Gahhh, this thing is never going to be done.

Baby steps below.

Lower offset camber plates, correct my geometry to take into account the shortened coilover struts. Offset for even more negative camber and increased track width.

All OEM turbo flares and front spoiler. I was lucky to get a set as the front right fender flare has been on backorder from Germany for over a year now.

E30 M3 rear seat. I'll eventually recover it to match my front seats.

Fuel cell (with internal baffles). Most 2002's aren't fuel injected so it's a bit of work to get the OEM tank to work with the M20. This is easier, safer, and when trunk mounted lets me shave the fuel cap of the side for a cleaner look.

I finally found a body shop that would work on it. It was literally like pulling teeth. I couldn't give my money away. Crazy. Carbon fiber hood (shown) along with ditching the front bumper and moving the battery to the back more than make up for the extra weight of the M20.

Unfortunately in moving it around prior to the body shop my nose got smashed, so they'll have to replace that (found OEM fresh nose) along with all the rust repair and cutting fenders for the flares.

After a good sand blasting. Luckily no big surprises were found. Stripping all the old sound deadening from the inside looked quite labor intensive.

After the wheel wells got all cut out for the fender flares. That should give me a bit of extra room for tires.

Flares on. I'm deleting all the trim and any extra side markers etc that were added for the US market. It's a lot of little holes to weld up.

Test fitting the new nose. Wheel gap much?

Part one of the rear strut bracing. It will eventually tie into the floor and have an integrated battery holder. There was a lot or reinforcement to the shock towers for two reasons. #1 it's known failure point. #2 Normally that is just a mount point for the shock, the spring goes to a perch under the car. I'm converting to a true coilover rear that will mount to the shock tower so it's a lot of added stress to that area. Fingers crossed.

Finally got my front coilovers on. You can see them (powdercoated in Inka orange) peeking through. Not shown are the nice adjustable camber tops. GC did nice work. The struts are from a Tii which gets me bigger wheel bearings. They've also been shortened 2" to get me lower. This picture makes my pants tight. I've been dreaming about this for a long time. It's nice to finally see it.

Thanks again to Jay for the killer deal on the wheels. I really wanted BBS RS but these were literally 10% of the price. Wheels are 16 x 8 ET 0. I was a bit worried the 16" would look too hot wheels, but I think it's just fine. Front tires are 205/50 rear are 225/50. I went with a Continental Extreme Contact DW tire. Reviews were quite positive, especially wet performance. Should do fine for Austin weather. Coilovers are set about half way in this photo, so I should be able to go lower if I want to. I will need to do a little trimming of metal on the inner wheel well where it rubs under a hard turn. No biggie.

I have a custom rear subframe and axles (2002haus) coming at the end of the month. Once that gets here I can weld in the lower perches for the rear coilovers. Hopefully after that it's only a few more weeks until I can get it to paint.

Unfortunately after it's painted, I'm out of money, so it may need to sit for a while more.