this is an abandoned BMW M3 and we're going to fix it in just 24 hours the BMW M3 is one of the greatest driving cars of all time and the E46 generation which this one happens to be is considered the very best it also happens to be one of my favorites it's possible I may be a little biased though because I had one years ago and loved it so when I heard about this one just sitting in the back of a shop nearby I felt sad as a car Enthusiast I hate when cars just sit and aren't driven especially something as special as an m three it just hurts to see something that someone could be enjoying rotting away somewhere so I called the owner negotiated a deal and now we're going to fix it and then sell to someone who will properly enjoy it because it shouldn't just be sitting here all sad and and lonely we need to diagnose the problems because we have actually no information on this car get all the parts and then hopefully fix it I guess first thing to do is see if this thing starts I have a key and a title so I know it's a real vehicle I'm hoping this key belongs to it and hopefully it'll just start but I'm sure seeing that it's been left back here that will not be the case probably should nice I noticed that a second ago oh oh it's gross in there a little oh yeah oh there's some stuff y all right that was to be expected literally why is that lighting up what is that is that a radar detector hardwired Valentine One radar this thing was baller back in the day wait where is that mounted to I don't know dude look at the shifter that's not bad that's got to be a short shifter something yeah there's a lot of worn down things like look at this oh someone definitely use this thing this is these get beat up but it's probably sitting outside in the sun and heat we have a jump pack at the shop but it's so close we can probably just get some people to push it there all right we're going to get it to we're going to get it over to our shop and then see if we can get this thing started with a jump pack and hopefully fingers crossed it runs if we have engine problems we're in for a whole world of pain because these e46s have been known to have a few issues but usually it's a lot of other things that go wrong with these cars so I'm sure there's plenty sometimes the engine you know yeah only sometimes the engine this isn't like you know doesn't have hopefully the frame isn't cracked oh yeah yeah that happens with these all right let's push it all right we'll be back we have the BMW inside the shop all pushed in and now we got to give it a little jump start I'm at the back because the battery is actually back here okay you need the battery to open that that's a good point it's not really a modern car but it's new enough to have that problem Oh there's some the battery's exposed already which probably means that that's the problem there a CVS Auto Zone receipt what did they buy an oil filter and oil and then somehow it's this long wow this is some CBS stuff right here man yeah you got a VI bag is that a hose no it's a dog leash all right leash oh um a tricle charger yeah that'll do it a lot of signs point to to the fact that this battery is toast a pumpkin spice thing a glove oh a holiday card glove notes sunglasses case with no sunglasses better give it a shot at least I have a feeling it's not going to turn on I am an optimist I'm praying on your downfall right now yeah that's messed up it's actually our downfall that's true noises are happening oh my God the light came on so hot I am going to start it with the door closed I know that's bad well if it starts that's a good point hold on oh my God she's beeping alive okay lights are onga 18800 inspection miles whatever that means I don't know oh we got I forgot about this aftermarket stereo hold on oh man it's on yeah it's actually running on no smoke out the back oh it's out of gas all right yeah kill it I guess we know it runs we have a tendency with cars that we bought like the Aston Martin everybody's like don't forget to check the oil when cars sit for a long time the oil degrades plus we actually have no idea how much oil is in this but I'm shocked Ed I mean I'm not that shocked we don't know the last time it was driven so it sounds super healthy hold on yeah it didn't even like tick or anything Jackson knows how to open the hood on one of these cuz he had one and his was that's how I know it sounds okay yeah oh we have a Cann intake and some mouse remnants yeah but the fact that it started means the mice haven't gotten to anything important let's check the oil I'm going to start it one more time and we're going to just listen for any bad sounds cuz I'm not 100% convinced yet I I almost think we should change the oil before we started cuz these engines have such big problems all right well that's fair at least we know we'll change the oil before we do any more Shenanigans so we all don't blow this up together and you don't get mad at me for it um yeah but that's a great sign these cars notoriously spin rod bearings cuz they don't get oiled properly so better be safe than sorry than to even run it on oil that might be really really old and yes I know what you're thinking by the way convertible really not my first choice however look at the spec it's it's factory Manuel ni interior it's got the cinnamon interior which is actually pretty cool this car yeah the convertibles are less desirable but it's still an M3 still fun to drive it's a five car they're also way less expensive than the coups which is why we could have this one but it's not a car that I plan on keeping but I think it's a car that people should be able to enjoy it shouldn't just be left and I'm actually really happy that we just got this thing started it might not seem that way and that's because I'm scared about what you knock the light I'm scared about what else we may find in order to see what we might find we need to get the car into the air first step of the car not being in the air I'm going to take a look at the brake pads which honestly have a lot of life left in the rear the front's where all the braking takes place though well most of it wow yeah those are like new pads but the rotors are just really rusted that'll be fine though I think when we get it moving yeah we should be able to shake all that just surface rust off no problem with some heavy braking we're going to check on everything underneath this here when we do the oil change is the only way to get there but in the meantime let's take a look at all the suspension components there's a little bit of surface R but actually not too bad look in here so you see right above the exhaust here that little rubber piece yeah that's called the guebo that takes all the force of the drive shaft when it's spinning and brings power from the engine to the wheels it absorbs a little bit of it so it allows for some play cuz if it were metal on metal you would break many things from the torque but the guebo here is something that usually cracks but I'll be honest this one has no signs of cracking it actually looks really good you can't really see on camera but it does look really good it does not look bad oh man look at those diff bushings out there those things are falling apart those are those are super messed up we're going to be feeling that when we're driving for sure uh on Old BMWs diff bushings they usually go at this point Will's M Coupe actually needed diff bushings yeah so it's not hang on the wheels back here the reason will wants me to bang on the wheels is to check for any play If The Wheel has any it could mean that the hubs and bearings are toast which would create a lot more work for us but luckily it seems okay yeah this car has been sitting by the way for like 2 years um doing nothing so it's not the struts are like dry dude look there's no liquid coming off anything I don't see any like I don't see any obvious signs of leaking we're going to have to take the front cover off to see if the oil has been leaking we should go get some stuff to do an oil change before we do that anyway so but so far we're looking quite good on the M3 you're really glistening right now man I'm very sweaty nothing horrible has happened to this car however most of the catastrophic things would likely happen to the front engine portion of the car the next day we have all the parts we need to hopefully get this car right and uh on the road once again and we're going to start with all of the general maintenance stuff we have a huge order from our friends at FCP Euro have all the parts you need for your European car including a kit for an E46 M3 to change all of the uh things that need to be changed especially after the car has been sitting for 2 years so we have filters we have oil we have other fluids we have spark plugs uh and we have mystery fluid that's in German don't even know what it is but we'll figure that out in momentarily I think it's what is this bra fluid dip fluid yeah oh boy the time starts now it is well it's a bad time to start it's 11:00 in the morning so let's see how long this takes I don't think there ever is a good time to start that's true I think it all just equals out there's all the hours are included I have absolutely no idea how to do spark plug on you have to take the intake off oh great yep all right let's begin turns out you don't have to take the intake out but you do have to take a lot of other things out in order to get to the plugs and coils first comes the strut brace and then we can move on to getting the plastic cover off even with it off though it's still really tricky to access everything which is why we're also going to take off the cabin air filter housing which should give us all the room we need to start getting the spark plugs out as you can see the uh spark plug is a little fried here so good thing we're replacing it the coil packs look actually fine so we're going to reuse those but replace these it wasn't too bad we're in like what how many minutes 15 yeah it's been like 15 minutes so we're making good progress we'll have these in it'll be like 25 minutes and then we can move to the next thing now if you haven't done spark plugs it's a pretty easy job you just remove the coil pack which sits on top of the plug itself and then use a special spark plug socket to slowly get the plug out from there you just put the new ones in making sure you don't cross thread them trust me that would be the worst day of your life once we finish that we can quickly put the engine bay back together including replacing the cabin air filter which is all going really smoothly I literally hate dropping things in the engine bay and I just dropped a a very helpful helpful tool that I'm going to need I'm going to try fishing that back out with a magnet but it's buried super deep uh well luckily I have another 13 but I'm going to need to grab that when we do the oil change cuz I cannot get it from up here in order to get my socket back I'm going to throw the car in the lift and take the under tray off but I'm hoping that it didn't get stuck anywhere otherwise this could be an issue more that hey the 13 woo all right well I did take this off really just to get my uh 13 back however uh it's probably good to take a look at all this stuff and I think we got a little lucky we never checked this when we were looking at the car ordering Parts but the steering rack is not leaking it looks to be in decent shape there's obviously some corrosion up here but nothing important the ti rods look fine rods look good and the belt is like brand new so it looks brand new and it doesn't look like well this one of the belts is a little older but they both look fine that's great now we're going to drain the oil which I think is from right here well the uh the the thing is stripped the drain bolt is stripped of course it's stripped that's going to eat a lot of our time it's officially been um about an hour and a half s right so we're making decent progress but this could hold us up Bill's trying to hammer in a bigger uh a bigger Torx to try to get it out going to the left yeah I am dude you're going to the right yeah okay yeah yeah that's why you stripped it okay that's my fault godamn I'm really bad with my directions you don't even know this guy doesn't even know left is bro okay that's my bad this oil is gross after letting all the old oil drain out we can quickly put the new drain plug in now The Logical Next Step would be to complete the oil change but since I'm already under the car draining fluids I'm going to move over to the transmission which is blocked by just a single under Trend now time for a part that I dread which is draining the transmission fluid if you've never smelled transmission fluid before good for you it smells terrible and this is a bad bad thing to get in the nose since I hate the smell of transmission fluid and assume it's probably horrible to breathe I'm just going to undo the drain plug and run away it smells bad really bad I'm going to move away while it's draining once fully drained I can put a new drain plug in tighten it to spec and then detach the fill plug which is on the side of the transmission something very interesting on e46s is that they say this lifetime oil no oil change that's on the transmission and honestly it's kind of not totally true you want to change your transmission fluid um you can theoretically never change your transmission fluid uh but that is not really the truth um I think it was an attempt at I guess trying that I don't really understand it but uh from all the research I've done online you want to change your transmission fluid at a certain point maybe this transmission fluid lasts a long time but it's not lasting forever that's for sure uh and this car has been driven quite a few miles so it could use it in order to fill the transmission fluid the fastest I'm using a hand pump which makes it honestly super easy it's just starting to overflow which means we have the right amount of fluid in we'll let that drip for a second I don't want to overfill it because once the transmission gets warm you can kind of seep some fluid out of the side there with that done it's as easy as bolting back the fill plug and moving to the next step I forgot to record but I got the oil filter out it wasn't hard you didn't miss much with the oil filter out I'm going to replace all the rubber gaskets from there there I simply pop a new filter in close the housing and then can start filling the car up with fresh oil now this car takes some very obscure very expensive BMW specific oil so I'm trying to be really careful not to spill any because I don't want to have to buy any more now I can boltt the under trays back on and drop this thing on the ground where we can move on to the next step we need to start picking up the pace though because we've already spent 3 hours on the car and have lots to do now we need to move on to the interior of the car which needs some help and I thought to make it easier we would lower the top so you can actually see what we're doing and then it came to my mind that we've never tried lowering the top and if the top broken we're in a lot of trouble cuz this is probably one of the most expensive moving parts of the car besides the engine so we're going to hope I haven't heard about these tops having issues but again they all do I feel like so so let's see where is the top button center console oh that's something it's slow it's a little lack of Dayal you know wa oh my it's going to eat it oh this is a complicated thing dude oh it sounds not great it's not doesn't sound happy but [Music] oh and two years later oh 2 years later the top is down it's kind of cool without the roof R yeah it's a bit of little Vibe not really like a convertible person and I'm definitely not like a M3 convertible person but it is not bad that's for sure little Vibe brother let me show you what we're working on so now that we have the top down do you see this uh this interior has seen better days this steering wheel is pretty toast it's gooey it's it's not only like the leather is so worn down that it's actually shiny which is I really haven't seen that much shiny and like missing yeah there's some parts that are like fading away it feels terrible and the stitching is starting to burst at the bottom um which is not great to fix the steering wheel problem we have W this steering wheel fancy guy which is not only not terrible and falling apart it's made of Alcantara with bmwm stitching and it's a lot thicker this feels is is the best feeling steering wheel I wish you could feel this right now it's actually it's actually great I love Alcantara I know some people hate it because you know over time it does kind of wear down but if you take yeah alcatara feels D I wish everything was made of alcatara I wish my skin was made of alcatara there is little holes as you can see one here one here same on this steering wheel and you put a screwdriver through and you pull these Springs and they allow for the airbag to pop out but to be extra safe by the way when you're working with airbags I may be not so good at working on cars but what I do know is that you need to disconnect to the battery even if this battery is a little low on juice don't risk it Wills airbags go off on him I also did it the other day in the M coup remember when I did the steering wheel oh yeah yeah don't be will don't be me be smart will is going to do this cuz I'm scar he got so afraid and that's because it's pretty scary jamming a screwdriver into an airbag that could potentially deploy but will was able to get it done quickly we the bomb theel squad right there that would be bad if we were that yeah do not trust us do that good yeah clear with the scary part out of the way we just need to unbolt the wheel and pop the new one on on but these bolts are really tricky they're always torqued Down super hard and usually quite thin meaning they're easy to strip but with some brute force and ignorance we'll got it done pure stress holy jeez I got it that was scary speaking of brute force and ignorance we have a merch drop it's going on right now and will only be available for a few more days we got everything from crankshaft brand and teas to a collaboration with 996 road trip featuring both of our Porsches and these ones are almost sold out so go on the site right now and ensure you get one before they [Music] call give him the secret code yeah up up down down left right oh that was right wait ready yeah yeah one more up up down down left right left right oh and then there you go that's you got to do yeah simply just do that if you're Shing really yeah that's it's a little known secret sometimes you have to hit B then a then enter um but like this seems like it came up yeah that one's an old one so it doesn't much it's like an old card yeah it's not as complicated or something all right now we got to make sure this goes all straight it could sometimes take a few tries to get the steering wheel on properly but once on it's very easy to reinstall everything including the airbag oh heck yeah dude he got the all contara wheel oh that makes the car much faster I feel that's uh that's another one let's fix the next thing we have a lot to do still uh by the way it's the next day we pause the CL if you're wondering so we ran out of time we haven't run out of time yet we're still how many hours into all this are we like 4 yeah four hours we we've been bad at timing it but we are doing it in 24 hours there was just a period in between because we had stuff to take care of the reason this car has probably not been driven is definitely the diff pushing every time you try to drive it we've moved it literally a tiny bit it clunks every time you get on and off the clutch huge clunk it feels like the entire rear end is going to fall out of the car and that's that's cuz the diff bushings are gone as we showed you so now we're going to attempt to change the diff bushings uh it's it's allegedly a little bit straightforward but you do have to get the diff out of the car which is annoying so let's do it in order to get the diff out we need to remove a lot of things starting with the exhaust we kind of locked out a bit because the bolts don't seem too rusty and all we need to do is drop a couple of hangers with that out of the way we now move on to the axles these are at a tough angle but with the right tools aren't too challenging to get off and we even came up with our special strategy we found a strategy check this out these are a pain to get out they require quite a lot of uh torque cuz they' probably never come off the car ever step get the wrench on and now attach the breaker bar and Will's going to oh my God [Music] ready what you know about this get an axle off of M3 you just need a hanging setup oh god with the hanging setup we can get these off pretty quick which is good because we need all the time we can get we're now able to move on to getting the drive shaft disconnected which is a very similar process to the axles but a bit more straightforward from there we can support the differential with a transmission jack to make sure it doesn't fall and start undoing all the supports that hold it on turns out though that this can be slightly dangerous holy sh oh my God the diff moved a lot I think it's out my God I got hit in the head with the drive shaft that's what happened hope that got it that's what I have no idea what dropped just nail me directly there does that have a view on this yeah in order to ensure that the diff doesn't fall and also hit me in the head uh we're going to lower the car put a table jack up take the last bolt out and then it should fall onto the table Jack which will ensure that no one gets hurt and the diff that is really dense and weighs a lot doesn't come crashing to the floor and break so let's do that the diff is in there pretty good so we have to keep adjusting it to try to get it to come free I'm having to use a bunch of tools to try to push the diff over the rear subframe but it turns out it's not so easy however after a lot of playing around with it it finally decided to come out got it dip out oh my God this thing is violent with the dip finally on the floor we can start to get the old bushings out now bushings are a pain and require some special tools this one pushes on the center of the bushing while holding on to the other side to ensure we can get it to pop out but even with the right tools it takes a little bit of fiddling around to get it right once we have the old bushings out including the metal ring that was being incredibly stubborn we can start to install the new bushings this is the easy part to be honest they just pop right in and with a mallet you can sure that they are seated 100% no wonder the car was clunking this was one of the bushings there there is no bushing left on that the last bushing is under the car but once that out we can put everything back together and move on to the next stage next while we have the top still down we're going to detail the entire interior of the car it's uh been sitting and it has many random gross things in it uh and I think we can make it look a lot better me and will actually used to both do car detailing so fun fact this is a part that we do know how to do somewhat yeah yeah somewhat we're getting better at the working on cars part but the detailing we got going go crazy let's Dawn some gloves and get the interior all good with Will and I's detailing experience this should be pretty easy we just have to throw away all the trash vacuum and wipe off any surfaces that need attention will is going the extra mile by using some leather conditioner to bring the seats back to life we're also of course going to clean the floor mats by giving them a good wash and scrub and also clean the rear convertible deck lid which was super Dusty all right well the final step is to wash the entire car because honestly this thing is disgusting it hasn't been washed in years and uh before we sell it to anybody uh who will properly enjoy it we want to make sure that it actually looks okay for them so we're going to wash not only the car but also the engine we're going to do more than wash it I'm going to give it a little polish oh Will's even going to give it a little polish he's like a old Corvette man at a show he's got that one1 Corvette is polishing all day keeping it nice and clean this thing is absolutely disgusting and it desperately needs a wash so we're going to do that and I think it's going to really actually change the way this car looks I mean we've done all the maintenance work we've done preventative maintenance work we've cleaned the interior we've made the interior better and now we actually need to make the exterior of the car look good this is already pretty good- looking car but it is uh sadly not in great state so let's do that and this should be a great transformation I'm excited to see it done to start we're going to wash the engine bay I doubt this has ever and clean cuz it's absolutely disgusting but cleaning an enger Bay is the easy part of the wash we just need to spray a little cleaner in there scrub it spray it and dry it and with that out of the way we can move to the hard task deep cleaning this old car we first start with the wheels which take a ton of work because of how disgusting these ones are from there we do a regular wash with water a foam Cannon and some sponges once done we can move to the not so regular part of the wash in order to really get this thing clean we need to clay bar the whole car this gets rid of all the little stubborn pieces of dirt and contaminants that are still stuck in the paint lots of people use actual clay which works just fine but we're using a synthetic clay bar with some detailing spray to get the job done after that we simply rinse it down dry it and move it inside for the next part this is the cut in Polish phase which is very very timec consuming but luckily for us we still have a few hours left on our 24-hour clock so hopefully we don't run into any problems in order to save time will and I are both going over separate panels buffing machine and the car is turning out absolutely amazing The Cutting compound gets rid of all the micro scratching in the paint and the Polish brings out an amazing finish which makes the car look brand new I mean look at how amazing the car looks [Music] now and just like that we've turned a rotten old abandoned E46 M3 into what can actually be moved on to the next owner and properly enjoyed I hate to see Enthusiast cars just left to rot I'm happy it really made me relive my E46 M3 days and uh I'm excited for the next person to be able to enjoy it subscribe thank you so much for watching