What happens when you bolt a supercharger and a bunch of suspension parts to an E46 M3?
Let’s do that again let’s do that again hey hey hey slow down zachary that’s zachary that’s a little bit much my dad does not sound like this imagine it’s 2004. you’re a stockbroker and you recognize the tech bubble was coming so you sold all your pets.com stock at the top and got out before retail got cratered into the ground and now you’re sitting on a bit
Of extra cash and you want to buy a fast sporty sedan or coupe so your options are a mercedes c32 amg a good looking quick car but only comes in automatic audi’s rs4 has a great potent v8 but is quite nose heavy and then of course there’s the e46 m3 very good very balanced advanced engine but the horsepower number starts with a three as advanced as the double
Vano system was and it was for its time as we entered the 2000s v8s were coming the rs4 had a v8 the c63 would eventually get a v8 the e55 amg amazing 5.5 liter and the next generation of m3 was also going to have a v8 engine but what if you didn’t want to lose the balance and versatility the e46 m3 offered but you wanted more power well the best option was to
Call up steve dinan they had been modifying bmw since the 70s and in the early 2000s they built a car well this car the s3r and it has a laundry list of parts that upgrades every single part of this vehicle and in the end has quite a bit more power than it did stock the owner of this car whose name is mark very nice man who drove this car down from the bay area
To let me drive it did exactly that he bought this car used in 2006 and then he gave it to steve dinan and their team and basically ticked every box uh and the list of what was done is quite long the s3r kit comes with everything dinen offered for this car engine upgrades suspension upgrades brake upgrades you get a new exhaust you have a dinan strut bar in the
Front and the back uh at the time steve was not into coilovers so this got a different upgraded set of springs and shocks as well as sway bars and camber plates but now the car actually has ground control mcs coilovers on it the big brake kit was built by brembo you have six piston in the front slotted rotors stainless steel lines new bushings make all the parts
Communicate to the wheel and the ground more you get a set of lightweight dinan wheels 19 by nine and a half in the front 19 by 10 in the back currently they’re wearing michelin ps4s it 275 square stance steve is a big fan of the square stance on the e46 m3 but the headliner today the reason you clicked on this video the reason i was so excited to drive this car
Is because of what’s under the hood vortex supercharger feeding that inline six engine they also installed bigger throttle bodies and they recalibrate the timing and the vanos and everything else and the result is just over 460 horsepower and nearly 330 pound-feet of torque and a higher red line so you don’t need to shift to third to hit 60 miles per hour oh the
Smg the smg is the reason that the manual cars are worth so much more money now it’s time to find out how it all works okay right off the bat the turn-in is amazing i mean this has camber plates which is part of the stage 3 suspension kit and in the brochure which i actually got to look at it specifically mentions that it increases the turn-in which of course
It does if you know if you know how camper works you know that that’s the case but the nose is so eager to turn in it just it feels like the front is hundreds of pounds lighter even though we know that it’s not really really impressive you got to lift off the throttle a little bit when you shift it’s kind of like i mean it’s a manual transmission with a robot on
It so you just drive it like a manual transmission you downshift well before the corner and uh you know let’s see i’ll pull the paddle to downshift now and it downshifts yeah like right before i turn in it’s interesting the car feels like the chassis is stiffer because i’m getting a lot more information through the wheel but not so much uh when i turn the wheel
It’s more of the information coming through like the steering shaft itself so as i go over this road which is relatively smooth but does have a little bit of granularity to the tarmac i can feel vibration coming through the steering wheel sort of forwards and backwards very very subtle it just tells me what kind of surface i’m on it also makes me think that this
Car is really buttoned up there is no slop in the bushings anywhere here i don’t know what the durometer is which is the stiffness of these bushings compared to the ones i have i have a polyflex kind of street track blend these feel a lot more solid i wanted something that kind of worked for daily driving around los angeles and the owner of this lives in the bay
Area where the roads are as he described bad but not nearly as bad as down in l.a i mean there’s no lean in the corners the sway bars are doing a good job it stays really flat steering’s communicative these brakes i mean we should talk about them because they are such a big improvement over the stock system so these have a dinan big brake kit which is built by
Brembo six piston front i believe four in the rear or maybe it’s the stock single but it’s a bigger rotor and it’s also slotted it also has stainless lines and different pads it came with furotos but and what i noticed is there is a little bit of play at the top but once you’re in the meat of the clamp it’s very talkative and progressive it gets progressively
More difficult it honestly reminds me of like like a modern sports car like gt3 or you know mclaren 570 where the pedal is so firm as you get into that travel it starts to feel like you’re like you’re squishing a lacrosse ball that’s kind of what it’s like if the stock system in my car is like stepping on a tennis ball pretty soft this is stepping on a lacrosse
Ball and if you’ve ever used a lacrosse ball to uh you know massage your back or something you know that it’s pretty hard all right let’s go give it some gas feels so composed and and you know i get all this information through the wheel so at first i thought the car was too stiff which but it’s not it actually soaks up the bumps pretty well i’m moving around
A little bit i think the car it’s sitting really low so there’s less travel in the suspension than there would be if it was riding like an inch higher you know so we are probably making contact with the bump stops on some of these larger bumps but when we’re not it soaks things up pretty well on a really smooth road or on track i mean this is what you’d want you
Know this is it’s hard to set up a car for los angeles it really is do you want it to be comfortable on the street do you want to work really well on a bumpy canyon or do you want it to work well on a really smooth track or canyon you know there’s there’s compromises man but wow there’s very little dive under braking what i mean there’s very little dive under
Braking less squat under acceleration i mean the whole car is just moving less than mine and you know and remember my car has kw club sports on it it was also set up by steve dynan’s team at carbon they did an amazing job i just went with something that’s a little bit more street friendly i also don’t have strut bars front and rear i mean this this makes me think
I should buy some the response in the corners is so good i mean really really it’s reading my thoughts from my fingers i am so jealous of these seats these cloth insert seats they hold me in place so much better than the leather ones i have and they look awesome the only downside i think is it feels like they’ve been re-stuffed so i feel like i’m floating a little
Bit more on the seat let’s talk about the engine it’s the big ticket item right big horsepower jump 130 more horsepower than stock nearly a 50 percent increase that is a huge amount especially when you consider that mark’s put 60 000 miles on this uh making that 50 power jump that is a testament to the bmw engineers that made this engine and to the programming
And build that the dining team does they want to make sure your car is reliable so let’s just go let’s go from second i’m not going to launch the car it’s an smg the magazines said that the 0-60 time was dropped from stock by about half a second but they tested it on a 100 degree day and it’s like 91 degrees up here right now so it’s pretty warm but let’s see
What it does from two 8 000 rpm they also shorten the rear diff ratio it’s a 391 now i mean what i noticed coming up here it was a little bit cooler before is it feels like it pulls in fourth the way my car pulls in third and it pulls in third the way my car pulls in second so it was a little surprising ducati getting after it um i’m so used to modern cars
Especially modern turbo cars that have that huge punch of power down low this does not have that the power band is actually feels really similar to the stock power band it’s mostly up top peak torque is at 5 500 rpms and it just pulls and pulls and pulls till 8 000 rpm what’s great about this and what i really love about superchargers when they’re set up this way
Is it doesn’t change the nature of the car it still feels like an n a car it just feels like a stronger one you know it just feels like a bigger bore in line six let’s do that again let’s do that again all right full throttle you know as i said it’s 90 degrees up here it’s definitely not making the full 460 horsepower does but it is definitely faster than my
Car between a combination of the power added up front and the shorter diff in the back it feels really good and yet even with the shorter diff when i checked the uh the miles per gallon on this car mark drove down from the bay area as i said he’s getting 27.7 miles per gallon average with shorter with shorter gears and 130 more horsepower i’m i’m trying to find
The negatives of this of this power i’m trying to find reasons why i shouldn’t supercharge it you know as far as the the power and the character of the car it’s it’s great and the fact you still get nearly 20 miles per gallon highway is amazing i mean the price which we’re gonna get to that’s a negative that that’s a problem but we’ll get to that in a second
For now let’s just let’s just enjoy the corners now as we go through the corners i’m not getting the annoying traction control light that the stock m3 comes with and i say annoying not because traction control shouldn’t be used on public roads but the system in this car is so old it’s 20 years old basically when i drive my car when i go into a corner medium speed
No scrubbing happening from the tires no loss of traction the light flashes it doesn’t pull throttle until you actually lose grip but it starts to just flash at you and it’s like it’s like driving with my mom my mom gets freaked out if i go three miles an hour over the speed limit and she just starts screaming that’s what the traction light is in is stock form this
Uh mark had it modified so it has like a middle ground so you hit the button once and it lets you have a little bit more leeway and if you hold it down it goes full off here is where this car and honestly every car we’ve ever driven from dinan or carbon his new company has ever shined like these second and third gear rhythm sections this pavement is smooth there’s
Nothing hidden underneath i mean the turn-in is really good carlene’s a little bit so it talks to you but not too much the front and the back feel even the grip is really good i mean one difference i’m noticing right now between this and my car is my car has 18s with more sidewall this has 19s i mean they’re wider stickier tire this has ps4s and all of that
Just means the turn-in is better the grip is better obviously but the response through the front i mean is is just it is a market improvement it’s not that everything in the car is turned up to 11. it’s like every bit of it is termed up to nine so there’s just this perfect harmony between acceleration turn compliance and braking like i mean that’s what i want
From a car i mean every now and then you want a firework show you want to drive a 1200 horsepower 68 nova that doesn’t stop return and just like lights parts of your brain on fire but most of the time i want this this this is what makes great sports cars great harmony boost boost is so great and unlike the turbo cars that replaced this generation of m3 well
Later on it doesn’t change the character i know i’ve said it before but we all talk about how much we love a good na engine we love the response we love the sound we love all those pieces you still have those just makes 50 more horsepower okay i think it’s clear what i like about the car but let’s talk about what i don’t like price the s3r kit with everything
Was about forty thousand dollars uh the engine kit and all that stuff alone was about twenty that’s a big chunk of change that’s why i will not be super charging my car and to think about it if you bought this car new back in the day and then got the s3r kit you’re spending like ninety thousand dollars to have what is a very fast very powerful m3 it is a lot of
Money but it puts you in a class uh power wise with the ceo the c6 corvette or the c506 even the porsche turbo and you’re way beyond the m3’s competitors those are well in the rearview mirror um this is a pretty unique thing i’m not gonna run out and supercharge my car i i think that i like the character of it enough that i don’t need to add the power to it right
Now but what this car highlights i think and reinforces is that comprehensive modification is important and the tuning is important so you can throw parts on your car but setting them up right aligning them right is really really important and if you’re going to add more power add more brake because you will be going into the corners much faster and not only is it
A safety issue but i think it’s a more rewarding experience when you jump on the brakes and the braking force matches the advancements and the um advantages you’ve put in the acceleration department you know so just upgrade everything evenly and your car just gets better and better and better so thank you guys for watching big shout out to mark for bringing this
Car all the way from the bay area leaving it with us for a week really really appreciate that that’s really above and beyond and shout out to steve and his entire team who set this thing up a long time ago and it’s still pulling hard 60 000 miles later so that’s impressive thanks for watching thanks for listening to the podcast see you later and remember always
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Transcribed from video
Should You Supercharge a BMW M3? By TheSmokingTire
