/// mock 3

[hakhawk]

cheers guys, i love building and driving this thing. its definitely a passion for me.

so its been progressively getting worse to change gears in the car, and seemed to go from crap to downright stupid in an instant not long before i dropped the car off at the panel shop.

i decided to finally pull the gearbox and see what was wrong, and replace some other bits while it was out

got home friday and put it on ramps(who can see my problem, seeing as im removing the gearbox)



so it seems i neglected to take many pics this time round, but heres the important bits.

remove the fork and throwout bearing and im greeted with a nice dusting of bronze EVERYWHERE, a broken fork retainer spring and next to no pivot pin left



heres a comparison of the new oem bmw steel pin(only used on certain cars, m5, 850ci, etc) and the "better wearing than oem plastic" silicon bronze pin that i put in ~80,000ks ago when the engine went in.



the wear on this actually managed to let the throwout bearing spin 90deg and make changing gears shocking

you can see the marks in the fork(theres wear on the proper pads, so it did go in correctly in the first place)



little bit of wear on the pressure plate fingers but still a decent amount of material on the clutch, so it stays for now



gave the box a quick scrub down, as there was fluid all over the top of it at the back, coming from the breather, so rigged up an extended breather for it, checked some of the seals and replaced the end piece on the shifter shaft

also threw some fresh fluid in, last lot wasnt too bad, but hey, its out might as well.



box ready to go back in. guibo and mounts were fine, so didnt bother replacing.



changed the starter motor, original one was starting to feel a bit sad, and again, box is out, was easy enough to do. no pics, its only a starter :p

and installed my mid section exhaust, been waiting to do this for a while. took some fluffing about, drilling out the front flange bolt holes, modifying brackets.

but its in, lighter, sounds better, high flow cats lets motor breathe a bit more too. unsure how many ks on the mid section i had in there, but i dare say they werent pretty inside.

old pic of exhaust, didnt take pics today, was busy messing with it



overall car feels better to drive, feels more alive with the exhaust, and gears are a dream to change compared to before.

i'll try and get some video of the exhaust once it breaks in a bit more

[bmw328m52]

I admire your ethic for replacing maintenance based items as well as adding go fast parts. I just did a front susp overhaul for the first time on my 220k mile turbo'd 328 and its amazing how different it feels. I'll be tackling the rear susp/bushings here in the next couple of weeks. Again, awesome build and keep the updates coming...just don't go broke!!!

[hakhawk]

cheers man! its all about preventative maintenance. keep on top of it and you generally dont have to worry about surprises. and gofast bits along the way makes things easier :p

gonna be making the move interstate next year, so i'll be broke from that, so car work will slow down, but hell if its gonna stop!!

looks like ive finally got my ongoing vanos issues licked, after fully rebuilding the unit, replacing solenoinds, it turns out my "spare" vanos ecu was faulty, threw the original back in and shes all peaches for now. will see how it goes

and today after work i installed a set of trackspec motorsport bonnet vents.

install went nice and easy, few cuts, bit of paint, couple holes and some rivets and an hour later they were on.

first cut(drilling the initial holes was far less daunting than one would think). they come with measurements in the instructions, which i missed(who reads the instructions anyway!!), but turns out i wasnt far off anyway.



i covered the bay with a big ole piece of cardboard, worked for the most part



and all done



think ill get some of the plastic caps to keep water from settling around the strut bolt holes

[SMOKEY53]

What happened to the s/c? Did you have to remove it for insurance assessment?

[hakhawk]

What happened to the s/c? Did you have to remove it for insurance assessment?

Nah had removed it before the accident. The piggyback was crap(as others have said but without explanation). Off boost it wanted to hesitate, stutter and just drove poorly. Had to be either all or nothing, and that just doesn't work for a daily. I think my non working Vanos wasn't helping either. But I've now got an Autronic sm4 to put in when I get time to play with it all

[SMOKEY53]

That's a shame. On the bright side, stand alone ECU and a good tuner with some road tuning should solve your issues and probably pick up some power over the piggy back.

Care to share where you got that awesome retro badge for the bonnet ('hood')?

[hakhawk]

That's a shame. On the bright side, stand alone ECU and a good tuner with some road tuning should solve your issues and probably pick up some power over the piggy back.

Care to share where you got that awesome retro badge for the bonnet ('hood')?

yeh, new mid section exhaust should help with some more power too hopefully

motorsporthardware were doing the badges, but mine had issues with lifting the colour in the heat/sun, so the manufacturer is working on remaking them differently. sucks because they looked amazing!!

[hakhawk]

so long story short, the fenders were stuck on with sikaflex before being glassed and bogged, obviously, cracks started showing not long after i got the car back.

the shop i did it at have essentially decided to wipe their hands of it, after continually saying "we'll cover it, we got you". the actual paint "may" be done in their booth, but i have my doubts(and really dont want them touching it if possible)

my mate who works there that did the finishing work and painting has taken it upon himself to help me out and redo it all. both him and myself are going to be out of pocket, but hey, thats cars!

a mate of his that owns a rod shop has kindly let him tuck the 36 away in a corner and work on it after hours and weekends.

i stripped as much off the car as i could before dropping it off and have helped him where i can to remove parts for him to do the work. if i had any skill with bodywork id be there every weekend lending a hand, but im not so im leaving that to him.

the good thing is he has been able to even out the overhang, the panelbeater that put them on didnt compare sides, so one side had about a 20mm difference in the rear, and front was 10mm difference.

the blend from fender to door edge was also rather abrupt previously, my mate has cut more fender off to smooth it out more.

so, onto a few pics

first he stripped back the join lines and cut the fenders off, every area to be bonded was taken abck to bare metal. the back of the fenders hadnt been prepped at all, and there were areas of sikaflex that either didnt stick at all, or didnt even touch car/fender



proper panelbond applied to every bit of bare metal behind fenders, so no rust should ever show its face



fronts received the same treatment, along with a bit more trimming of the original arch



no shortage of clamps!!



then onto glassing. he used some glassfill in a few deep areas to build up before the glass mat. heaps more coverage than the first time



my ducktail spoiler was removed and redone, sans about 2kg of bog. it was also installed with sikaflex originally.



then smoothing and recreating bodylines



and these last few pics are from saturday when i went to help him remove the last few things to finish certain areas

pulled my bonnet vents, as the bonnet is getting resprayed aswell(essentially whole car minus bumpers and skirts is)



mid way through him working on the rear quarter. the first time, the fender tapered in around 4" from the door edge, this time its much better



keeping good company, my cars definitely the ugly duckling in this place!!



so thats where im at right now, waiting again for my car. hes smashing out some decent hours on it though, so not too long to go hopefully.

the guards feel more solid than they ever did, and hes confident there should be no failures in the bodywork.

if anyone is looking at getting similar done, definitely look into the place you get to do it, dont use someone that relies on insurance work as the base of their business.

enjoy the pics and expect way more when i get it back, i have a few new goodies on the way for it aswell!!

[notMpowered]

I'd be setting a certain shop on fire after that. Good on you for keeping a good attitude about a frustrating situation. Look forward to seeing it again.

[hakhawk]

so i bought a thing



and another thing(which i proceeded to modify the same day)



and a few pics of progress.

[Dejo325i]

Looking forward to seeing it complete again
Where did you get the diffuser from?

[hakhawk]

Looking forward to seeing it complete again
Where did you get the diffuser from?

fit and finish will be even better this time round!! hes even been able to fix a few things i wasnt overly happy about, but were done as a compromise to how the idiots had installed the fenders.

bought it off a guy on ebay, actually spotted his car on stanceworks, and he had a link to his ebay account. postage was awesome compared to trying to get one from usa.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/BMW-e36-M...AAAOSwa-dWnKxg

seems postage has gone up, either ebay is playing funny buggers or he screwed himself on original postage cost

[hakhawk]

primer day!!!











bootlid got sprayed yesterday



getting closer to being done for the second time

[Dejo325i]

any updates yet?

[hakhawk]

progress is slow, he lost a week due to personal reasons, so that set it back a bit.

hes onto wet rubbing now, few final adjustments, and it should get hit with paint in the next week or 2

[Fatandre]

Fantastic!!!
Did you ditch the supercharger?

[hakhawk]

Fantastic!!!
Did you ditch the supercharger?

for the moment yeh, car didnt want to drive off boost nicely with the piggyback, so pulled it all off for now. have an autronic standalone for it, but with the car being in the panel shop for a second time, ive not had any time to do any testing on it. and once cars back i'll be moving interstate, so supercharger will tkae a back seat for a while again while i get settled in

[Fatandre]

But you will get back to it
I am also considering a supercharger over turbo in my e31

[Matuh]

Dauummm! Big fan of this car! Great job your doing keeping Her in mint condition.
Finland E36 is well underrated, most end up just hooning machines for youngsters....

Keep up good work!!

[hakhawk]

finally have the car back!! today was spent reinstalling parts and installing some new parts.

installed a new rear diffuser, had to trim it a bit to clear the rear muffler



mmmmm paint



went out for a few photos, then after parking it at home, it decided in typical e36 fashion to break the door lock mechanism. so in order to fix that i had to remove most of the window and door lock parts in the car, which gave me the opportunity to replace the window rail with a better condition spare, and door latch. blessing in disguise one would almost say LOL

anyway, have some crappy iphone pics

[hakhawk]

today i decided to tackle my diff cover leak, and installing my spherical rtab's.

jacked the car up, by the time i came out of the shed with a drain tray, it had decided to start raining... YAY!! silly victorian weather, it lasted about 10 minutes but didnt stop me crawling under the car and dumping the diff oil

didnt take many pics, so ill fast forward.

diff cover off, and not a single trace of gaskt or rtv apart from around the outside where id smeared some a couple years ago to try and stop to extremely slow leak.

testament to bmw's machining process, ive done over 50,000k since i put the diff in, and its not been enough to leak onto the ground until recently(considering its been sitting at panel shops for ~7 months all up, im not surprised)

for some reason when it was built, the diff guys didnt put anything on. lazy/forgetful/whatever, but i gave the cover a clean and threw some rtv on it. tiny amount of metal on the speedo sensor, but everything else nice and clean, no noticable wear on the gearset, so should be all good



and back in the car, didnt bother completely removing the sway bar(not enough room to remove it without dropping exhaust). i smooshed some more grease on the mount bushes, which looked in good condition still and bolted everyhign back up



while i let the rtv set, i got into the rtabs. of course i still havent bought a removal tool for these, so out with the threaded rod and assortment of plates and sockets. i do have several rather large sockets that work to pull the bush into, but seeing im moving interstate soon, most things are packed.



threw the new rtab's in the freezer for a bit to shrink them, didnt really help, these are a super tight fit!!



and thats all for pics of install. took some effort to get them in, but got there with help of the rattle gun and some alloy plate(was bending the steel plates)

took it for a squirt and the car feels good. i did mark the rtab pockets before removal, and lined them back up as best i could, but will still take it in for an alignment

instead have a couple pics i took when i went for a drive last week. have since reinstalled the boot badge and my roof spoiler, and you'll notice i now have 35% tint all round too

i absolutely love how the car sits now, height is pretty much spot on and i wont be changing it.

[Dejo325i]

Looking good mate

[stealthbeam]

Looks great man, Lots of work put into this, but the end result is worth it. Great job

[hakhawk]

slowly getting all the trims and bits and pieces sorted on this. still lots to do, ill never be fully satisfied lol

interior is pretty much back together, missing a couple plastic bits ill have to scrounge next wreckers run or next order.

finally installed the clips for the rear sunvisor. still need to clean the insides of all the vents, and get new front seatbelts oneday, theyre getting a bit tatty





weighed the car at work, bit more level surface, still not exact though, need to set up laser levels

44l fuel, full interior, stereo, etc. bodykit, foler stainless mid exhaust and supersprint rear. not bad considering i havent done any active weight reduction

not sue if front left weight is because not level or something else



3d printed some covers for the nuts on the strut brace using TPU, awesome stuff!! ill see how it goes with one cover seeing sunlight. they take 20mins to print, so not a problem if they dont last

still need to do more cleaning and wiping bogdust out of the engine bay, stuff gets everywhere!!!!!!!!!!!!



got factory cruise installed using a 328 cable, so i could hide it instead of it draping over the strut tower like stock. works well, but is a bit agressive on the decel, which ill assume is because of the itb's



and had my workmate give it a quick polish and wax for me









the colour is amazing, but so hard to get nice photos of. needs just the right light

[jake93854]

sell this to me dammit