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Thread: A Million Broken Pieces: An E36 Story

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Arida Zona
    Posts
    30,108
    My Cars
    z3

    A Million Broken Pieces: An E36 Story

    I was perusing facebook one night when a notification popped up about a local enthusiast posting something in the E36 classifieds. Normally I ignore this but when he posted it across like 5 groups I thought maybe it was something he was expecting to have trouble selling and it'd be entertaining just to look at the ad. I was expecting "318i shell, $2000" or maybe a concourse-level M3...

    1997 328is 118K on the chassis
    Full M3 mechanical swap from a 1998 M3 with lower miles (engine, suspension, brakes, diff, everything)
    M50 manifold and Bimmer Life/Alex Fuller tune
    Aluminum Mishimoto radiator with Euro expansion tank conversion
    Stromung rear muffler and catless mid section
    M3 rear bumper, M3 side mouldings, M3 mirrors, M3 side skirts included but not installed, no front bumper
    M-Rain interior swap from 1994 325is M-Tech with Headliner, rear deck and A and C pillars are covered in synthetic suede
    BMW Motorsport front seat belts and BMW Motorsport door handles
    RC041/RC042 wheels
    Hood and roof are faded
    Driver front seat need a little work
    Car is not perfect but has a lot of good parts.
    Only selling because of move to Germany and can't take it with.
    The best part was the price - $3k. I messaged him within minutes of the ad being posted (luckily I was in the right place at the right time and he was a friend of mine so I got notified as soon as he posted... who said facebook is always a bad thing?) and set up to be the first to look at the car.
    I knew the owner as he bought fabric from me years ago, he worked at a local BMW dealership and did the M3 swap stuff himself so I felt pretty good about all that stuff. The car was his son's but didn't show any signs of abuse or neglect...

    Went with my friend Danny to look at it and buy together, we were poking around, didn't see anything unusual... engine started fine, just let it idle, didn't even do a test drive and that is probably a good thing... Motorsport handles... nice... "Yeah, they are real" And the Motorsports seatbelts too, I love those... "Yeah, those are real BMW parts too" Literally as soon as I heard the belts were real I whipped out the money and bought the thing.

    We will take good care of it, I said...

    Went to pull away, car FLOORS IT to redline without ANY input from me. Dear god, what have I gotten myself into?

    Manage to get the revs to fall a bit, but its wanting to rev at like 4k. Clutch in, immediately revs to 4k. Very gently get it into gear and the revs will fall, but you feel the engine climbing. I don't need to give it gas on the highway because it's trying to pull to 4k, in fact, I'm riding the brakes the whole time. Luckily we only have to limp it home a couple blocks as Danny's house wasn't far.

    The electronics are also really weird. Headlights flickering, half the speakers dont work, all kinds of weird stuff... but we got it home...

    How it looked when we first got her



    Like the Techno Turd (which I have sold, and someone crashed into it at the new owner's house so, lol) this car came without a bumper. But when I had the Techno Turd, they mistakenly sent me a Cosmos Schwarz bumper... and for some reason this 328is is Cosmos, so it all sort of worked out nicely.



    I also kept the LTW wheels from the Techno Turd...
    And the seller gave us twisty sideskirts! So those will be going on at some point soon

    So first things first I wanted to tackle the electrical issues. Symptoms were that the electrical crap sucked. So we swapped in a new battery. It helped for a bit, but then after driving for awhile, the electrical stuff started sucking hard again. Must be an alternator. I had a spare good one from a friend in Tucson (thanks again, Joe!) so I got that sucker installed. From 9.8v at idle to ~13.8 - good times, happy alternator. Now our electrical crap don't suck so bad.

    What is sucking bad is the revving to 4k. It stopped doing that by the end of the first drive, but it will still occasionally floor it to redline on it's own at cold start and it has REALLY bad rev hang. Sometimes the revs climb 2-3 hundred before dropping. My friend Danny says he likes it because he doesn't know any better.



    My thought process was that throttle has two things that could control it, the cable from the pedal, and the cable from the cruise control. The cruise control cable was rusted, gross and binding in a few areas. So first thing I did was unplug it which seemed to immediately help with some of the weird throttle behaviour.



    We got it drivable enough to ... drive it. Did a little canyon carving which was a blast. Handled it like a champ



    I made some shift boots for it as well. They came out bad. I'm working on a better version

    Next thing I went to fix was the aux fan... the harness was broken, and it just has little elbow clips that pop right onto the fan-side harness. I just looked at another E36 of mine to see which pin went where and slapped it together. That gave us ice cold A/C for a little bit...



    Gave it a little wash... then the next day I ripped it hard through first gear, just as I go to shift from one to two, the radio cuts out and since then the A/C hasn't been blowing as hard as it was. We replaced a fuse which fixed the radio, but the fan still isn't blowing...

    Also decided to remove the cruise control yesterday. In doing so I removed the TPS harness to get access, but now I'm regretting that because it is throwing TPS CEL's. It's also being weird and bogging around 3k RPM but only in certain gears. Swapped on another TPS, but it is still doing it. I'm thinking this is an ICV issue now, and may relate to the rev hang as well. Next step is to remove and clean the ICV thoroughly.

    The driver's side headlight also doesn't work. Many other things broken. It's a project. But the best kind of project because I get to drive and enjoy it in the meantime

    Going into my TENTH YEAR of providing high quality reproduction BMW fabrics!

    PRICE CUT on ALL FABRICS
    Offering the best prices on the best quality reproduction fabrics!

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Apr 2017
    Location
    Schenectady, NY
    Posts
    165
    My Cars
    1995 BMW M3/2/5
    This gave me anxiety! Could be a really great car if you can get it sorted, it's definitely unique

    Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Jan 2006
    Location
    Oakhurst, CA
    Posts
    6,668
    My Cars
    96 M3 97 M3 98 M3 99 M3
    Ah, so you ended up with this car. I’m really curious if those parts are real, although they are fairly cheap new.

    Price was right. Hope you get it sorted.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Jan 2015
    Location
    Tempe, AZ
    Posts
    7,657
    My Cars
    1995 525i/5
    We got a few more things fixed, but I'll let Graham post about those.

    In the meantime, the car does run and drive pretty well for the most part— I've been dailying it and I'm glad to own half of it haha, it's been a blast. I went from not really caring much about the E36 M3 to absolutely loving it.
    1995 525i 5-speed - Thread

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Nov 2013
    Location
    VA
    Posts
    1,156
    My Cars
    E36
    Another e36 saved. Glad to see you're diagnosing the problems without any shortcuts. A true enthusiast.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Peoria, AZ
    Posts
    7,696
    My Cars
    03 zhp, 97 e36m3, 04 zhp
    ^ x2. Sounds like a fun project!

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