1997 M3 - Lean mean fat grillin' machine

[Jdesign]

rampelsauce said:

Planning on welding the diff and doing a full rocket bunny kit

Full build this winter I see.

I cant wait.

[damnboy037]

E36, yes!

[YoungCR]

Hell yeah! Nice color

[SteelBlue]

The GOAT color.

[rampelsauce]

Aw thanks fellas. I'm pretty proud of this purchase.

[damnboy037]

Looks stock, it also needs a molding refresh

[rampelsauce]

So, drove it two days before a small but annoying problem reared its ugly head: fucking ignition cylinder anti theft. It fired up but when I turned the key it felt funny. When I tried to turn it off, it was locked in. Then it did the stupid anti theft 360. So I killed it with the battery Un-hooked and pulled the big plug under the hood. I'll be doing the temporary fix to it, but will be ordering a new key and cylinder. 

Other than that little issue, car is great. Rust free (like extremely rust free) and bone stock other than suspension and a shitty aftermarket radio. Will be addressing a few things over the winter, mainly front diff bolt, emissions and ASC delete, interior work, and I'll be looking into a GT wing and adjustable front splitter. 

I'll update this sometimes as work proceeds to keep a log.  

Here's a photo from Tuesday car night where I had to leave it running for the short time I was there, due to the issue mentioned above.

[YoungCR]

How many miles on the car? Paint looks to be in great condition.

[rampelsauce]

YoungCR said:

How many miles on the car? Paint looks to be in great condition. 

151k. Exterior presents well, but has its fair share of scratches and chips, so it won't be winning any concours any time soon. The mileage is most apparent in the interior. I'll do a fairly complete photo documentation soon. The only place the mileage isn't apparent is the drive line. Car is super quiet, runs drives and shifts wonderfully. Brand new Michelin PS4S on all four corners. Overall it is the start of something totally worth the time and money.

[rampelsauce]

Well, it's been fun but it's time to park the M3 for winter. 

I did get rid of the shitty aftermarket radio and installed an old C33 I had laying around. I have some good tapes for the car, so Ill be hunting down a casette tape holder for the center console. So far thats really all I've done in terms work on the car. It runs and drives amazing.

Snapped a quick pic awhile back of the current lineup. 

After the M3 is parked and I have a minute, I'll be dropping the entire rear subframe to get ahead of e36 problems. First, front diff bolt will be swapped out for a 14mm and I'll be going with stiffer diff bushings (probably condor). Next a little weld reinforcement because why not. Also I'll be doing some upgrades to make things a little less compliant while trying to keep the car street friendly. I'm doing my best to stay away from poly bushings and looking more into the solid rubber pieces for most stuff, condor plastic bushings for some stuff, and maaaaaybe poly inserts for the rubber bushings where applicable. I have a bunch of other plans but the rear subframe will be first because I have most of that figured out. I have a lot of shopping carts loaded on a lot of websites.  Just waiting to pull the trigger when all the end of year sales start kicking off.

[rampelsauce]

This destroys racecar parts.

This is Danette, my fairly new daughter person. She first started moving around in the womb on a parade lap around Road America in the e91, so hopefully that's foreshadowing.

M3 isn't in storage yet because she popped out the day I was going to take it to my storage unit. Also, if anyone needs to store anything for winter let me know, I have all kinds of space, unit is located in Port Washington. 

Also, I'll be offering my tig welding services over the winter. I'm setting up to work on various things for the M3 (like reinforcements, exhaust, etc) so I'd like to make some extra scratch while I'm off work on FMLA with my wife and daughter. Let me know if you want to bring your parts to Glendale and have me strike an arc on em.

No real updates on the M3, sales haven't started on parts so haven't bought anything. Hopefully I can drop the rear sub shortly after parking it so I can do good things with that.

[Boris3]

Congratulations on the new "pit crew" addition!

[YoungCR]

Congrats!! Future race car driver through osmosis

[SteelBlue]

I was in the womb at the 93' Indy 500 2 months before being born, seemed to have worked for me.