I totally understand where you are coming from. I get very **** with my cars and I hate when things go wrong...small problems or otherwise! When I bought my 2003 M3 it had less than 20k miles on it and the cats had to be replaced! Eventhough it was all under manu warranty and cost me no $$ it still pissed me off. You should never have to worry about replacing your cats...especially under 20k miles!

So don't feel bad about feeling somewhat nervous about this, I think that's normal and I'd question it if you didn't feel that way. I'm happy that your issue is a small one and can easily be fixed though.

And Mitsu does make very good, reliable cars so I wouldn't sweat it too much.

 

yeah, it's my daily. I plan on getting an ETS quiet exhaust and a tune within a few months, already have a cosworth drop in filter on the way. That should put me around 315 whp. That'll be all for power for a while.

Gonna do reliability mods next, stuff like a better clutch, Magnus CMC, etc.

Then suspension mods, but nothing crazy. I wanna wait for GTWorx to bring out their springs and get those along with some revalved bilsteins. If Gtworx never makes their springs, then I'll go with swift, not sure if I'll be getting the sports or spec r's though. Then a rear sway, white line roll correction kit, prolly some other bushings

Then after all that is said and done, gonna go for more power, do the rest of the bolt ons, maybe add meth, I'll have to figure it out then. If borgwarner's new efr turbos work magic like they're promising, I might get one of those as well.

Ofcourse all of the above will change a million times in my head before I actually do it... But that's the general idea, basically on building a fun daily that'll also be a decent autox'er once in a while...

 

exactly, its quite irritating

if your car needed new cats at 20k, it was prolly tracked before you bought it... unless its a known issue with the e46 M3's. when you stay at high rpms for 10-20 minutes at a time like you would at the track, it puts alot more heat into the exhaust than the cats were designed for. OEM cats usually can't keep up with a car that gets tracked, thats why they make motorsport cats. Its not for higher flow like most people think, its more so that they can deal with the elevated temps. and I'm not talking about your average magnaflow 1-200 dollar cat, a real race cat runs about 1500 for the core only.

Do you still have your M3?

I know the evo is generally a pretty good car reliability wise, I'm really hoping I won't be getting anymore petty issues like this...

 

Nah, I don't have the M3 any more...my marriage and new house took care of that for me lol! That was a fun car to drive though, but I must say that I'm having even more fun driving my Evo MR. My M3 had the SMG tranny and so far the SST beats it hands down!

 

well the smg in the m3 really was the pioneer for a manual flappy paddle transmission, not really a surprise that the sst is better... glad you're having fun with your evo.

 

Yeah, the SMG was really nice, but they've come a long way with the SST. I honestly wasn't expecting it to be so nice, but it's a surprise I'm willing to live with.

 

So I got my oil valve replaced today. I don't feel any difference... but its nice to know my car is back at 100% again. Got a look at the old one, looked completely fine, must have been some electrical thing...

 

I don't think you're complaining.. thanks for the heads up, if you're having problems then the rest of us that picked up the '11 should at least be aware of it

I'm sure everything will work out okay, my last new car had a list of TSB's, but it was a new style/body change... you don't expect as many TSB's on a car that's been out for a couple years

 

the SMG really has nothing in common with dual-clutch transmissions. although they both have paddles, the similarities largely end there.

FWIW, Porsche is typically regarded as the pioneer of dual-clutch transmissions, using them as early as 1980s for their race cars. The first production car to feature a dual-clutch transmission was the Mk4 VW R32.

ironically enough, BMW scrapped their SMG to move to a unit made by Getrag, who happens also make the SST in our cars.

 

is valve lash manually adjustable on the evo x like it was on the older 4g69 fist-gen MIVEC engines? I never had the head opened on mine to check, but if it is that might be your problem. It would be rare for be set incorrectly from the factory, but you couldn't expect the dealerships to pull the valve cover off every new car before they sell it =/

Just be glad you got the code now, and not after you added the exhaust and tune!