I’m prone to modding cars that I’ve owned expeditiously, but I think I set a new record with this one. Immediately after picking up the car, I drove over to Supreme Power in neighboring Anaheim. When the deal was set and confirmed, I preordered a new set of 19″ BBS CH wheels and Dunlop tires […]

For the past year, I have been casually looking around for an E46 M3. The seed was first planted with a Want to Buy ad on the M3Forums. My requirements were strict and my intent vacillated as the months went by. I came to realize that finding the absolute exact car I was looking for […]

With the tune, the way the car pulls now is even more savage than before. Granted, power and torque was abundant right from the beginning, but the tune really helped translate that power into an even more linear scope. This is one of the reasons why I am just not a turbo guy (aside from […]

Once the roll bar was installed last Winter, the car sat in the garage for months. It is now Spring and I finally had the chance to action a lingering item on the list: the tune. The car drove around fine, but the power deliverability was noticeably off with the added long-tube headers and intake. […]

Overdue update, since all of this was conducted over the Winter of last year and completed a few months ago. Samberg Performance makes more than just the subframe parts for the RX-7 V8 conversions, they also make their own roll bar. The Auto Power Race roll bar I had installed in the car a couple […]

A combination of laziness and a lack of free time these days is restricting my flow of updates. The frequency of posts have dramatically decreased over the last couple of years as I have steadily become busier with other aspects of life. I will still try to keep things going, but I foresee that these […]

I’ve been gradually driving the car around and putting it through its paces. There are a few more details that need to be finished up before I can deem the swap to be finalized. Namely, a tune is mandatory. When temperatures are cold or the engine is not fully warm, it has the tendency to […]

The Shine FEED Type II spoiler that has been on the car for the past 2 years served its use well, but it is time to expand towards bolder directions. Since I had the ’99 front bumper installed for the third time, I decided to maintain a congruency at the rear as well with a ’99 […]

Attempts were made to re-bleed the clutch but its behavior started to become increasingly erratic. Instead of having the clutch pedal gradually fall to the floor, it would randomly fall to the floor and then come back up. The usual pattern was no longer observable, which disproved the theory of an air bubble expanding with […]

Work was measurably amped up during the past couple of weeks to push this swap through the finish line. Once the engine was started and running, attention was turned to ironing out all the minor bugs and any drivability issues. Marcus spent a good deal of time locating and silencing noises and making sure the […]

With the exhaust fabricated, attention has turned to finishing up the wiring and mounting the battery box. Marcus also redid the intake piping that came with the Samberg radiator kit and its LS7/LS3 MAF adapter. The fitment of this pipe puts it close to the hood with the LS3’s drive-by-wire throttle body, so the goal […]

FINALLY, progress. The car has admittedly been sitting mostly idle inside the shop while other matters came up. Marcus is in the process of opening another, larger shop and has likely been spending most of his time there setting it up. I know extended wait times come with the territory with these large scale projects, […]