I finally got the time to take the car to get an alignment at a dealership. If you read one of my past updates on this car you’ll remember just how off-center my steering wheel was thanks to new tie rods I installed myself. The shifter is a bit less floppy than it was before, but there’s still a lot of play because the bushings attaching it to the linkage are shot. Considering how deformed the mounts on the car were, they were likely original as well. The transmission mounts were worlds easier to install, as I just had to drop the carrier that sits under the gearbox and place the new units in. This is what nearly 300,000 miles of driving does to a transmission mount. The problem came, as you’ve probably guessed, when I tried to put the new mounts in. I simply put the car on a lift and raised the motor with a ¾ ton under-hoist stand to get it high enough to where the transmission was actually pushing against the top of the firewall. Getting the old mounts out wasn’t even a problem. In fact, I barely had to remove any trim to get a socket and ratchet onto any of them. Getting access to the bolts that hold the mounts to the subframe and the motor wasn’t an issue. So I figured it would take a similar amount of time to complete on this E46. I’ve only replaced engine mounts once before on a BMW, and it took less than an hour. I ordered a kit specifically for the M3 put together by FCP Euro that included both engine and transmission mounts, as well as new bolts so I wouldn’t have to reuse the old ones. That’s what I was thinking going into this job. C’mon, Replacing Engine Mounts Couldn’t Be that Difficult, Could It? What I didn’t realize was how hard it would be. In an effort to make my M3 feel a bit better going down the road, I decided to replace the engine and transmission mounts. The steering was in desperate need of a refresh, as were all of the rubber pieces holding the drivetrain to the car. The suspension was almost all original, with a vast majority of the bushings absolutely shot. While the body and engine were in good condition when I picked it up, almost everything else on the car was not. This past summer I went out and bought an E46-generation BMW M3 with an astounding 284,000 miles on the odometer.
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