Piku's Arctic Silver E36 BMW M3
 

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I got this car in 2003. For a long time it was just perfect to me so I left it alone and loved it. 60,000 miles later it had a blown head gasket and so it was time to make some decisions. I decided to keep the car. Gradually keeping the car turned into insane boosting plans and so here it is. I plan to do everything in big stages as life just isn't as much fun without this car on the road.

Head Gasket Job. Did this a couple years ago and it has the following notable things:

* VAC standard head job
* All sensors (cam, crank, knock, etc) except HFM
* All rubber and plastic bits in the cooling system, vacuum system and a new water pump, thermostat and housing. This was expensive but offers huge peace of mind. The parts list was many pages :cool:
* Belts, pulleys and tensioners
* Fuel injectors balanced and blueprinted
* Primary and secondary timing chain tensioners

Now more recently I redid the suspension. This includes:
* Bilstein sport shocks/struts, H&R sport springs
* Every single bushing and ball joint replaced (about 20 of them)
* Front and rear shock mounts replaced, rear with GC track mounts
* GC delrin RTAB limiters (limits rear toe deflection under heavy load at the expense of noise)
* Lots of driveline work including new guibo, center bearing, diff and tranny oils, reverse switch, etc.
* Front and rear control arms, tie rods, etc. Basically everything.

Now after this the car is super tight but has some front end play that I now suspect is the wheel bearings.

Shortly after this I installed a full mac mini car pc system. The dash is completely custom. Not sure I recommend this to anyone else just yet. It's pretty flaky. I blame windows.

Who knows what the future holds but the goal is megasquirt, rebuilding the bottom end with LC pistons, fixing the interior/body issues and then boosting the **** out of it.

Gah..I cant belive you said a base model has good power... my vr4 bores me if i drive it all the time.

I said good, not great. I would consider 300+ HP great for stock ;) But you know everyone gets used to the power they've got. And besides with the downpipe it's supposed to be 230 something HP. That's not bad for a $1500 beater ;) It's not as torquy as my m3 but again, $1500 beater I'm just keeping things in perspective.

very cool car. thanks for my first ride in an m3. im a fan.

Thanks :) I need a ride in yours as well. I actually drove a brand new celica gt but the dealer had no GTS's and that was a couple days before I test drove my first M3 and made my decision ;)

you know the sensation you had from driving that celica gt? well, my car is totally different than that. :lol:

Finally got to work on Phase I. Pulled the diff out. The first part of the pics are after we got the diff out, and the final pics are after I cleaned up and how I generally like to keep things. I used to lose tools all the time. Not so much now.

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Any pics of your old beretta?

Clean BMW!

stinkin dif! nah... very interesting process to get that baby out. Pretty cool if you ask me

I saw 3000GT in the title
???

So Dan and I removed the diff and when we did Dan backed the bolt back into the body to the point where it was hard to get back in. I went over there and finagled it back to tighten mode and then wrenched back in and realized pretty early on, oh ****, I crossthreaded it.

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Picked up stuff today. This is the more expensive but smaller order. The big mama orders (2 of them) are coming soon. The damn shop dog (german shepherd) decided to bite me.

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Looking good Mark. You need to come help me when I do a 5-speed swap on the E34...just don't bring your creeper it has had a rough life.

Nice, I will definitely help out with that as I need experience dropping the trans. Also to edit what I have posted above, I decided I will be using stock rubber subframe bushings and trailing arm bushings and using a delrin type of plastic deflection limiting shims. Best of both worlds really. (read: keeps the girl happy on the straights, and me happy in the twisties!)

Gotta love BMW's axles...no need to drain any fluids.

Argh, I spent all night futzing with the crappy harbor freight air hose I got (which has a leak in the casting of the fitting!?), crappy harbor freight in line filter and oiler which I could not get to stop leaking from every place it could, my ball valve drain which - again - is leaking, and the parking brake of all things.

I don't know WHAT the deal is with the lower control arms but the nut won't come off the one side and the bolt is seized into the other. They have kind of a groove cut out of the bolt for some reason so I almost wonder if they're a special dealy... Who knows. I can get the bolt on the other side to spin so probably not but I am not familiar with why you would cut a groove down the side of a bolt.

You cannot get the nut off? Big break bar is what you need.

yes you do, then you can learn on an old audi as well :D :lol::roll:

Just let me know when. We can use my garage as long as it's done in a couple days to keep the gf happy ;) I have to get my car finished up if we use my garage.

well Ill try to get all the parts I need then, and obviously it would need to be towed (via flat bed this time :mad:). Ill try to take a long weekend off soon and we will try to punch it out. Ill bake her cookies. lol

I need like $200 in gaskets still.

Yeah, def try to be ready or she'll blow a gasket ;)

Wicked nice car, Ill be possibly starting a bmw build in early spring. Have you ever looked at the option of a V8 swap? Go to www.e36v8.com they make swap kits for a mustang 5.0 and T5 trans and you can have a nice torque monster for cheap. They say its cheaper than buying a turbo kit and building your motor and all the emissions stuff can stay intact.

as much as I love mustangs. BMW I-6 > 5.0 v8 plus Id imagine that would throw off the weight balance.

If I did anything, it would be an LS1 swap. Vorschlag makes a kit to do that. I'm not really a ford fan ;) As for the swap though, I consider it cheating and I'd much rather have the boost ;) Besides the i6 motor is hard core.

Ya true but the ls1 would be sick also but I was saying ford because they are cheap and readily available.

LS1? Its a good motor...but come on an S54 will sound so much better. :mrgreen:

Depends if it has that E46 rasp. :bigeek:

nah, stuff an s62 in there.

There you go :drag:

Got a new press, finally got the drive shafts and subframe out and as you can tell from the pics, there is virtually no apparent bushing wear after 209,000 miles which leaves me scratching my head... But that's good really because it means I didn't let it go too long and fatigue the sheet steel where they mount up.

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lookin good mark. i swear I'll be over to help soon lol.

Haha, it's ok I don't hold you to it ;)

What a weak looking subframe, but I do like the press.

Well you don't see the monster trailing arms and at the same time this subframe can handle 450HP with a couple small reinforcements. In fact the only thing on the subframe itself that breaks is the swaybar tabs which have nothing to do with the power. It's not weak.. It's light ;)

silly bmws, always breaking

The one in the E34 can handle twice the power.:banana:

I hear some kind of pot calling some kind of kettle black. Go back to your silly MR2 ;)

This is actually pretty old now. Painted subframe and control arms, diff out of the car and drained. Now the subframe and diff are all back in the car. I'll get pics soon.

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Some more pics. Got the car on the ground and had some made some nice pulls with Ryan. It rides really nice now with the billys... There is a clip for the shifter on top of the transmission called the bitch clip. It held true to it's name. So now the shifter has all wear parts replaced and is really tight. Driveshaft has new flex disc and center bearing and is very quiet and vibration is gone. Got new lower control arms in the rear since I couldn't find the tool to press out the bushings. Strangely they look really similar to my home painted old parts ;) Maybe I should get into the refurbishing business :-P

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