It is finally starting to look like a M car now.
BHPian Reesnat recently shared this with other enthusiasts.
The very first mod I did to the car even before I took delivery was protecting the front transmission cooler that is completely exposed in the M2 automatic cars.
In our conditions there is a very high chance of this getting peppered badly and losing its efficiency, or worse, failing completely. The simplest solution I came up with was to purchase a honeycomb grill sheet (similar to the ones BMW use on their cars of the older generation), cut to size and secured via zip ties around the radiator.
Found a cheap one on Amazon.
I felt it was important to not put the grill right in front and secure it on the bumper, but secure it on the radiator itself. This is because underneath the transmission cooler, sits the engine oil cooler, so it was important to not block any air coming into that lower front area.
With that done and delivery taken, the immediate next step was to get the car to my friend Niranjan at OCD for a full-body PPF and to get the wheels painted. Being a black car, I knew going in, I was going to be in for the pain of maintaining a black car in India. Let me put it this way – no matter what you do a black car is only clean for 5 minutes in India. Sad, but I still fancied owning a black car for that look, so took the plunge. For any darker-coloured car, good quality, self-healing PPF is a must if you want your car to look swirl-free over longer periods. So we settled for the most expensive PPF on the market, Llumar Valor. Plus 3M CR70 tints all around.
Next, we wanted to tackle the wheels – after some looking around we settled on a shade of silver that compliments the wheel design and contrasts the black paint well. We ended up with a satin finish instead of going full matt or gloss.
Next was to address a big issue with the look from the factory – the stance. The wheels are unusually inset very deep (for an M car) and come with pretty high GC for a car of this type so the wheel gap is significant. So spacers were much needed. I’m usually not a fan of spacers but in this case, it was a necessity to fix the look.
Getting high-quality spacers is very important to avoid any sort of vibrations or seating issues. The seat between the wheel hub and wheel has to be perfect and even the slightest misalignment can cause vibrations. I picked up a set of Japan Racing spacers – 15mm in front and 12mm in the rear. In addition to the spacers, you need matching longer wheel bolts to match.
The addition of spacers has pros and cons to keep in mind – the pros being better stance/look and an increase in the track width, this will improve the grip and handling characteristics of the car, making it sharper to drive. Cons are that it will add some weight (negligible) and will introduce a little more transmission into the chassis from the road due to the leverage increases. In the case of the M2, it has little feedback from the steering wheel so a little more transmission from the road isn’t too bad. The spacers certainly delivered on the promised improvement in driving dynamics – noticed this straight away.
On the exterior, I also wanted to compliment the carbon roof with some more carbon bits, so I picked up the carbon fibre mirror caps and rear lip spoiler.
So with all that, this is how the car looked at this point:
It’s finally starting to look like an M car. The aggressive body design seems to fall flat with the way the car is stanced from the factory. Just the spacers make the whole design come together so much better!
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