Welcome to the first post on my brand new blog! The plan is to document every service, modification and repair.

BMW E46 330d Saloon Sapphire Black M Sport

To get an idea of the type of content to expect from this blog, take a look at the one I created for my last car, a modified Solar Red Rover 25 1.4 Impression. I absolutely loved the Rover but it's 1.4 engine simply didn't cut it, despite the throttle body upgrade and a combination of Janspeed and LongLife exhaust mods. It was fine around town but on motorways it was way out of it's depth, wide open throttle at 60mph just resulted in more noise.

So the new car; a 2002 BMW E46 LCI (facelift) 330D M-Sport Manual, with the pre-LCI 5-speed ZF S5-39 gearbox, in Sapphire Black. It has the M57 2.9L turbo charged diesel engine in it, and although sporting 124,000 miles on the clock, still pulled like a train.

Overall, the car was in ok condition, but in need of a very thorough clean, and a bit of TLC in the mechanical upkeep department too. There are a few niggles, I won't list them for now, but what do you expect from a car that's done 124k miles.

To round off this first post, here's some technical specifications;

Build date: 01/2002
Mileage: 124,000
Engine: M57 2.9l turbo diesel
Power: 181 bhp @ 4000 rpm
Torque: 390 Nm @ 1750–3200 rpm
0-100km/h: 8.1s
mpg: 42 combined

Let me know what you think in the comments below, what modifications would you make?