Well, this is an article that I've been waiting to write for a very long time, haha. I just wanted too to say thanks to everybody so far for reading my novels that I write about my car parts and reviews. I love making videos, but something about writing blogs makes me happy. So where do I even begin...
If you're a part of the forums there's a solid chance you know who "Slicer" is. If you know of BBS wheels, you probably know of "SlicerSpec". Brett Slicer is a friend of mine who has a passion for high quality automotive wheels, along with high quality parts in general. I've always admired his passion behind doing an immense amount of research on everything he does. He's built some amazingly spec'd BMW's over the last decade. I remember reading his posts on the forums when I was 18 just DREAMING of being able to afford something even remotely close to his builds.
If you're not already, give him a follow on Instagram. If you're ready for a set of BBS wheels, or any quality parts, just let him know please you saw my article or videos. It would help a lot!
A few months ago I had the chance to meet up with Brett and finally hang out for about three hours. I've been doing these "feature films" with BMW owners talking about their cars and why they mod the cars the way they do. Brett agreed to doing this with me and we finally met up to film an episode. After we filmed, we ended up talking for an hour about business, cars, products and more. I was very thankful and kind of fan-boying over the fact I was able to gain SO much knowledge from him in those few hours on a gloomy morning in Santa Barbara.
Brett was nice enough to explain his whole history behind being the top BBS seller in the USA for a very specific niche. It was admirable to see the work and dedication he has to this community. It inspires me to become better as a person representing the E9X community and overall work ethic. I think we share a lot business wise and just overall passion for cars.
Brett & I spoke about doing some work together and I'd like to make it very clear, I did pay for these wheels. This is actually one of the first major things I paid for with my own cold hard cash. Many of you know I work with sponsorships and partnerships, but they're never at this level usually. This was a treat to myself for losing about 30-35 pounds in 2020 and I felt as if I finally deserved something for ME, not for YouTube, not for marketing, not for flexing, but for ME... so after enough talking, convincing going back and forth, I finally decided to commit to paying for a custom set of BBS E88's for my E92 M3.
About 2-3 weeks ago I kept opening up my laptop, looking at my money for the month, looking at the invoice, looking at the tires, adding it all together, looking at photos of cars at the Nurburgring, looking at Team Schirmer cars, looking at Brett's cars, looking at the price of E88's on other websites, looking everywhere. I just was like... F**K it, and sent the money over to Brett, lol. It was a crazy feeling and man... I was so excited for those days of waiting. I kept waiting to see the FedEx truck.. Sure enough, Tuesday morning rolls around and I hear the sound of an airbrake and big box truck pull up. I looked out my window and BOOM, I saw two big boxes getting pulled out of the truck and I knew that was it. It was time. I grabbed my camera and started filming the entire experience.
In the video above you can see pretty much the entire unboxing experience. My goal always is to try and film content MOST people don't see. (The delivery, the boxes they come in, how to unpack them, how the shipping packaging is, how they protect the wheels, each layer of cardboard/foam, the reactions, laying them out, showing the process, taking it all in, etc. I feel like so many people miss those moments on cameras. You see cars with just wheels slapped on and that's it, not the journey or experience leading up to that moment. I have a lot of excitement filming and editing these kind of moments just like my Eventuri airbox unboxing video.
This was the first photo I snapped on my iPhone. Typically I try my best to focus on just making video content for my vlogs, but I know that I'll be stoked to have content for my Instagram, Facebook, Website, TikTok etc, so I try to do a mixture of phone content and video content on my phone. The entire experience was really cool. It was a dream coming true after so many years and my goal was to catch this reaction to share with others and for my future self.
My friend Parker always helps me with filming videos and unboxing things. One thing I cherish a lot is being able to share moments like this with my car friends and friends in general. He posted an Instagram picture about this exact thing, being able to be a part of this with me. So it was cool to see his reaction and everybody at my office since most of the tenants are car people.
One of the coolest things about these E88's are simply just how light they are. For being an 18x11, it was VERY light. I was able to pick up one wheel from the center hub with out any issue.
One of my favorite things about this moment was I was able to see how much weight I've managed to drop. It's one thing to slowly feel better mentally, but when you start to see it in photos it's even more exciting. This mixture of brand-new dream wheels and seeing how much healthier I'm becoming made me the happiest I've been in a long time. Plus I had new profile photos for all my social media, haha.
It's crazy because I see so many posts on social media from Germany, Sunbeam Motorsports, BBS wheels, Team Schirmer, Sky Motorsport and a ton of other Instagram accounts of E88's... I would day dream about owning a set of wheels like that, but also being able to lay out a set of wheels and photograph them. Each part of this experience from the delivery, making content, mounting them and the final result has been extremely rewarding.
It's just such a beautiful and simple wheel, especially in gold.
They are so wide, lol. I was blown away at how detailed 3-piece wheels are like this. It's cool to see the sticker on the barrel that shows the sizing of the lip, sizing of the barrel itself and the measurements. I learned a lot during this entire process.
I noticed that a lot of forum posts or social media content didn't have photos of the inside of an E88. I wanted to share every detail and I noticed a comment on Instagram that said something along the lines of "That's awesome to see the inside of the wheel, I've never seen that". These inner barrels will never get the air time since you can't see them in any photos or videos, so I figured I would get some photos before they're mounted on the car to show the level of detail. The hardware is so cool.
I had a conversation with my friend Parker about how BBS wheels are made and what they do that's different than others. Apparently (Confirmed by Brett Slicer), they use this material that's almost like grip tape on the outside of the lip where the tire would connect to the wheel itself. This helps lessen the chance of the tire debeading from the wheel. If you watch any cars at the ring going around the carrousel you'll see that the tires REALLY push out from the wheel itself on hard turns. This is the wheel holding on for life to make sure the tire doesn't come off. Really interesting to learn. It feels like sand paper or grip tape.
I had gotten a BBS banner for my office (As the background of our automotive podcast), but I saw an open opportunity to take a funny picture. I made a little TikTok video out of this too, had to have some fun with it :).
I had to go show my friends at my shop, so I grabbed one wheel and drove over to Precision Dynamics. You can see in the video the reaction from my friends, it was really cool to share. I even saw myself in Manny Khoshbin's video carrying this out to my car, lol.
This is what the car was looking like with my APEX ARC8's. I really like the ARC8's, but I've had a set of these before, along with 4 other sets, lol. So I was ready for a change. These Federal RSRR's were way too loud as well as far as road noise.
The first mock-up of my E88's over at Precision Dynamics. I was super happy to see these next to the car. It made me laugh so much and smile.
I decided to go with Yokohama A052's for my wheels. I was never really aware of these tires before just because I was always using Federals or Michelin tires. I will have a full write up and review on these tires soon!
When I was ordering my E88's I was asking Brett Slicer about what he recommended. His E92 had the Yokohama A052's on it which I thought looked great. The sidewalls had a very clean look, not too much font, not too much design as well as the tread pattern. I liked it a lot. It looked like a Michelin tire to be honest.
Quick Instagram pic.
Boxes would not fit in my M3, so we had to make it work somehow. Parker took the tires in his E46 M3 and I put my E88's in my E92 M3. We did two in the trunk and two in the front seat which fit perfectly.
Looking like jewelry.
One fit at the footwell of the passenger side and one fit in the bucket seat perfectly.
I went over to 714 tires to get them mounted. One thing about this shop is that they have ramps to get low cars onto the alignment rack. Most shops don't have the ability to get lowered cars up the ramp, let alone with a huge front splitter.
This was the first time I saw the tires and wheels together. I was stoked to finally get a glimpse at what the tires would look like mounted. Sometimes tires just look off or strange on certain wheels, but this setup looked like a racecar, which is exactly what I wanted. Super smooth sidewalls that work well with the chrome lip on the E88's.
I had valve stems that Brett recommended that fit into this style of wheel. You can really see the sand paper/grip tape lining on the outer barrel to hold the tires on. So cool to see this stuff in the process. It makes me appreciate the effort behind tire shops and wheels in general.
The team at 714Tires really took their time. Kevin the main guy has been there for 10+ years. He literally took so much time to make sure nothing got scratched on the wheels. I was able to watch the entire time and film, which I appreciated a lot. I will continue to come back again and again.
One of the craziest things was that Kevin told me to write my name on each wheel in a sharpie just in case.... I was like, what! But it made sense, so I wrote my name on each wheel which felt kind of cool to know each wheel has my name on it.
I also had a set of Motorsport Hardware extended studs installed on my car a few days prior to the E88's getting mounted.
Tires went on with no issues! I always prepare myself to wait for that loud "POP" noise when they put air into them. It always catches me off guard.
I was so anxious. I was at the shop from 9:30am to 12:30pm. It was a long morning.
So. Much. Tire. 295/30/18 rear!!!
This was my first time seeing the wheels on the car. If you watch the video and look back at when I saw it here, I was tripping. I had my mask on but I was smiling ear to ear.
The fitment was very tight. We had almost no camber up front, which we needed to adjust. The settings that were recommended were -3.0 front and -2.5 rear. So we maxed out the coilovers that I had from ISC with camber plates. Thankfully it worked out 100%. This is without any camber here... it was way too close for my comfort.
Click here if you're looking into getting a carbon fiber airbox/plenum/intake from Eventuri!
It sure looked great though.
We added the -3.0 camber up front and it helped a lot. I realized that I could go less actually. The only rubbing I had was under full lock and it wasn't bad. But it definitely could be -2.8 up front or -2.5 to give it a better less "sunken in" look. I just would be curious on how it would be with this being my daily driver.
I was so anxious to pull it outside and see it in the wild. I instantly fell in love. The only issue was the yellow on the cage and the calipers, but other then that I was beyond stoked. I was in disbelief to be honest. It was cool to finally see a literal dream come true for myself after so many years of hard work.
It was really starting to look like a Schirmer GT. This was such a rad moment for me not going to lie.
My smile is huge under that mask, lol. I was just taking a thumbnail though for my YouTube channel. I was excited to get the alignment done to really go test the car on how it felt compared to the Federals and Apex wheel setup I had.
Here's the final adjustments we made and spec.
I had a chance to take the car back to my office once it was all done at the tire shop. If you watch the video of the installation I talked about how hyped I was on the first on-ramp I had taken getting onto the freeway. I hadn't felt my car grip like that before. I instantly noticed the difference running a 295 on the rear. It felt like I was able to push a bit harder, and also way more balance between the front and rear. It's hard to explain, but it felt x10 better. I also noticed on the freeway at speed the car had no road noise. I was so used to the Federal RSRR's that make a LOT of noise, so it was nice to actually enjoy the experience and hear more of the car rather than the tires.
This was the first photo I had posted on my Instagram. I just loved the lighting and the background. The wheels really pop hard in the sunlight. It's like jewelry.
For some reason this style of photo makes me laugh. It's crazy to see a 265 up front with this much grip.
There was really no bad angle of the car. I went to work after I looked back about 300 times at my car.. from a distance it just shines. The paint, the wheels, the ride height, it all just makes me so happy. I got back in my car after work and went to Newport Beach. I just kind of drove around enjoying the moment, along with finding a nice photo spot to shoot photos at.
This was one of the most special moments of my life for sure. I had paid for these myself, spoke to Brett Slicer for over a decade, I've seen hundreds of M3's with this setup and finally... I became an E88 owner. A real, genuine BBS wheel owner.
I drove home, parked my car, looked back 100 times and went into my bedroom. I just kind of laid down, looked at all the comments, photos, messages etc. It made my day being able to share this with everybody online. It was great to see the feedback, the kind messages about how people see the work ethic, they see the excitement in the video, they see more than just the wheels. I felt very fortunate to have the friends and following that I do.
Thanks for taking the time to read this article, it means a lot! I hope that this brought you some entertainment, education and inspiration towards any of your goals you're trying to reach in the future.
Thanks again to Brett Slicer. If you'd like to grab a set of wheels for yourself, or any high quality part in general, feel free to reach out to him and please mention my name! He can help you get the exact wheels for your car with the most precise fitment possible. My setup was a 295/30/18 rear and 265/35/18 front. You can see in the video more details as well.
See you next time,
-Spencer Berke