WIP BMW E46 M3 GTR Road/Race car (UPDATE 1/17/15)

As soon as I can. Right know it's possible that a few burnt capacitors etc. are keeping it from receiving power. I hope this is the case, because if it is I can have my computer back up and running fairly quickly. If it's worst and I have to scrap the whole motherboard it could take considerably longer, being that I'm working with a very tight budget right now. Before I make anymore moves I'm going to study-up some more so that I don't: make the same type of mistake and kill off the current motherboard for sure this time.

 

Any luck with your pc?

 

I have to say. You had the best timing in the world to ask that question. I'm actually a little weirded out too. But actually, YES! IT LIVES!!

I actually got it working yesterday but, due to my idiotic mistake, I didn't want to plug in the charger with it powered on; so I wouldn't short anything out. I already had something happen to me once with this computer when I powered it on, because of a "very" poor soldering job. I saw smoke... and the MOSFET fell out... at that point I got pretty worried. I came back to it today though to see if I could mend the mistake I made; being that I got it working. It was so bad that I ripped out a track from the PCB; luckily only one. I had to play a guessing game and expose some copper so that the circuit would be complete. I couldn't for the life of me find acceptable schematics for the motherboard. So... I had to dig... scary stuff when talking about sensitive electronics. Luckily I found something. I still don't know if I soldered to the correct path but nothing seems to be up; I had to flatten and cut my own piece of copper (~3-5mm), it was that far away.

Right now I'm in the testing and benchmarking phase, to see if anything goes wrong under max load. So far no smoke . At this point I just have to see what happens with normal use. The only real issue that I'm having is that my "." and "x" keys are fairly unresponsive. I may just have to make sure the connector is plugged in fully. That and the initial problem that I had with the charging is still mostly there ; but at least I don't have to power off the computer and remove the battery just to get it to start charging.

Here are pics of the area that I was (or may still have to) working on. Experienced solderers and electronics workers: feel free to facepalm. I deserve it:



Area of work:



Before I learned how to cleanup rosin (also before it started working):

 

Hey great progress !! May I help you test it out ?

 

Of course! I'll notify you when ready.

 

thanks

 

I'm shooting for the beta (public or private) by December and the release in January.

 

grr i want it NOW!!. congrates on the motherboard coming back to life.

 

Nice car cant wait for it to be done!

 

I'm glad to know that your motherboard is working, and I cannot wait for this mod to get released

 

Good luck !

 

Will there be the Most Wanted skin?

Sorry if its been bought up already

 

Yes, after I make a race car skin.

 

Any updates recently?

 

Right now, I'm still working on putting the car together.

 

Sweet! glad to see your pc back up an running been following this since the beginning cant wait to finally see it in game and test it!

 

Omg this car looks amazing! I cannot wait for this to get into BeamNG, it's a beauty.

 

Can I help test it too? I really love the E46 and I'd be extremely happy to help you with the process.

 

Yeah! I still need to finish up a few things before testing but I'll let you know when I'm done.

 

Thanks! It looks awesome.