My story with my Coupe - Parts 1, 2, 3

[asirvr4]

Hi all,
First of all, English is not my first language, so bear with me. My name is Asir, and I am from Oman.

I always had that thing for BMW's and M-power beasts. S54 high-rev engines were the pinnacle and remain so to me or enthusiasts who share my feeling about it.

When I first decided on buying an E86 M Coupe instead of an E46 M3 its was because of the uniqueness in terms of quantity & design and lighter weight in terms of performance.

In my area it was impossible to find an E86 M, so I went on to search in Dubai, where I found like 2 E86 M's and 2 E85 M's only for sale. Because I was limited on choice I had only two options, an alpine white E86 M or an interlagos blue E86 M.

Unfortunately, the AW E86 M (GCC-Spec) was over my budget priced at around $34k and the IB E86 M (US-Spec) was within my budget, awkwardly priced at around $22k. I knew that there was something wrong of course, but thought why not check it out.

I met the seller (who didn't know it was an M btw), immediately gave it a visual check and it was obvious the car has been in an accident, cause it didn’t have an M bulged hood, had an aero front bumper instead of M bumper, fog lights unwired, an E89 steering wheel, non-m headlights with one of them miss-aligned beam, broken grill, missing antenna, M wheels in bad condition.

Then the seller prompted me to test drive it, and I was impressed with the smooth breath-taking acceleration and braking. After that took the car to a shop for a mechanical checkup , and the result was there was no mechanical faults, and the engine/transmission running smooth as butter with low-mileage.

I took my time to think about it and weighted the price difference between the other M's, and if I can invest the amount difference in repairing the damages in a "mod" way instead of OEM. Ahhh, so I pulled the trigger and bought it.

The day I bought the IB E86 M Coupe. (May 2011)


Non-M hood


Aero front bumper


Missing antenna


E89 steering wheel


Thanks for reading, in part 2 I will show you what I did.

[Vanne]

Great story Asir, please tell us the rest. I love interlagos blue on the M. : D
I'd say the M coupe is pretty rare in Oman. : )

[a_riddler]

Welcome! Lovely car and who can complain about "fixing" a car with mods!

[fercho]

dude i love the steering wheel, does the stereo buttons work?

[Walkurie]

Originally Posted by fercho

dude i love the steering wheel, does the stereo buttons work?

Yes, tell us about that steering wheel!

[asirvr4]

Originally Posted by Vanne

Great story Asir, please tell us the rest. I love interlagos blue on the M. : D
I'd say the M coupe is pretty rare in Oman. : )

Thanks, I will. Yes, even bimmers over here didn't there was an M Z4 version.

Originally Posted by tbalutis

Yes, tell us about that steering wheel!

It's an E89, as I mentioned.

Originally Posted by fercho

dude i love the steering wheel, does the stereo buttons work?

No, they don't work. But, it's possible.

Originally Posted by a_riddler

Welcome! Lovely car and who can complain about "fixing" a car with mods!

Thanks.

[krusty]

Is that aero bumper just the bumper off the E85 pre-facelift roadster? Are the parts between then pre-facelift E85 and E86 interchangeable? [Some might say yes - evidently! ]

[jophish17]

What a funky little car - I applaud your work putting this car together, it's hard to source some parts over here, I can only imagine the difficulty in Oman. Hopefully servicing it in the future won't be a challenge.

The only thing that would really bug me is having the flappy paddles on the wheel

[Huz-Z]

Looks nice! ANd i love the color!

I note the paddle shifters. I presume that as Z4M's have manual transmissions, the paddle shifters came with the E89 wheel and are not functional.

Cheers!!

[asirvr4]

Hi again,

Once I got the M back to home, Muscat, I decided that I will take it to the dealer for a full service + inspection 2, since there was no service history available. The tech person complimented the condition of the engine and was amazed as he extremely rare sees a Z4M other than the E46 M3’s. They changed all the oils and fluids, and found out that the front passenger side wheel is bent slightly.

The OEM continental tires were in bad condition so I decided it’s time to get a new set of wheels and new tires. I went for the AP-EX Arc 8 silver polished staggered set 18x9 front and 18x10 rear with Nitto Invo Tires 245-40-R18 front and 275-35-R18 rear.



I didn’t go for 19’s because of performance reason, and these wheels are very lightweight. I really felt the difference in acceleration after I installed them. Nitto tires are good also for their affordable price.



About the antenna, I saw a couple of JDM cars who shave them, so I decided to do the same for a clean look fender.
Link: http://www.zpost.com/forums/showthread.php?t=602282



Every time I drove my car I was thinking it’s a manual, what I am doing with the paddle shifters? So, I removed them and modified the steering wheel little bit temporarily.



My plan was to get a racing steering wheel, but after I saw how the Z4 people praise the M thick steering wheel, I bought one. I just added M-power badge to it. Got the ZHP gear knob as well.



The Z4 aero bumper is cool, but just doesn’t go with the M, and sorry the M bumper isn’t really my taste. You see that’s the problem with Z4’s, no front bumper up to now was designed correctly to flow with Z4 design. So I decided to come up with something different, an AC shnitzer front spoiler custom fitted to the aero bumper, the work was done at a body shop. I also got the RHO-plate at once.






What’s your opinion about my front bumper? Should I get something different? Or stay with what I have?
The hood doesn’t really make a difference, so maybe a Varis cooling hood in future.

The headlights were okay, as it was something different than M headlights. I just coded the car by myself to switch off the amber parking lights using NCSexpert if you heard about it. I installed the CCFL angel halos as you can see in the pics above, but plan to replace them with Umnitza Orion V2 LED angel halos because of flickering issues.

I installed some other mods as well: Fabspeed S54 headers, great power difference than catted OEM headers. Rouge Engineering Diablo Rear Exhausts MZ4, really felt the difference in weight, both almost weight less than one OEM exhaust cat-back.

Then… something bad happened to me. Which I will tell in next part.

[asirvr4]

Originally Posted by krusty

Is that aero bumper just the bumper off the E85 pre-facelift roadster? Are the parts between then pre-facelift E85 and E86 interchangeable? [Some might say yes - evidently! ]

It is an aero bumper, but I don't know where it came off. I guess some parts are interchangeable with little work.

Originally Posted by jophish17

What a funky little car - I applaud your work putting this car together, it's hard to source some parts over here, I can only imagine the difficulty in Oman. Hopefully servicing it in the future won't be a challenge.

The only thing that would really bug me is having the flappy paddles on the wheel

Thanks. It is hard actually, but the dealer over here is good. I got rid of the flappy paddles.

Originally Posted by Huz-Z

Looks nice! ANd i love the color!

I note the paddle shifters. I presume that as Z4M's have manual transmissions, the paddle shifters came with the E89 wheel and are not functional.

Cheers!!

Thanks. I would imagine the gear shifter moving and clutch depressing by it self when I shift through paddles

[Jroc]

Love what you did with the car, except the bumper. Just way too buldgey

[Huz-Z]

Originally Posted by asirvr4

Thanks. I would imagine the gear shifter moving and clutch depressing by it self when I shift through paddles

[Walkurie]

Like the front bumper / splitter. In that blue color, it works. Not sure how it would work with other colors, it looks fine. Some of the ACS kit may be a bit too edgy for some, but many pieces work fine.

[silverfishZ4M]

the only thing i don't like about the bumper is the middle part with the two pieces that go up. if i put my finger over that it looks much better. maybe there is a way you can modify it? i'd also paint the mesh matte black so it blends in better/looks more invisible.

[ricanbandit]

I like the front bumper. A LOT, also like the shaved antenna. That bumper would look amazing in BSM ( of course I am biased)

[3point0]

Good work! Now I'm going to have to investigate the e89 wheel some more, I'd LOVE a heated wheel.

Liking the front bumper work, I would go with a much wider mesh, maybe even a 1" spacing and have it powder coated black

[mgwatson48]

you have some "interesting" taste in mods haha

[krusty]

Originally Posted by asirvr4

Hi all,
In my area it was impossible to find an E86 M, so I went on to search in Dubai,

I met the seller (who didn't know it was an M btw), immediately gave it a visual check and it was obvious the car has been in an accident, ... M wheels in bad condition.

This may explain why it had a bent wheel??

[GammaZeta]

Wait, did your new steering wheel come stock with the deleted buttons? Where did you get that?

I didn't think the M steering wheel could go with a multi-function deleted from the past?

[asirvr4]

Originally Posted by krusty

This may explain why it had a bent wheel??

Hahaha yeah I saw that vid, but that one aint mine

[asirvr4]

Originally Posted by GammaZeta

Wait, did your new steering wheel come stock with the deleted buttons? Where did you get that?

I didn't think the M steering wheel could go with a multi-function deleted from the past?

Yeah, I ordered it from getbmwparts. I guess it does, I was never into multi-function steering in a pure sports car anyway.