We recently finished up a 2003 M3. The customer originally came in about a month ago and made some power pulls. Unfortunately the re flash that had been done was wiped out by the dealership during its last maintenance visit. So we were unable to get the max out of the car. We were fortunate enough to have made a good impression on the customer to warrant a return visit for some performance and maintenance work. We were going to install a header and mid pipe, new brake rotors and pads, along with the 60k inspection 2.
The day of the appointment the car didn’t want to cooperate. The customer had called to let us know that the car had overheat as well as lost power steering and occasionally the Alt. light would come on. He limped it here after a brief cool off. I took a look at it before we got started to find that the serpentine belt had come off. So the water pump, alternator, and power steering pump all were down. Luckily it happened only a couple miles away and not on the side of the highway! We brought it in and put it on the lift and started to break it down. Upon further review of the serpentine belt failure I was surprised to see that the belt had actually broken and not just come off. It broke due to a locked up water pump, ouch. We notifiedthe customer of what we found and he decided to upgrade the radiator as well as install a pulley kit. After a small shopping spree at Turner Motorsports and a Zionsville Autosport aluminum radiator, we were back in business. To anyone reading this article with an E46 M3 or if you are thinking about it, if you don’t know already, the water pump retails for $627.35 
!!! BMW is very very proud of that unit! I was shocked and it wasn’t even my car.
The Zionsville Autosport radiator is a superb piece with a high but fair price tag. We ordered it on a Friday, they did not have one on the shelf so they had to fab it up. 3 days later it shipped and by the following Friday we had it in our possession. CNC machined billet brackets and precision (rivaling robotic) welds with a perfect fit are what to expect with these guys. If I had a E46 M3 and the extra $1000 dollars to spend on a radiator, there is no question, this is the one I would get. As a finishing touch we were requested to paint the polished muffler tips a nice high temp matte black. I was a little hesitant because the polished look was really nice, but after it was finished this does in fact look better.
Once again I would like to thank our customer for giving us the opportunity to do the work on his car. We will be dyno testing this car in the near future to see what it has when the re flash is done for the mods on the car and the restraints are let go. I think this further shows that no matter what the car, project, time frame or budget you are working with, Batlground gets it done, and gets it done right.
