The road-going racing car - Sam McKee's BMW E36 328i

[Hamster69]

Nice little Vid. I have been considering getting a gopro or something recently. It's a shame I didn't have one from the start, missed out on the evolution of my car really.

[JordanTurbo]

Good read this. Looking forward to getting mine on track, even though it's a wobbly soft top.

I have a spare drivers side fog including mounting bracket in the garage if you're after one. I also have a pair of clip in blanks if you wanted to remove the fogs altogether.

[croyde]

I love my E36 323. Bought it at 6 months old back in '98 and it's still with me. Brilliant car.

Cost me £18k back then and probably worth £500 if I sold now, if I'm lucky. Not selling as I have just bought 4 new tyres at over £400 the lot

[g3org3y]

Good thread, thanks for the updates.

McSam said:

It also has no cruise, no steering wheel controls, no parking sensors, no sunroof, no auto wipers (or even an adjustable intermittent), no nice soft-touch plastics, nowhere to put your shades, the air con doesn't work.. None of the things I'm used to.

Not strictly true.

From the BMW Manual:

manual said:

The length of the interval is varied automatically according to the car's actual road speed.
If a headlight cleaning system is fitted, the driver can also vary the wipe interval as follows:
- Move the lever briefly from 0 (off) to 1 (intermittent) and back to 0.
- The time which you allow to elapse before switching on again (from 0 to 1) is the subsequent intermittent wipe interval (maximum 25 seconds).
This interval setting is cancelled if you return the lever to 0 or when the ignition is turned off.

HTH

And it does work - on both my E36s. Obviously expect your track times to tumble as a result.

[McSam]

Thanks all! I've been through my share of E36 build threads, both before choosing this car and for inspiration as I go on, and while this is nowhere near the calibre of some I'm glad it's being read

Jordan, many thanks, please feel free to drop me an email (since your page tells me you don't accept PMs).

croyde said:

I love my E36 323. Bought it at 6 months old back in '98 and it's still with me. Brilliant car.

Cost me £18k back then and probably worth £500 if I sold now, if I'm lucky. Not selling as I have just bought 4 new tyres at over £400 the lot

Great to hear of a lifetime car like that, I really love the idea and would like to do it myself some day - but for now I'm rather limited to my pre-loved examples! Keep it going


Thanks for all the info, cmoose - your car looks a great example! What seats are those, and how much effort were they to fit? As much as I like the sports leather front seats I have now, I can't help thinking they'd be better off fetching money on eBay than weighing this car down! Z3 rack is on my to do list, part number is very valuable info, thanks for that.

After previous advice, I already have a set of E46 front caliper carriers to fit 300mm discs, as soon as the current parts need replacing, on they go. As an added bonus, the discs are only a couple of quid extra and the pads are the same cost!

As for discs, I've decided to give Brembo MAX a go. The rears need replacing, the Brembos cost scarcely more than boggo parts and seem to be reasonably well reviewed so I'll get a set fitted along with Redstuff pads. Nice to know you never had any issues with standard discs on track, I'm hoping so long as my pads are good enough not to overheat, I'll find the same!

g3org3y said:

Intermittent wiper info

Top bearding, well I never! Since my E46 has a thumbwheel-type switch on the stalk, and this doesn't, I presumed there was no adjustment but that's very cool, completely manual control and you can change it on the fly too! I'll give it a go. Could actually come in handy on track, when there's enough rain that you need an occasional sweep but not enough to use any normal intermittent setting, would save me wasting concentration doing it manually.

Edited by McSam on Sunday 5th October 22:07

[g3org3y]

McSam said:

Thanks all! I've been through my share of E36 build threads, both before choosing this car and for inspiration as I go on, and while this is nowhere near the calibre of some I'm glad it's being read

I keep forgetting about the Reader's Cars section.

There's a wealth of info plus I really appreciate when people spend the effort to take/upload pics and do write ups as I know how time consuming it can be.

McSam said:

As for discs, I've decided to give Brembo MAX a go. The rears need replacing, the Brembos cost scarcely more than boggo parts and seem to be reasonably well reviewed so I'll get a set fitted along with Redstuff pads. Nice to know you never had any issues with standard discs on track, I'm hoping so long as my pads are good enough not to overheat, I'll find the same!

Are they the ones with the grooves?

If so I used a set (from GSF) on my E36 325 years ago:


Coupled them with Pagid Fast Road pads. They were effective (on the road, never tracked) but the pads were crazy dusty!

McSam said:

g3org3y said:

Intermittent wiper info

Top bearding, well I never! Since my E46 has a thumbwheel-type switch on the stalk, and this doesn't, I presumed there was no adjustment but that's very cool, completely manual control and you can change it on the fly too! I'll give it a go. Could actually come in handy on track, when there's enough rain that you need an occasional sweep but not enough to use any normal intermittent setting, would save me wasting concentration doing it manually.

No problem. There's quite a few nice features on the E36 which actually make it quite habitable.

McSam said:

I drove it to work for a week and could see how, when you're tired or had a long day or just plain can't be arsed, it would annoy you.

In other words.. It's perfect.

Try driving an E30 cabrio as a daily! The E36 is ruddy luxury by comparison.

The E36 presents very nice blend of old school mechanicals and comfort. Leather, aircon - what more do you want? Everyone knows that auto lights and auto wipers are for the mentally feeble. The only feature I'd like is cruise control and that's because of the reasonably frequent drives I do from London to Scotland.

[Hamster69]

Morning.

I have been through a few sets of pads on track now. Brembo's, Ferrodo DS3000 and now performance friction. I can not rate the Performance friction carbon metallic pad highly enough. Much cheaper than the Ferrodo's. Much less dust, no fade that I have experienced and great stopping. Discs are your choice. I found standard brembo a to be fine.

[McSam]

g3org3y said:

McSam said:

I drove it to work for a week and could see how, when you're tired or had a long day or just plain can't be arsed, it would annoy you.

In other words.. It's perfect.

Try driving an E30 cabrio as a daily! The E36 is ruddy luxury by comparison.

The E36 presents very nice blend of old school mechanicals and comfort. Leather, aircon - what more do you want? Everyone knows that auto lights and auto wipers are for the mentally feeble. The only feature I'd like is cruise control and that's because of the reasonably frequent drives I do from London to Scotland.

I can imagine I think I'd be happy enough using it as a daily, but it's amazing how much it highlights the huge gap between it and my E46, which feels like a lovely wafty barge by comparison.

The only trouble is, both cars have the same steering wheel, except in the E46 where the vast majority of my miles are done, it has audio and cruise buttons on it - so in the E36 I often find myself going for switches that aren't there!

Glad to hear you had good experience with the Brembo Max discs, especially as some deliveries turned up this week:



These will be going on the rear this weekend, hopefully along with braided hoses all round!

Hamster69 said:

Morning.

I have been through a few sets of pads on track now. Brembo's, Ferrodo DS3000 and now performance friction. I can not rate the Performance friction carbon metallic pad highly enough. Much cheaper than the Ferrodo's. Much less dust, no fade that I have experienced and great stopping. Discs are your choice. I found standard brembo a to be fine.

Thanks for the tip, that sounds quite impressive. I've just had a quick look and found these, are they the same compound you've used? If so, scarcely any more than the EBC pads so I might give them a look next!

[Hamster69]

Yes the Z rated ones are what I have been using. I will keep on using them to. I haven't used EBC myself, but friends with track E36s have, they then used PFCM and won't go back. Careful with bimmerworld. The prices look good but it's based in the US and I think the delivery would be a lot with import tax to I would think.
I found the fronts here,
http://www.part-box.com/product_info.php?products_...
And rears here
http://www.part-box.com/product_info.php?products_...
You can cross reference them for yourself on the table at bimmerworld.

[Hamster69]

Or if you have an M3 the fronts would be.
http://www.part-box.com/product_info.php?products_...

[McSam]

Ah, OK - I was just taking a quick glance to see what the prices were like, but going further the postage alone is £37 from them and as you say, there's a risk of customs charges too. Many thanks for the UK-based supplier!

The brand names are often thrown around, but sourcing these things can be tricky. Perhaps that's why EBC are so common, they're very easy to get hold of here.

[VinceFox]

Back to that air filter...

Cheap trick is to buy a nsf fog, smash the glass out and epoxy/carbon fibre a feed through. Get the filter on a smooth bent elbow and run it down to sit just behind. You'll be getting pretty bad heat soak atm.

You can make a dave f style wall instead, but the bottom end response is better the first way.

Edited by VinceFox on Thursday 9th October 22:36

[McSam]

I was eventually planning to get a nice bend in the air feed pipe and run a duct from the bumper, using either a takeoff from the brake ducts or removing the foglight, but now you've pointed it out, a foglight shell might make a really good, well-fitted and semi-discreet inlet, I like that idea!

I have an aluminium heatshield I made for the E46 (Dave F type of design), but it doesn't really match properly onto this car - everything is mounted in slightly different places relative to the suspension turret - and I'm loath to cut it up to make it fit.

Surprisingly, the 270° wraparound aluminium jobbie I got from ASH seems to do a decent enough job. When on the E46 without a heatshield, you could really feel the filter surface was hot even after light use, whereas here after a session on track it was absolutely fine. I appreciate this is an extremely rough gauge of what might be happening to the inlet temperature, but as this car has no OBD2 port I can't use my scanner to monitor the temp properly, which is annoying!

I'm planning to dyno the car completely standard anyway, to get a baseline before any engine modifications are made, but while I'm at it I would also test with this inlet system to investigate the effects. From inside the car it feels golden, but I'd like some data.

[carpetsoiler]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I'd agree with that. M50 intake manifold = an absolute must with the M52 engine. Did another one the weekend just gone, so nice feeling the difference before and after.

[McSam]

Oh, please don't misunderstand - I don't think I've gained power, no chance, even the response doesn't seem to have changed much. What I want to confirm is that I haven't lost too much power to justify the awesome noise it makes

[VinceFox]

McSam said:

Oh, please don't misunderstand - I don't think I've gained power, no chance, even the response doesn't seem to have changed much. What I want to confirm is that I haven't lost too much power to justify the awesome noise it makes

I did all this stuff to a 328 a few years back. My take was that a large conical with a wall round it made a great sound and was better higher up the revs but lost out lower down compared to a standard box with the baffle out. My personal experience was a smooth hardpipe locating the conical down behind the bumper and the fog air intake gave the best all round result as far as filter induction alone is concerned.

The 325 inlet is also a big step up for these, it's such a shame they weren't standard.

[McSam]

I'll definitely have a play around with the intake, there may be some slight loss of low-end torque but I drive the car very rarely so it's hard to be sure. In any case, it's never really below 3500-4000rpm on track. An M50 inlet manifold is on the list but as you can see, I'm operating on an extremely tight budget and focusing on everything but power first!

On that note, rear brakes looking good:


Annoyingly, while I managed to get the right-hand rear bleed nipple to crack off with judicious application of molegrips, the left-hand one is well buggered and even if I tried to file flats onto it, they'd be tiny. So I'm going to borrow the services of a mate with a welder, stick a nut on the end and try to get it off that way. If that's no good, there are some replacement calipers floating around for £20-30. I really want to get at least the fluid changed and preferably braided hoses on before Bedford.

[g3org3y]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I keep toying with the idea of this upgrade but if I'm honest I'm a little concerned re sacrificing the day to day driveability. A lot of my driving is around town stop/start and that torque allows you to be lazy. Wouldn't want to use that for a mod I might only benefit from during 'enthusiastic' driving.

[McSam]

If experiences I've read (and the dyno plots I've seen) are to be believed, a decent remap sees all the mid-range torque restored with no loss to the greatly improved top end! For this car, with it being track-only, I wouldn't mind so much but raising the rev limit to 7300rpm or even higher seems common and that'd be nice.


Anyway! We had a very successful outing at Bedford Autodrome on 1st November, using the GT layout, which I really like. Having done Palmersport three times all of the corners are familiar, but stringing the best bits of the four circuits together into one big lap is great. The day was run by Javelin who were very good, we only had to queue to get out on track once, there were no red flags and any suspect driving seemed to be dealt with pretty swiftly. The weather was awesome for this time of year, a bit damp first thing but drying up into a lovely sunny day!



The car was fantastic. We got over 150 miles done without any issue, it hasn't even used any oil and we drove back on that same set of Kumhos that just won't die! I'm very happy with the balance at the moment, it has perhaps a little too much understeer off-power, but as soon as you start opening the throttle it becomes neutral and transitions really nicely to playing funny buggers if you so choose. That gentle understeer proves useful for tuition, and I shared the driving with my fiancée, who acquitted herself very well for her first time on track! She loved the day and I don't think I'll struggle to find someone to come along on any future events

Looking decidedly filthy in the pit lane mid-morning:



And, of course, here you can find a little highlights reel from the day.

I realised when going through the footage that I didn't string together a single quick lap, but a traffic-free one at 8/10ths or so was 3:22, so there's a benchmark for future comparison.

Job list:

• Braided brake hoses! I keep putting this job off, but man alive do they need doing, there is so much sponge in the pedal and it does not inspire confidence. No fade with the Redstuff pads, though.
• Solve a slightly strange faint metallic clunk when the suspension articulates into a hard left turn, followed by a juddering in long lefts. Suspecting ball joint or bushes somewhere.
• A new set of boots: the car feels quite tyre-limited, generating no roll whatsoever but giving up and lower speeds than you might expect. Semi-slicks should solve that nicely!

[wackojacko]

Nice one fella.

I went to look at this car with James when he bought it, one of the cleanest 36 shells I had seen.

I may have an M50 manifold in the shed I'll have a look and let you know.