Almost Done with Maintenance and a New Exhaust

Today I ended up taking my 2004 M3 over to a buddy's shop so he could fabricate up a trailer hitch for it. While I was over there I ended up buying a Raven exhaust he had sitting around for $200. I'm pretty stoked since it is the mid-pipes and final exhaust. It is meant to connect to the E3 headers, but I'm going to see (and hope) it works on my stock headers. He is going to fix a few holes in it and a busted hanger. I guess it had previously lived a life on a race car.

I also managed to get around to finishing almost everything else on the car. I replaced the transmission fluid which was a little dirty (grey/black in color). Hopefully the Redline fluid I'm throwing it helps shifting feel a bit until I can get around to refreshing all the shifter bushings.

I finally got that stupid differential bushing bolt on. It took some further persuading and some clamps to finally get it to go through. While I was there I also filled up the differential with Redline LSD fluid.

I couldn't find the drain bolt for the power steering fluid. So, I just removed the fluid from the reservoir with a turkey baster and replace with new power steering fluid.

Lastly, I managed to get the passenger side's half shaft off the output hub on the differential. Bashed my elbow good, but it came off. That side was all good, so I checked the driver's side half shaft. Sure enough I could hear a bit of metal on metal on the inner portion of the half shaft. I replaced it with a spare I pulled off my 325is from a few weeks ago. Hopefully this one holds up until I can get around to repacking the two half shafts that are now sitting in the garage.

I was going to do the fuel filter too, but I found a small hose that connects to the fuel filter has dry rot. Instead of messing with it and potentially causing it to finally crack, I'm going to order a replacement hose.

Tomorrow with the help of my roommate we'll bleed the brakes and clutch. I think I'm going to postpone the coolant swap until I a. get distilled water and b. get more coolant since I only got 1 gallon, but need two.