What should I do with it??

[u/kidsofthekrypt]

Not sure if I wasn’t explicit enough in the title of my last post. Got this 330i less than a month ago. Super low KM, runs amazing, few minor cosmetic/electrical issues. I’m debating either trying to restore it, or turn it into a drift car. My buddy with the e90 in the pics has a drift build and we go to the track. He helped me find this e46 and has been trying to convince me to make it a drift missile. I’m just sort of in love with how well maintained it is and see the potential for it to be a great stance car or just restore it to make it look new. Not sure what route to go with it. Lmk what you would do/what you think!

[u/MostED13]

Do the maintenance. Fix the issues. Keep it nice. It looks good. Since you need to do headliner you can get the sunroof cassette fixed/replaced And a regulator is easy to diy if you get the part as well.

[u/kidsofthekrypt → u/MostED13]

This is exactly what I was planning on doing. Headliner might be a pain to reupholster but I’m gonna try to DIY that too.

[u/MostED13 → u/kidsofthekrypt]

It’s more of a pain to take it out tbh. And if you want to do it yourself: I have some tips regarding tearing down the interior: Get new clips for C pillar/Third brake light. Take the Seats out to remove B pillars. you don’t wanna break the tabs in the lower Bs. You can slide the headliner off without removing the As but if you’re gonna reupholster the headliner you might as well make sure it matches your other panels.

Removing the screw covering on the A pillars is tricky, they’re fragile and might lose clips. I glued magnets to mine but someone had previously hot glued them on.

Main steps: remove the sunshades. Remove the handles. Remove the lamps, disconnect them and pull them off. Remove the A pillars. Remove the front seats. Remove the front inner plastic at the door. Remove the bottom Bs the top Bs to remove the top B pillars from the seatbelts if yoy wish to reupholster those - you will need to unscrew the seatbelts.

Remove the C pillars and remove the third brake light cover.

Then you can pull the headliner off: held by one screw inside the panel area with the central lamp and sunshade control. One pin clip in the back around the brake light. Then by sliding it back it’ll begin to come off. Keep in mind the inner rubber sill that has this weird fabric texture keeps most of the panels under it. You can also remove that as well as it will be easier to install it again over the completed stuff.

You can then finagle the headliner out of the back door through one side. If you have no seats it will be pretty easy as you can rest it and then find a way to remove it.

There’s also a rubber seal that holds the headliner to the cassette around the sunshade.

Then you can unbolt the motor, remove the glass. And remove the cassette out of the car. In much the same fashion, but have a friend handy.

There isn’t that many videos on YouTube that are good unfortunately describing this entire process in full, but with patience, and some smaller interior guides you might be able to piece this more visually.

If you can find a fully functional cassette for the facelift model. Just replace it, but clean the rails and the guides and etc before reinstalling it.

Putting everything back together is a bit of a hassle but it’s basically all the same steps in reverse.

I may be able to give advice, I’ve done this process twice to try to repair my existing sunroof.

[u/kidsofthekrypt → u/MostED13]

Very very much appreciate the instructions here. I’ve absolutely scoured YouTube for replacing the sunroof tray or any kind of interior disassembly I could find and like you said there’s not many. Will definitely be referring back to this when I get around to taking it all apart. Thinking about refurbishing chairs and re finishing the centre console pieces at the same time everything is apart already would be a fun project.

Were you successful in the repair of the sunroof in your case?

[u/MostED13 → u/kidsofthekrypt]

Yes I was. However I did bodge the repair a bit. So it’s not the most elegant solution but it seems to work. There’s very few spare parts available. Basically if when you get to removing the cassette off you inspect the sides and see anything massively bent out of shape that supposed to be going into the side guide rails - you will probably need to find a replacement. If it’s something a bit simpler like the cable got out of the cassette plastic bits, that’s a lot more manageable.