[m3tor]

This is my first post - I have been lurking and learning from you guys for several months now and appreciate all of the insights. I had the following problem with my 02 e46 M3 last summer. I searched the forum at the time and couldn't find the problem reported by others so I thought I'd add my post. I hope its helpful to someone else in the future:

Problem:
-loud, metallic sound coming from front underside of car, occuring intermittently under braking or while slowing the car down using gears. The harder the deceleration the more likely the sound was to occur and the more persistent
-it sounded horrendous and like I was doing some real damage to the car - other drivers and pedestrians waved at me all the time to tell me that something was wrong with my car (like I didn't know...)

Diagnosis:
-my dealer originally suggested I had a rock stuck in my brakes (didn't make sense as sound occurred when decelerating using gears)
-after a month and four trips to the dealer including test drives with head mechanic (took a couple of drives for problem to occur with mechanic in car), they diagnosed problem as:

-two of the dowel pins on the flywheel had broken off and were rattling around in the bell housing, also causing damage to clutch forks (and clutch?, can't recall)
-my dealer had never seen this problem before
-I don't track or drag the car and don't think I'm too hard on the clutch - maybe a manufacturing defect?
-because the problem was traced back to the flywheel it was covered (including labour) under Extended Warranty as a drivetrain item. They also replaced some other damaged parts (eg. clutch fork) under warranty and I took the opportunity to replace the clutch itself at my expense as although its a low mileage car (40,000 kms) and clutch was only half worn, as the clutch was taken apart it was a good chance to save the labour I'd have to pay later
-have had no problems with clutch etc. since

Hope that's helpful.