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I’ll take it 👍

Turns out the previous owners mechanic had misdiagnosed where the oil was leaking from, and I should know better than to take their word for it but struggling to get under there myself at the moment unfortunately! Took the car to Sam at @HELLBM, who I can’t recommend enough. Transmission got a bit of a birthday since we’d already ordered the parts, and no more oil leak. Chalk it up as a win.

Now an auction on trademe starting at $13600 https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/335i/listing/4361170506

A bit more love for the 130i, been throwing a few parts at it the last couple months. Had a wonky idle and limp mode accelerator pedal a few weeks back, suspected vanos solenoids. I wasn't sure if they'd been done on this car( I did have 3 130i at one point 😅) but I did find some cheap nasty solenoids in my parts pile I'd ordered during lockdown for reasons unknown to me. Swapping them in made a difference, and also change in fault code! From a generic valvetronic to intake solenoid 🤣 Don't buy shitty solenoids kids. The old solenoids were originals, so definitely due for a change. Went to the usual fcpeuro and picked up Pierburg oem solenoids and a few extras, delivery in 5 days Fitted the solenoids today, mega difference in performance, exhaust note. The mid range is alive again! Also swapped in some new hood struts, the old ones have been overworked in my ownership. Also rusty 🫠 I also picked up some of the vanos filters, will get them in at some point but looks quite fiddly.

Couple spots from the week: Rubbish photo of an estoril blue speck… but E46 Clubsport Convertible BMW outside an indoor Golf centre… am I even surprised @cleanish_e46

Musings from the first month, I like this car. A lot of time for the wing mirrors! The E30 and E46 has always had my attention but the E36 is growing on me. Generally speaking, I’ve never owned a convertible or planned to own one but I think the E36 lends itself better to the body style imo. Clocked someone in another E36 waving on the drive through Kumeū if you’re on here, car looked well.

I see that I didn't make a post about the end result. 1998 B3 3.2 switch-tronic saloon manual 6 speed conversion. The 4 saloons which were built in RHD were all switch-tronic so I thought why not. Except for the steering wheel, everything is oem spec 3.2 manual. Sam at Hellbm completed the conversion for me, with my supplied parts including various new bushes, bearings etc: -M3 evo 420g, C.V driveshaft etc -New e36 m3 clutch, dual mass flywheel etc -New Alpina shift knob Sam completed the work smoothly and quickly which was awesome. In my tarting up of the driveshaft paint I had painted over the white alignment dots, and there was a bit of a thumpa thumpa at 90kmh which I attributed to this. Dots found, realigned and still thumpa. I took it apart again and lubed the splines up, checked preload on CSB etc. reassembled and vibration mostly gone. Maybe anything remaining is the rear wheel balance?? Clutch engagement was near the floor. Clutch pedal disassembled and found to have flogged out bushes/material which I rebushed and for the small amount of slack which was removed, the clutch engagement improved drastically. Darned plastic pedal... Alpina used the US spec Siemens MS41.1 which is half OBD2 and half OBD. INPA etc over usb identified EWS, KMB and ABS but would only access EWS for me to change from auto to manual. So I just removed the trans fault bulb from the cluster. No issues anyway with idle or rev hang, as evidently the Alpina DME don't have auto or manual allocation. I'm sort of curious whether the KMB fuels differently when pulling away from standstill between auto and manual, because I do have to focus a bit more than I recall on manual BMWs I have owned in the past. I still have the switchtronic steering wheel and will likely keep it out of sheer laziness, unless I can source an Alpina stitched airbag and have a sport wheel restitched to match... End result I'm really happy with.