Balleristic's M3/4/5 DD build.

[Balleristic31]

Copy and pasting this thread over from R3VLimited.

Well this should be a fun one. I haven't decided if I did the right thing on this one or not at this point but time will!


A little backstory:


I'm finishing up my senior year of college. I've already got a job down in Los Angeles starting in October of this year post-graduation in my field of study (Public Accounting) so I have been fantasizing about all the cool DDs I could buy with all my future, non-college life, wealth.
My mental budget was around 10-20k but I wasn't really sure on what I wanted (E39 M5, E36 M3, non-M Z3 coupe, E46 ZHP, blah blah). But either way I wanted something BMW, not new (smart right?), and not boring.


Rewind a month or so ago and I found a smoking deal on a euro E24 grey market car which I had to pick up locally. It was an original owner 635CSI with all the euro goodies so I bought it. However, living in the college apartment isn't super advantageous to owning even one car(my E30), let alone two.


So naturally, after buying the E24, taking up too much of our already limited parking, pissing off a roommate or two, and never driving either of my cars(I ride my bike to school), I bought this E36.


Now I know what you're thinking, its an E36. A parts car. A sacrificial lamb. A throw away. But...


I paid $950 for it, and it was a few minutes down the road from me, and it was cosmoschwartz at some point so thats kinda cool right? I mean how could I not buy it???


TLDR version:
So I found myself a daily. Now to make it a driver.


Here's the craigslist ad picture listed in auto parts for sale, not cars.

The PO was trying to part the car and I just asked what he would want to sell the whole thing. He did.


The car is a clean title, 98 M3/4/5. Originally cosmos on dove. Now baby shit brown and greasy fingerprinted dove.


It doesn't run, has 5th gear lean, an E36 interior, and it is the ugliest car I've ever paid money for. But it's an M3. For $950!


Here's some pics from when we pushed it out of its resting place into the sunlight. That didn't really help much.




The interior (smelled exactly like every E36 junkyard car I've ever been in).



The car is registered as non-operational so that's nice. No backfees.


Got it home and in my driveway after some creative driving by the AAA tow truck driver. Here it is in its current resting place next to my e30. (Please note the sign on the carport put up by my landlord:doh




So I was too anxious and impatient to see if I had completely wasted my money, so I alligator clipped the starter trigger post and jumped it to power.


She turned over!


With my newfound knowledge of a complete and properly timed engine I decide to really test my luck and do a compression test to see how stupid I was for buying this POS.

These were my results:
Cyl 1 215 PSI
Cyl 2 220
Cyl 3 210
Cyl 4 195
Cyl 5 220
Cyl 6 185


A bit of oil fell into the cylinders from the spark plug wells which i believe led to the high level of variance between a couple of the cylinders. But all i care about is the fact that that is plenty of squeeze to make boom.


That's as far as I got today. Stay tuned for more of me trying to bring this thing back. Or parting it. Or setting it on fire. All appropriate I think.

[TostitoBandito]

Whoever did that to the car should be shot. Good lord.

[Balleristic31]

I guess I didn't really lay out a real plan for this thing in my initial post.


-Get the engine running
-Clean clean clean scrub
-Fix the fifth gear lean
-Get rid of the E39 m5 style 65 wheels (anyone want to throw me an offer on those?) for some stock E36M wheels
-Swap some stock suspension back in. No more stancelyfe :up:
-Swap in a stock exhaust for the patched up supersprint that is currently on there.
-Paint




Here's some random photos of a few of the things that made me :doh: :hitler:


The POS Jom/raceland/shit style coilovers the car has:

Some high quality welds for your high quality supersprint exhaust!! :wtf:

PO said he ripped this off to diagnose the no start... from under the vinyl glovebox cover??? Wtf.:

Here's a bunch of stuff that may or may not make it back on the car. Just a huge mess. You can also see all the leaves and dirt in the jams between the body and the trunk seal. That crap is all over this thing.



That's all for now. It's growing on me.

[Balleristic31]

Alrighty then, I finished up my last midterm before finals this quarter so I rewarded myself with a bit of time on no crank, no start diagnostics.


Let me recap my situation for anyone who may have better insight on these POS cars and those of you who do/don't care!


-car has voltage
-all the lights turn on on the dash when the key is in the on/run positions
-the starter can be powered directly on to turn the motor over
-have a no crank/starter click/ start problem






So first things first I checked the fuse box. They all check out just dandy.



Next I wanted to make sure I was getting 12v out of the yellow/black wire on the ignition switch. I was.


Next I bypassed the clutch switch between the purple/white and brown/black wires. No change


I tried to see if I was getting any signal out of the antenna ring when the key was turned to the "run" position. I got some quick like 2.5V signal out of one of the terminals on the antenna ring, but I don't really know what I should be seeing there.


Then I pulled the glovebox.
]


Found the EWS box. And a sick twist tied and electrical tape job on a few of what I think are crucial wires.



However they have good enough (although hack) connection so theoretically they should work.


Idk what I'm doing with this EWSll BS. I've spent a ton of time online trying to find definitive diagnostics on it but am coming up with zilch.


Does anyone have an idea on how to properly diagnose the EWS2 system? Will a Flash EWS delete solve my problems? :

[Balleristic31]

And to brighten the mood a bit, here's what I found when I unloaded the trunk CD changer.

Can wait to be cruising the primer M3 jammin to my tunes 1:

[MINIz guy]

Sounds like you got a deal. I hope you keep it budget and don't start throwing money at it to get it running! I love cheap finds like these.

[CblockM3]

Are you going into Tax or Audit?

[RightYouAreKen]

Now I know what you're thinking, its an E36. A parts car. A sacrificial lamb. A throw away. But...

It doesn't run, has 5th gear lean, an E36 interior

Let me recap my situation for anyone who may have better insight on these POS cars

I might be misreading these, but it seems like you don't really want an E36. Why bother? That thing has gotta be a labor of love, or you're gonna go insane getting it back to presentable condition.

[Balleristic31]

Are you going into Tax or Audit?

Audit!

I might be misreading these, but it seems like you don't really want an E36. Why bother? That thing has gotta be a labor of love, or you're gonna go insane getting it back to presentable condition.

I say these things kind of satirically and a bit from the perspective of a long time e30 diehard . I actually have a huge soft spots for e36s and have always wanted one as a DD. Don't mean to ruffle any e36 guys' feathers.

I also have owned 11 older bmws (mostly e30s) and have never paid more than $1000 for any of them, so I'm never afraid of a project

[typed by ben]

And I thought I was taking a leap of faith and really seeing into the future! Not that I agree with you but... wow what a turd to start with. Good luck. Anxious to see if your CPA mentality allows you to write this off or see it through to the bitter end.

:cue real men of genius intro:

MR POS M3 FIXER UPPER

You thought you could turn a sow's ear into a silk purse- but will you be sharp enough to know when your bacon is DONE?!

SO MUCH HEARTBURN NOW

[Ex36]

Putting a car cover on that thing is one of the funniest photos I've seen in a while!

[Nate047]

:cue real men of genius intro:

MR POS M3 FIXER UPPER

You thought you could turn a sow's ear into a silk purse- but will you be sharp enough to know when your bacon is DONE?!

SO MUCH HEARTBURN NOW

10/10 *slow clap*

[Balleristic31]

So I think I made some kind of progress today.


I emailed TRM about what the deal was with their EWSll delete flash. Here was their reply:

Way too easy, so that pretty much seals the deal on that. I will be deleting the ews and never looking back!


I also made a deal to sell/trade the Style 65 wheels for 3 DS2s with tires plus some cash. Pretty stoked on that.


Went to remove the front wheels and hit what I thought would be a minor road block; locking wheel lugs. Luckily/unbelievably the only key tool I had in my box for wheel lugs worked on them Sometimes life works out.

[Reprisal]

Man, that thing is fugly.

Props for attempting to bring this car back from the dead. Looking forward to seeing the progress.

[Balleristic31]

So I decided to experiment with the paint on this car a bit tonight. The results were VERY surprising.


I wanted to try and sand/feather an area where the primer was scratched through and showing a small amount of the original color beneath. After a couple minutes of wet-sanding the crappy primer was thinning pretty nicely. I wiped the area down with a bit of acetone to strip away the rest of the primer and to my surprise, there was acceptable and original Cosmos/clearcoat underneath!


This picture was taken after a quick buffing of the clear, which made me very happy.



Then I kept going with my stripping process for a few minutes and got here.



The crappy Iphone pics are a bit forgiving to the paints true condition, however, the level of acceptability is high! Seems like I'll be inviting some friends over so we can have a stripping party over some beers and pizza.


And just for fun here is a silly picture of the corner of my e24!



That's all for now!

[TostitoBandito]

Why the hell did someone spray crappy primer on top of the (acceptable?) original paint?

[MarketMaster]

at least you can try and wrap it after you pull that crap off.

[typed by ben]

Man if you can get the factory paint back that'd be something. The only thing that will hang you up I think is getting all the primer out of the cracks. Stripping party is a good idea. Good luck!

[Balleristic31]

So small but significant update: just ordered my TRM EWS delete flash and sent them my ecu. Hopefully get this thing running sometime this week!

If the EWS delete doesn't do it I'll be calling on the e36 gods for help.

[JEC928]

Wow, that is amazing. Hopefully the whole car looks that good under the primer.

[A ///Monster]

Wow.... a M3/4/5 for $950.

I can't understand this primer paint craze. How to instantly devalue your car for $20 of CFCs.

I'm looking forward to the results after your stripping party.

[Balleristic31]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRxfK3wKUCs

[A ///Monster]

Ah yeah! Congrats on the running car.

[Balleristic31]

Ok so the EWS delete got her running!


Fixed all the ghetto wiring with solder and heat shrink. Connected the green/black wire from the iginition to the yellow/black wire to the starter. This bypasses the EWS module for the delete.





While I had the soldering iron out I also bypassed and cleaned up the clutch switch bypass. No more no start BS for me!


A couple things I notice now:


-Blower motor does not work at all. Going to have to figure that out.


-Oil pressure and alternator cluster lights are not lighting up with the key in position 2. Any ideas on this? Look back at my picture of the cluster the alternator light was for sure working. Did I forget to plug something in? Idk. Don't want to run it much with no oil pressure warning...

[JasonGM3]

Wow congrats on bringing this thing back to life, you have balls of steel my friend


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