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Thanks Ray!! Will do - we're taking a closer look this weekend - so will give you a call if we need some help Thank you muffler was degreased, sanded with 1200 wet sandpaper, then an initial polish with jif, then a buffing wheel - it's basically a lot of hard work, but it does come up well Thanks for the encouragement! Really enjoying the restoration process! Haha I'm with you - at least we know how to recognise it right!! As long as I don't think about my bank account too much it all turns out fine in the end Yeah he is a bit! I'll show him your post - he'll be chuffed! I suppose you can borrow him, but only after he's finished helping me with my car!!!

Admire your great attention to detail. If you need advice or a repair kit for the subframe cracks give us a call.We had 40 kits of our own design made about 2 1/2 years ago and have 5 left. That means there are 35 E46`s out there with or reinforcement without any problems.

Update #4 This week has been one of cleaning up parts for painting, cleaning up underneath the car, doing some prep for repairing the front right RACP mount, etc. Last weekend while I was sick Dad cleaned up the muffler and gave it a polish... Before: After: After discovering the crack in the front right RACP mount, we dropped the fuel tank on Tuesday (more of a mission that we were expecting - none of the hoses were keen on letting go) in preparation for welding. While I was at work, Dad sand-blasted one of the control arms to see how it would turn out: It cleaned up really nicely - so will sand-blast the other one as well and paint it the same aluminium silver colour we did on the brake callipers. On Thursday after work we removed the upper and lower control arm bushings in the trailing arms using a puller set and a socket. Unfortunately not all of them are going to be as easy to do that way. On Saturday Dad and I spent the day cleaning up underneath the car, cleaning the front right mount in preparation for crack repair, sanding parts ready for painting, and also removing the main bushing in the trailing arms (we went for the "use a hole saw to cut out the centre of the bushing, and then use a hacksaw blade to very carefully cut the aluminium shell of the bushing. This allowed us to relieve the tension enough to get it out fairly easily with the bushing puller, and a hole saw blade that was conveniently the right size :thumbsup2:). I took the section 1 and 2 of the exhaust home to work on cleaning up in my spare time after work, etc. Below is an in progress pic showing one of the cats in the process of being cleaned up. Next steps are to work out what subframe reinforcing plates we go with, or whether we fabricate our own. I'm also thinking that it may be worth doing the BMW structural foam in the front mounting points as well (This thread: http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/showthread.php?t=440530 has a great discussion on how to do this).

I just got myself a 325i! I believe it's from a member on here. Anyway thanks for the great advice See you out there!

I had a 2005 330i and sold it about a year ago.......still very disappointed that I sold that car and I (and the wife) still want to kick myself. I had no issues with it, bought it at 80 000km, sold it at 111000 after owning it for nearly 4 years.

Your Dad is awesome. Can I borrow him???

Update #6 So in spite of being an IS Project Manager for a living, and even though I should know better, this project is suffering from a moderate case of scope creep. I've decided to add doing the rod bearings to this project. With the front of the car apart anyway for the suspension refresh it makes sense to do the rod bearings at the same time. The car has done 145,000km, and I was definitely wanting to do the bearings this year anyway, so it makes sense to do them at the same time. Doing that at the same time means that I'll have taken care of everything in Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this list with the exception of the cooling system and the fuel pump It's going to be great to have all of the maintenance items up to date and to know that things like rod bearings are taken care of. Place the final final order of parts today - up to 97 distinct part numbers. All OE with the exception of the koni shocks and some of the bushings (Lemfoerder). Will do another update in a few days once we've made some more progress

Update #5 Today was bushings removal day! First up were the subframe bushings. During the week Dad had welded up a removal tool. Basically the same concept as the official tool. One end of the tool straddles the subframe surround, around the bushing. A high-tensile threaded rod goes through the bushing, and a plate on the other end of the bushing covers the end face of the bushing. Tighten up the nuts on each end and the bushing is pulled out. Here's a pic of the tool (complete with demonstration bushing): And here it is in action: We basically followed the TIS procedures for the various bushings. The tools that we made for this job mirror the official tools in the way that they work. As you can see in the second photo, we also heated the subframe bushing cages as per the TIS procedure (600C for up to 2 minutes). Following this process the bushings came out in a reasonably straightforward manner. A fair amount of force needed (as you can see by the design of the tool). Here's one of the bushings after removal. Not in terrible condition, but also not as great as the new ones going in. And here's the subframe, free of the 4 main bushings. :rockband: Next up was the front diff bushing. Again, a very similar approach here. Just had to make sure we were accurate with the plate that cups the bushing, so that it was small enough to fit into the channel in the subframe, but large enough to cover the outer casing of the bushing. Here's the tool mid-production: Dad driving his MIG welder, with plasma cutter in the background. Note that without this equipment (and a parent, or other acquaintance of your choice, who knows how to drive them), manufacture of said bushing removal tools would be very difficult. And here's a couple of shots showing how the tool fits up. Note that after these photos were taken, testing proved that we needed to do double-thickness 10mm bar on the crossmember (like the subframe bushing tool) to provide sufficient bend-resistance. Goes to show just how much force is involved. That cross member is 70mm long, and ended up needing to be 20mm thick to take the forces involved! I didn't actually take any photos of the diff mount bushing during/after removal, but rest assured that we got it out fairly easily. We celebrated with lunch (which I didn't photograph, and won't show you, cause this is a car forum, not Instagram). After lunch (which has already taken up too many words in this journal), we moved on to getting the bushings out of the inner ends of the upper and lower control arms. We spent a while on this. The issue wasn't a mount for the side of the tool the bushing was being pulled towards, we were able to just use a large socket and some steel bar spacers for that (no need to weld up a tool), the issue was finding/manufacturing something the right size to cup the end of the bushing that was being pulled. We messed around with a few designs that we ended up abandoning, because we were in danger of flaring the ends of the aluminium sleeves on the bushings. We then tried just washers, and pulling only the inner core of the bushing, and letting it pull through the rubber. Again, in spite of a lot of force, we weren't able to make it budge even a little bit. At this point we consulted TIS procedure (and this awesome DIY: http://www.m3forum.net/m3forum/showthread.php?t=464146) and determined that we were on the right track, and just needed to apply more force!!! We wound it back up again, added a pipe extension to the breaker bar, wrapped the whole arrangement in welding gloves in case of catastrophic failure, and just kept cranking. Eventually it gave way, and, once it moves, it's fairly straightforward from there. No photos of this bit unfortunately, we were a bit focused on not getting hit by flying bits of metal. But basically you just need more force. You have to get to the point where you cannot believe how much force is involved, and then go a few turns beyond that, and that turns out to be enough to make it move :thumbsup2: Here's a photo magically showing the bushing removed: We tried the same approach with the lower control arms (using spacers to keep the two halves of the arm with the correct separation). We succeeded in moving the bushing somewhat, but there was so much force involved, and we had zero confidence in being able to reverse the process to get the new ones in, that we decided to cut our losses and buy new arms, which already have the bushing pressed in. At $50 each it's a pretty good deal, and given these are fairly lightweight parts, it's probably good to put new ones on (at least that's what we told ourselves as it got closer to dinner time). Having already removed the trailing arm bushings a week and a half ago, that brings bushing removal to a closure for us. It's great to have got them all out. It's been really surprising just how much force is required to get the old ones out. Certainly without the ability to manufacture your own tools to get this job done, it would be either very messy and frustrating, or a costly process to get the bushings out. Tomorrow will be a slower day. It's terrible weather here at the moment, so I'll limit myself to more clean up of the exhaust section 1 and 2. Over the next few days Dad is going to clean up more parts for painting, and will paint as well if the weather starts playing ball and provides something less that 100% humidity. Over and out for now.

Here's how it's looking right now. Waiting on paperwork, seats and harnesses. Not sure on what colours I'll be painting it yet, but might just stick with black - easier to keep clean.

might have been me you asked to do it i seem to recall it. i have most if not all of a get rag 220 manual conversion kit here, you can PM me if interested. no modules to code on the E36 when converting to Manual, technically the DME should be flashed to tell it its a Manual now instead of an Auto, or you could fit a non-EWS Manual DME to it, but really its unnecessary expenditure unless you have cruise control and/or traction control which is rare anyway

What was the problem in the end?

Just a warning, if bringing something over ensure it is 100% rust free. Otherwise it'll cost you s fortune to get legal here. I had this issue when I brought by UK RX-3 home with me. They wanted it completely stripped back. Probably looking at a $20g resto.

Good test day at pukekohe yesterday. Getting to grips with the car. Had to learn smooth braking as put it around once under braking. Brake bias needs a little more work before before I'm happy to push harder. Few things to do like get drivers seat lower and general stuff