It’s been a minute and I’ve been a bit distracted. The family E39 got M-Tech’d. Fitting everything was more work and parts than expected. A local shop painted the bumpers. I think it turned out great but I will sorta miss the Eastern European Mob look.

Here’s the car when I picked it up earlier this year.

Bumpers + trim. I also tweaked the rear air suspension settings to even the car out. The PO had the rear jacked up high for some reason.

The front bumper required trimming to the air ducts and new fender liners. No real pictures for all of this.

M-Tech cars had a different rear exhaust section so I had to weld up a new tailpipe. I had plenty of scrap left over from old exhaust projects to get it done. Not too bad. It turned out pretty nice and looks stock which was the goal.

Back on the MK2, I finally welded up the sump but I still need to fabricate the pick-up pipe. I dropped the ball on documenting this in my scramble to get it done and installed.

Clearance to the subframe and steering rack was exactly as designed. That felt pretty good.

I put the car back on the ground and rolled it out to clean the shop. If nothing else, the aesthetic of this swap will look 10/10.

Started messing with the exhaust. I got the mid-pipe or “section 1” done. I had to cut this apart and re-do it a couple of times but I finally got it all to work. I believe the primaries are 1.5in and the secondaries are 2.25in. I used a vibrant merge and some bends I had from the exhaust project on the M3. I ended up prying the secondaries apart slightly and welding braces to try to avoid rattling with thermal expansion. The primary and secondary lengths on these headers are definitely not optimal but I plan on designing and building a 6->1 header after I get the car driving.