairs and well so we could move the vehicle around.

Sorry, I didn't mention THIS WAS AN ACT OF VANDALISM and the vehicle on had liability during the incident

Long story short, angry person with keys to the vehicle, several pounds of sugar, an aluminum baseball bat and what looks like one heck of a major league level of a swing equal a total loss.

I am now getting errors trying to upload photos, so maybe there is to much mega and giga chompers using my cellphone.

What's damaged if you can't tell in the photos:

• pretty much every body panel, minus front fenders and bumper
• every light
• mirrors and all glass
• cluster and idrive display
• sadly holes in the carbon roof too
• did I mention sugar?!?!

After being told to hold off on the injectors, pump and removing the tank we were asked to park it outside and wrap it up with a car cover.
We started working on estimate to repair, replace all damaged glass, body panels, lights, interior pieces and well to get it looking good again.

I don't remember the total but I know it broke the previous owners spirit because I was hurting too and we didn't even quote labor or paint. We search new replacement parts, as well as used parts and the total $$ was pretty staggering.

Due to this disappointment the vehicle sat, covered, for MONTHS! We started to get some motivation to start in the fuel system on our own to see what really needed to be done, but.
We flew out town for a wedding and apparently had a crazy wind and rain storm come in and . . . well . . . . the car cover came off and stayed off until the weather passed before it was placed back on.
This isn't the worst part, nobody told us it ever came off and there was a dang world ending flood sitting in the car, covered, in South Texas heat of the summer for a few months before I went to take the car cover.

To my surprise, not those reading this, I found a swamp and was nearly knocked down from the smell and bugs that flew out and smacked me in the face and made contact with all my senses.
I came back inside and asked if anyone knew about the cover ever coming off. Someone started off with a story, I had to aggressively stop them mid story and ask why I wasn't informed0then I realized human nature and moved on.

My rant is over now, now time to call the client.
Weeks and phone calls, texts and visits later. . . . we have now taken possession of probably the most beat and I know the cheapest M3 ever available for sale.

For some reason I can not for the life of me upload the pictures when it came into the shop, preflood. And seem to have the same issue while continuing this thread. So now you get to rear this and just use your imagination until I figure that out.

Cool so now we have one heck of a build, maybe. The good news is I get to start off from scratch, I'm not taking a prized, clean daily and turning it into a track rat. We are pretty much turning a rat(dead rat) into to track rat

So we have the car, we know the potential risk of damage, but we also know there's INCHES of long term standing water in the vehicle and it has no power anywhere, duh because its flooded.

I start the LONG and I mean LONG process of extracting nasty stagnant water from the interior and removing the rear seats so I can sneak into the trunk and pop the trunk open. I threw away all my clothes, you can not imagine the amount of growth and I've never seen mold like this before. Some of it was mesmerizing, maybe a mold spur high IDK. Under the rear seats looked like the thickest spider web design imaginable , everything else was just plain nasty.

To my surprise there was an insane amount of standing water where the battery is, nearly half way up-then I remember there is no glass in the car.
We moved shops and when out of town for a few weeks-this time made sure to keep the vehicle inside and out of the way from day to day business and well health and safety hazard.

When we got back in Sept of 2024 it started our slow season, which means I can step back from the hands on operation a little more and spend time on the vehicle. Time for the full interior removal, everything came out minus the dash, steering and any electrical under/behind the dash.
I knew right away this was either going to the scrap yard or I was going to have hours of wire diag and trial and error until we could get power back in the vehicle and start our diagnosis-removed fuel system is shut off.

The most concerning things to me were the main battery cable from battery to vehicle was rotted away, literally there was no connection point anymore going through the chassis. The JBE and all surrounding items were horribly corroded and this big relay under the passenger carpet was rotted away along with the wires going to it - its the fan relay.
Repaired the battery cable and connection point, repaired wires and replaced the relay, threw a known(okay, not great) battery in there-not connected and then began the JBE trails.
I wanted to see if it could be saved so I began removing every main connection and depinning the harness from all four connectors. Some were rotted away so I repined those and cleaned everything else and put it all back together. Reconnected the battery and plugged in the key, nothing.

I pulled the key holder out and found, you guessed it more corrosion. Needless to say I cleaned everything in there and the traced back to the FRM and CAS and found the same thing and repeated the process. I WILL GET THIS THING TO POWER ON. Placed the key in the slot, click and it accepted the key we get power

Damn! That’s a hell of a start lol.

Holy crap! That was one worthless piece of crap that totaled the car. Can’t wait to see how the build develops with time. I hope your build goes much more smoothly!

kolosy wrote

Damn! That’s a hell of a start lol.

It’s come and a long way and wish we had ready for the last day of 25 for COTA but we get lazy working on personal stuff

M3SQRD wrote

Holy crap! That was one worthless piece of crap that totaled the car. Can’t wait to see how the build develops with time. I hope your build goes much more smoothly!

Definitely a special type of person to go this far

Here’s the photos I was trying to upload last night before we moved shops and technically took ownership.

Merry Christmas to all and Hapoy Holidays to those non Christmas folks.

Where left off, connections cleaned and repaired. Key accepted and vehicle powered on all amazing and great things and the car is starting to show promise that it can be revived.
Seeing this video send shivers down my spine and shows some of the real nasty of what I’ve been going through.

After getting power to the car and fully knowing the extent of the electrical damage and decided to dive into the fuel issue.
Turns out sugar does not really dissolve in gas, fully.
You get to see the baseball used to damage the vehicle and I’ll definitely be keeping it as a trophy lol. But after getting the metal covers and top hat off the tank I drained as much fuel as possible and to my surprise there was solids in the tank. Who knew it would all melt and solidify into chunks glassshards.
Taking this out was pretty horrible, imagine stuffing your arms in this, getting cut up and covered in a little fuel. . . . for what felt like hours. Sadly I vacuumed up a lot prior to diving straight in so you don’t get to enjoy the amount of sugar to the full extent, just use your fingers imagination.

I hope they found and charged who ever vandalized this thing, this is ridiculous!

With that said the car looks to have promise and you are right, perfect for a track build.

Rubin

former 240 s14 wrote

I hope they found and charged who ever vandalized this thing, this is ridiculous!

With that said the car looks to have promise and you are right, perfect for a track build.

Rubin

The previous owner knows who it was, has on camera and chose not to press charges. So at least the car has a clean tittle

"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned".

I should note when I vacuumed the tank I, do not recommend this even after I removed as much fuel as I could with a fluid pump, poured water and dry everything as much as could. There is still the possibility of fuel vapors going into a vacuum and either creating a fire, a boom or a flame thrower!

To my knowledge all of the sugar is out of the tank and cleaned both sides, removed filler neck as the entire thing was full as well. I did several warm water flushes and went filled and gas can with 93.
Added 3 gallons to the tank and primed and the car started.

Now it wasn’t happy when it was running but this could be from bad fuel in the lines, car sitting for a year or so, but by the grace of god and a lot of sweat hours it runs!

Now on to draining and filling the oil that’s sat for so long and who knows how long it was before it was changed prior. Oil and filter looked good-dirty but good.

I had to take it for a little shake down drive after changing the fluids. This was a little crazy with no windows and broken glass everywhere but hey it ran and shifted great.

So many things to do and and so glad it runs and drives. Let’s get onto the maintenance.
I know the throttle actuators are less than 2 years old

• Rod bearings were done but no proof or dates/miles so those have been ordered
• DCT fluid and filters ordered
• Rear diff fluid ordered
• Guibo, transmission and engine mounts ordered

There’s a pretty serious active power steering leak from the rack/lines area so let’s dive in and begin with this journey.
It can’t be as easy as the crush washers, replaced and still leaking. Further inspection found fluid coming from the two skinny hard lines going into the rack.
When you take these off you’ll find orings and after researching and measuring thickness on these I found you can’t just throw any oring in there due to the high corrosive properties of CHF11S.
From what I could find online FKM is safe for CHF11S.

Ordered and installed, start the car and the leak has slowed dramatically, but not gone. Now I’m scratching my head removed and found one of the orings slightly kinked so threw another set in there and retested.
Found there’s still a slight leak but it’s coming from the very top of the rack :bs: I’m going to do a separate write up for removing and replacing all the components that leak inside the rack and keep this part short.
Remove or completely lower rack, remove heat shield, dust cap/shaft alignment (make sure you mark this) remove the little servo motor, unbolt the upper section of rack and twist off the cover exposing the leaking seal-looks like a small rear main seal. Measure everything, order, assemble. Sounds easy enough right lol.
A couple weeks later and an assortment on parts came in, some from Mexico and some from UK. Everything went back together well. Jump in and start the car and no more leaks-let’s go!!

Ready for the frustratingly amazing part, I didn’t mark the dust cap mentioned above so of course the steering wheel is WAY off center

Another problem for another day, I’ve had this rack down so many times now I just happy to have stopped the leak!

e30gentry wrote

The previous owner knows who it was, has on camera and chose not to press charges. So at least the car has a clean tittle

Wow, either they "kinda of" deserved it or they are a saint.

Rubin

All glass, what was left of it was removed from the vehicle. New windshield installed-Safelite charged for disposal SMH when there was literally next to no windshield left and what was left threw in our dumpster.
I’d love to splurge on some race plastics windows but that goes against the build.
My daughter and I went to home depot and picked up their brand of lexan. I’ll update with the thicknesses but the back window is think and the rear quarters thinner.
This would have been nice to have glass to make a template but o well. We had fun using markers and cad cardboard auto design together.
We made what felt like 100 cuts and figured we’ll fill in gaps with an appropriate “silicone” when bonding to the car.
Traced and scored the protective liner and tore that off to paint the interior portion black for “oem” look on the 3 back windows.
Being in the film industry we have tons of left over DOW995 from left over jobs and UPPF sunroof protection film.
Not too sure if the DOW is safe and proper for bonding but it looked like it from what I could see online, online also states windshield adhesive is not correct for lexan and polycarbonate.
The UPPF film I knows bonds to plastic windows and serves a few purposes:

• Reduce scratching
• Reduce UV and heat
• Cool slight blue look
• Good visibility

Now you can’t use this in windshields dues to haze and clarity but works great in this application.
Mocked everything up, predefined a few wholes, laid down the DOW, placed windows and self tappers to make sure it’s not going anywhere.

Spoiler as you can see in the photos new taillights from Amazon/Ebay.
I will need a new trunk as the interior, driver light will not stay in due to crazy trunk damage.

Surprisingly the low beam side of the headlight is good on both sides, while those mounts and turn signal mounts a little messed up.
I removed the interior running light, halos and left all the low beam and turn signals in.
A little black pant in the inside and some Amazon headlight covers and we’re back in business.

Vehicle works, almost every creature comfort is water damaged, interior bits will be up for sale-well those that are in “good” condition that is.
Front seats are spoken for already and in use, one seat is used for “racing sim” the other a roll around work chair.
Since the interior will be stripped, harness thinned and vehicle going through a bimmer craig diet we have the first replacement seat.
The Sparco Ultra Carbon. This thing is light and surprisingly very comfortable considering is a solid seat with no padding.

I may make a for sale post, but here’s what’s available:
A/C condenser
A/C compressor
A/C lines
Evaporator - less than 3 years old
Heater core
Power steering cooler
Power steering pump
Power steering lines

Everything worked when removed but I do not know the miles or age of anything other than the evaporator. 2009 BMW M3 DCT.

A lot of stuff if you cover shipping and a little tip it’s yours.