Hi there
So a little feedback on the car, could not resist going for a drive this afternoon and pushing the car, hard, very hard even though it still had steering rack and tools in the boot.
In short oh my god I am blown away with how damn good it is, it drives superior to what my CSL ever did on the road, even more so it rides better to, I think I might have found the holy grail of what settings to use on the KW Clubsport coilovers for the road. I was suffering with some understeer but I can say with the new alignment, new front tyres and KW settings I have discovered from trial and error. The grip at either end of the car is unreal, the grip levels are nearly on parr with the Mustang and like the Mustang the front-end is now a lot more confident inspiring to turn in. I'd say on a fast sweeping flowing road the Mustang would probably still corner quicker, but move away from grip and over to handling the way the car can be chucked and the way the car breaks away is so progressive its like slow motion. Also because I modified my MK20 DSC to dial out intervention now with the stock steering rack back in place one can actually boot the car in 3rd gear on a roundabout exit and keep the throttle modulation and it will actually drift with DSC on, its quite remarkable like drifting for dummies, not tried it in the wet though yet, haha.
In short the car is hugely inspiring from both ends, its was always good, but now I think I have found the holy grail, its a great mix of lots of grip (not too much), superb handling, incredible acceleration, not sure how accurate phone apps but I tried a 0-60 run with partial throttle in 1st and then WOT in 2nd with a little spin which registered a 4.3s, the 3.91 and rebuild LSD really makes acceleration from low RPMs incredible and traction seems much better, guess a fully rebuilt fresh diff makes a big difference from one with 100k on it. Accelerating hard through the gears is breathtakingly quick with the shorter diff and it works so well with SMG, I've never experienced clunk or jerk free SMG but now I have it and its so smooth.
My KW Settings
Front
Rebound (top): 9 clicks (KW stock ring wet setting)
Compression/Bump (bottom): 1 1/2 turns out from hard
Rear
Rebound (top): 12 clicks (KW stock ring wet setting)
Compression/bump: 1 1/4 (5 sweeps) out from hard
This seem to really help turn in at lower speeds, with the biggest improvement coming from softening the bump in the front, I kept the rear 0.25 (1 sweep) stiffer at rear than front as per KW instruction, plus normally a firmer rear helps to dial out understeer. This also stopped skipping tendency over poor roads when heavy braking. Its obvious to me that KW's factory settings for basic road are for smooth roads that are flat, on a UK road you need to go softer for sure.
For track work I shall try these settings too though I found KW ring dry settings seems to work quite well on track or even 1 click firmer.
Then of course I trial fitted a pair of 255/40/18 MPSS on the front axle, changing from the Advan V105 265/35/18. Yes the MPSS do catch a little on the arch liner, but its minor so I can bear with it, these for sure have a lot more subjective feel to them compared to the Advans, a big confidence boost and the taller wall does not look out of place and of course the ride quality with new KW settings and these tyres is surprisingly good, in fact shockingly good, everything just seems to work so well. Also even though they are 255, they seem just as wide as the 265 Advans!
With the new alignment settings (image below), has made the car super confident inspiring on the road, car is hugely stable in all scenarios and grippy, a little less camber all round (can still get upto -3 front by undoing 3 top mount bolts and sliding the strut inwards, takes two minutes per side, and for road just slide outward all the way to be back at alignment settings below.
Surprised with how grippy the rear feels, once I have the new MPSS on the rear car will ride even better.
Got a half rear cage being fabricated as we speak which is scheduled to be welded in first week of November, its bright yellow, harness bar etc. which finally completes what was originally a track car that turned into a mental fun road car that just happens to lap faster than M3 cup cars, or so an owner of M3 cup car told me (he has driven mine) and simply said my car felt better in every way. M3 cup cars are built to spec to make racing fair, of course my car is running superior kit, has more power and a lot of other tweaks detailed in this thread and even better my car is still a sheer joy on the road, works absolutely fine as a daily.
I've also always driven the car in comfort mode as I found sport mode well to jumpy and over-sensitive, which is a complaint by many. As such I decided to have a go at writing my own sport throttle map using Martyn's great tool from ECUworx that makes alterating your factory map so easy and it only cost £20, a must have for any E46 owner!!
Here are the stock comfort and sport throttle maps:
You can see the difference between stock comfort and sport throttle maps is huge, which explains why the sport mode feels over sensitive in my opinion. So I decided to write a sport throttle profile which was well very close to linear, as in if I command 30% I get 30%, I only increased it beyond linear ever so slightly once passed 40% throttle travel, here is my sport throttle map if others wish to try it:
I am now driving the car in sport mode again, just my own variation of sport mode!
For those interested here are the settings I also run for my tune file:
Once the cage is in next month am gonna be on the look out for some track days at Donnington or Oulton Park, need to get back into enjoying the car on track instead of just enjoying her on the road. But its taken a few years but all the things I dreamed of doing to the car are now done, its not the cleanest M3 externally but none of the track prepared ones are, but mechanically its all pretty much brand new and performance wise well 385BHP, 1375kg, CSL DME/SMG, 3.91 diff, RWD and well its a sheer joy. Though don't be surprised if I still have the car in a years time or so to see it change colour to something rather bright to make it look full on race car too.
From the amount of stuff I've driven, no other car except for Houseys old GT3 ever felt like a race car on the road, even my CSL was a bit tame compared to this, but don't interpret that wrong, if anything this car is more raw but actually rides better on the road than the CSL did, simply because the KW's once you find the ideal settings are better damped, I'd only advice for a strict only road going M3, get the KW V3 as they use progressive springs up front compared to Clubsports firmer linear offerings. Housey's GT3 was raw and a scalpel but for me was not a joy to drive on the road, but a lot of that was down to his aggressive track alignment and my M3 was less fun on road with a similar alignment. Now this M3 is raw, race car, but by some kind of magic still refined and confident inspiring, how I don't know but I am not complaining. The car is a true jackel and hide, two personalities, it can race and it can cruise or be a shopping kart. Just wish I had done my recent NC500 trip with it in this configuration as it would have being awesome.
