daily e36 that'll probably break

[thorburn 121]

Got another e36 on Friday and it's green.

Biggest problems it's facing so far:

• Me being a rough c*nt 
• It's going to be my daily driver
• Gearbox whines terribly. Will either fix, buy another or both 
• interior is missing so many bits of trim, interior door handles fall off if pulled too hard
• terrible steering vibration
• windscreen washer jets aren't working
• Ac doesn't have a belt going to it 
• Tyres are bald at the back
• Lacking performance

Plan so far is to get a warrant, which only needs some minor things. Then sort out a standalone ecu and do some needed and preventative maintenance  

 

 

 

[thorburn 121]

Found an old headlight washer reservoir from one of my previous e36's. One of the things I refused to let go when trying to defeat my hoarding problem. 

Made up a new bracket from 3mm alloy, remembering to leave a bit extra at the start to make folding easier. Riv nut in place and rough enough. Riv nuts are f**king great btw.


Even sprayed the hole to try prevent rust. I'm not very good at painting hence the overspray
Looks on the piss in the photo.  

[zero 1162]

What size motor?

[thorburn 121]

2.5L 
I'll remove the badges at some stage
 

[thorburn 121]

Still failed a warrant so instead of making seatbelt adjuster covers I started taking apart the front end. Couldn't remember if there was a way to remove the bolts without taking the trigger wheel/harmonic balancer off. So tapped it off. Is there a way? 

Next I wanted to swap the cast exhaust manifold with a m52 stainless one. The main reason for this is the cast ones that were on it don't have an O2 sensor bung. Luckily for me one of the mates removed the old manifolds. 

The next photos show the purge setup I used for welding on some extra stainless fittings to the stainless manifold.
Argon going in through the bottom, all holes taped and covered apart from the fittings.
Argon is heavier than air so you want the purge venting through the top of the part to make sure it is full of flowing argon.
I usually run a flow rate of 2lpm or less while welding. I do alter this depending on the size of the outlet of the part. 
This was rushed and i don't intend on keeping this exhaust manifold for too long. The part wasn't as clean as it could be but you get the idea.
Being an exhaust it isn't completely necessary to purge it. It'll just be a bit ugly, not as smooth and not as strong(not by much).
The tube thickness of the manifold was about 1.2mm and the fitting was about 2.5mm thick. Unsure exactly what each material was. They seemed to weld like 304 or 316
Welded with 1.2mm 316L wire at about 58 amps. 3 second slope down and a post gas time that's just long enough to keep the tungsten covered while it has color. Like i mentioned earlier I was in a rush and I could've gone lower on the amps, longer on the slopedown and spent some more time getting comfortable 
All up this took 45 minutes. I haven't measured anything so I hope it fits 
 

I designed some under tray things a while ago and got a couple profile cut. Thinking up a tidy, and easy to remove way of mounting it to the bumper and body now. It sits just behind the lip not under it


Currently I'm mid way through removing the front suspension. Control arms are getting all new ball joints including the meyle hd outers. Offset lower control arm bushes (lcab) are also going in. The lcab is definitely one of the reasons the car was handling so terribly. The old ones had nearly torn completely apart
Also going to swap in all the m3 bilstein and H&R gear. 

The badges and spoiler have been removed. Turns out the spoiler is genuine (i'd assumed it was a rep). It's developed a crack in the lower part because it had a screw attached in the wrong place. So that is getting repaired as well. Undecided if i want to keep the spoiler or sell

Edited August 22, 2016 by thorburn

[M3AN 4016]

Let me know if you do decide to sell the spoiler, I could be interested.

Also interested in your under tray and what you decide to do there. I need something.

[thorburn 121]

Next time I'm getting stuff profile cut I'll give you a message about an undertray.

[Garett 103]

7 hours ago, thorburn said:

Next time I'm getting stuff profile cut I'll give you a message about an undertray.

 

Me too please, looking to cover the under side sooner or later

 

[thorburn 121]

Swapped out the control arm bushes and joints. Really glad I went for the meyle hd outer ball joints.  

It's a very easy job if you have access to a press. Not sure what a new control arm is worth vs doing this. I actually have no idea what the parts were worth because I bought them over 3 years ago...

Put in some early 325 swaybars with polybushes and new endlinks. These are the style that mount to the strut. 

Only new or freshened parts I don't have on the front end are inner rack ends and the steering rack itself. The steering fluid reservoir is leaking like they all do so i'll sort out a fix for that too.

Thanks Garett for the seatbelt adjuster trim.  I might be able to finally get a warrant

 

[thorburn 121]

Finally got a warrant last week. Huge muck around over seatbelt covers. Ended up 3d printing some seatbelt nut covers. 
Any-hu that's in the past

Wideband and egt sensors are installed.

Car doesn't have O2 feedback to the ecu. It consistently runs very rich. Cruise, idle and acceleration. Only time it was a little efficient at cruise was when it was warmed up and the outside temp was 7ish degrees. 
 

Suspension feels great. Only major letdown is the open diff. I'll fix that today

I've somehow collected 2 spare m50 throttle bodies along the way. So tested my machining/measuring skills and made a big bore throttle body


 

Original throttle body is 63.85mm and i've bored it out to 68mm. I'll be getting some brass blades and new fasteners to make things look a bit more professional. 
Hardest part of the mod was putting the springs back on. 

[thorburn 121]

I've been out enjoying the car. 
Manage to mess up parking and got stuck down a bank. Stuck enough that I cut one of the seatbelts off to use as a tow rope (I own a perfectly good tow rope but didn't have it there). Just as i finished cutting through it a gc arrived in his s2000 and leant me his tow rope. Seatbelt hasn't completely gone to waste though.

No damage, just needed to give it a little alignment in the back

Also made it to the drags to get a bit of a baseline. 
Stock car with no performance mods. No weight removed. 3/4 tank of gas. 167k k's and 4 year old toyo c1s tyres 225/45/17. I was car 198

I had way too much fun. Was great to see a few other bmws out there also. The last run was against a nice e46 330 coupe.

Now it's time to upgrade and see how much I can improve the car. I'll also need to improve my driving but good things take time

Started making a dirty log manifold. It will be top mount. If there is enough interest in a cheap turbo manifold I'll look into getting the pipe profile cut. Currently making a jig to hold it all. 

The temporary turbo is a h1c. I'll need to get back to this with specs. Hoping to swap the compressor side with some parts from overseas. Or just buy something new. 

I've got a spare car to mock it all up on so made up the mounts for a universal intercooler from redline. Got tbolt clamps from nzkw and silicone from speedfactor.

Buying a stage 3 clutch and flywheel package from speedfactor as well. Hoping it will be ok to drive

And for my final trick I designed some seat mounts to mount racetech 1000 seats directly to an e36 or e46. This is the quick prototype

These are as low as you can go without modifying the body. Anyone who has tried the other options will know how important this is. I'll be getting a few of these profile cut 

Edited November 23, 2016 by thorburn

[M3AN 4016]

What did you do with the rear spoiler?

Can't read the tickets, what did you pull, terminal and RT?

[thorburn 121]

Rear spoiler is stored away for now. Looking for some risers

1st run
16.387 at 88.16 rt .655

2nd
15.719 at 88.31 rt .621

3rd
17.851 at 87.99 ran the light spun tyres missed gear. Turns out it's hard to drive in a straight line

Can definitely do with a bit of practice but was happy to get a baseline

[M3AN 4016]

Low 15's if you improve the RT and tbh ~88 km/h isn't bad... I'd be pretty happy with that as a start actually.

[thorburn 121]

Cheers. 

Hopefully next time out I'll have an aftermarket ecu or the racepak gear ready to get some more data

[thorburn 121]

I've had plenty of fun with the car and done minimal work on it. Everything had been going great up until the 28th of December. Traveled up to Auckland to help some mates replace a radiator on their suzuki carry van that was mid road trip. 
Not sure what sort of luck was going on with our group but as soon as the van was fixed the bmw wouldn't start. It's especially worrying when it'll turn over but wont start. Spark was poor and the fuel pump was dead(luckily had tools with me to diagnose this roadside). Luckily Connor (toast) came to my rescue with a spare fuel pump. New pump (blue top pump with no siphon return that needed to be a little rangi'd to fit) and new plugs and I was on my way. Had to of course make sure I stayed over half a tank. Also the car ticked over 170,000k's just after it died.
 

Got home after new years and installed a dw300 pump into the 325 fuel pump carrier. It's held in with a 3mm sheet of viton wrapped around the pump. Works mint so far and is plenty big enough for the future and e85. Please excuse the poo nail

Next on the list of things to do was the clutch. It's currently working fine but i'm sure it isn't going to like any boost. Current guibo is ready to give up. Glad I used to hoard e36 parts because i've got a spare and a full gasket set to do the main seal as well. 

 

Next on the list of things to do was the clutch. It's currently working fine but i'm sure it isn't going to like any boost. Current guibo is ready to give up. Glad I used to hoard e36 parts because i've got a spare and a full gasket set to do the main seal as well. 

 

Edited January 3, 2017 by thorburn

[thorburn 121]

It lives again. 

Biggest problem was not having flywheel bolts for the new flywheel. M12x35mm fine thread 12.9 bolts are rather hard to find at this time of year. Also speedfactor isn't open till the 9th. Managed to find some that were 40mm long. So cut them down, deburred and run a die up the first thread and a bit. Also weighed and balanced them to .1 of a gram (probably unnecessary). Used the wet paper trick to remove the spigot bearing. Started with grease and then remembered wet paper was easier and less messy.

Also pulled the inlet off to remove the old knock sensors. Replaced with some generic bosch donuts and wired up to a link knock block.

Rerouted the coolant hoses away from the throttle body. 

Also started getting the spare inlet manifold ready for some positive pressure. Devcon to set the idle control valve inlet into place. Not sure which way I'll go with crank case ventilation.

First impressions of the clutch. Master and slave cylinder aren't really suited to it. Not much travel but might be enough to live with. Pedal feel is a little heavier but I'm happy with it. Driveability wise it is rather on or off which isn't helped by the shorter throw of the clutch pedal. It is definitely easier to drive than the uuc stage 2 kit and I'd definitely recommend it to others.

Edited January 5, 2017 by thorburn

[thorburn 121]

Well after 2000k's of driving the clutch is getting a positive review. 
Great for spirited driving at this very low power level.
Spent 3 hours in stop and start traffic in Auckland. It wasn't pleasant, it wasn't elegant but I got through to the other side. 

On the downside i've broken things. 
Getrag number 2 very rapidly developed noise on Thursday. Noise is only apparent when i'm in 2nd 3rd or 4th. So thinking it is the bearings in the layshaft.
This now brings me to having 2 noisy getrag 220 boxes. The first one I believe is just an input bearing problem.

I've also started ripping the subframe (I've repaired a couple of these so far so not really a big problem) and some of the bushings have really had it in the back. 

Current thoughts are to put the zf box from the other car into this one and pull the subframe while i'm at it.

Not sure if I can be bothered rebuilding the getrag boxes. If I could find the tis repair manual that'd be helpful and might sway me. 

I'm also off to Europe in a month. So maybe I'll do some shopping there. Maybe find another few zf boxes or a 6 speed. I'll make another thread for this.

So I think i'm going to be on my bike again...