Leaderboard

This..

now if only someone was making mounting brackets for 328is...

See its a "Push Start" too.... Didn't realize modern Beemers were that archaic

Hey all - This my new ride! Looking to beef up the sound a bit from stock - been searching muffler deletes and all sorts of things. I am on budget and looking for the most cost effective way to produce a bit more sound from this sleeping beast. Can anyone offer any suggestions? In Palmerston North area Cheers! Like This Back to top Quote MultiQuote Edit Report

Hey all - This my new ride! Looking to beef up the sound a bit from stock - been searching muffler deletes and all sorts of things. I am on budget and looking for the most cost effective way to produce a bit more sound from this sleeping beast. Can anyone offer any suggestions? In Palmerston North area Cheers!

Ok! i had a thread up a while ago in the general forum about re-shelling vs restoring an M3, and well the consensus was restore so here it is; introducing brutus, my 1994 NZ new e36 m3 coupe. he is a dark individual, black on black to be exact. a few photos will follow but first the story of brutus.... i picked up the above car in pretty average condition thinking i was getting the deal of the century, all things considered now its probably going to cost me just as much as buying an m3 i good nick to start with by the time i get this one to the level of tidiness i intend. there were a few things i didn't see when looking at it first time round, lust must have taken over! but hey at 23 i was the owner of an M3! bucket list item achieved! 1st order of business - out with the black oil, in with 6l for 300km for a flush, then the full castrol edge - TWS 10-60 treatment, 3000 ks later its still amber! i also treated decidedly scungy intake filter to a K&N panel filter in the stock box and 6 new OEM spark plugs. when i first got it the head lining resembles a curtain more than the roof of a car, so first duty was to whip the head lining out. boom done, fabric and rotting foam striped off. i wanted the A and c pillars to match so out they came and got the same treatment. there was a wee pause in progress here in terms of the roof lining and the next problem reared its head. Enter the sunroof, well exit the sunroof... there was a knocking noise coming from the sunroof when the car un-weighted, and it was not tilting properly, the shuttle was not behaving 100% either but the roof portion was O.K. . until it too stuck in the open position on a drizzly day. great... out came the sunroof casset. picked up on a few broken clips in here so ordered a few from the us of a. jimmied the roof into the close position and re-installed it waiting for the bits to arrive. goodies in the mail! back in biz! or not... turns out one more clip was broken having removed the roof again causing the shuttle not to function. i have tilt now though! another order for the last clip and a tarp over the car. a few more goodies made it over with this order, a new rattle clip for the front right brake caliper that had been driving me nuts and a set of brass caliper bushings to replace the shot flexi and cracked stock ones. time to have the roof lining re-done, well thought having a matching parcel shelf would look better than the faded one in there, so out it came. there was absolutely nothing wrong with the adhesive on the parcel shelf! i must have removed about 3 layers of knuckle skin stripping the fabric off this one! Onehunga marine and auto upholstery did re-cover of these bits in an Audi RS4 esq material. black textured, and once re-installed looks really good. the finish of the job around the edges was not perfect which i was not too happy about originally, but is 100% now the head lining has been installed. next embarasing issue. the drivers door had been increasingly hard to open, until it would no longer open from the outside. slighly less than dignified effort to get into the car in westfeild carpark ended up with a passenger side entry... que replacing the drivers door handle mechanism. brand new rubbers and surrounds for both doors handles here! now the bit that had been really aggravating me. body work.... new guards, drivers door, nose cone, belly pan/under tray, wheel arch liners and radiator shrouding later the front was looking a little more like and m3 and a little less like a prats yard special! although i could not sort the light alignment out for a free beer... disassembly found 1 of the lenses not installed correctly, reassemble and we have aligned lights! PHEW. - i am still after an m3 oil cooler duct though... a few cosmetic bits here and there, LED parking lights, LED interior light conversion, ZHP shift knob and (pick-a-part score of the month) some blau-punked 6*9 including adaptors for the parcel shelf and an M-spec 3 steering wheel (this one currently residing in my 328I though) pretty much brings it up to date! And because every one loves pictures;

What would be good is a reinforcing plate for the front crossmember so the car can be evenly lifted from one central point. Dunno about others but it gives me the shits lifting one side 500mm+ and resting it on a stand then hurrying around to the other side and gingerly jacking it up to balance it on another stilt. At least the arse end can be lifted up from the diff!

@Dkonsta1 If your handy with a soldering iron its possible to retrofit a controller board and freeview module into the later ibus based TV tuners when you change it over. On my dyi to do list after finishing off carpc. http://pibus.info/tv/

Made some weight savings And if anyone knows how to fix my wonky photos, there's some good karma in it for ya. Also some cam locking tools would be effing handy. Ta

So much want!! Is it a convert or original manual?

keen to see the dyno sheet and see how similar it was to mine. My 3.0 made 179kw but was on a hub dyno.

Well its been on the dyno! 160 wKw and 534Nm at the wheels in 4th gear which corrects to 137 Nm ( divide by diff ratio and gear ratio) - this seems wrong if factory torque is 320nm at the flywheel? Apparently the dyno was reading 6% low so im allowed to say 170Kw but ill take that with a grain of salt. I was stoked with the result anyway, nice smooth power delivery, a very flat torque curve and a good looking AFR! And it was the most powerful 3.0 on the day by half a Kw Excuse the lack of side skirts, trust me i got my fair share of stick for that one already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly9fFo3U0Ew Ill post up a copy of the Dyno sheet when its emailed to me, or if i find where i've hidden the original Sorry Rob i didnt make it out of auckland till sunday night, i hope the BMW club day went well for you!

Going in for pre purchase check on Friday

remember to factor in the cost of converting the iDrive to NZ in a Japanese import too.

Make some ramps out of 2x4 and ply. Done

Nice car, but if you can get the LCI model, it had quite a few improvements, these came out in 2007, so the 2007's are a mixture of the two. However currently it seems they are quite a bit more expensive. http://www.bmwdrives.com/bmw_cars/e60_my2008_detailed_changes.pdf

Sorry mate you will struggle to find a good one now. Most good NZ cars are tightly held. I sold mine late last year and had a huge interest with 3 buyers all falling over each other. Took me more than a year to locate that one. Most now are getting alittle long in the tooth. Good luck I hope you find one.

Cool that you're using a ZF box. Good luck!

Looks much more involved than the e30 manual swap I did almost ten years ago. Started at 5pm Friday and drove out at 7am Saturday. Was a long night! Doing my new touring in a few weeks so that'll be interesting, should be straight forwar enough tho

you got to buy your car back first!

Do you know a guy who owns a drill?

I also have an ehaust clip ill try upload, it has a schnitzer exhaust on it and really sings when you open it up!