So I swapped this tonight for a friend of a friend. Went pretty smoothly, took around 2.5 hours.
However, how the F do you drive around like this?? It was so bad just driving it the 5 miles to my house. It was twisting enough for one of the trans side bolt heads to actually contacted the driveshaft, awesome.
Anyway, my first experinece working on one of these, thought Id share. Imsure there are much much worse cases of abuse, or in this case judging by the rest of the pos, neglect.
Dan
oh wow
Damn that looks unpleasant.
hmmm…i wonder how mine looks. How was the car behaving before the swap?
Shaking like a sob nearly regarless of accelleration (+ or - ).
I saw a writeup somewhere about how to tell if its going… it just escapes me where at the moment.
Dan
It’s also worth taking a look at the rear subframe mounts, especially the left forward position. Real common item on E46 cars. I bought one a cpl months ago that had one ripped out. Pics follow
Bought some patch plates from Turner Motorsport, and welded them in. It also necessitates cutting a square hole in the trunk floor to weld the top of the mount back in.
^ Do you have a 99 or 00 e46?
this rear subframe tearing is more of a problem for early e46s
'00 323 5-spd
^^^ ouch.
not a horrible job, just time-consuming.