The Nine Man Month Baby

So, 9 months after starting the motor swap project it's finally back on the road. Here's a summary of what's happened and lessons learned:

• The E46M3 six-speed was a tremendous pain in the ass. I got it for an absolute steal, but didn't do the proper look-over and it ended up having a hairline fracture on the bottom rear case (leaking significant fluid) and the shifter centering springs were busted. I ended up getting a replacement transmission, and will be repairing the old one to sell.
  
• The six-speed was SOOOOO worth it. Gear shifts are snickety-snick, and with the 3.73 rear end, it rips through the gears like nobody's business
• I forgot to replace the coolant temp sensor for the E30 gauge with the correct brown-top version. Luckily, there was enough room to throw an 18mm deep socket + universal on there and replace it.
• The 3.5" MAF is another one of those questionable mods...it made the intake fitting problematic, and it's also throwing a CEL now under WOT after 5500RPM. It looks to be a known failure mode related to turbulence hitting the MAF (the cone intake is attached directly to the MAF). I'll have to get some piping and put some distance between the filter and the MAF one of these days.
• I need to roll the fenders and trim the lining...with the Z3 1.9L rack at full lock, the fronts are rubbing. And over mild bumps, the left rear is scraping.
  
• With no primary cooling fan, the coolant temp creeps above halfway in mid-seventy degree weather while idling after a hard run. I'll do a debug session on the thermo-switch to see why the aux cooling fan isn't turning on...maybe get a lower temp thermo-switch.

All in all, the car is an absolute hoot to drive. I can't find enough excuses to take it out for a drive. Nailing 1st gear will smoke the tires (and these are 235/40-17 NT-05s!) ...in the rain, forget about it! I'll definitely get in trouble if I'm not careful.

Once I solve the engine oil level sensor issue (maybe a bad sensor?) and fix the tire scraping, I'll try and grab some videos.

How NOT to build a car.

1. Violate your 2 rules (stay in budget & no feature creep) by drooling over the thought of a slick-shifting close-ratio 6-speed manual transmission
2. Pick up a half-price example of this "feature"
3. Throw away the CSB, driveshaft and flex disc from your old car because the 6-speed is just SO AWESOME that you won't need those old parts anymore
4. Don't do a thorough inspection of the transmission, so that you miss the soft/broken shifter centering springs AND the hairline fracture at the rear of the case that leaks badly
5. JB weld the crack without taking the transmission out of the car (not only did it not seal the leak, but now you've jeopardized the ability to repair the case with a proper weld)

At this point, your head hurts because if you put in the old transmission that you do have, you would have to replace the clutch, lightweight flywheel, short shifter kit, flex disc, starter, driveshaft, center support bearing, pilot bearing, master slave cylinder, throwout bearing, clutch fork AND fabricate a custom transmission mount.

You could also pull the transmission and find someone who's willing to pop open the rear case and fix it (or replace it with one from some old core)

But then you realize at this point that you've been waiting almost a year to drive this car, you've completely blown your budget, and you are SO CLOSE to getting on the road that you just give up, bite the bullet and get a replacement transmission, hoping that you could convince some other sucker to make the same mistakes as you and buy your mistake.

Argh.

Next time, I'm just getting a Honda.