The Joy of Driving: A Personal Experience with the BMW M3

As I sit here thinking about my current ride, I have to say that I'm extremely happy with how it's turned out. The car is a daily driver for me, and I've put countless miles on it over the years. It's fast, it's fun, and it's not too expensive – what more could you ask for? But before we dive into the details of my experience with this car, let's take a look at its performance.

The M3 is powered by an inline six twin-turbo three liter engine, which produces 400 horsepower. I've found that this car is virtually non-existent when it comes to turbo lag, thanks in part to the use of bigger turbos. When I'm cruising along on the highway, I can easily hit speeds of over 100 mph without any issues. And when I need a boost, the M3 delivers – it's got some serious acceleration for its size.

One of the things that really impressed me about this car is how well it handles. The M3 is designed to be a track-ready beast, and it shows in its agility and responsiveness. Whether I'm driving on twisty roads or cruising down the highway, the M3 always feels like it's connected to the road.

But with great power comes great responsibility – or so they say. In reality, the biggest challenge I've faced with this car has been its throttle response. As you might expect from a high-performance engine, the M3 can be a bit hesitant to come alive when you first press the accelerator pedal. However, once it's settled in, it's got plenty of oomph to get me where I need to go.

One feature that's become somewhat of an obsession with me is the sound of this car's exhaust system. I've spent hours trying to tweak the settings on my exhaust system to get just the right amount of rumble and roar. It's amazing how much difference it can make in terms of overall driving experience – there's nothing quite like the thrill of accelerating down a winding road with the wind rushing past your ears.

Now, let's talk about brakes – something that I've come to appreciate as you spend more time behind the wheel of an M3. The brakes on this car are top-notch, and they've given me complete confidence in my ability to stop the car quickly and safely. Whether I'm cruising along at 60 mph or hurtling down a mountain road at 100 mph, the M3 always stops with ease.

Of course, no discussion of the M3 would be complete without mentioning its fuel efficiency. As an owner of this car, I can tell you that it's surprisingly decent – especially for a high-performance engine like this one. According to my own estimates, I get around 18-19 miles per gallon on the highway and up to 25-30 miles per gallon in ideal driving conditions. Not bad for a 400 horsepower car!

But let's be real: nothing lasts forever. And when it comes to high-performance engines like this one, there are always potential problems lurking beneath the surface. In my case, I've been lucky enough to have the high-pressure fuel pumps replaced and have the turbos serviced at around 120,000 miles. However, BMW does offer recall warranties for certain components – including the high-pressure fuel pumps and turbos.

For anyone considering purchasing an M3 or a similar car, it's worth noting that these vehicles can be prone to certain issues. High-pressure fuel pumps tend to fail relatively early in their lifespan, as do the turbos themselves. However, with proper maintenance and care, you should be able to get hundreds of thousands of miles out of your engine.

One final thing I want to mention is my experience with braking. As someone who's always pushing the limits of how hard they can brake on a mountain road or a track, I've come to appreciate just how good this car handles when it comes to stopping power. The M3's brakes are truly exceptional – and I've found that they're able to bring the car down from speed in seconds if needed.

That's my experience with the BMW M3 so far – one of pure joy driving a fast, fun, and relatively affordable machine that's perfect for those who enjoy driving on twisty roads or hitting the track. Of course, no car is perfect, but I've found that this one more than makes up for its quirks in terms of sheer excitement and enjoyment.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso I don't really do videos like this that often so I'm gonna kind of take a different approach at it so first thing I'm gonna do is just kind of walk you guys around the car tell you guys what I've done to it kind of give the backstory behind a couple little things and then we'll go for a drive and I'll try to give you guys a little more of a holistic approach as to like how the car drives how the car handles and just my overall thoughts about the car if you haven't already it'd be sick if you could go check out the video I made just talking about how this car is kind of like changed my life not as a car but anyway if you watch a video you'll kind of understand what I mean I'll put a link down in the description so I'm gonna start with just all the basic like body exterior stuff and then we'll work in a more like the performance stuff I've done in the car the easiest and the most important thing to talk about are the wheels BBS LM 19 by eight-and-a-half with 25 millimetres also and then in the back I have nineteen by tens except these have like 15 millimetres of offset thanks to my friend Johnny we polished the lips and we put in 24 karat gold-plated hardware I've wanted VBS LMS almost my whole life but I never thought I'd actually spend that much money on a set of wheels was it worth it probably not I actually got screwed over by the guy I got them from these rivers were supposed to be 25 millimeter offset and the Front's were supposed to be thirty two millimeter offset but he sent the wheels to me and they were in terrible condition and offsets were wrong and the tires were super worn so merliss stories don't buy stuff used and don't buy you stuff online I had some people check it out but I still didn't realize that they were this bad which sucked but they look pretty I have no idea what the tires are in the rear because the letters literally wore right off I do rub quite a bit but it's just because there's a bumper support in here that just eats away my tyres in the front I have Hankook v12 Evo's to 2535 19's my front wheels literally could not fit better all in all I like the wheels they sit pretty but rubbing all the time in the rear is kind of annoying not to mention trying to polish underneath the spike hardware's nearly impossible me and Jonny are actually going to take them apart tonight just we can polish under there really well before Euro tripper this weekend so yeah if your local kind of near Fort Myers or something go to Euro tripper this weekend because I'll be there with my car and I never go to car shows so come I'm on BC racing BR type coilovers I'd highly recommend them they actually hooked me up for this car which is sick they're local they live right down the road they're all super cool guys I think we're actually working on something to do with my 240 right now - I the stock spring rates in the front and then in the back I went up like 2 K just so I wouldn't have to worry about rubbing issues that much I have an M Sport rear bumper Tony I have a lesson learned for almost every part of my car when I got that bumper it came and the clearcoat literally just flaked right off when I washed it so I have it painted had it painted the wrong color because there's two variants of alpine white apparently and then I had to have it painted again but now it finally matches so I'm happy it's a replica it's not original BMW but it fits really well see not bad I have a BMW M Performance high-kick spoiler funny I actually ordered an ebay spoiler because I couldn't see myself spending $500 on a carbon-fiber spoiler for my car and it looked absolutely terrible so I ended up getting the original BMW one and it looks so much better it's actual carbon-fiber it was like fiberglass with like carbon-fiber on the outside so another thing I learned is don't buy stuff off eBay word of advice if you're putting these spoilers on with adhesive make sure to line the adhesive really close to the edge otherwise the spoiler will come up I had that happened to me a few times after I put this on and I literally had to reinstall like three times before I finally figured out how to get it on right one of my favorite things in my car has to be my custom BMX BMW logo I actually had a couple hundred of those made in bulk because that was the only way I could get em custom made and I sold them on my website at one time but I decided to stop selling them because my website kept growing and growing and I really don't have any legal trouble with BMW BMW if you're watching this I'm sorry I won't do it again please don't sue me I have custom side splitters hiram off a guy named Josh Avery who I found in Instagram I thought was kind of cool he's like a little small business where he makes like lips and diffusers and side splitters for cars that'll be cool to support a local business instead of just order in some cheap eBay crap I chose to keep the stock polished trim because I thought it looks really nice with these wheels a lot of people like to wrap it black but I just think it looks really classy keeping the silver the thule bike rack with big mouth plate carriers by far my favorite and the best looking bike carrier there is us of a thule fairing funny story number 73 they actually hooked me up with that roof rack when my last one got stolen off my e46 i had a friend named carl who worked there a super nice guy who'd help me out with stuff we actually gave away an exact same roof rack is this way back in time but now he works for a different company so no more bike rack connection if you get a bike rack my biggest tip is to cut off the excess that hangs out here because it looks stupid and you're going to hit your shoulder on it all the time and it just looks so much more clean having it cut off like that clear om side markers painted reflectors om gloss black grills and an OEM bumper with a narrow lip you're slowly going to learn that this car was kind of built on a budget I bought this whole bumper with the lip and every someone who was getting another bumper for like 300 bucks already painted match my car perfectly I personally like this bumper a little bit better than m-sport bumper just because it hangs a little bit lower and I think it's kind of different them swear bumpers just kind of look weird to me because I sit so high unless you put like a carbon fiber lip on them and I got to worry about hitting that thousand dollar lip everywhere I go so I beat the crap out of this one without really caring it's actually really cool because if you have a stock bumper this lip is only like two hundred three hundred dollars and it completely transforms the front end look of this car as you can see I upgraded the angel eyes from the yellow ones that they come stock the name of the bulbs I have is something like why should I should like a dragon I don't know something German that I can't pronounce the lights on the pre-facelift 92s aren't really that nice I really missed the LEDs that I had on my e46 but with these it's really expensive to change them to the LEDs they have them on the facelift of this generation but these look all right at night so I figured I'm just fine keeping them the purr of this exhaust has told me that we should probably start talking about performance stuff before I bore you with more stories about my exhaust setup and how many different things I had to do to it to get it to my liking why don't I just show you how it sounds right yeah so I had err countless downpipes leading into a secondary can delete replaced with vibrant resonators leading back to a BMW performance axle back exhaust my only complaint with the current setup is the tips look kind of cheesy but I can change this out fairly easily before this I actually had an Eisenman race axle-back wasn't loud enough so I did a secondary kattiline replace it with a resonator wasn't loud enough so I took the resonator out had too much rasp so then I just got a different axle back exhaust and I loved the BMW performance it's got kind of like a soft tame growl but when you go for the high rpms it really screams and it's raspy but it sounds awesome like it doesn't sound like like tin can like raspy like it sounds sick yet again when I bought the Eisenman race axle vac I didn't realize that it was a v2 which apparently they made much quieter and is more like their sport version so yet again I've learned my lesson about buying used things online and in the future I think I'm probably just gonna end up buying new parts because I make a lot of mistakes are you guys ready for the sickest subwoofer setup you ever seen just getting my trunks a mess the cool thing is it is a fairly big trunk with split fold rear seats so I can fit like two bikes in here if I take the front wheels off other performance stuff I have done include a dual cone in tank setup an ER 7-inch intercooler that you can't really see and an active auto work charge pipe and blow-off valve active was actually cool enough to hook me up with the charge pipe because I told them I was doing this car check like a year ago so I feel really bad because it took me almost a year to do this car check because there's always like one thing that I was waiting on you guys know how it is cars are projects that are never finished so I definitely want to apologize to them for being so lazy and just really extend a big thank you to them for hooking me up they make really awesome stuff especially supercharger kits for m3s which I'll hopefully own one day and they're all really nice guys so now it's time I get to show you my absolute favorite part about this car the coral red interior beautiful aluminum pedals and a dirty floor courtesy of Nicole she got me the pedals she didn't make my car dirty my most recent mods and one of my favorite was this BMW and performance steering wheel especially m3 one with a flat bottom I never realized how much getting a nice steering wheel changes the feel of the car but Alcantara on this just feels absolutely amazing I had this stripe which is supposed to be blue custom dyed red too and it looks so nice got a match I got the trim from an m3 wheel too just because my last stuff was all corroded these colors have problems with the rubber trim just kind of like peeling right up you can just kind of peel it all off like a done on this door handle that looks way better I guess I might as well talk about my radar detector real quick it is a s score 9500 IX it saved me quite a few times but unfortunately the cops run the laser down here and I got a ticket from laser because you can't really beat that unless you have a laser jammer I personally don't recommend getting a radar detector just because it gives you like a false sense of security that you're not going to get pulled over and I think people tend to get more tickets when they have a radar detector than if they didn't I should probably talk about these little guys too they're supposed to hand you your seatbelt but that's another thing with this car that just ceases to work so they're just kind of annoying and I haven't pulled the fuse for them yet but they confuse people and they stick out and make funny noises so it's like my little robot friend I need to put like a little smiley face on here so one thing that I wasn't really too stoked with at first but I ended up loving is this grey poplar trim I really wanted aluminum because I hate the look of woodgrain but this is almost like a grey and it just looks really like rich and classy plus I heard the aluminum has problems with like chipping and stuff from the seat belt hitting it even though it's a more expensive material it can kind of look cheap to me so I'm very happy with my stock trim the navigation system in this car absolutely sucks but if you're buying a used BMW you might as well get one with Knab because chances are it's not going to cost you any more the user interface on the navigation system really isn't the best but it's been working really well considering my GPS and my phone stopped working so it's just a nice thing to have this car has like 7000 speakers like all over it has the I Logic 7 surround sound whatever crap it's just like the OEM plus like the best Doc's system you can get in this car I highly recommend it because way cheaper than doing like an aftermarket stereo system the bass is really good and like it's super clear a high volume so I'm happy with it at the BMW performance shift knob and shift boot more Alcantara because Alcantara is awesome and it feels so nice on my hand my couple there still work nice and slow my biggest complaint with my e46 was only having one like accessible cup holder so the fact that I have not just one but two plus one in here plus two in here means that I can drink all that my little heart desires the only other thing really left to mention is my cobb accessport v3 when i use it which is almost never I put it up here yeah I guess I forgot to mention I actually have a Cobb protune on this car so what that means is I took my access port to a tuning shop I went to EFI logics in Connecticut they're really known for like two new Subarus and stuff but they do really good work with the n54 platform and I got a custom dyno tune for this car that's loaded onto my access board but this car made somewhere around 393 wheel horsepower and like 420 something foot-pounds of torque it was on a Mustang dyno so that's pretty good considering all I really have this bolt ons no math no upgraded turbos very conservative boost I think I'm running somewhere around like 18 pounds that's a boost gauge and stuff so I guess that's kind of cool before I had my pro tune I'd go in there and I'd switch from maps once in a while because you know there's more conservative maps and there's more aggressive Maps daily driving maps and there's even a valet map where there's absolutely no boost comparing it to the jb4 tune my biggest complaint is just not being able to switch between maps on the fly while I'm driving and seeing it through the dash but since this is actually a tune and not just a piggyback - that confuses the ECU like the jb4 I've noticed it's much more predictable reliable and it just feels smoother than JB for cars I've driven overall I think I'd recommend Cobb over JB for however the JB 4 is way less expensive so I wouldn't blame you if you got that plus turning your gas gauge into a boost gauge is pretty cool this car surprisingly spacious for what it is you can fit two people in the back seat relatively comfortably and shout out to BMW firming in the sweet storage cubby but one of my all-time favorite things about this car's interior are the seats there's actually a little button right down here that you can press and adjust the bolstering on the seats so you can inflate them or deflate them so you can make the seats squeeze you really tight if you're going around some twisties so that covers the basics of my car now what I want to do is take you guys for a little ride and kind of go over how I feel about the car as a whole in terms of handling performance etc I got to pour out this ice otherwise this comes to me clanking the whole time we're going for a drive good to go hey yo man yeah yeah yeah it's fun yeah where you go back there a skatepark no I'm actually go to my warehouse I have like a BMX company yeah yeah you can look it up it's called L Z BMX oh yeah cool so since there's a total of one turn this entire Drive I think it would make the most sense and I was a turd by the way I think I'd make the most sense to talk about the suspension it is a little bit of a bumpy ride but that's partly because I have the dampening turned all the way up so I don't rub on absolutely everything I go over but overall this car handles really really well if you are getting a teen I need any sort I really recommend that you get the Sport Package because I don't know what the exact ratio is but the steering is a lot tighter in that like less turns of the steering wheel gives you full lock so it feels much stiffer and it doesn't feel loose and sloppy like a lot of the newer luxury cars do I've had the BC coil overs on here for about a year now they've been treating me really really well I had race lens on my last car and they were like garbage after a few months where these don't feel like the day after I took them out of the box in terms of handling this car compared to the m3 there's really no comparison the m3 handles infinitely better the biggest thing I noticed with this car there's a lot of body roll it just kind of it feels a little sloppy when you're hugging corners tight the weight just feels a little bit off there's there's something that I can't put my finger on don't get me wrong handles extremely well but comparing this car to an m3 is like comparing a Cadillac to a go-kart kind of not really I guess I was a terrible example but a lot of people put m3 sway bars on this car and there are some suspension mods that you can do that make a huge difference but since there are totaled like three turns on all of my drives in Florida I haven't really focused that much on making this car handle super well just frankly I'd just be pointless this is my daily driver I'm don't ever plan on tracking this car so as long as it has a nice ride and it's fun like that's all that matters to me so compared to stock the tune I have in this car like makes it an absolute monster this thing has so much power in every year that is like the ultimate daily driving race machine so I'll pop it down into fifth right now and show you guys what I mean so are at 60 get on it and we're giving 70 so like you don't even need to downshift if you're going to pass a car or anything like that I might as well go for the one issue that I have right now with a car because I've just been too lazy to fix it I think I'm a bad speed sensor or something so I don't have traction control cruise control or ABS which I should probably fix I just I have to download the program so that I can scan it and I just don't feel like doing that access port will actually scan codes but it won't scan this code for some reason but this car is very very fast even though it's heavy and it's like kind of like a big car I like the fact that it's big by the way because it's not so small that it's like claustrophobic but it's big enough where it's spacious but it's not so big where like I drove the m4 and that's too big for me this is like the perfect sized car but it's got a lot of power for what it is I personally wouldn't want too much more power just because it just starts to get a little hectic after like where I'm at with performance mods on this the next thing people normally go to is meth which should make the engine run so much better and can definitely give you almost another 100 horsepower but I don't have a limited slip diff in the rearend and i don't really plan on getting one just because i just don't really see a purpose like if i get a limited slip diff then that's gonna trigger me to go math and then i'm probably gonna go with bigger turbos and i just really like how this car is right now like it runs every day it's my daily driver and I don't want to get myself in too much trouble the turbo lag in this car is virtually non-existent so we'll put it down in third we're around 2000 rpms we hit peak boost at like 2500 overall I'm really happy with this car like it I love how it sounds I love how it feels it's just a really fun fast daily like that that's what it is in my eyes is awesome that I can fit people in it I can fit bikes I can go on long road trips in this car is good I think my biggest complaint with this car is actually the throttle response so as far as I understand it's electronic and the car does not have individual throttle body is like the m3 does so I go to step on it and they're just there's that split second before it actually goes to the motor and it's it's kind of like I don't know they make I think sprint boosters that help with that but the thing that I don't like even more than that is that when I let my foot off the throttle the motor wants to keep going for a little while now I don't know about you guys but I love when I Drive a car and I take my foot off the throttle and the front end just immediately pitches down where's this watch I'll get on it alright foots floor like it just kind of sloshes out which I understand they want to do that just so it's a smooth car for like people that are just daily driving it or whatever but because this is more of a sports oriented car for me I think I would prefer to have it where I take my foot off and I can feel the car immediately stop because it's kind of weird like you're going to in a turn you let your foot off the throttle and it still wants to go so we'll do a quick ball overall the car is extremely fast I need new tires on it right now it's definitely not as fast as it could be because I spin right through first and second so I'm really excited to put new tires on and then hopefully take it to the drag strip and do some 0-60 runs but that'll be a different video but overall like I love this car don't get me wrong this car isn't perfect but I feel like for me it's pretty it's fast it's fun and it's not that expensive like I get decent gas mileage driving how I'm driving on my way to the warehouse so I normally get about 18 or 19 miles to the gallon but if I'm really trying I can push 25 to 30 miles to the gallon on the highway and for a 400 horsepower car that's pretty impressive I guess the only other thing that I really want to mention is just that if you are looking to get one of these you probably have already researched enough to know that they are fairly problematic the high pressure fuel pumps tend to go and so do the turbos I was lucky enough to buy a car that already had the high pressure fuel pumps replaced and I was personally able to have the turbos replace about 10,000 miles ago because of wastegate rattle completely under BMW warranty I don't know what it is right now but I think last time I checked it was somewhere around 120,000 miles like recall warranty for the high pressure fuel pumps and like eighty thousand for the turbos so if you're buying a car with an N 54 which is the inline six twin-turbo three liter which i think is like before 2011 just make sure that you're in that mileage range so if something does go wrong you're covered the brakes on this car are great they'll stop it on a dime and they're not big breaks or anything special and overall I do think that it's a pretty well put together car so I guess that's it guys I can't really think of anything else but if you do have any questions feel free to leave a comment cuz I'm more than happy to answer and I really like I would not have this car I would not have any of the awesome stuff that I've done to this car if it wasn't for this channel and my clothing company and everything so I just can't thank you guys enough for all your support because like I'm living the dream out here and this is this is if you haven't already be awesome if you go check out that video talking about why this car is important and like the back story because this isn't just a car to me but anyway thanks guys for watching and I hope you enjoyed my video when you sayso I don't really do videos like this that often so I'm gonna kind of take a different approach at it so first thing I'm gonna do is just kind of walk you guys around the car tell you guys what I've done to it kind of give the backstory behind a couple little things and then we'll go for a drive and I'll try to give you guys a little more of a holistic approach as to like how the car drives how the car handles and just my overall thoughts about the car if you haven't already it'd be sick if you could go check out the video I made just talking about how this car is kind of like changed my life not as a car but anyway if you watch a video you'll kind of understand what I mean I'll put a link down in the description so I'm gonna start with just all the basic like body exterior stuff and then we'll work in a more like the performance stuff I've done in the car the easiest and the most important thing to talk about are the wheels BBS LM 19 by eight-and-a-half with 25 millimetres also and then in the back I have nineteen by tens except these have like 15 millimetres of offset thanks to my friend Johnny we polished the lips and we put in 24 karat gold-plated hardware I've wanted VBS LMS almost my whole life but I never thought I'd actually spend that much money on a set of wheels was it worth it probably not I actually got screwed over by the guy I got them from these rivers were supposed to be 25 millimeter offset and the Front's were supposed to be thirty two millimeter offset but he sent the wheels to me and they were in terrible condition and offsets were wrong and the tires were super worn so merliss stories don't buy stuff used and don't buy you stuff online I had some people check it out but I still didn't realize that they were this bad which sucked but they look pretty I have no idea what the tires are in the rear because the letters literally wore right off I do rub quite a bit but it's just because there's a bumper support in here that just eats away my tyres in the front I have Hankook v12 Evo's to 2535 19's my front wheels literally could not fit better all in all I like the wheels they sit pretty but rubbing all the time in the rear is kind of annoying not to mention trying to polish underneath the spike hardware's nearly impossible me and Jonny are actually going to take them apart tonight just we can polish under there really well before Euro tripper this weekend so yeah if your local kind of near Fort Myers or something go to Euro tripper this weekend because I'll be there with my car and I never go to car shows so come I'm on BC racing BR type coilovers I'd highly recommend them they actually hooked me up for this car which is sick they're local they live right down the road they're all super cool guys I think we're actually working on something to do with my 240 right now - I the stock spring rates in the front and then in the back I went up like 2 K just so I wouldn't have to worry about rubbing issues that much I have an M Sport rear bumper Tony I have a lesson learned for almost every part of my car when I got that bumper it came and the clearcoat literally just flaked right off when I washed it so I have it painted had it painted the wrong color because there's two variants of alpine white apparently and then I had to have it painted again but now it finally matches so I'm happy it's a replica it's not original BMW but it fits really well see not bad I have a BMW M Performance high-kick spoiler funny I actually ordered an ebay spoiler because I couldn't see myself spending $500 on a carbon-fiber spoiler for my car and it looked absolutely terrible so I ended up getting the original BMW one and it looks so much better it's actual carbon-fiber it was like fiberglass with like carbon-fiber on the outside so another thing I learned is don't buy stuff off eBay word of advice if you're putting these spoilers on with adhesive make sure to line the adhesive really close to the edge otherwise the spoiler will come up I had that happened to me a few times after I put this on and I literally had to reinstall like three times before I finally figured out how to get it on right one of my favorite things in my car has to be my custom BMX BMW logo I actually had a couple hundred of those made in bulk because that was the only way I could get em custom made and I sold them on my website at one time but I decided to stop selling them because my website kept growing and growing and I really don't have any legal trouble with BMW BMW if you're watching this I'm sorry I won't do it again please don't sue me I have custom side splitters hiram off a guy named Josh Avery who I found in Instagram I thought was kind of cool he's like a little small business where he makes like lips and diffusers and side splitters for cars that'll be cool to support a local business instead of just order in some cheap eBay crap I chose to keep the stock polished trim because I thought it looks really nice with these wheels a lot of people like to wrap it black but I just think it looks really classy keeping the silver the thule bike rack with big mouth plate carriers by far my favorite and the best looking bike carrier there is us of a thule fairing funny story number 73 they actually hooked me up with that roof rack when my last one got stolen off my e46 i had a friend named carl who worked there a super nice guy who'd help me out with stuff we actually gave away an exact same roof rack is this way back in time but now he works for a different company so no more bike rack connection if you get a bike rack my biggest tip is to cut off the excess that hangs out here because it looks stupid and you're going to hit your shoulder on it all the time and it just looks so much more clean having it cut off like that clear om side markers painted reflectors om gloss black grills and an OEM bumper with a narrow lip you're slowly going to learn that this car was kind of built on a budget I bought this whole bumper with the lip and every someone who was getting another bumper for like 300 bucks already painted match my car perfectly I personally like this bumper a little bit better than m-sport bumper just because it hangs a little bit lower and I think it's kind of different them swear bumpers just kind of look weird to me because I sit so high unless you put like a carbon fiber lip on them and I got to worry about hitting that thousand dollar lip everywhere I go so I beat the crap out of this one without really caring it's actually really cool because if you have a stock bumper this lip is only like two hundred three hundred dollars and it completely transforms the front end look of this car as you can see I upgraded the angel eyes from the yellow ones that they come stock the name of the bulbs I have is something like why should I should like a dragon I don't know something German that I can't pronounce the lights on the pre-facelift 92s aren't really that nice I really missed the LEDs that I had on my e46 but with these it's really expensive to change them to the LEDs they have them on the facelift of this generation but these look all right at night so I figured I'm just fine keeping them the purr of this exhaust has told me that we should probably start talking about performance stuff before I bore you with more stories about my exhaust setup and how many different things I had to do to it to get it to my liking why don't I just show you how it sounds right yeah so I had err countless downpipes leading into a secondary can delete replaced with vibrant resonators leading back to a BMW performance axle back exhaust my only complaint with the current setup is the tips look kind of cheesy but I can change this out fairly easily before this I actually had an Eisenman race axle-back wasn't loud enough so I did a secondary kattiline replace it with a resonator wasn't loud enough so I took the resonator out had too much rasp so then I just got a different axle back exhaust and I loved the BMW performance it's got kind of like a soft tame growl but when you go for the high rpms it really screams and it's raspy but it sounds awesome like it doesn't sound like like tin can like raspy like it sounds sick yet again when I bought the Eisenman race axle vac I didn't realize that it was a v2 which apparently they made much quieter and is more like their sport version so yet again I've learned my lesson about buying used things online and in the future I think I'm probably just gonna end up buying new parts because I make a lot of mistakes are you guys ready for the sickest subwoofer setup you ever seen just getting my trunks a mess the cool thing is it is a fairly big trunk with split fold rear seats so I can fit like two bikes in here if I take the front wheels off other performance stuff I have done include a dual cone in tank setup an ER 7-inch intercooler that you can't really see and an active auto work charge pipe and blow-off valve active was actually cool enough to hook me up with the charge pipe because I told them I was doing this car check like a year ago so I feel really bad because it took me almost a year to do this car check because there's always like one thing that I was waiting on you guys know how it is cars are projects that are never finished so I definitely want to apologize to them for being so lazy and just really extend a big thank you to them for hooking me up they make really awesome stuff especially supercharger kits for m3s which I'll hopefully own one day and they're all really nice guys so now it's time I get to show you my absolute favorite part about this car the coral red interior beautiful aluminum pedals and a dirty floor courtesy of Nicole she got me the pedals she didn't make my car dirty my most recent mods and one of my favorite was this BMW and performance steering wheel especially m3 one with a flat bottom I never realized how much getting a nice steering wheel changes the feel of the car but Alcantara on this just feels absolutely amazing I had this stripe which is supposed to be blue custom dyed red too and it looks so nice got a match I got the trim from an m3 wheel too just because my last stuff was all corroded these colors have problems with the rubber trim just kind of like peeling right up you can just kind of peel it all off like a done on this door handle that looks way better I guess I might as well talk about my radar detector real quick it is a s score 9500 IX it saved me quite a few times but unfortunately the cops run the laser down here and I got a ticket from laser because you can't really beat that unless you have a laser jammer I personally don't recommend getting a radar detector just because it gives you like a false sense of security that you're not going to get pulled over and I think people tend to get more tickets when they have a radar detector than if they didn't I should probably talk about these little guys too they're supposed to hand you your seatbelt but that's another thing with this car that just ceases to work so they're just kind of annoying and I haven't pulled the fuse for them yet but they confuse people and they stick out and make funny noises so it's like my little robot friend I need to put like a little smiley face on here so one thing that I wasn't really too stoked with at first but I ended up loving is this grey poplar trim I really wanted aluminum because I hate the look of woodgrain but this is almost like a grey and it just looks really like rich and classy plus I heard the aluminum has problems with like chipping and stuff from the seat belt hitting it even though it's a more expensive material it can kind of look cheap to me so I'm very happy with my stock trim the navigation system in this car absolutely sucks but if you're buying a used BMW you might as well get one with Knab because chances are it's not going to cost you any more the user interface on the navigation system really isn't the best but it's been working really well considering my GPS and my phone stopped working so it's just a nice thing to have this car has like 7000 speakers like all over it has the I Logic 7 surround sound whatever crap it's just like the OEM plus like the best Doc's system you can get in this car I highly recommend it because way cheaper than doing like an aftermarket stereo system the bass is really good and like it's super clear a high volume so I'm happy with it at the BMW performance shift knob and shift boot more Alcantara because Alcantara is awesome and it feels so nice on my hand my couple there still work nice and slow my biggest complaint with my e46 was only having one like accessible cup holder so the fact that I have not just one but two plus one in here plus two in here means that I can drink all that my little heart desires the only other thing really left to mention is my cobb accessport v3 when i use it which is almost never I put it up here yeah I guess I forgot to mention I actually have a Cobb protune on this car so what that means is I took my access port to a tuning shop I went to EFI logics in Connecticut they're really known for like two new Subarus and stuff but they do really good work with the n54 platform and I got a custom dyno tune for this car that's loaded onto my access board but this car made somewhere around 393 wheel horsepower and like 420 something foot-pounds of torque it was on a Mustang dyno so that's pretty good considering all I really have this bolt ons no math no upgraded turbos very conservative boost I think I'm running somewhere around like 18 pounds that's a boost gauge and stuff so I guess that's kind of cool before I had my pro tune I'd go in there and I'd switch from maps once in a while because you know there's more conservative maps and there's more aggressive Maps daily driving maps and there's even a valet map where there's absolutely no boost comparing it to the jb4 tune my biggest complaint is just not being able to switch between maps on the fly while I'm driving and seeing it through the dash but since this is actually a tune and not just a piggyback - that confuses the ECU like the jb4 I've noticed it's much more predictable reliable and it just feels smoother than JB for cars I've driven overall I think I'd recommend Cobb over JB for however the JB 4 is way less expensive so I wouldn't blame you if you got that plus turning your gas gauge into a boost gauge is pretty cool this car surprisingly spacious for what it is you can fit two people in the back seat relatively comfortably and shout out to BMW firming in the sweet storage cubby but one of my all-time favorite things about this car's interior are the seats there's actually a little button right down here that you can press and adjust the bolstering on the seats so you can inflate them or deflate them so you can make the seats squeeze you really tight if you're going around some twisties so that covers the basics of my car now what I want to do is take you guys for a little ride and kind of go over how I feel about the car as a whole in terms of handling performance etc I got to pour out this ice otherwise this comes to me clanking the whole time we're going for a drive good to go hey yo man yeah yeah yeah it's fun yeah where you go back there a skatepark no I'm actually go to my warehouse I have like a BMX company yeah yeah you can look it up it's called L Z BMX oh yeah cool so since there's a total of one turn this entire Drive I think it would make the most sense and I was a turd by the way I think I'd make the most sense to talk about the suspension it is a little bit of a bumpy ride but that's partly because I have the dampening turned all the way up so I don't rub on absolutely everything I go over but overall this car handles really really well if you are getting a teen I need any sort I really recommend that you get the Sport Package because I don't know what the exact ratio is but the steering is a lot tighter in that like less turns of the steering wheel gives you full lock so it feels much stiffer and it doesn't feel loose and sloppy like a lot of the newer luxury cars do I've had the BC coil overs on here for about a year now they've been treating me really really well I had race lens on my last car and they were like garbage after a few months where these don't feel like the day after I took them out of the box in terms of handling this car compared to the m3 there's really no comparison the m3 handles infinitely better the biggest thing I noticed with this car there's a lot of body roll it just kind of it feels a little sloppy when you're hugging corners tight the weight just feels a little bit off there's there's something that I can't put my finger on don't get me wrong handles extremely well but comparing this car to an m3 is like comparing a Cadillac to a go-kart kind of not really I guess I was a terrible example but a lot of people put m3 sway bars on this car and there are some suspension mods that you can do that make a huge difference but since there are totaled like three turns on all of my drives in Florida I haven't really focused that much on making this car handle super well just frankly I'd just be pointless this is my daily driver I'm don't ever plan on tracking this car so as long as it has a nice ride and it's fun like that's all that matters to me so compared to stock the tune I have in this car like makes it an absolute monster this thing has so much power in every year that is like the ultimate daily driving race machine so I'll pop it down into fifth right now and show you guys what I mean so are at 60 get on it and we're giving 70 so like you don't even need to downshift if you're going to pass a car or anything like that I might as well go for the one issue that I have right now with a car because I've just been too lazy to fix it I think I'm a bad speed sensor or something so I don't have traction control cruise control or ABS which I should probably fix I just I have to download the program so that I can scan it and I just don't feel like doing that access port will actually scan codes but it won't scan this code for some reason but this car is very very fast even though it's heavy and it's like kind of like a big car I like the fact that it's big by the way because it's not so small that it's like claustrophobic but it's big enough where it's spacious but it's not so big where like I drove the m4 and that's too big for me this is like the perfect sized car but it's got a lot of power for what it is I personally wouldn't want too much more power just because it just starts to get a little hectic after like where I'm at with performance mods on this the next thing people normally go to is meth which should make the engine run so much better and can definitely give you almost another 100 horsepower but I don't have a limited slip diff in the rearend and i don't really plan on getting one just because i just don't really see a purpose like if i get a limited slip diff then that's gonna trigger me to go math and then i'm probably gonna go with bigger turbos and i just really like how this car is right now like it runs every day it's my daily driver and I don't want to get myself in too much trouble the turbo lag in this car is virtually non-existent so we'll put it down in third we're around 2000 rpms we hit peak boost at like 2500 overall I'm really happy with this car like it I love how it sounds I love how it feels it's just a really fun fast daily like that that's what it is in my eyes is awesome that I can fit people in it I can fit bikes I can go on long road trips in this car is good I think my biggest complaint with this car is actually the throttle response so as far as I understand it's electronic and the car does not have individual throttle body is like the m3 does so I go to step on it and they're just there's that split second before it actually goes to the motor and it's it's kind of like I don't know they make I think sprint boosters that help with that but the thing that I don't like even more than that is that when I let my foot off the throttle the motor wants to keep going for a little while now I don't know about you guys but I love when I Drive a car and I take my foot off the throttle and the front end just immediately pitches down where's this watch I'll get on it alright foots floor like it just kind of sloshes out which I understand they want to do that just so it's a smooth car for like people that are just daily driving it or whatever but because this is more of a sports oriented car for me I think I would prefer to have it where I take my foot off and I can feel the car immediately stop because it's kind of weird like you're going to in a turn you let your foot off the throttle and it still wants to go so we'll do a quick ball overall the car is extremely fast I need new tires on it right now it's definitely not as fast as it could be because I spin right through first and second so I'm really excited to put new tires on and then hopefully take it to the drag strip and do some 0-60 runs but that'll be a different video but overall like I love this car don't get me wrong this car isn't perfect but I feel like for me it's pretty it's fast it's fun and it's not that expensive like I get decent gas mileage driving how I'm driving on my way to the warehouse so I normally get about 18 or 19 miles to the gallon but if I'm really trying I can push 25 to 30 miles to the gallon on the highway and for a 400 horsepower car that's pretty impressive I guess the only other thing that I really want to mention is just that if you are looking to get one of these you probably have already researched enough to know that they are fairly problematic the high pressure fuel pumps tend to go and so do the turbos I was lucky enough to buy a car that already had the high pressure fuel pumps replaced and I was personally able to have the turbos replace about 10,000 miles ago because of wastegate rattle completely under BMW warranty I don't know what it is right now but I think last time I checked it was somewhere around 120,000 miles like recall warranty for the high pressure fuel pumps and like eighty thousand for the turbos so if you're buying a car with an N 54 which is the inline six twin-turbo three liter which i think is like before 2011 just make sure that you're in that mileage range so if something does go wrong you're covered the brakes on this car are great they'll stop it on a dime and they're not big breaks or anything special and overall I do think that it's a pretty well put together car so I guess that's it guys I can't really think of anything else but if you do have any questions feel free to leave a comment cuz I'm more than happy to answer and I really like I would not have this car I would not have any of the awesome stuff that I've done to this car if it wasn't for this channel and my clothing company and everything so I just can't thank you guys enough for all your support because like I'm living the dream out here and this is this is if you haven't already be awesome if you go check out that video talking about why this car is important and like the back story because this isn't just a car to me but anyway thanks guys for watching and I hope you enjoyed my video when you say\n"