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Thread: Steve's E36 drift build.

  1. #1
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    Nov 2017
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    1994 325is

    Steve's E36 drift build.

    I want to start off by saying that this will by no means be a high horsepower, high budget drift car, but more of a budget minded, use what I have drift car. I love a clean engine swap, but what I would rather see is someone trying to push their stock power train to the limit. This is my closest attempt.

    Also please note that a lot of these pictures are not chronologically ordered, but here is what I essentially started with.





    A 1994 325is, which I went on a 9 hour journey to retrieve from Craigslist. The initial ad was the typical one which you would expect but when I got in contact with the owner he told me that he needed the car gone that coming weekend for a price well below what was originally listed. Nonetheless this is where the life of this car started to completely change. I had previously parted an M3 out which left me with a slew of some parts that I will have ended up using on this car. The first of which would be the front knuckles.









    I had a friend of mine local to me cut and shorten these down for me to give me what every inexperienced driver needs, steering angle far beyond what I was capable of using. At the same time I had sourced a rear subframe from a car and decided to clean it up and replace all of the bushings for some by Condor Speed Shop.



    I began to start the disassembly process and removed the control arms, diff, trailing arms, and bushings and got it down to a bare frame.



    From here I began wire wheeling all the parts I had wanted to paint including the knuckles and upper control arms. I went with a silver color as I wanted some contrast for the 10% of time I spend working on the rear of the car.









    As you can see I wasn't able to completely remove the rust in some harder to reach spaces so I coated it with a rust reformer in the hopes to not have any rust bleed through the paint. So far it has been working just fine. I began to start spraying all of my spare parts at this point. I opted for engine enamel in an aerosol can mainly for its budget friendly alternative and in hopes it would be more durable.















    Wanted to try out the color on the diff cover



    Pretty modest I would say.



    Threw in the bushings and sealed up the cover before noticing it was cracked





    Began to paint the spare parts, hit it with some primer and then the color.









    All finished





    Got eager and tossed in the bushings. I really like the ease of installation but it doesn't differ much from any other bushing on the market.



    At this point this had all been done prior to me buying the car shown at the start of this post, but once I brought it home I was eager to start throwing in parts that I was basically collecting at this point. First mod was the M3 cluster because I am a fanboy, momo hub, and Momo wheel with some sweet carbon fiber vinyl wrap





    The car did end up receiving some basic maintenance, it truly didn't need much. Started with the spark plugs and intake boot.







    Started to assemble my rear subframe project



    I went pretty overkill on this, I replaced all of the hardware with OEM bolts, nuts, etc. But I was pretty satisfied with the end result. The main thing that I was waiting for to put it in were my coilovers. I went with BC Racing after seeing enough guys locally running them and having good luck.



    At this point it was go time and began to remove the rear end from my car





    Many more pictures to come
    Last edited by fsteve; 12-03-2017 at 08:02 PM.

  2. #2
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    2 E30s and a maxima
    Welcome!

    Those front knuckles scare me.

    Status: Someone put glitter in my oil. Wait. Why's all my oil outside the engine? What's that knocking?

  3. #3
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    Welcome to Drifting! Good move cleaning up what ya got first (bushings, paint, etc).

  4. #4
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    Thanks guys, a lot of people local to me have been running these knuckles for awhile now and have seen some abuse. Maybe not the prettiest setup but they work fine for me

    So at this point the subframe was out of the car and began the work of starting to swap everything over. A seemingly straight forward process but this was the second time I've removed one of these subframes but my first time putting one back in.





    Rather than just tossing everything back in I picked up some M3 reinforcements for the rear subframe mounting points as a preventative point. I've only seen this happen to someone once but the car had 224k on it and I really didn't want to take any chances. I had a friend stop by and weld them in for me.







    Not the prettiest stuff by any means but we don't have a lot of power running to our shop as its basically located on a farm. They're holding up just fine however. One last thing before tossing all my cool not so shiny subframe pieces in the car was to throw some undercoat on the car. I primed the welded spots first then went ahead with some 3M undercoat. All in all it wasn't too messy for something over the counter, would recommend to anyone on here who is reading this and is doing the same stuff I was doing.

    First things first though I scrubbed the 224 thousand miles of New York road grime from the arches and rear floor







    Then began to throw some undercoat on. Took me about 2 and a half cans to do everything









    While I waited for that all to dry I quickly tossed in the Condor speed shop RTABs. Originally I had planned on using these in the M3 trailing arms I had leftover from the partout car but due to time and budget constraints I reused the factory trailing arms.







    Now was the time I was eagerly awaiting which was the installation of the new subframe back into the car. I chose to just install it without the diff, or trailing arms at first because I didn't have an extra set of hands available to me. That and I had to swap over diff covers and reseal the diff so I didn't feel like waiting around for that.



    Trailing arms and coilovers installed.





    At this point it was pretty late and I might have been drunk so I quickly mocked ip one of my wheels and the M3 rear bumper to see where I was at.





    Somehow I thought that I would be able to run a 235 out back and be low but a few weeks later I realized that was not a possible feat without running 6 degrees of camber, more to come on that later. Back to actual progress





    I manhandled the 3.91 into the car somehow without dropping in on my face then started putting the e-brake shoes together with the help of a friend. I naively thought that these would actually work for me but they lasted maybe about 30 minutes worth of driving. My conclusion was that they were adjusted way too tight and just burned through the pad under normal driving.







    Yes I fixed that brake hose. More pictures to come
    Last edited by fsteve; 12-03-2017 at 08:05 PM.

  5. #5
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    Now that the rear end was pretty much wrapped up I decided to move onto the front end of the car. The M3 I previously parted out with had a front subframe with threaded inserts for the x-brace as well as E46 lower control arms. Rather than fight with removing the control arms I took it a step further and opted to swap out front subframes. In addition to the E46 arms they had Condor Speed Shop solid engine mounts too so I took the liberty of removing the front subframe from my E36.



    Decided to clean up the steering rack and front subframe while it was out. I suppose I could have reinforced it at this point too but everything seemed structurally sound and I had a week until my first drift event ever. So with that in mind I got back to putting things together.





    I ended up having to replace one of the lower control arms as the threads for the rearward ball joint had stripped out and there wasn't enough room to secure the nut holding it in place.



    On my lunch break at work I removed the bushing on the LCA and swapped in the AKG conversion bushings that also came with the M3





    This next picture was probably the biggest mistake I could have made while building this car.



    DO NOT BUY THESE. I was in a time crunch and these were the only available hubs I could get same day, and I figured what the hell, right??? Wrong. I have replaced these 3 times since I've bought them, thankfully under warranty but still. A huge design flaw too is that you have to remove the inner dust shield on the stub axle to get these to spin. Long story short we made it work, but I will be replacing these with FAG bearings in the future. Onto the rest of the re assembly, I could get the rest of my front suspension in at this point and test that sick mad skid racer lock.





    When installing the other side I was having trouble getting the bottom two bolts on the strut to thread in so I decided to chase them. Got them pretty good then I went to back them out and this happened.



    I got EXTREMELY lucky to have just enough showing that I could soak them and use a pair of vice grips to slowly get it out.



    Up next was installing all the new steering hoses I had ordered as preventative maintenance, and so I could start final assembly



    Then came the brakes, I ordered new OEM dust shields too because the ones from the M3 were gone





    One tip I can make to anyone running these is to check the clearance on the dust shield to the control arms. For some reason mine were pressed up against the dust shield and I actually had to grind them down to get them to clear everything.

    At this point the car was pretty much done. When we reassembled the rear brakes and went to bleed them my bleeder screw broke off and I needed a caliper. Grabbed a local one and went on my way basically. The only things left were pretty minor, I also swapped out my transmission mounts.



    Got the car ready to pass tech at this point and finally put it on the ground for the first time in over a month



    My rear camber was totally screwed to fit the 235s in the back, my toe was totally screwed because my inner tie rods were stripped, my car was way too low but I was "ready"




    My toe was so bad that I actually corded both of my front tires and blew one out by the time I made it to the track. But I was pumped, I did it. I threw together the car on such short time and I was so proud of myself I could care less. I ended up snagging a spare tie rod from my friend and did my best to try and drift





    I was not the most successful that day but its one i will never soon forget.



    More pics to come

  6. #6
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    Never go to an event with messed up toe. That's the #1 cause of a bad day.

    Status: Someone put glitter in my oil. Wait. Why's all my oil outside the engine? What's that knocking?

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by protomor View Post
    Never go to an event with messed up toe. That's the #1 cause of a bad day.
    Yeah realistically the car was not really ready for the event but I made it work for the day at least

  8. #8
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    At least you made it out. I had a guy toss it into the first corner with way too much toe out, the wheel never self corrected and we went into a grassy hill. Thankfully the car was fine.

    Status: Someone put glitter in my oil. Wait. Why's all my oil outside the engine? What's that knocking?

  9. #9
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    This was around when things started to slow down for me, the car had pretty much mechanically come together and I needed a break from it for a few weeks. Also was dealing with just life stuff so I missed out on some events which was a bummer because I really needed the seat time. But I had some leftover M3 parts that I decided to paint. I used to do paint and prep at a couple of auto body shops when I graduated high school but have since moved on to something else. So since I no longer had any ties into that industry I had no where to paint the parts and we don't have air at my garage so I opted for some good old fashion rustoleum. Prepped the bumper which previously was rattle canned so I used some lacquer thinner to remove the old paint as well as a scuff pad.





    Went over it a few more times and called it a day. This bumper wasn't a permanent anyway since the bottom lip was cracked and is built into the bumper.

    Also started to dial out the negative camber I had to fit the style 42s I had. I cut and rolled them a bit, not totally flat but pretty good. I ended up downsizing the rear tire to a 205/40 after this picture



    I called my car George for a short period of time because I bought these wheels with the ink pen writing on them



    Ordered some OEM hardware from BMW and started mocking up the skirts and drilling holes. Did this quick and dirty so no photos of the process but fairly straight forward. Test fit, make marks, double check, drill, pop in the grommets, attach the skirts.



    Sprayed down the white



    Prepped the rear bumper and sprayed the two M3 bumpers





    Threw everything on the car a few days later, I sprayed the bottom lip of the bumper in a semi gloss black too. Took it to the gas station to fill the tires.



    I decided to try out the Falken RT615K front tires in 205/40R17, I like them. They appear to be pretty grippy and have been wearing nicely. A friend of mine also offered some wheels to me that were taking up space in his shop for a great price of $50. He only had 3 of them but we located the fourth later on, they are SSR Bang Vec II's. Super high offset I needed a 1" spacer to fit them on the car, I tossed some used 225/45's on them and test fitted



    Promptly took them off because I wasn't a big fan lol. Good spares though



    I had some issues with my car running after the car sat for a month as I tried to get it ready for the upcoming drift event. I traced it down to a vacuum leak on the hoses running to the ICV. I opted to torture myself by keeping the intake manifold on during all of this, but cleaned the ICV and replaced the hoses running to and from it. The car ran great after this but I had my MAF in backwards. HUGE rookie mistake and the car still ran terrible but I sucked it up and unplugged the MAF for the event. Ran super lean and fouled out all of my plugs but had enough power to drift the event. No pictures driving sadly but had a super good time and was actually able to link the skid pad at Thompson Speedway.







    Carnage, also didn't realize I replaced the plugs with these horrid dual prong style plugs



    Also snapped a motor mount bracket



    Swapped everything out and was back to being a decent driving car. Learned how badly I needed a decent seat in the car and came across a deal from a good friend on some Zeta III XL's. I am a 36 waist and I'm pretty snug I don't think if you were any bigger you could fit



    Still need to mount them in the car. Around the same time I picked up a set of SSR's of dokor_b's old M3





    Did a test fit, they needed a spacer to clear up front but it was a little too close for me to want to keep them on







    At the same time I cut out the fog light inserts for the hell of it, I like the look but want to fill the gap where it was cut, also painted my kidney grilles since they were hydro dipped carbon fiber and look awful. Found someone selling some inpros too, I love how these tail lights look



    Made it to one last event, got it there no problem. It was really cold this day and I didn't have heat until I got to the track 40 minutes later.



    And this happened....



    Carried too much angle into a hairpin and caught a tire, and with how cold it was I instantly destroyed it, but oh well not the end of the world





    And home back at the shop.



    Plans currently are to re gasket the engine and trans, spray the engine bay, and a few other miscellaneous upgrades. More to come on this as the car will be ready to spray in the next month

  10. #10
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    Love those ssr's, if i had the cash i wanted to buy them so bad. Did you find those lights used? i kinda want some.


    IG: dimitriantoniou

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by e30 394 View Post
    Love those ssr's, if i had the cash i wanted to buy them so bad. Did you find those lights used? i kinda want some.
    They were BNIB but got them second hand of someone on Facebook, and thank you I was stoked I was able to grab them

  12. #12
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    also a fan of those tail lights, coming together nice!

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by mcfilmwerks View Post
    also a fan of those tail lights, coming together nice!
    Thank you!

    Not much to report just been dealing with the single digit weather here in Massachusetts, haven't been touching the car lately but its warmed up a bit this week so I'm looking to tackle some stuff soon. Here's where I am at currently.

    Pretty much right after the event I began tearing down the car to remove the engine, thankfully this wasn't my first E36 engine removal so I knew what I was up against.











    Now began the task of trying to clean up this 24 year old engine bay and try to bring some life back into it. This is what I started with



    Got to work with a spot weld bit





    The rest of the brackets removed



    Started working on the battery tray, this wasn't a pretty job for me due to my lack of tools. A belt grinder would've been ideal here but I made it work





    This area will need to be cleaned up and a few spots tack welded but once it gets smoothed out I think its going to look really nice. The wiring will be tucked as much as I can, I really want to spend some time to make it look good. The fuse box will not be moving however. Also started checking out a few oil leaks on my ole trusty M50



    Thats literally why I'm doing all of this lol



    Ordered input and output shaft seals for this. Just plan on wire brushing this thing and praying it doesn't blow up on me. I also intend on going with a single mass conversion kit for this car because the dual mass had a little bit of play in it and realistically I think it will help with the responsiveness.

    This is how the car has looked for the past 3 weeks



    Right now I'm just putting together parts lists for it and trying to find where I'm coming up with the money for all of it. Hopefully more updates soonish

  14. #14
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    if you need anywhere to store those wheels let me know....


    IG: dimitriantoniou

  15. #15
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    Looking good! Hopefully i can get around the same angle once I finish throwing my knuckles on, this single digit whether mixed with parts taking a while isnt helping

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by e30 394 View Post
    if you need anywhere to store those wheels let me know....
    I already offered to sell you them! If you want them though let me know I am looking to sell them


    Quote Originally Posted by mcfilmwerks View Post
    Looking good! Hopefully i can get around the same angle once I finish throwing my knuckles on, this single digit whether mixed with parts taking a while isnt helping
    Tell me about it. Today is nice out though I am actually about to go and throw my engine on a stand and start working on cleaning it up

  17. #17
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    I love the attention to detail

  18. #18
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    Too much going on right now or id be all over them :/


    IG: dimitriantoniou

  19. #19
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    Quote Originally Posted by TheJoNathonNeal View Post
    I love the attention to detail
    Thank you!

    So to fit the SSR's a little bit better I picked up some overfenders from someone on Instagram. It took about 6 weeks total for them to come in so I was really eager to test fit them. I bought the fronts directly from the source but the rears I got from my friend who parted his E36 out and didn't need them anymore. I ended up getting the fronts first so I did a test fit.



    The rears took a little while to come in, I never actually test fitted them. In the down time I was on the hunt for a new daily so I picked up this 98 M3. Its an auto but I can always swap it down the road.



    So far this car has been great to own. Needs some TLC but it will get there soon, I will eventually do a thread on this car.

    I kind of lost motivation for a bit but decided it was time to start tearing down the M50.









    Someone made me a good offer on the SSR's that I didn't want to pass up, only downside was he lived in Philly and I really didn't want to ship wheels and tires so I figured it was a good enough excuse to take a road trip in the M3. Spent about 11 hours driving total and on my way picked up a replacement set of wheels



    SSR Koenig 17x8 and 17x9 +36 but 5x114.3. I actually had adapters already so I test fitted them on







    The rear literally sits perfect, the front I will replace the fenders to make fit better because the bacon roll I have going on really messed up everything

    Continued on stripping the engine



    Accessories off and cleaned up





    Plan is to re gasket everything, single mass flywheel conversion, paint the block and clean up the aluminum to essentially make it look brand new.

    In more drifty things I had a friend of mine get my toe in issue taken care of.





    This offsets the position of the trailing arm in the pocket so you can be low, not run a lot of camber, and have as little toe in as possible. Painted them up real quick









    Waiting on funds and the overfenders to sell before I can start ordering parts to get the M50 back in good shape. Im also going to hold off on the engine bay shave until next year because I really just want to get back on the road as quickly as possible. We will see though

  20. #20
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    New wheels are tight man. forget the bay shave, these bays are clean enough, just ditch the washer reservoir and the aux air pump.


    IG: dimitriantoniou

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by e30 394 View Post
    New wheels are tight man. forget the bay shave, these bays are clean enough, just ditch the washer reservoir and the aux air pump.
    Thanks man, you're right but I still am going to do it. Next year though

  22. #22
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    So things took an interesting turn for me last week when I stopped at the junkyard with a friend to grab a part for his broken down daily. I came across a 92 325is with an entirely untouched black interior. I wasn't planning on doing the conversion this year but I couldn't pass this up. I went back to my shop and grabbed all the tools I needed to have that thing gutted by the end of the day. After about 3 hours and a broken windshield I had everything out of it.





    The next day I put my RT615K's on from last season on the wheels



    Here's a quick before of the interior





    I need to find a tote to throw all of this stuff in because I hate having the car full of spare parts and junk

    Threw on the modded RTABs and put the car on the ground and pushed it forward to give me some more room to work on pulling the interior out.



    Dash and center console out





    50/50 comparison of the carpet, you can't really tell but I scrubbed the hell out of it. I left a bunch of boot marks in it from working on pulling everything out of the parts car



    Out with the original carpet



    It left behind tons of insulation





    New old carpet installed





    The 92 dash installed





    I love the look of the non airbag dash, this car is going to end up being a total parts bin car



    Still have some buttoning up to do, I'm going to have to fix the previous owners sketchy radio wiring before I reinstall that and do some tidying up in the car because its a mess right now. Tax seasons coming so I am going to be ordering all the parts I need to get my car running again. I have a month before the first event of the season, I don't think I will make it but it doesn't hurt to try. Guess we'll see

  23. #23
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    I love the half dash look on these cars, I'm tempted to do it! and the black looks so much better!

    I think im gonna go with those falkens also, im interested to see what you think of them when you get some time driving with them

  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by mcfilmwerks View Post
    I love the half dash look on these cars, I'm tempted to do it! and the black looks so much better!

    I think im gonna go with those falkens also, im interested to see what you think of them when you get some time driving with them
    I drove on them last year, I like them simply for their price point but I don't have anything to compare it to

  25. #25
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    Alright I have a fair amount to catch up on here but I've been making a little progress, not nearly as much as I need to but nonetheless.

    Mocked up the fabric for headliner








    And glued in place



    And cut out



    I took about a month break from the car because I was getting overwhelmed. Probably shouldn't have made my interior a priority but oh well, it will look good.

    Started making progress on the whole reason I am doing all this work, the engine. It leaked a lot of oil and was tired of cleaning it off.



    Started with the oil pan, it was super filthy

    This was after the initial cleaning







    An hour of wire brushing later







    Wasn't pleased with the finish so I decided to give it some paint. I went with VHT engine enamel.







    Stoked on the finish.

    Next was the engine block. I used POR15's engine painting kit. Pretty simple and self explanatory







    Masked up, painted the aluminum bits silver then layed down POR15s primer













    Then the actual paint









    Valve cover was last













    And tossed it on to see how it all came together









    Not bad for a DIY project I think. We will see how it all holds up.

    Got a chance to test fit my Bride seat. I had custom brackets made up for me



    Need to finish the door panels and kick panels installation and the interior will basically be done





    Got lazy and dyed the sunroof cover, will eventually delete the sunroof assembly anyway





    I like how the parcel shelf came out too



    Also got bored and wanted to test fit the rear wheels up front. My plan is to widen them to 9" up front and 10" out back so I wanted to see if it was readable



    I think yes.





    But now for that even toe pr0n



    This at 1.5 degrees of camber and Condor speed shop rtabs.



    I swear this is a drift car.





    Might be getting some work done on the engine bay this weekend but I totaled my M3 daily so I need to have the engine out by Monday. We will see

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