[deathmetaldrums]

Hi all, clearly from my post count I'm what you'd call a lurker, but I'm going to try to contribute a little more. I've been inspired by other build threads in here and while mine might end up being a little more slow and modest than most I'm excited about the way the car is going and want to share, plus it's super boring in Kamloops in winter so this is how I'm passing the time until I get the car out of hibernation.

Ultimately the goal is to end up with a car that's aggressive and has some unique qualities while still maintaining some semblance of subtlety and class. Usually I'm initially motivated by aesthetics, primarily drop and wheels, but the way my wheel build is going it calls for quite a bit more performance I think, if for no other reason than legitimizing the rear widths. Ultimately I'd like to end up somewhere between 400-450 wtq which seems pretty achievable on the N54. Budgets are my only restraint having just gone pretty deep into debt for school, I'm sourcing a lot of stuff out through this forum which has gone well so far thanks to badass335 , probably getting more stuff from Idratherbesurfing and Ah Gon soon too so thanks to you all.

First, the car as it began, was in great shape, about 60k km, not easy to tell from pics but the front wheels were really pitted and stained from brake dust.



First order of business was remedying all the silver trim...



...and lowering on ST coils, Pancake approved...



...here was the car at that point relative to one at stock height.



I wanted to try out the stock wheels in white because the pitting and brake dust bothered me so this happened.



Ultimately I wanted a really slick aftermarket wheel, and in the past I'd had a few different sets of multipiece BBS wheels on other cars so I wanted that again. I bought a set of used BBS Super RS, one pair of which had already been converted to three piece. Here they are on the car, they're 18x9/10, and they needed a 15mm spacer in rear and 20 up front to sit in a really great position.



This winter I took the wheels off and tore them down, the goal is converting the other pair to three piece so that I could widen the lips up front and in the rear, maintain 9" width in front with no need of a spacer increasing lip size from 1" to 2", and widening rears from 10" to 11" with a 3" lip instead of 2", also removing the necessity of the spacer. Rears will widen the total stance by 10mm per size relative to the photo, fronts will come out another 5mm. Caps will stay the same, custom lips/barrels and new black chrome hardware is on the way.

Tearing the wheels down...



Mating surfaces cleared of old sealant...



Centers back from the powdercoater...





I've a fender roller and fair experience working with it; fronts are rolled and slightly pulled, rears are a little tougher to work with but have been rolled, I may end up trimming out the inner fender lip to get the fitment/height I want and still be able to drive without much concern.

With that said, putting an 11" rear wheel on an RWD car is all well and good, but like I mentioned earlier, some punch should probably legitimize their existence, so I'm starting with this Cobb V3 thanks to Badass335, as you can see it is also a Pancake approved part.



And there we are, that's how the last year has gone. I've got a lot of plans for this year but as we can all attest to in varying degrees, finances are a factor.

Will post more pics when they're available, car is still off the road until April due to Kamloops B.C. being a sub-arctic dump.

If anyone is interested I'll have a set of 9" Super RS barrels for sale as well as a full set of BBS wheel hardware. Also looking to buy used FMIC, DP, or chargepipe, PM me with what you might have, trying to make some good progress without causing too much marital distress.

[Alen E90]

Your car is looking good. Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work!

[SMH]

Looks good

[classyfast]

Nice work man, question.....is that plastidip white on the OEM wheels there you showed above? Just wondering bc I want to powdercoat my wheels white but want to see what they look like first. Thinking of dipping for the hell of it.

[deathmetaldrums]

Thanks all, hoping to get the parts I need to rebuild the wheels here any day now, looking forward to it. Trying to work out a deal with someone on here for downpipes, intercooler and charge pipe as well.

Forgot to mention in my first post the car has a borla cat-back as well, just had no photos of it.

Originally Posted by classyfast

Nice work man, question.....is that plastidip white on the OEM wheels there you showed above? Just wondering bc I want to powdercoat my wheels white but want to see what they look like first. Thinking of dipping for the hell of it.

Thank you! No those are painted, though I had plasti-dipped them first to see how they would look in white before painting. The plasti-dip looked great initially but it was no match for brake dust, it didn't hold up as well to cleaning as they advertise, in my experience at least. If you're going to do it the paint/powdercoat be a lot nicer to have and work with, probably only marginally more expensive than plasti-dipping as well.

[bimmette]

Nice progress!

[deathmetaldrums]

Little update; wheel parts finally arrived but things haven't gone according to plan. I dealt with this company in California called "wheelflip" and they've been...I'll say less than stellar. Started with good prices, commitments on shipping (ended up sending them almost a month late) and assurances that they had patterns to do Super RS lips/barrels so I thought awesome, that's low stress, no chance for me to screw up measurements...

New parts arrive, always fun...



Black bolts arrived, should look good with the white centers...



Sadly the measurements WERE screwed up...




Thankfully theres enough free space on the mounting surface to have a machine shop correct what they did, still super irritating to pay twice for work that should've been done right the first time.



These will have to wait a bit longer, I'm a pretty impatient dude.





Pictures are of the 2" lips that will go on the fronts, looking forward to seeing these completed hopefully next week.

[Narvin]

I would never trust wheel flip with wheels ever again. I once met up locally with the guy that started wheel flip and his work was so ghetto that a set of wheels I bought from him were mismatched. One pair was 20 hole and the other pie was 40 hole. They didn't even line up correctly and he said he would fix it by drilling the holes (with a drill bit). Wish I could've told you to save you the headache. They are very unprofessional. I tried to get the wheels ready in time for bimmerfest and he couldn't get the bolts on time either. He encouraged me to run the car to bimmerfest with 5 bolts on the wheels with the other ones empty. How stupid would that make me look..

[deathmetaldrums]

Originally Posted by Narvin

I would never trust wheel flip with wheels ever again. I once met up locally with the guy that started wheel flip and his work was so ghetto that a set of wheels I bought from him were mismatched. One pair was 20 hole and the other pie was 40 hole. They didn't even line up correctly and he said he would fix it by drilling the holes (with a drill bit). Wish I could've told you to save you the headache. They are very unprofessional. I tried to get the wheels ready in time for bimmerfest and he couldn't get the bolts on time either. He encouraged me to run the car to bimmerfest with 5 bolts on the wheels with the other ones empty. How stupid would that make me look..

Haha oh wow that's pretty terrifying. Yeah I'd go with felgenfuchs or justmatz in the future instead. I've used VRwheels and tunershop in the past for standard RS lips, in this case I actually went to a dozen different companies and when it was all said and done the only ones that would give me the sizes I needed in a Super RS pattern and didn't ask for payment in odd ways were felgenfuchs, justmatz, and wheelflip. Dave at Justmatz has awesome service, felgenfuchs seemed good too, they just didn't have the required blanks so on paper their turnaround time would've been more than twice what Wheelflip claimed.

Yes super unprofessional, thankfully they didn't fundamentally bungle these blanks and I can have a legit machinist clean up the mistake at my expense.

[swagon]

The chrome trim would look nice with the chrome BBS lips, man. I love the wheels.

[BoogeyMan'sBMW]

Sweet ride height

[mike@x-ph.com]

Looking good

[soursamo]

Nice to see another Okanagan build!
Yeah wheelflip suuuuuuuucks

[sbce90]

Keen to see those wheels put together!

[deathmetaldrums]

Thanks for the comments and interest, I'm also super keen to see these wheels complete. Quick update; after the lips and barrels showed up wrong I told wheelflip they could either express ship replacements or they could refund me the cost of having a local machine shop fix what they'd sent, they opted to send replacements. I told them I'd chosen them specifically because they claimed they could deliver sooner and had the pattern. They shipped another set a week later and forgot to add an invoice...

Long story short, a total of thirty emails, ten phone calls, one fb post later I get confirmation that they provided invoices to FedEx, so then it was fedex' turn to start shitting the bed and they've done so in epic fashion.

Long story short, 12 phone calls, 8 emails and one pointless trip to a pickup location that didn't have my package to confirm that FedEx has no idea where the package is.

I suppose it's a good opportunity to develop my patience .

[deathmetaldrums]

[Jairomvp]

love the wheels man!

[deathmetaldrums]

Wheels are put together and on the car, some quick photos with no caps. Front and rear will come down further and fronts will probably get spaced a bit more. Got some bump stops that will go in tomorrow as well to help out with getting the fit I'm looking for, I think some more rear fender work will need to happen. Will post some better photos when it's closer to finished.

[deathmetaldrums]

Big thanks to jyamona for the downpipes, they went in a couple days ago.

[deathmetaldrums]

Caps in, 2 extra packers on each corner now and I think the front still needs to come down more, just waiting a month until we move to Victoria, roads in Kamloops aren't very forgiving.

ER CP w/Tial BOV coming in the mail thanks to @[Mike@N54Tuning.com](contact:49994) , that dude is crazy responsive and on the ball! After the piss poor experience I had with wheelflip it's nice to know some people still take pride in the level of service they provide, and shipping from within Canada no less.

[deathmetaldrums]

[classyfast]

Fuck those wheels are crispy man, awesome!!!