My 1997 M3 (That I'm not going to part out anymore)
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Back home from school, just ordered BC coilovers and some other stuff for the M3 thanks to Pat
It was beautiful out so I washed the car
I decided to test out one of my new jack pad adapters that I was going to use to put the car up on jack stands so I could do all my rear end work. I bought them because the rear jack pads had rusted at the base, so I didn't trust jacking on them from the bottom of the car. I thought that because I was lifting above the rusted section with the "e36 jack hole" it would be fine
Well it wasn't fine and when the car was about 2 inches off the ground I heard a bang and it gave out.
The whole jack pad/hole thing in the body has crumpled upwards and torn from the body/ bowed the body out above the skirt cover.
I was going to be doing basically the whole rear end soon (subframe bushings, rtabs, axels, control arms, etc.) and I literally have no way to support the car unless I'm jacking by the diff, and that wouldn't allow me to get the subframe out or even move the diff to put my new control arms in.
With the prices of clean M3's these days I doubt I can afford to get another M3 without selling all of my parts I have for this one, unless I save for the next few years. I'm probably going to end up with a stock M of some sort hopefully by the end of this summer. I'm selling everything e36 I have and a detailed for sale ad for the car will be posted soon for whoever wants to part it.
RIP
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Sucks that you have to call it quits on this, would you like to sell me the LTWs (hopefully for the same price you got them)? I have back problems from shoveling & the vaders are killing me.
They will be going on a 99 m3 with 103k miles, very clean.
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Sucks that you have to call it quits on this, would you like to sell me the LTWs (hopefully for the same price you got them)? I have back problems from shoveling & the vaders are killing me.
They will be going on a 99 m3 with 103k miles, very clean.
I'm trying to figure out if I can keep them first
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Might as well pick up from here.
Got my dad to drive me down to Chicago at 8:00pm last night to check out a "rebuilt" SMG e46 M3 coupe that was $5900. The guy told me it was a rebuilt title, until he sent a pic of the title and I saw that progressive total loss insurance was the last title holder. One $39 carfax later I found out the car hasn't been registered for 3 years because it's still a salvage title. This dude had it registered with plates on it and everything and it was still a salvage title car that progressive had only signed off on. Sketchy. Once I confronted him he told me that he knows a guy who will brand the title anything I wanted for $100 lmfao. Told my dad to turn around.
Literally 5 minutes after turning around I found a 98 M3 coupe 5-speed with 153k miles in Chicago on Autotrader. The car was at a dealer and was just shipped here from Georgia. Was titled in California and Washington from the day it was sold until 2015. Not a spec of rust
We turned around, got to Chicago at 1am, and by 11am this morning I was on my way back in my new car, running late to work by 2 hours.
Looks pretty familiar. Cosmosschwartz and Mulberry 🤨
Will have a back interior soon
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I'm glad this had a happy ending!
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I'm glad this had a happy ending!
I get to use my BC's and all the parts you ordered me!
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Quick little update
The Mulberry interior in the car was disgusting to me both physically and mentally so it had to go. I have a full black interior, the LTW seats and a 99 wheel to go in. Lots of random stuff was broken in the interior of this car, and It's nice because I can replace it immediately with stuff from my old M3.
e36 interiors are super easy to pull and put in
Doesn't look to bad here, but it was. The power vaders sit much higher then normal vaders even at the lowest setting I'm pretty sure, they felt really weird. I like sitting close to the floor.
They weigh probably 80lbs and I'm really happy I can get them out of the car right away. I think I will be shaving off an easy 100lbs between swapping the seats out, removing the spare and removing the sound deadening.
I wasn't planning on removing the sound deadening, but I noticed that the drivers side floor pan was wet. Most of the sound deadening just came right up because moisture was underneath it. I wasn't going to mess around water and my floor pans so I decided to pull almost all of the sound deadening out. Thankfully there is still absolutely no rust, but I have to find where the water was getting in. I'm saving that for tomorrow, doesn't look like or smell like coolant. New interior wont go in until I'm certain it's not leaking anymore
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Update
Did a few things the past week, I found out where my interior water leak is coming in. I first cleaned my cowl and cowl drains in the firewall, and unfortunately the water is coming in where the AC/Heat unit goes through the firewall. There is a gasket that goes between the firewall and the unit and mine has failed apparently. When water goes into the cowl under the windshield, most drains out like it should but a good portion leaks past the gasket into the cabin. This is a stupid big job, and now I have to get my AC released and drain my coolant as well as remove my whole dash and dash bars to remove the unit
Also the foam gasket I had to order was $44...
Anyway, for now I have to wait over 10 days for my gasket to come from Germany. Most places wouldn't ship it until late June.
I'm still going to move forward with the car and just keep it out of the rain until my gasket comes.
I put my glass headlights in and aligned my front end up the other day
My shifter was supperrr sloppy and hard to find gears, I found out that it's possible to replace the shift lever bushing from the top so that was a good start. Feels much better and is tight, but 3rd gear is pretty hard to distinguish from 5th. The shift linkage will need further work, my previous M3 shifter felt much better I want that feeling again
After I picked up the car from Chicago, the car started Idling like shit pretty much right after I got home. I found that the ICV hose had cracked in 4 places where it connected to the intake. While I was at the junkyard I cut a chunk of ICV hose from a e36 and cut off the cracked part of mine and made this. This seems to work great, and I made sure it doesn't hit my throttle cable. I wasn't about to pull my intake manifold...
3.5in maf came on this car for absolutely no reason also
No pics, but my LTW seats wouldn't just plug into my new M3 because the seatbelt plugs are different on a 98.5+, so yesterday night I swapped pyro seatbelt tensioners from my vaders onto my LTW seats that had mechanical tensioners. It was absolutely horrible and involved me having to constantly remove and replace my 700lb electric vaders in the car so I could adjust them to swap bolts around from the seat frames. It took forever, but if you take the time to swap everything over the seat frames are the same. Managed to stay airbag light free
Finally, today I threw in my rear BC coilovers and leaned how to set preload on the springs and adjust the shocks. Never had nice suspension before, so that was fun.
Deja vu, basically looks like were I was at with my old car lmao
Final rear ride height, digging the wing.
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Did a few things this past week, hopefully I can offer more technical updates soon haha
I'm a huge fan of vinyl windshield banners, DTM or Supertouring style
I went to the craft store looking for vinyl that was the length of a windshield, it just so happens that Joanne Fabric sell 4ft by 12in strips of vinyl in every color for those Cricket cake and vinyl machines, $9.99
Wide enough to have up to 8in of reduced visibility
After my exhaust gaskets came, I threw on my Billy Boat catback that I picked up from @Rekpoint
It was actually pretty hard getting that right pipe to slide off of the midpipe, I didn't know they slide into eachother.
yea, thats a jack and 4 jackstands to support just the rear of the car.
️I want to not cut corners with this car, but here I am cutting corners. Instead of buying fog light deletes, I just prepped and painted my fog lights because I had some color matched paint laying around. I did this because my fog lights aren't OEM, and it was free basically. If I wanna go back I'll buy nice ones. I also removed the bulbs so I don't accidentally turn the lights on.
No hanging plugs too
After wet sanding and installed, they need to be adjusted along with the bumper still.
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keep in mind that I make custom vinyl decals for cheap, including windshield banners. Check out my facebook page ... Rage Drift Designs ... for some pics of previous work I have done. I give a WIBIMMERS discount too.
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keep in mind that I make custom vinyl decals for cheap, including windshield banners. Check out my facebook page ... Rage Drift Designs ... for some pics of previous work I have done. I give a WIBIMMERS discount too.
+1, you do great work!
Dan
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