Hey guys, so I decided to just go for it and drop the subframe. JoeJ has a great write up on stumptownbenz on his swap, figured I'd drop some knowledge on the forum from mine.

while his write up is GREAT it doesn't mention having to drop the fuel filter assembly and all that stuff.

I got lucky having deleted my parking brake pads and my cables just pulled out (man would that have been a pain)

only broke one thing! Passenger rear fender liner stud, snapped when removing the first one.

onto the fun part!

Exhaust was definitely a pain to get off. Muffler sucked enough but resonator was a B word. Driver side pipe slipped right off, passenger side however was on nice and solid.
Ended up actually pulled out most of the gasket (metal everywhere) with a little pick and eventually got it to slip off.

guibos looks good (but hard) and there's marking in writing on my shaft of front and rear of drive shaft making me think someone's been in there before (unless it came like that from factory but I doubt it) probably 3mm of play in center bearing (not sure if that's bad)

but I did notice that my new Lemf 1 year old trans mount definitely moves. Like a good amount of play. Not sure if that's normal but I will swap when I do engine mounts (after 2 years and upgrade to oem "black series" mounts. Would make the most sense to just do solids from eastcoasteuro.

there is an arm that holds the primary cats with what looks like bushings, I'd really love to replace that.

there is a piece that was rattling and fell off my car on the saw mill in chappaqua which I actually went back and got but I had run over which I'm unsure I'll ever put back, Benz tech said it was to keep secondary cats from hitting each other, makes sense. Lol probably the only catastrophe of my car other than belts snapping from leaking oil filter housing etc.

id really love to never put the stock resonator/muffler (it's called a ****ing axle back for *** sake) but looks like all I've got is eisenmann and someone else would really love a section 2 and 3 exhaust for this thing any opinions would be great but I'd even drop $2k on it tbh.

meistershaft, give me the shaft for $2k 😂😂

be careful with bottom shock bolts, my passenger side was super tight.

now for the final part, the mounts. They're thread locked and tight AF. My rear mounts being bottom drop look fairly new, like real new. The bolts were a B but backed off. Now for the front....

i ****ed up. Hit it with a e16 to start and completely stripped the passenger side. Damn. They're an e14. Regardless. Rooky bimmer guy mistake and regardless, basically stripped the driver side heating it up to get it off.

looks like we'll be investing in one of those handy Chrisfix bolt extractors. Wish us luck. If not, looks like it'll be a dremmel and no fun from there.

Other than that, driveshaft didn't really separate from diff after dropping bolts, hoping it will with no issues once subframe finally comes down.

really is an amazing feeling popping off 20 year old fender liners to see really nice and preserved stuff.

Having a 19 S4 as a daily, my girl having a 20 M340i, my brother as well and my best friend having a brand new 20 X3M don't tell them but man I ****ing hate bimmers. ****in plastic go carts. Audi isn't any better pieces of **** but Benz and AMG are king.