• Sep 29, 2018: “Well, I’ll keep the 330 because I’ve put so much time, effort, love and money into it. I’ll have to figure out what I’m going to do with it.”
  • Sep 30, 2018: “Nope. All gone, all of it.”

What could bring about such a change? A blue, Dual Motor, Performance, Tesla Model 3 can.

Let’s rewind: I drove the 330 over from NY to OR from Septebmer 21 to 24th. I had just dumped quite a bit of money to fix a bunch of stuff, including the installation of a Radium Engineering oil catch can. The car made the drive over here wihtout too much trouble, but the catch can filled up much more quickly than I liked (every ~700 miles), and putting the car under any amount of load caused it to not want to accelerate. So the original plan was to return the car back to stock partially. I’d replace the fuel injectors with stock ones, the exhaust manifold with stock manifolds, and hopefully it’d be OK enough to enjoy. Then I was thinking of putting an S54 with an MSS70 ECU in there, as that has the code to control the SSG transmission.

But, then I got a call on Thursday saying my car would be ready for pickup on Sunday. I picked up the car, and laughed from the amount of joy of leaving from a light…or going from 30-60, or 60-something. Instant torque is fun! It handles pretty decently too, at least for what I want.

So, here’s the long and short of what’s happening.

  1. BMW M3 development is temporarily on hold.
  2. BMW 330 is coming back to main priority, as I’m going to use what I learned / developed with the M3 to get the 330 SSG code correct.
  3. Porsche development will run in parallel, addressing any issues or requests that come up.
  4. Once the 330 work is complete, I’ll continue using it to ensure I’ve caught any corner cases, then sell it.
  5. The M3 work resumes, and then that will be sold after completion and verification.

First thing to do with the 330 is create a new, short harness. The existing harness took quite a bit of effort to remove from the M3, and it’s seen better days at this point. This time I’m going to keep the ECU where the stock ECU is, though I’m not sure how well this will fit.

I will still be working on Porsche related items after the BMW work has been completed, and any other cars that come my way that look like an interesting development candidate. But I will not be keeping my BMWs. It’s been a fun ride with the BMWs, but I don’t see myself driving them more than is necessary.