1996 BMW E36 328i Coupe - we have history...
Discussion
So here we are in Lockdown 3.0. The weather is crap. Christmas has just been so I have no money. What I really want to be doing is spannering on my car, but points two and three preclude that at the moment, whilst point one means I need to occupy my time somehow…
What’s the alternative to spannering on your car when it’s too cold and you can’t afford any parts? Talking about your car, of course. Or typing I suppose. It’s what we do now that we’re not allowed to actually interact with real-life human beings.
I’m now going to waffle on for ages about my car (which might actually qualify as a ‘shed’, although I’m a bit too fond of it to describe it thusly myself. You be the judge). That’s partly because I’ve owned it for quite a long time now, partly because I have time to kill, and partly because, hopefully, I can give you something lengthy to read to distract your attention whilst you are tussling with a particularly stubborn poo.
Fair warning – this isn’t going to be one of those Readers Cars threads where everyone gets all dribbly over immaculate nuts and polished shafts. I’m all for doing things right, but sometimes I’d rather just do it. I enjoy having a go, and the sense of accomplishment when the thing still works after I’ve taken it apart and wafted my tools at it, but I’m not particularly interested in achieving show quality. Those of you with a penchant for shiny nuts should, therefore, either look away or be prepared for itchy teeth. Particularly when we get to my DIY bodywork repairs…
Enough of the preamble. Introducing my beloved, though oft neglected and occasionally abused, BMW E36 328i Coupe. It’s Montreal Blue, which I like, with black leather interior, which I like, and it came out of the factory with an automatic transmission, which I didn’t. More on that later.
No, it’s not a sport, which is a bit of a shame, but hey, it’s the same engine and as far as I’m concerned everything else is up for grabs. Being a bog standard 328i does mean it looks a bit grandad with the overbite at the front. It does have a spoiler though, so… downforce?
I suppose the beginning is the logical place to start this story, although a more journalistic approach might be to start with the most exciting part to catch your attention and then go back to the beginning with you all wondering what outrageous turn of events could possibly have led to such an exciting happening. However, if you’ve read this far then you’re probably doing a poo and therefore I judge my competition for your attention to be limited. I’m going to start at the beginning. In fact, I’m going to start two years before the beginning, before this particular car even entered my life.
Once upon a time (2009), when I was young (ish), I knew a guy. This guy was a former race mechanic who knew a thing or two about cars. I was in the market for a new car, so obviously I solicited the opinion of this knowledgeable chap (was he a chap, or was he a guy? At the point at which I was asking for his opinion he probably qualifies as a chap). I duly asked him what he thought I should buy. My requirements were that it should be fast enough to be fun, cheap to buy and run and as reliable as it is possible for such a vehicle to be. Funnily enough, as the owner-enjoyer of an E36 328i Coupe himself, he suggested I buy an E36 328i Coupe, remarking that it met all of my requirements.
Off I went to the obvious website of trading autos and found myself an E36 328i Coupe in what I soon discovered to be ‘irreplaceable spec’. Having taken a little test drive, which put an idiot grin on my face when I planted my right foot and felt the auto box kick down and the surge of Bavarian horses from the 2.8 litre straight six (those that hadn’t long since escaped), I purchased the beastie for one thousand Great British Pounds. It was in some kind of metallic lilac with purplish interior (maybe sun faded, I don’t know), sun roof, rear parking sensors, sport seats (I think – possible faulty memory), and a bonus Kings of Leon CD in the CD player. The colour scheme was a bit weird, but I like weird.
Precisely one week later (almost to the hour), whilst returning from a camping holiday during which the BMW performed superbly, even getting out of a muddy Dorset field, it became the meat in a BMW sandwich on the M5. A lady who was, I believe, applying lipstick whilst in stop-start traffic (two cars behind us) managed to bury her car under the rear of the one in front of her which, in turn, compressed mine somewhat between it and the one in front of us. It wasn’t quite hard enough to turn the coupe into a compact; in fact, it didn’t look too bad on the roadside. However, since BMW make bumper mounts out of gold leaf and the tears of unicorns it was deemed beyond economical repair and was an insurance write off.
I thought I’d beaten the house when the insurance company gave me a cheque for five hundred quid more than I’d paid for the thing in the first place, but the jubilation was short lived when I realised that I couldn’t find another example in the same spec or as in good nick as the one that had just been squished.
Shortly after banking my insurance cheque, I purchased my second E36 328i Coupe, in boring black, without a sunroof or parking sensors, or sports seats, or even a Kings of Leon CD. I think I paid about £1200 for it.
I had this one for a couple of years, including briefly when I lived in Germany. During this period I discovered a couple of things from first hand experience.
1. Although everyone says BMWs are crap in the snow, actually they’re bloody good fun (or at least this one was).
2. 130MPH on the autobahn in a ropey 15 year old car is terrifying and shouldn’t be done for longer than necessary to be able to say you’ve done it.
I sold it for some idiotic reason, before realising that I shouldn’t have and buying another.
That’s when P956 BVJ entered my life. My third, and probably ropiest, E36 328i Coupe.
This was 2011. I don’t recall the exact purchase price, but it was between £1k and £1.5k. About 125k miles, Montreal Blue, leather interior, auto box, scratches, scuffs and dents on most panels (not to mention rusty wheel arches), non-functioning air con, wobbly door cards, and a wiper arm that mysteriously lifted the back of the bonnet with every swipe were the highlights. I didn’t really care about most of this – it was all about the engine, and the feeling it gave me every time I buried my right foot in the threadbare carpet.
In the early years of my ownership, mostly all I did was drive it. I did swap the headlights for some European ones off German Ebay and cross-wired the fog lights so that it was legal in Germany, as I was still working there at the time. The headlights were ridiculously easy to swap out, although losing a screw and then subsequently finding it in my own tyre wasn’t my finest moment. The indicators never quite fitted properly, thought, which tended to result in a worrying bang at autobahn speeds. On later inspection the indicator would be dangling on the bumper like a zombie’s eyeball on a rotted cheek. Good times.
My ‘commute’ (roughly once a month) was between Birmingham and my place of work in the West of Germany. This was what the venerable beemer was born to do. I loved cruising across Western Europe, the big straight-six lump chewing up the miles, and the big sidewalls on my 205/60 R15s contributing to a lovely, relaxing ride. I used to arrive after an eight-hour drive feeling as fresh as a daisy. I didn’t give a stuff about the floppy door cards and the shonky bodywork. It was all about how it made me feel.
Towards the end of my time in Germany I was in a position to treat myself to a new car. I bought a brand new Skoda Octavia VRS diesel estate (this was the year we had our first child), which I still own eight years and 120k miles later and have no intention of getting rid any time soon. The arrival of this upstart (car, not child) meant that the BMW was relegated to driveway duty and I officially became one of those people with a ‘project car’.
The problem was, what was my project? I didn’t really have a vision for it. I just liked the idea of having a plaything, and those memories of surging down the autobahn meant that it kept a place in my heart that wouldn’t allow me to part with it. Every so often I would have a fiddle with it. I swapped the lights back to UK ones, without joke indicators. I had a go at fixing the worse of the rusty rear arches. This without access to indoor work space, or any knowledge, or skill, or the right tools. I ground away the rust until I had good metal. I whacked in some mesh to bridge a gap, followed by my own bodyweight in filler, then spent days sanding to try and recreate the correct profile. When I got close enough/got bored, I rattle canned most of the rear quarter (mostly by mistake). This was grey primer, Montreal Blue and then some clear lacquer, all from the obvious high street automotive supplies shop. To be fair, for a clueless amateur, it wasn’t a complete disaster. If you stand a quarter of a mile away, in the dark, and squint, you wouldn’t know it had been repaired. Any closer than that, though and it does look crap. I have since tried to resolve other rusty bits, with similar results. I console myself with the thought that 1. At least the rust has gone (or at least is well hidden) and 2. If I ever decide the bodywork is all that important it can have a full respray (professional. Not sure how many rattle cans that would take…). I ‘fixed’ the notorious saggy glovebox. I did a few servicing-type jobs, changing filters, plugs and oil. Mostly just for the novelty of it, and to learn a thing or two.
I wasn’t driving it much, though when I did I still enjoyed it. From time to time I used to fantasise about it being a manual, thinking it’d be fun to have a bit more control over what that engine was doing on the twisty bits.
It ended up sitting still on a driveway for a good couple of years, whilst I had no time, money or really inclination to do anything with it. I put a cover over it, which turned out to be a terrible idea. It turns out that covers can be really good at keeping moisture in. When I eventually came to uncover it, the carpets, seats, centre console, pillars and headlining were all covered in mould. This did not serve to increase my enthusiasm for doing anything with it. There were, however, some squatters who clearly had more affinity for my project car than I did. Under the bonnet there were piles of seed cases, nibbled away at by a contented family of mice who had taken advantage of the car’s immobility to set up home in there. Not only that, they had chewed away the rubber insulation on many connections in the engine bay and the rubber coating on the ECU cover, and had set up home behind the glovebox in a lovely cosy nest. I discovered later that they had built a similar bundle of stuff inside the blower fan as well. They had really gone to town, left undisturbed for so long.
It was at this point that I decided it was time to sell. I thought to myself ‘it’s just rotting away on the driveway, I’m never going to have any money or time to do anything with it, so I might as well try to recover some money from it before it turns into a pile of rust on the driveway. With this in mind, I decided it was worth cleaning it up and seeing if I could get an MOT on it, so as to squeeze as much out of it as possible. First things first, I got myself a non-lethal trap for the mice. I’m not a vegetarian or anything, but thought if I could trap them and get rid of them it’d be preferable to killing them. Maybe I’m just soft. Anyway, I managed to lure a couple into my trap with some digestive biscuit and relocated them a fair distance away, in case they were homing mice. I then went nuts with a carpet cleaner, and spent a couple of days sucking up all the mould and 18 years or so of muck and grime out of the soft furnishings. It came up remarkably well, really. I then titivated a bit, replacing cracked door handle surrounds, replacing bulbs here and there, had a go at a DIY wheel refurb (which I’m pretty convinced made absolutely no difference whatsoever). Just small jobs to make it more appealing to the discerning shedder.
Having brought the car back from what seemed to me like close to death, I then took it for its MOT. By this stage I was actually feeling quite positive about the car. In doing those little jobs I had reminded myself of the satisfaction that can be obtained by just fettling and improving, even at such a trivial scale. So, when it sailed through its MOT without even a single advisory, my mind was changed. It clearly wasn’t rotting away, and if it was SORNed and uninsured sitting on my drive, it cost me nothing unless I chose to spend on it, so there was no harm in keeping it. I did however discover on my way home that I had failed to evict all of my squatters. As I turned into my road, a small brown furry head appeared between the bonnet and the windscreen and looked straight at me. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or the mouse. I didn’t even bother to try and evict him after that. I assume he decided to move out after I parked up as I never saw any new sign of him.
That was when the beemer went from slightly resented former flame to potential future bit-on-the-side held in reserve. I still didn’t have a plan, or much motivation to do a great deal with it, but at least I knew it would happily sit there for a few years waiting for me to get round to it. I did take more care thereafter to check regularly for intruders, and I’ve never put a cover on it since.
Fast forward to 2018. I was weekly commuting, and decided to give the trusty VRS a break and get back into the old beemer. I duly put it through another MOT, for which it needed a windscreen washer pump, some kind of slip ring that I didn’t really understand (something to do with the steering wheel/column?) and a new front spring. The garage supplied a pair of springs, but, feeling confident, I said just fit one and I’ll do the other…
So, back on the road, I relived some of the enjoyment of cruising on the motorway, and very occasionally swinging the back end around like a hooligan (mainly on airfields). It still put a smile on my face, and I also enjoyed the increasing rarity of these cars. I hardly ever saw another ‘90s car out on the roads. It felt special, and to still be running a sweetly as it does after all the neglect, it was being far nicer to me than I had any right to expect. My ‘chap’ who started my E36 journey back in 2009 may have been on to something!
I can’t remember why, but I stopped using it again for a while. Then in late 2019 I looked again at that sparkling new spring in its box in the boot and thought, ‘I’d better fit that.’ That’s when the fun started.
What’s the alternative to spannering on your car when it’s too cold and you can’t afford any parts? Talking about your car, of course. Or typing I suppose. It’s what we do now that we’re not allowed to actually interact with real-life human beings.
I’m now going to waffle on for ages about my car (which might actually qualify as a ‘shed’, although I’m a bit too fond of it to describe it thusly myself. You be the judge). That’s partly because I’ve owned it for quite a long time now, partly because I have time to kill, and partly because, hopefully, I can give you something lengthy to read to distract your attention whilst you are tussling with a particularly stubborn poo.
Fair warning – this isn’t going to be one of those Readers Cars threads where everyone gets all dribbly over immaculate nuts and polished shafts. I’m all for doing things right, but sometimes I’d rather just do it. I enjoy having a go, and the sense of accomplishment when the thing still works after I’ve taken it apart and wafted my tools at it, but I’m not particularly interested in achieving show quality. Those of you with a penchant for shiny nuts should, therefore, either look away or be prepared for itchy teeth. Particularly when we get to my DIY bodywork repairs…
Enough of the preamble. Introducing my beloved, though oft neglected and occasionally abused, BMW E36 328i Coupe. It’s Montreal Blue, which I like, with black leather interior, which I like, and it came out of the factory with an automatic transmission, which I didn’t. More on that later.
No, it’s not a sport, which is a bit of a shame, but hey, it’s the same engine and as far as I’m concerned everything else is up for grabs. Being a bog standard 328i does mean it looks a bit grandad with the overbite at the front. It does have a spoiler though, so… downforce?
I suppose the beginning is the logical place to start this story, although a more journalistic approach might be to start with the most exciting part to catch your attention and then go back to the beginning with you all wondering what outrageous turn of events could possibly have led to such an exciting happening. However, if you’ve read this far then you’re probably doing a poo and therefore I judge my competition for your attention to be limited. I’m going to start at the beginning. In fact, I’m going to start two years before the beginning, before this particular car even entered my life.
Once upon a time (2009), when I was young (ish), I knew a guy. This guy was a former race mechanic who knew a thing or two about cars. I was in the market for a new car, so obviously I solicited the opinion of this knowledgeable chap (was he a chap, or was he a guy? At the point at which I was asking for his opinion he probably qualifies as a chap). I duly asked him what he thought I should buy. My requirements were that it should be fast enough to be fun, cheap to buy and run and as reliable as it is possible for such a vehicle to be. Funnily enough, as the owner-enjoyer of an E36 328i Coupe himself, he suggested I buy an E36 328i Coupe, remarking that it met all of my requirements.
Off I went to the obvious website of trading autos and found myself an E36 328i Coupe in what I soon discovered to be ‘irreplaceable spec’. Having taken a little test drive, which put an idiot grin on my face when I planted my right foot and felt the auto box kick down and the surge of Bavarian horses from the 2.8 litre straight six (those that hadn’t long since escaped), I purchased the beastie for one thousand Great British Pounds. It was in some kind of metallic lilac with purplish interior (maybe sun faded, I don’t know), sun roof, rear parking sensors, sport seats (I think – possible faulty memory), and a bonus Kings of Leon CD in the CD player. The colour scheme was a bit weird, but I like weird.
Precisely one week later (almost to the hour), whilst returning from a camping holiday during which the BMW performed superbly, even getting out of a muddy Dorset field, it became the meat in a BMW sandwich on the M5. A lady who was, I believe, applying lipstick whilst in stop-start traffic (two cars behind us) managed to bury her car under the rear of the one in front of her which, in turn, compressed mine somewhat between it and the one in front of us. It wasn’t quite hard enough to turn the coupe into a compact; in fact, it didn’t look too bad on the roadside. However, since BMW make bumper mounts out of gold leaf and the tears of unicorns it was deemed beyond economical repair and was an insurance write off.
I thought I’d beaten the house when the insurance company gave me a cheque for five hundred quid more than I’d paid for the thing in the first place, but the jubilation was short lived when I realised that I couldn’t find another example in the same spec or as in good nick as the one that had just been squished.
Shortly after banking my insurance cheque, I purchased my second E36 328i Coupe, in boring black, without a sunroof or parking sensors, or sports seats, or even a Kings of Leon CD. I think I paid about £1200 for it.
I had this one for a couple of years, including briefly when I lived in Germany. During this period I discovered a couple of things from first hand experience.
1. Although everyone says BMWs are crap in the snow, actually they’re bloody good fun (or at least this one was).
2. 130MPH on the autobahn in a ropey 15 year old car is terrifying and shouldn’t be done for longer than necessary to be able to say you’ve done it.
I sold it for some idiotic reason, before realising that I shouldn’t have and buying another.
That’s when P956 BVJ entered my life. My third, and probably ropiest, E36 328i Coupe.
This was 2011. I don’t recall the exact purchase price, but it was between £1k and £1.5k. About 125k miles, Montreal Blue, leather interior, auto box, scratches, scuffs and dents on most panels (not to mention rusty wheel arches), non-functioning air con, wobbly door cards, and a wiper arm that mysteriously lifted the back of the bonnet with every swipe were the highlights. I didn’t really care about most of this – it was all about the engine, and the feeling it gave me every time I buried my right foot in the threadbare carpet.
In the early years of my ownership, mostly all I did was drive it. I did swap the headlights for some European ones off German Ebay and cross-wired the fog lights so that it was legal in Germany, as I was still working there at the time. The headlights were ridiculously easy to swap out, although losing a screw and then subsequently finding it in my own tyre wasn’t my finest moment. The indicators never quite fitted properly, thought, which tended to result in a worrying bang at autobahn speeds. On later inspection the indicator would be dangling on the bumper like a zombie’s eyeball on a rotted cheek. Good times.
My ‘commute’ (roughly once a month) was between Birmingham and my place of work in the West of Germany. This was what the venerable beemer was born to do. I loved cruising across Western Europe, the big straight-six lump chewing up the miles, and the big sidewalls on my 205/60 R15s contributing to a lovely, relaxing ride. I used to arrive after an eight-hour drive feeling as fresh as a daisy. I didn’t give a stuff about the floppy door cards and the shonky bodywork. It was all about how it made me feel.
Towards the end of my time in Germany I was in a position to treat myself to a new car. I bought a brand new Skoda Octavia VRS diesel estate (this was the year we had our first child), which I still own eight years and 120k miles later and have no intention of getting rid any time soon. The arrival of this upstart (car, not child) meant that the BMW was relegated to driveway duty and I officially became one of those people with a ‘project car’.
The problem was, what was my project? I didn’t really have a vision for it. I just liked the idea of having a plaything, and those memories of surging down the autobahn meant that it kept a place in my heart that wouldn’t allow me to part with it. Every so often I would have a fiddle with it. I swapped the lights back to UK ones, without joke indicators. I had a go at fixing the worse of the rusty rear arches. This without access to indoor work space, or any knowledge, or skill, or the right tools. I ground away the rust until I had good metal. I whacked in some mesh to bridge a gap, followed by my own bodyweight in filler, then spent days sanding to try and recreate the correct profile. When I got close enough/got bored, I rattle canned most of the rear quarter (mostly by mistake). This was grey primer, Montreal Blue and then some clear lacquer, all from the obvious high street automotive supplies shop. To be fair, for a clueless amateur, it wasn’t a complete disaster. If you stand a quarter of a mile away, in the dark, and squint, you wouldn’t know it had been repaired. Any closer than that, though and it does look crap. I have since tried to resolve other rusty bits, with similar results. I console myself with the thought that 1. At least the rust has gone (or at least is well hidden) and 2. If I ever decide the bodywork is all that important it can have a full respray (professional. Not sure how many rattle cans that would take…). I ‘fixed’ the notorious saggy glovebox. I did a few servicing-type jobs, changing filters, plugs and oil. Mostly just for the novelty of it, and to learn a thing or two.
I wasn’t driving it much, though when I did I still enjoyed it. From time to time I used to fantasise about it being a manual, thinking it’d be fun to have a bit more control over what that engine was doing on the twisty bits.
It ended up sitting still on a driveway for a good couple of years, whilst I had no time, money or really inclination to do anything with it. I put a cover over it, which turned out to be a terrible idea. It turns out that covers can be really good at keeping moisture in. When I eventually came to uncover it, the carpets, seats, centre console, pillars and headlining were all covered in mould. This did not serve to increase my enthusiasm for doing anything with it. There were, however, some squatters who clearly had more affinity for my project car than I did. Under the bonnet there were piles of seed cases, nibbled away at by a contented family of mice who had taken advantage of the car’s immobility to set up home in there. Not only that, they had chewed away the rubber insulation on many connections in the engine bay and the rubber coating on the ECU cover, and had set up home behind the glovebox in a lovely cosy nest. I discovered later that they had built a similar bundle of stuff inside the blower fan as well. They had really gone to town, left undisturbed for so long.
It was at this point that I decided it was time to sell. I thought to myself ‘it’s just rotting away on the driveway, I’m never going to have any money or time to do anything with it, so I might as well try to recover some money from it before it turns into a pile of rust on the driveway. With this in mind, I decided it was worth cleaning it up and seeing if I could get an MOT on it, so as to squeeze as much out of it as possible. First things first, I got myself a non-lethal trap for the mice. I’m not a vegetarian or anything, but thought if I could trap them and get rid of them it’d be preferable to killing them. Maybe I’m just soft. Anyway, I managed to lure a couple into my trap with some digestive biscuit and relocated them a fair distance away, in case they were homing mice. I then went nuts with a carpet cleaner, and spent a couple of days sucking up all the mould and 18 years or so of muck and grime out of the soft furnishings. It came up remarkably well, really. I then titivated a bit, replacing cracked door handle surrounds, replacing bulbs here and there, had a go at a DIY wheel refurb (which I’m pretty convinced made absolutely no difference whatsoever). Just small jobs to make it more appealing to the discerning shedder.
Having brought the car back from what seemed to me like close to death, I then took it for its MOT. By this stage I was actually feeling quite positive about the car. In doing those little jobs I had reminded myself of the satisfaction that can be obtained by just fettling and improving, even at such a trivial scale. So, when it sailed through its MOT without even a single advisory, my mind was changed. It clearly wasn’t rotting away, and if it was SORNed and uninsured sitting on my drive, it cost me nothing unless I chose to spend on it, so there was no harm in keeping it. I did however discover on my way home that I had failed to evict all of my squatters. As I turned into my road, a small brown furry head appeared between the bonnet and the windscreen and looked straight at me. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or the mouse. I didn’t even bother to try and evict him after that. I assume he decided to move out after I parked up as I never saw any new sign of him.
That was when the beemer went from slightly resented former flame to potential future bit-on-the-side held in reserve. I still didn’t have a plan, or much motivation to do a great deal with it, but at least I knew it would happily sit there for a few years waiting for me to get round to it. I did take more care thereafter to check regularly for intruders, and I’ve never put a cover on it since.
Fast forward to 2018. I was weekly commuting, and decided to give the trusty VRS a break and get back into the old beemer. I duly put it through another MOT, for which it needed a windscreen washer pump, some kind of slip ring that I didn’t really understand (something to do with the steering wheel/column?) and a new front spring. The garage supplied a pair of springs, but, feeling confident, I said just fit one and I’ll do the other…
So, back on the road, I relived some of the enjoyment of cruising on the motorway, and very occasionally swinging the back end around like a hooligan (mainly on airfields). It still put a smile on my face, and I also enjoyed the increasing rarity of these cars. I hardly ever saw another ‘90s car out on the roads. It felt special, and to still be running a sweetly as it does after all the neglect, it was being far nicer to me than I had any right to expect. My ‘chap’ who started my E36 journey back in 2009 may have been on to something!
I can’t remember why, but I stopped using it again for a while. Then in late 2019 I looked again at that sparkling new spring in its box in the boot and thought, ‘I’d better fit that.’ That’s when the fun started.
Having had no experience whatsoever of messing around with suspension components, but being keen to learn, I started in the most obvious place. YouTube. And PelicanParts. And the Haynes manual. I vaguely recalled being given some strange looking devices by my father-in-law at some point in history, which, having watched a few YouTube videos, I now recognised as spring compressors. Excellent. This was going to be easy.
I jacked up the front of the car and put it on stands. I then spent a few minutes walking from side to side and peering into the arches to try and figure out which side had already been done. This wasn’t that straightforward given that I had been driving it on and off for a year and a half since the work was done. Anyway, I figured it out and set about removing the strut from the car. This is a fairly straightforward task. If your nuts aren’t 23 years old and a tad rusty. After judicious application of penetrant and the breaker bar, I had the hub unbolted from the bottom of the strut and dropped the strut out of the wheel arch.
I had read/heard/seen that disassembling the strut was possible with hand tools, though it was never going to be easy. I thought, ‘if it’s possible, I’m going to do it.’ Cue about two weeks of messing about with what was effectively a bomb, the spring held by compressors of unknown age and provenance. An amateur lunatic clamping, wedging, twisting, straining and cursing with various unsuitable tools. In the end I relented and spent a hundred quid on an impact wrench. The day it arrived I unboxed it, casually strolled outside and zipped the nut off the top of the strut with zero fuss. The moral of the story – use the right tool for the job, numpty.
Anyway, after that it was a breeze. I ordered a new bump stop for about £8 as mine was disintegrating, popped the new spring on, reassembled the strut and put it back on the car. Job jobbed. I was getting better at this mechanicking thing.
I had a look at the other side and saw that the other bump stop was similarly reducing itself to tiny rubber particles. Now knowing the drill, and having the correct tools, I made short work of replacing it. Strut off, disassembled, reassembled and back on the car in about half an hour. I felt very pleased with myself after this performance. Until, that is, I over-tightened one of the bolts holding the bottom of the strut to the rear of the hub assembly. Snap. Naughty words.
‘Never mind,’ I say to myself eventually, after repeating every swearword I know several times, ‘it’s all a learning opportunity, and at least I don’t need to drive it.’ So, off comes the hub. Or does it?
I can’t for the life of me separate the hub from the ball joint on the end of the control arm, despite other previously unidentified objects handed down by the Father-in-Law turning out to be ball joint separators. More swearing, lump hammering, persuading, cajoling, levering, twisting, jumping-up-and-down, and the thing won’t budge. It’s on there good.
I stand back and scratch my head. For my next trick, I decide, I’m going to replace both control arms and bushes. But given that one of my hubs is effectively welded to its control arm, I’m going to have to replace that hub as well. To eBay…
So that’s how replacing an £8 bump stop turned into a £400 rebuild of most of the front end, including track rods, drop links, brake discs and pads. Whilst there I did a bit of weight reduction by grinding about thirty tonnes of rust off the brake calipers and tried to clean everything up as much as I could. It was quite satisfying in the end to get it all back together and on the ground after about four months in the air. First stop, the alignment shop…
I jacked up the front of the car and put it on stands. I then spent a few minutes walking from side to side and peering into the arches to try and figure out which side had already been done. This wasn’t that straightforward given that I had been driving it on and off for a year and a half since the work was done. Anyway, I figured it out and set about removing the strut from the car. This is a fairly straightforward task. If your nuts aren’t 23 years old and a tad rusty. After judicious application of penetrant and the breaker bar, I had the hub unbolted from the bottom of the strut and dropped the strut out of the wheel arch.
I had read/heard/seen that disassembling the strut was possible with hand tools, though it was never going to be easy. I thought, ‘if it’s possible, I’m going to do it.’ Cue about two weeks of messing about with what was effectively a bomb, the spring held by compressors of unknown age and provenance. An amateur lunatic clamping, wedging, twisting, straining and cursing with various unsuitable tools. In the end I relented and spent a hundred quid on an impact wrench. The day it arrived I unboxed it, casually strolled outside and zipped the nut off the top of the strut with zero fuss. The moral of the story – use the right tool for the job, numpty.
Anyway, after that it was a breeze. I ordered a new bump stop for about £8 as mine was disintegrating, popped the new spring on, reassembled the strut and put it back on the car. Job jobbed. I was getting better at this mechanicking thing.
I had a look at the other side and saw that the other bump stop was similarly reducing itself to tiny rubber particles. Now knowing the drill, and having the correct tools, I made short work of replacing it. Strut off, disassembled, reassembled and back on the car in about half an hour. I felt very pleased with myself after this performance. Until, that is, I over-tightened one of the bolts holding the bottom of the strut to the rear of the hub assembly. Snap. Naughty words.
‘Never mind,’ I say to myself eventually, after repeating every swearword I know several times, ‘it’s all a learning opportunity, and at least I don’t need to drive it.’ So, off comes the hub. Or does it?
I can’t for the life of me separate the hub from the ball joint on the end of the control arm, despite other previously unidentified objects handed down by the Father-in-Law turning out to be ball joint separators. More swearing, lump hammering, persuading, cajoling, levering, twisting, jumping-up-and-down, and the thing won’t budge. It’s on there good.
I stand back and scratch my head. For my next trick, I decide, I’m going to replace both control arms and bushes. But given that one of my hubs is effectively welded to its control arm, I’m going to have to replace that hub as well. To eBay…
So that’s how replacing an £8 bump stop turned into a £400 rebuild of most of the front end, including track rods, drop links, brake discs and pads. Whilst there I did a bit of weight reduction by grinding about thirty tonnes of rust off the brake calipers and tried to clean everything up as much as I could. It was quite satisfying in the end to get it all back together and on the ground after about four months in the air. First stop, the alignment shop…
The suspension faff was my first serious foray into what I would consider serious mechanical work on the beemer. I hadn’t improved anything – I was just fixing stuff (and ending up replacing things that wouldn’t have needed replacing had I not broken them). At this stage my vague plan was a gradual restoration to its former glory. I wanted to fix things, replace things and keep it all original, and one day it’d look like it just rolled off the production line. The year would be 2050 and someone would buy my mint 328i for millions. I hadn’t really thought it through, but was very much of the opinion that I wanted to keep everything original (not sure how I thought the cheap eBay control arms fitted into that picture though). I have since woken up to reality and decided how to extract more fun from it in the near term, but I’ll get to that. Let’s keep this chronological.
My confidence peaking after the successful, albeit lengthy and expensive, rectification of my own cock up, I looked at the next job.
For some time the beemer had a bit of a starting issue. It would start first time every time cold, but once it was warm, if you turned it off and tried to start it again, it would just whirr and wouldn’t turn over. It sounded to my uneducated ear that the starter was spinning and not engaging the flywheel. Replacing the starter was the obvious solution to this.
If you read any forum post ever written about changing the starter on an E36, you very quickly get the idea that it is a total pain in the proverbial. It’s buried under the inlet manifold and under various coolant pipes etc. Undeterred, I think, ‘as long as I approach it methodically, write down what order I undo things and label everything, then I just have to reverse the steps to get it back together again.’ As it turns out, that was exactly the right approach. IIRC I followed a M3NACE video on YouTube, and carefully wrote down in my notebook each thing I undid or took off and labelled all the wires and tubes with duct tape and a sharpie. The inlet manifold came off with a little persuasion and I eventually got to the point where I could see the starter. Seeing the starter, and being able to reach the bolts to undo them are two very different things, however. I ended up cutting an E12 torx spanner down to a stub to get it in the space and then trying to get leverage by putting an 11mm socket over the stub and using extensions for length. I got one of two bolts out but the other wasn’t budging. RIP 11mm socket.
I got fed up in the end, moved the coolant pipes out the way and inserted my angle grinder into the space. That sorted it out pretty sharpish. Starter off. New bolts for the new one. Doing them up was much easier than undoing the old ones (at this point I thank my lucky stars that I have a later model with captive nuts and don't have to faff about trying to hold the nuts whilst doing up the bolts). The electrical connections are impossible to get wrong as they are different sizes, so that was easy. I reassembled the manifold (replaced the rubber boot with the huge hole in it – no idea how that hadn’t affected the idle), reconnected the fuel line and the battery and boom, problem solved! It starts on the button, hot or cold.
Please excuse the poor images. I didn't take them for display, they were purely to help me remember how it was supposed to go together. For future projects I shall take proper show-off pictures. If anyone's interested, that is.
My confidence peaking after the successful, albeit lengthy and expensive, rectification of my own cock up, I looked at the next job.
For some time the beemer had a bit of a starting issue. It would start first time every time cold, but once it was warm, if you turned it off and tried to start it again, it would just whirr and wouldn’t turn over. It sounded to my uneducated ear that the starter was spinning and not engaging the flywheel. Replacing the starter was the obvious solution to this.
If you read any forum post ever written about changing the starter on an E36, you very quickly get the idea that it is a total pain in the proverbial. It’s buried under the inlet manifold and under various coolant pipes etc. Undeterred, I think, ‘as long as I approach it methodically, write down what order I undo things and label everything, then I just have to reverse the steps to get it back together again.’ As it turns out, that was exactly the right approach. IIRC I followed a M3NACE video on YouTube, and carefully wrote down in my notebook each thing I undid or took off and labelled all the wires and tubes with duct tape and a sharpie. The inlet manifold came off with a little persuasion and I eventually got to the point where I could see the starter. Seeing the starter, and being able to reach the bolts to undo them are two very different things, however. I ended up cutting an E12 torx spanner down to a stub to get it in the space and then trying to get leverage by putting an 11mm socket over the stub and using extensions for length. I got one of two bolts out but the other wasn’t budging. RIP 11mm socket.
I got fed up in the end, moved the coolant pipes out the way and inserted my angle grinder into the space. That sorted it out pretty sharpish. Starter off. New bolts for the new one. Doing them up was much easier than undoing the old ones (at this point I thank my lucky stars that I have a later model with captive nuts and don't have to faff about trying to hold the nuts whilst doing up the bolts). The electrical connections are impossible to get wrong as they are different sizes, so that was easy. I reassembled the manifold (replaced the rubber boot with the huge hole in it – no idea how that hadn’t affected the idle), reconnected the fuel line and the battery and boom, problem solved! It starts on the button, hot or cold.
Please excuse the poor images. I didn't take them for display, they were purely to help me remember how it was supposed to go together. For future projects I shall take proper show-off pictures. If anyone's interested, that is.
No, this is the self indulgent waffle version for people who have too much time to kill.
If I had to summarise so far, it’d be:
Bought a ropey E36 a few years ago, didn’t know what to do with it, neglected it for a while, then got excited about fixing it, broke it, fixed it.
The story will continue, as will the waffle.
If I had to summarise so far, it’d be:
Bought a ropey E36 a few years ago, didn’t know what to do with it, neglected it for a while, then got excited about fixing it, broke it, fixed it.
The story will continue, as will the waffle.
buy_cheap_pay_later said:
No, this is the self indulgent waffle version for people who have too much time to kill.
If I had to summarise so far, it’d be:
Bought a ropey E36 a few years ago, didn’t know what to do with it, neglected it for a while, then got excited about fixing it, broke it, fixed it.
The story will continue, as will the waffle.
If I had to summarise so far, it’d be:
Bought a ropey E36 a few years ago, didn’t know what to do with it, neglected it for a while, then got excited about fixing it, broke it, fixed it.
The story will continue, as will the waffle.
I have lots of time to kill, but my dyslexia at times makes reading tricky.
Cool car though - As an E46 330ci (track car) owner, I wish I went for an E36 328i.
Keep up the good work
Court_S said:
Good work. I enjoyed your thread.
I’m far from a mechanic but I’ve enjoyed getting more involved over the last few years.
Thank you. I consider myself an enthusiastic amateur and will turn my hand to most things. If it goes wrong and no-one dies, it's all a learning experience. If someone does die then it's probably manslaughter.I’m far from a mechanic but I’ve enjoyed getting more involved over the last few years.
outnumbered said:
I'm enjoying it so far, keep waffling.
Thank you, I shall!Gallons Per Mile said:
Great write up! More pictures of car required to go along with the writing though 
Thank you. I was looking back through my phone and folders on the laptop etc and found very few pictures of it. I think I tend to be too busy skinning my knuckles and making a mess to take photos usually. I will definitely do better in future.Mcr325i said:
Excellent, well written and entertaining (to me) waffle.
Thank you.B'stard Child said:
Good words - a few pictures - great subject 
8/10 shows promise, will bookmark
Thanks for the kind words! Yes, more photos in future, but we've got a way to go yet to catch up to the present, so please bear with the sparse picture content for now.8/10 shows promise, will bookmark
integraf40 said:
Keep up the delicious work, have a Montreal Blue 328i touring myself that's a bit of a going concern at the moment So I'm watching with interest!
My work could be described as many things, but 'delicious' is certainly a new one!Pig benis said:
I have lots of time to kill, but my dyslexia at times makes reading tricky.
Cool car though - As an E46 330ci (track car) owner, I wish I went for an E36 328i.
Keep up the good work
buy_cheap_pay_later said:
The grass is always greener... I'd love to play with an E46 330ci. My brother used to have one a few years back and he still remembers it fondly, even after an Alfa GT and a Maserati GT Coupe.
The E46 330ci is an excellent car, superb on fuel, super smooth engine and they make a nice soundtrack. The downside for me (coming from turbo Jap cars) is until I stripped the car out, I found it to be very boring. Now mine has no interior, semi slick tyres, exhaust mods and a closer ratio diff, which has made it very entertaining to drive. The car cost £970 and I've spent circa £2.5k on modifications, I can't think of any other car which would be as much fun, rwd and reliable for £3.5k
Anyway, here was I complaining about too much to read and I've started to waffle.
Good thread OP.
The story continues...
I was really getting into this now. I was enjoying the challenge and the satisfaction of fixing problems. So, what next?
You may recall that I made a comment about the wiper arm lifting the rear edge of the bonnet. Well, whilst I was doing the starter replacement, I had to remove the scuttle panel, which exposed some of the wiper mechanism. I had previously noted a big lump of fibreglass joining the scuttle panel to the bulkhead, and had been far to scared to dig into it to see what horrors it concealed. However, since I had to remove the panel for this project, I had to break the fibreglass and discovered its purpose. It had been holding together (barely) the two parts of a snapped wiper mechanism. The slight change in geometry caused by this ‘repair’ had been causing the bonnet lift I mentioned.
I looked on the trusty source of all used parts (for me anyway) and bought a new mechanism for £30. The wiper mechanism on an E36 is one of those things that makes you think of ships in bottles, or elephants in fridges. ‘Surely it’s impossible to get that in there?’ Well, it’s not impossible. The old one came out ok, mainly because it was more flexible than it should have been. The new one needed to be carefully inserted at just the right angle, twisted at just the right point, the angle changed with the twist, then twisted the other way, re-angled, turned, persuaded and bribed. But it went it. Another problem solved. Wipers working perfectly and an unsightly lump of fibreglass removed from the picture. Not that aesthetics are the point, but it’s still satisfying.
The temporary absence of the scuttle panel also exposed the cover for the blower motor. Given that I had never been able to turn the blower up beyond about one third of its capability without it making a sound like a champion farter making a world record attempt, I decided to have a poke around whilst I had access. The cover was loose, so a few inches of duct tape later, all was well and I can blast myself with air in near silence. Again, very satisfying to make that annoyance go away. I am aware that some may cry ‘hypocrisy’ at my use of duct tape after I scoffed at the fibreglass ‘repair’ of the wiper mechanism, but I think there is a difference between neatly applied duct tape in a location that will probably never be seen again, and the application of a vomit of fibreglass in a visible location to bodge a component that could easily(ish) be replaced. *Shrug* Anyway, this is when I found the ball of mouse fun that had been on a spin cycle inside the blower fan, so out that came.
Now, at some point during all this fun, a six-inch crack had appeared at the bottom of the windscreen. This was annoying, but immediately made me think back to a time in the dim and distant past when I had tried to get Autoglass to replace the windscreen due to a chip (they couldn’t repair), and he said he couldn’t replace it either as there was rust bubbling up at the top of the screen and he couldn’t guarantee a seal given that he didn’t know what it looked like under there. That was disappointing at the time but perfectly understandable. So, although I was annoyed about the crack, and the cost of a new screen, there was a silver lining. If I could get the screen taken out, I could sort out the rust around the frame before the new one went in. Not to mention that the unrepairable chip had now been there for at least eight years by this stage.
I called a local firm, who came and whipped out the old one for me. I then set about masking up the hole (not a quick job), and cleaned up the frame as best I could. I ground off any rust I could see, treated with rust killer, filled the holes, primed and painted. Where it had bubbled up onto the roof my repair is pretty poor and you can see a dip, but I refer to my previous post on the subject – at least the rust has gone!
Note – never attempt DIY bodywork repair unless you don’t give a stuff what your paintwork ends up looking like. Or you’re some kind of Michelangelo.
The dudes came back, popped in my new screen, and it’s as good as new! Or not, really, but no rust and no crack makes for an improvement in my book.
I was really getting into this now. I was enjoying the challenge and the satisfaction of fixing problems. So, what next?
You may recall that I made a comment about the wiper arm lifting the rear edge of the bonnet. Well, whilst I was doing the starter replacement, I had to remove the scuttle panel, which exposed some of the wiper mechanism. I had previously noted a big lump of fibreglass joining the scuttle panel to the bulkhead, and had been far to scared to dig into it to see what horrors it concealed. However, since I had to remove the panel for this project, I had to break the fibreglass and discovered its purpose. It had been holding together (barely) the two parts of a snapped wiper mechanism. The slight change in geometry caused by this ‘repair’ had been causing the bonnet lift I mentioned.
I looked on the trusty source of all used parts (for me anyway) and bought a new mechanism for £30. The wiper mechanism on an E36 is one of those things that makes you think of ships in bottles, or elephants in fridges. ‘Surely it’s impossible to get that in there?’ Well, it’s not impossible. The old one came out ok, mainly because it was more flexible than it should have been. The new one needed to be carefully inserted at just the right angle, twisted at just the right point, the angle changed with the twist, then twisted the other way, re-angled, turned, persuaded and bribed. But it went it. Another problem solved. Wipers working perfectly and an unsightly lump of fibreglass removed from the picture. Not that aesthetics are the point, but it’s still satisfying.
The temporary absence of the scuttle panel also exposed the cover for the blower motor. Given that I had never been able to turn the blower up beyond about one third of its capability without it making a sound like a champion farter making a world record attempt, I decided to have a poke around whilst I had access. The cover was loose, so a few inches of duct tape later, all was well and I can blast myself with air in near silence. Again, very satisfying to make that annoyance go away. I am aware that some may cry ‘hypocrisy’ at my use of duct tape after I scoffed at the fibreglass ‘repair’ of the wiper mechanism, but I think there is a difference between neatly applied duct tape in a location that will probably never be seen again, and the application of a vomit of fibreglass in a visible location to bodge a component that could easily(ish) be replaced. *Shrug* Anyway, this is when I found the ball of mouse fun that had been on a spin cycle inside the blower fan, so out that came.
Now, at some point during all this fun, a six-inch crack had appeared at the bottom of the windscreen. This was annoying, but immediately made me think back to a time in the dim and distant past when I had tried to get Autoglass to replace the windscreen due to a chip (they couldn’t repair), and he said he couldn’t replace it either as there was rust bubbling up at the top of the screen and he couldn’t guarantee a seal given that he didn’t know what it looked like under there. That was disappointing at the time but perfectly understandable. So, although I was annoyed about the crack, and the cost of a new screen, there was a silver lining. If I could get the screen taken out, I could sort out the rust around the frame before the new one went in. Not to mention that the unrepairable chip had now been there for at least eight years by this stage.
I called a local firm, who came and whipped out the old one for me. I then set about masking up the hole (not a quick job), and cleaned up the frame as best I could. I ground off any rust I could see, treated with rust killer, filled the holes, primed and painted. Where it had bubbled up onto the roof my repair is pretty poor and you can see a dip, but I refer to my previous post on the subject – at least the rust has gone!
Note – never attempt DIY bodywork repair unless you don’t give a stuff what your paintwork ends up looking like. Or you’re some kind of Michelangelo.
The dudes came back, popped in my new screen, and it’s as good as new! Or not, really, but no rust and no crack makes for an improvement in my book.
Excellent write up !
Having owned 2 E36s....my first was a family car that belonged to my late Uncle, and he had owned it since nearly new: it was a 328 convertible auto.
He stopped driving and so I bought it from him at a fair price. It was a dark metallic purple (?) colour with 'aubergine ? full heated leather, and all the toys ( remarkable for a 1997 P reg car.
I guess if it had been a manual I would have kept it.....apart from the Nikasil block that is !
However, I had already decided to take the car on a European road trip, so I kept the car for mainly sentimental reasons.
Prior to that trip I also did a Track Day at Croft ( my first of several ) which emphasised that the auto box was not best suited to that task.
I then replaced the convertible for a W reg E36 318iS, which I really liked, and did a couple of track days with that car, proving that the smaller 4 cylinder lighter engine gave the car a better balance, if not so much power of course.
Apologies for derailing your thread....but I am now envious of your manual 238 coupe...!!
I may be tempted again!
Having owned 2 E36s....my first was a family car that belonged to my late Uncle, and he had owned it since nearly new: it was a 328 convertible auto.
He stopped driving and so I bought it from him at a fair price. It was a dark metallic purple (?) colour with 'aubergine ? full heated leather, and all the toys ( remarkable for a 1997 P reg car.
I guess if it had been a manual I would have kept it.....apart from the Nikasil block that is !
However, I had already decided to take the car on a European road trip, so I kept the car for mainly sentimental reasons.
Prior to that trip I also did a Track Day at Croft ( my first of several ) which emphasised that the auto box was not best suited to that task.
I then replaced the convertible for a W reg E36 318iS, which I really liked, and did a couple of track days with that car, proving that the smaller 4 cylinder lighter engine gave the car a better balance, if not so much power of course.
Apologies for derailing your thread....but I am now envious of your manual 238 coupe...!!
I may be tempted again!
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