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Here is one more update to bring the thread up to speed, only a few minor details. At some point I'll get some black and white euro plates but in the mean time the nz related stickers have to go. I orignially thought these were painted on but after looking closer they are stuck on afterwards. Peeling these off revealed the euro flag and 'D' country symbol, I was hoping they would be completely white across but it looks like the plates must be imported as blanks and covered in stickers. Ah well, suits the car better than the kiwi flag for the mean time. Something else I wanted to try was swapping wheels with my other e91. With the car being on coilovers and on 19s the ride leaves a lot to be desired. The coilovers are MCA pro comforts and are pretty good but I think switching to 18s with some more sidewall will help. The current wheels on the car are VMR VB3s (if anyone has a way of telling if they are real or not that would be great). In the front they are 19x9.5 +33 with a 235/35R19 tire and the rears are a 19x10 +38 with a 265/30R19 tire, running Nitto Invos all the way around so quite a nice tire. The fronts are much too stretched for my liking and even the rears have a little bit of stretch. The wheels on my other e91 are style 193s which I'm a huge fan of. They aren't as wide but can still fit a 255 in the rear which is plenty enough for this thing for now. They've only got 225s all round on them at the moment but they are dunlop sp sports so I'll run these for now. The offsets of a 193 are a little weak but nothing some spacers can't fix. I've got one set of 12mm spacers at the moment which I used on the rear but I'll get a set of 20mm for the rear and switch the 12mms to the front. After swapping them onto the car I'm pretty stocked. The overall look of the car is much more OEM+ which I really like. I think at some point I'd like to get them painted a darker colour as they are pretty bright as is, something like a gunmental grey.

Red mtech 1 vert... perfect summer car. Well, my mtech 1 is sold. Pending payment. It's going to a good owner. He plans to own it for a long long time.

Not surprised, sharp price!

Damn you work quick! It's barely been out 24h 😄 I'm on episode 4

About that... it's actually Toto

Didn’t think that would last long Rohan! You still Aussie based?

E36 318is is underrated. Love my boston green coupe I've been tidying up Just saw this https://www.facebook.com/share/1XVRmipQrj/ looks to be a good one

Nice. That was quick. I'm biased, but diamond black tech 1 has always been my favoirite E30.

End of summer e30

Love a new pic heavy touring thread! Car looks great, look forward to the updates.

Its been quite some time with an update on the M3. Its been in storage for quite a few years, with my focus on work, kids and recent years circuit racing (Porsche series, then Toyota 86 series). However, it has just received its latest upgrade, an easy 10hp with its lower gurney flap. That aside, I've started research on how to get ABS back into the car. I simply cant run Targa without it, which i'm thinking about for Oct this year. The original e36 ABS unit was removed a long time ago, to mitigate the ABS ice mode risk. The rolls royce option is Bosch Motorsport Clubsport ABS kit, but its $$. I have also looked at the BMW OEM MK60 ABS unit, but by the time you buy all the bits, its 65% of the cost of an Bosch unit and probably more expensive to install and not as good. Happy for any feedback on the ABS, from people which have done it, as opposed to speculation please

Looks sooo much better bruv

Is there a member on here with both an M325i and M535i that this might belong to? (Dream fleet 🤤)

Interesting. BMW sure created confusion making multiple different configurations, not sure why they switched they spline count etc for the 5 speeds. Are you going for a 228mm or 240mm clutch? Appears you could have to use a 6 speed 22 spline clutch kit on a 5 speed flywheel to if you want a 240mm.

Here is a longer update from the last month so... The first point on my agenda was tearing into the engine bay to wrap my head around it, I've read and watched plenty online about these but nothing beats the real mccoy. From what I've read the things I wanted to check are: the turbo oiling system and the vacuum system. Checking how bad the CBU and oil in the intake was also on my list. After pulling the engine cover, airbox and ducting it was pretty easy to inspect the turbo oiling system. It looks like the line from the engine to the distro block and the line from the distro block to the hp turbo have been replaced with AN line equivelants, just the lp turbo oem line remains, it looks a bit weepy around the rubber hose and seems to be leaking as the undertray has a decent puddle in it under the turbos, more on this later. Getting further into it, pulling off the cowling, strut braces and rear engine cover there is easy access to all the intake manifold bolts. A few connectors, intake hose and nuts and bolts and the intake was off. Surprisingly the CBU isn't too bad, much better than I was expecting, definitely still in need of a good clean. Looks like there is plenty of oil getting throught the manifold seals and leaking down onto the engine, rocker cover gasket needs replacement too. A catchcan system is definitely on the cards to reduce the amount of oil getting through to the intake. After putting it all back together this wrapped up the first little dive into the engine bay. Another important item on the list was sorting out the paddle shifters. Who in their right mind decided that pulling on either would upshift and pushing on either would downshift? Anyways, simple fix, airbag out, swap some pins over and leave some disconnected. Now the left is downshift and right is upshift with pushing on the paddles not doing anything. Onto the next saga, the turbo feed line. After some time I decided to look back into the oil leak on the exhaust side as I had cleaned the undertray and a large puddle had formed after only a week of driving. It looked like it was coming from the lp turbo oil feed line banjo where it connects to the distro block. After attempting to tighten this slightly I had that dreaded feeling of it getting loose again. It looks like whoever was here last had overtightened the banjo and stripped the thread in the distro block (it is only aluminium after all). There was lots of back and forth on this one before Dad and I reached the conclusion of cutting down the distro block to reveal the undamaged threads further down the block. The block was carefully chopped 5mm shorter with a hacksaw and was flattened smooth with a file mounted in the vice. The threads were then cleaned up with M10x1.0 tap and bottom tap (shoutout to Tony for lending and delivering these). Some new copper crush washers (suprisingly Mitre10 pulled through on these, at the end of the hardware aisle is a whole bunch of interesting hardware in draws, a good one to keep in mind) and everything was back together. After a week of driving it looks like the leak is sorted and the puddle hasn't returned yet. After the last issue where the distro block had to be shortened the oil line down to the lp turbo was now slightly stretched and under some load so I ordered the fittings to replace it with AN straight away. Whitbread performance does aftermarket oil lines for the 335D so I copied their line routing and setup. Was pretty straightforward with some -3 PTFE line, 45deg -3 fittings and two -3 to washer seal adapters, one m10 and one m12. Although probably unnecessary I added some heat sleeving as it gets pretty hot on this side of the engine.

Hi all, Time to finally report back after months of getting stuff on the BMW sorted, and I thought it might be best to put it on this thread for continuity, apologies if this isn't correct protocol. I will preface the following "novel" with the comment that I am really happy to have bought Brads car as it has been a brilliant starting point for my “little” project as the foundations were very solid, i.e. good motor, good body etc. I could only live in fear of the saga that would have ensued had I bought the Lancia Delta HF Turbo I was looking at before that. So thanks heaps to Brad for supplying such a good starting point! As with all 21 year old projects there have been a few trials and tribulations along the way, but I guess that’s what makes these things projects, I mean it would hardly be a project if all you had to do was clean and polish it. The saga started with a delayed flight to Auckland where I picked the car up from Brad. It was interesting to reacquaint myself with a manual car after years of driving an auto. The car went well but I noticed it never warmed up (queue new thermostat job for later). Also the handling was a little off as the front tramlined over bumps and felt a little vague and disconcerting (queue lower ball joint job for later). I also noted the carpets were damp, not a biggie I thought… Nevertheless, the car never skipped a beat and got me to Napier with no real dramas, score! It needed a service, and my brother is a mechanic in Napier so he serviced it the next day, oil/filter, gearbox oil, plugs, air filter, checked the diff oil and pronounced it a car that had been mechanically well looked after. After all, it even had the wee tool for pulling the plug caps still there. Checked the rust in the tail and dismissed it as not a biggie. He thought the water in the drivers footwell might have come from the windscreen. One weird thing happened, overnight there was a frost, so when I opened the car the door wouldn’t close??? Once it warmed up it was fine??? So drove the car to Dunnos, via stops in Wellie and Chch, and got there with no real drama, it burned no oil, and it purred along, I could see that once we sorted the handling it would be awesome as the few cars that passed me on the straight were easily caught in the twisties. The only pseudo drama being on the ferry, and getting a call over the loudspeaker for the owner of the teal BMW to come to the pursers office... gulp... Turns out the alarm had gone off even tho I only locked it on the key (new car who knew?). So started with the water leak, I ran a dehumidifier in the car for about a week to get rid of most of the water, at its worst on my steep driveway, it was like a wee swimming pool in the RH passenger foot well. However, I couldn’t figure out where it was leaking. Though I can say the foam holds water like you wouldn’t believe, even when the carpets above appear dry (must be a good vapour barrier). A visit to my friendly local garage sorted out the central locking fault Brad had told me about in the passenger door, and the electric window fault as it kept popping out of its rail even after it was fixed. They did the thermostat, lower control arm, the coolant flange, new brake fluid, and obviously new coolant. They also remarked that it looked pretty clean, and was remarkedly oil leak free for a BMW... Driving around in the wet showed up the deficiencies of the Supercat tires, so I replaced them and got a matching set on Goodyear Assurance tires (not required, but I thought why not, and they had improved the grip in my Honda Accord). Driving around also showed up some chips in the windscreen which couldn’t be fixed. This necessitated a replacement which unfortunately uncovered rust around the sills, but $250 later that was fixed, so all good, and a possible source of the water leak eliminated (not quite as it turns out). I went to a local panel guy to get the rust cut out, and $500 later it looked factory again. The painter touched up the areas affected by peeling clear coat on the roof and the boot and the spoiler, but in the process of removing the spoiler the painter stripped two screws which remained in the spoiler, queue another trip to my friendly mechanic. Removing rear spoiler for painting also broke the rear spoiler stop lamp (broken wire was fixed when the rear spoiler was reattached). Whilst we are on stop lights, I replaced the left rear as it had broken and got the wiring redone after it fell apart in my hands and I didn’t know how to rewire it (another friendly garage job). Also in taking off the plastic cover on the bonnet which was all cracked it removed the paint… sigh, so that got painted as well, so now most of the car has been resprayed. The latest problem to manifest itself in the leak saga was I found water under the left rear seat squab, which may have come from the rear screen. And when working on the passenger door somehow I managed to get another problem to come up which was the airbag light, however it turned out to be a seatbelt pretensioner connection, and not the sensor in the seat. Other jobs I have done along the way are replaced the missing foam insulation in the drivers door (also a possible source for water leak), located missing plastic inner door handle surrounds (its amazing how many people own and are wrecking e36’s and I am getting to know most of them in Dunedin). I then ordered new trim clips for door cards and re-glued clip mounts to same door cards so they work. Some of the side skirt clips broke when I accidentally clipped the skirt with my foot getting out, so ordered new ones and refitted. I fixed the hole in the leather on the drivers seat with some black cotton (easy fix), and used my new friend Q-Bond (where were you when I was busting motorcycle fairings when I was younger?) to fix the broken RH front inner guard so it now mounts solidly. I also used Qbond to fix one of the vent pieces that closes the vent from behind on the passenger side which was cracked and broken, and to repair the hole I drilled to try and fix the droopy glovebox (don’t believe what you see on line lesson learned). I also got a new gear knob (keeping the old one), fixed the backlight on the clock, fitted a new centre console to replace the one with the cool (but utterly useless) tape holders (tho I kept it for the next owner). I also got some better mats for free out of one of the aforementioned wrecked Dunedin cars, replaced the rubber strip that runs the length of the roof as the front door was catching it and snagging it, reconnected the boot light (disconnected it again when the car got painted). So that left a couple of things to do, like still tracking down the front driver floor well water leak (was not looking forward to pulling the carpets). After a day of investigation with my mechanic brother, it turned out to be coming in through what, looks like a sensor at the top front of the drivers door, and was then tracking into the car. The screen didn't leak at all, not sure why it did the one other time I checked after the screen replacement (even took a photo as proof), but after blasting water at it for ages, no leak. However this did necessitate another visit to my friendly mechanic to get the airbag light reset (had to pull the seat), and got a power steering hose leak fixed at the same time, so that’s pretty much job done for the moment. It certainly is eye catching in Fiji Green, and does engender a lot of comments (mostly positive but it would be fair to say the colour is polarising), and people coming up to talk about it. Most importantly it puts a smile on my dial every time I drive it and has introduced me to a whole new bunch of people with a similar interest. Have I ever had buyer’s remorse after the purchase, NO. Has it caused me a little angst along the way, YES. Have my friend laughed at me when I regaled them with the tales of what I did last night, what I fixed, and what broke after that, you better believe it! Would I change a thing about the story so far... NAH!