Kevin3

did my payment go through andy?

Ya I emailed ye twice, april 6th and yesterday, and also rang ye and am still waiting for a response

I'm looking for a black leather armrest for an e36, complete with the centre tunnel piece it fixes to and all trim bits Christchurch or Wellington preferred

Thanks, no the pin that goes into the bumper had broken off so I threw it out, sorry about that

this topic? Can't see it in the ad, how much is it anyway?

Thanks for reply. Could you pm me the price of each and also total cost delivered to Christchurch please, thanks

As title, thanks

After that I went back to the front end and put Lamin-x 6% subtle tint on the foglights, here is one done and then both done and back on. One of them had a broken lens and the other a broken housing but I picked up second hand ones eventually I also went off and bought new clear indicators, split them then painted the inside black then resealed them, only to find I had bought a set for a saloon which are different to the coupe ones, so bit of a disaster there. I only bought the clear ones because I read they match in better with the headlights when painted than the tinted ones you can buy, but I think I'll just buy the tinted ones now and be done with it

Next on the list for this was the front door cards, they had been slowly falling apart for a while, the bottom used to catch on the door sill and then one day the inside grab handle came off. So without much effort I took them off and apart completely to redo them both This may seem like sacrilege to some but the upholstery was too tight around the curves of the arm rest part of the door card and I wasn't confident any adhesive would hold it, so I did a bit of chopping and then stuck down the free edges. I then got new white clips for putting them back on. The photo of it all back together doesn't show much but it's nice to open and close the doors without them catching on the sill

Another few bits done, I picked up a sunroof switch panel and took off the covering and recovered it to match my headliner Also painted the front kidney grille black

Good point Michael. I finally finished off all of the re-covering anyway, the headliner: The interior sunroof panel got stuck back the first time I opened it and since then the sunroof only slid back halfways, when I had the headliner out I took out the whole sunroof unit and found what I think was the problem, this angle piece at back had broken the plastic and seemed to have gotten stuck. I also think the sunroof motor may have been put on out of cycle with the sunroof. I did a bit of research then and discovered that when it's all working corectly with the sunroof open to tilt, the interior panel only slides back a few inches. I didn't like that so I took out the interior panel completely and covered the sunroof itself. I'm not sure if I'll have any issues with the adhesive not being up to the temperature changes since it is straight onto a metal external panel but I'll worry about that if it happens. It was quite hard to get the fabric smooth with all the ridges and infact I wasn't able to but I don't plan on looking up at it all that often. back together I then did the rear parcel shelf, like all of them it had turned nearly white in the sun Fabric pulled off and washed, the material that had changed colour came off very easily but the original black parts were suprisingly well stuck And done, I used a bit too much glue in places but it's ok overall That's it for the interior for a while except for a panel for the sunroof switch which I'll probably make because second hand ones are quite expensive. I'm moving to the outside next, particulary the front end, I've collected a few bits but it will be into next year before I get anything done with them

When I got the car it had the common sagging headliner problem and the material had been pulled off The original covering was a grey/beige colour so I also wanted to change the A and C pillar trims, the top boot panel piece, and all of the plastic bits holding up the headliner, to black. I sprayed the plastics first. Lights masked off and painted plastics washed and primed and done I then painted the pillar trims which looked ok but up close the paint had stuck in clumps to the fabric and I wasn't happy with it so I pulled it off and recovered them in the same fabric as I'm doing the headliner. The material I got has a slight stretch to it so worked very well I then scraped off the glue from the headliner and washed it to have it ready for recovering More tomorrow.

I know this is closed now but just wondering for next time is the black fern embossed on the plate or is it a sticker? I couldn't find it on the germanplates.com site

For an earlier model e36 (1993) is the blower resistor pack in the same place?

I want to recover the headlienr of my e36 coupe but not sure where to source the material, where have people bought material in the past? A lot of the online places I have looked at are in America and won't ship to here. I'm also not sure if I need to get foam backed material or will ordinary material do. The only place I'm concerned about really is covering around the housing for the centre lights in front of the sunroof panel, they look like tight enough angles so I think I would need a material with a stretch to do it without cutting the material, which is why I thought I might need the foam backed material. Any help or advive would be very much appreciated anyway, thanks (not my photograph)

Next update, I saw that the pickapart scarpyard here in Christchurch were scrapping a saloon 318 so I was able to get a few handy parts off that. One thing it had was heated mirrors, only the left one was there so I took the whole thing because the car conincedintally was the same colour as my own. Confirmation that it's just an extra wire onto the blue and brown from factory I then put the glass from that mirror into my own driver side mirror and it heats on the switch so I'm very happy with that. I also took the cubby hole from under the radio because my own had an extra hole at the back of it which I wasn't really too happy with. I never really like the red bulb that wasn't connected to anything so I replaced it with a blank which I think looks cleaner. When washing the car I noticed some of the rubstrips a bit faded and also had some broken clips so I took some clips from the scrapyard and then gave all the exterior black trim a coat of a 'back to black' product When I got the car, although it locked ok, the petrol cap was held closed by a lump of blu-tac when the car was unlocked I took out the spring and rebent it a little and put it back upside down and it is closing nicely now. As it's held in this photo I bent the top anti-clockwise slightly That's all for now, I have more work in progress so will update that soon

Ya I must recover the headliner anyway so I'm hoping whatever is causing that slide back part to jam will be visible then. That would be good alright, how much for a relay posted to Christchurch?

I have a tilt and slide sunroof on my e36 which is acting up in two ways, the first is that it only works from the button intermittently, and the second is that when it does work it only slides back halfways. When I first got the car I slid the sunroof the whole way back and I think it jammed the manually sliding cover thing and I think thats whay it only slides to half ways now, is that a common thing to happen? Also with the intermittent fault, I found a lot about the comfort relay on this and other forums but the solder on mine appears to be fine, I was wondering has anyone any other experience with this and what the problem might be? I had thought the comfort relay controlled the electric sunroof and and windows but with the relay pulled the windows still worked, if it only controls the sunroof then could I bypass it with an in-line relay? Here is what I have anyway Thanks very much

Thanks Andre, I found a few of the torches on ebay, pricey enough little things! Here is the story with the heated mirrors install anyway. I have had them in a previous car and found them quite useful, I researched them on the e36 and found they came with the optional extra winter pack and they were never switched. I decided to retrofit them and put in a switch. I wanted the switch to look OEM and my first choice was in the blank cirlce button here (picture from google - not my car) However after I took out the heater control unit and had a look at the back I realised there just wasn't enough room to get anything in there. In the end I found a nice little flat rocker switch in an electrical shop which I am happy with. I put it just infront of the handbrake To get it there I had to trim the console a little bit and spread the contacts of the switch to avoid this metal bar, all worked out in the end though. For the wiring itself, I found the wiring diagram from this webiste I haven't drawn electrical diagrams in a while but here was my original plan for wiring them. The diagram shows the wires having colour tracers but on my car at least they were straight brown, black, white and blue. I firstly spliced into the white as my permanent live but that was wrong, blue is permanent live and brown is earth. To do this option you must run an additional wire through the mirror casing which means taking off the back case which is held on by 4 number 1 philips screws which I rounded the heads of 3 of them and didn't want to go buying a left hand extractor set so went back to the drawing board and came up with this With this arragement though, the switch controls the adjustment of the mirror aswell as the heating of them which was not my original plan but it's not that much hardship either to flick the switch before adjusting the mirrors. Work in progress... For splicing in I just wrapped the wires and put on some heat shrink. This photo is the first time I did it so the white wire is spliced but I later rejoined that and spliced into the blue. You can also see three of those little philips screws holding on the mirror casing With it all back together After all that I have a switched live and an earth female connector at each mirror, all I'm short now is the actual heated mirror glass and I'll be sorted, now that it's into summer though I'm a bit reluctant to get them because they are a little expensive. So that's how I did it anyway, comments welcomed and thanks for reading

I have the heated mirrors install done too, write up to follow soon

One other thing that was quite annoying from when I got the car was the passenger seat never folded. I thought it would be the bowden cable as they seem to go but it turned out to the one of the simplest fixes I've ever done, just a pity I went off and bought a new bowden cable from Pelican Parts before I had a proper look at the seat, hopefully they take returns or else if anyone else wants it let me know. Anyway without taking any of the seat apart I was met with this, the problem: Looking at the drivers side it was missing this metal retaining clip The solution: Also, does anyone know what this socket in the fron glove box is for?

Ya I'm putting a switch in too so I'll be able to only have them on when I need them. Will try the mirrors with different glass.

Thanks for the encouragement. I'm currently fitting heated mirrors but can't get them to work. I've spliced into the constant live (blue) and the earth (brown) from the wires going to the mirror motor but the mirrors still aren't heating. I got them second hand so maybe they are faulty, can't think of anything else.

Does the car have a sunroof? I'm looking for the panel that the sunroof switch sits into.

Another thing off the list, the window of the passenger door wasn't dropping the 5mm it should to pass under the door seal when the door was being opened. It was very annoying have to go in and open the window a bit before I could open the passenger door, I researched it a bit and learned it's a common enough problem with these, just a microswitch inside the door lock that goes. I took some photos but it's all been covered before really, for taking off the door card I used the first half of this guide http://www.bimmerforums.co.uk/forum/f92/e3...o-doors-t19986/ (except I didn't need to twist the door pin to remove it) and for changing the microswitch I used this guide http://www.frankies-bmw.com/3series/diy/mi...microswitch.php For refitting the doorlock, I found it a lot easier to attach the door lock motor last, that wasy you have a lot more room to attach the pull rods for the door lock pin and the internal handle. It all went quite smoothly anyway and turns out it was also the reason the internal centre light wasn't coming on when it should with doors opening and after removing key from ignition, so they are working now too. One photo anyway, old and new microswitches