3rd Time Lucky; E36 M3 Evolution Saloon
Discussion
Update time if anyone's still reading! This will be a long one so I may split it up a bit.
My adventures in oil cooler land didn't really go so well, with me trying to source another and encountering a psycho eBay breaker! I ended up being sent the wrong one, which the guy then reneged on his offer to refund if wrong and this then descended into wild threats and accusations from the nutter once I opened a Paypal case.
Anyhow, I ended up buying a brand new one from GSF once I was able to get one delivered using the 35% off promo code.
Before fitting that though, I was part way through the work in the engine bay. I set about swapping out the FPR, cleaning the ICV and replacing the remaining hoses. The FPR wasn't specifically necessary but I felt that it was worth swapping out while the inlet was off.
Removed:
New one on plus a tricky silicone hose that was only just long enough after a slight miscalculation!:
ICV looks like some kind of grenade from Call of Duty!
Gave that a good clean with carb cleaner then put it back on, along with new hoses:
Next up, I removed the viscous fan!:
Looks like there's been a bit of contact with the radiator at some point. I expect to find damaged or extremely worn out engine mounts when I finally replace them:
As I have aircon, I have also fitted the lower temp fan switch from a 318i to use the aircon fan for engine cooling without the need for the viscous. Now, I get that some may wonder why I am keeping the aircon and all that I can say just now is that I want the car to be easily cooled/heated as I'd like to do a couple of 'Ring trips and Spa etc. at some point. When I get to the point that I'm trying to find ways to go faster, aircon removal and an electric radiator fan may come to the fore.
Somehow I bought the wrong type of fan switch from ECP:
That was months ago though, so I had to buy another. But there were none in stock unless I went down to Sheffield for it. So I did!
Here it is alongside the original from the car:
Fitting involves slicing a bit off the connector plug, but that's all there is to it. A good mod.
My adventures in oil cooler land didn't really go so well, with me trying to source another and encountering a psycho eBay breaker! I ended up being sent the wrong one, which the guy then reneged on his offer to refund if wrong and this then descended into wild threats and accusations from the nutter once I opened a Paypal case.
Anyhow, I ended up buying a brand new one from GSF once I was able to get one delivered using the 35% off promo code.
Before fitting that though, I was part way through the work in the engine bay. I set about swapping out the FPR, cleaning the ICV and replacing the remaining hoses. The FPR wasn't specifically necessary but I felt that it was worth swapping out while the inlet was off.
Removed:
New one on plus a tricky silicone hose that was only just long enough after a slight miscalculation!:
ICV looks like some kind of grenade from Call of Duty!
Gave that a good clean with carb cleaner then put it back on, along with new hoses:
Next up, I removed the viscous fan!:
Looks like there's been a bit of contact with the radiator at some point. I expect to find damaged or extremely worn out engine mounts when I finally replace them:
As I have aircon, I have also fitted the lower temp fan switch from a 318i to use the aircon fan for engine cooling without the need for the viscous. Now, I get that some may wonder why I am keeping the aircon and all that I can say just now is that I want the car to be easily cooled/heated as I'd like to do a couple of 'Ring trips and Spa etc. at some point. When I get to the point that I'm trying to find ways to go faster, aircon removal and an electric radiator fan may come to the fore.
Somehow I bought the wrong type of fan switch from ECP:
That was months ago though, so I had to buy another. But there were none in stock unless I went down to Sheffield for it. So I did!
Here it is alongside the original from the car:
Fitting involves slicing a bit off the connector plug, but that's all there is to it. A good mod.
Unfortunately my coolant looked like this:
Then I discovered this:
Quite annoyed, I ordered a replacement hard pipe and swapped it out, taking a bunch of things apart that I'd recently put back onto the car!
The oil filter housing was next, and I removed that to fit the oil thermostat diverter blank. This will help keep oil temps lower due to the oil being routed through the cooler all of the time.
The thermostat:
Blanked:
Side by side:
After putting the filter housing back on with a new gasket, the shiny new oil cooler was installed:
That was nice to get sorted finally!
The next part involves a coolant flush and the completion of the hoses plus a few other bits. I'll post that in the morning as I'm absolutely knackered!
Then I discovered this:
Quite annoyed, I ordered a replacement hard pipe and swapped it out, taking a bunch of things apart that I'd recently put back onto the car!
The oil filter housing was next, and I removed that to fit the oil thermostat diverter blank. This will help keep oil temps lower due to the oil being routed through the cooler all of the time.
The thermostat:
Blanked:
Side by side:
After putting the filter housing back on with a new gasket, the shiny new oil cooler was installed:
That was nice to get sorted finally!
The next part involves a coolant flush and the completion of the hoses plus a few other bits. I'll post that in the morning as I'm absolutely knackered!
ellipsis said:
Great work so far! And a real eye opener to anyone considering undertaking such a project.
Will definitely be worth it in the end
Cheers, and I certainly hope so. If I had known what I know now, I may have bought a completed Compact Cup car or something! Could have gone M3 power later but I thought I was doing the smart thing and just getting the M3 now!Will definitely be worth it in the end
So from there, all the focus was on that gammy coolant. I removed the thermostat, housing and the water pump, then replaced with a new Meyle water pump:
Now, unfortunately the water pump wasn't as good a fit as the one I removed. Having checked over the removed one, I ended up cleaning it up and putting it back on. The new Meyle one leaked where the seal was between it and the thermostat housing, plus the metal hard pipe out of the back of the stat housing also leaked. I found that all the pissing about trying to get the bolts to line up through the stat housing to the water pump had basically torn an o-ring on the hard pipe and warped the other. Great!
As the old pump also had a metal impeller I decided to just reuse it:
Once this was on, I set about pressure flushing the crap out of the cooling system. I used a garden hose and blasted as much water through as possible and cleaned out both the radiator and the pipes around the block. I removed the block drain plug and let it run out of there.
During removal of the cooling bits, the TPS had to come off. Unforunately it had really knackered screws on it!:
Replaced these with new:
I also then added a couple of new radiator silicone hoses but seem to have failed to take a shot of them. I'm really happy with the quality of the Roose Sport hoses. They really are a nice bit of kit.
During all of this work, it was playing on my mind that I should have compression tested the engine before I took anything apart. I was eager to get back into a position where I could do this and find out if I had a solid base to go forward with, despite its 156k miles!
I decided to use the Triple QX 5w-40 fully synth oil for now as I can flush the engine with it and it will only be running on my drive at the moment. I added a magnetic sump plug. Will be interesting to see if anything turns up on this. Hopefully not!:
I got the oil filled up, put in a load of Comma Xstream G48 coolant and bought a new Bosch S5 110 battery. That thing is huge! I will want a lightweight battery eventually but we're not there yet and I need something solid and reliable in the meantime.
I put the the inlet back on and got all the hoses attached, which was fun, and I connected everything underneath. The induction kit went back on and the engine was finally all back together again. With much trepidation, I went to start it....
Lots of cranking, but no firing. Balls. I decided to go out and get a bit of fresh fuel and give that a try. After a nice little round trip, I walked through my gate and it suddenly hit me: Didn't I unplug the fuel pump a while back?
Yes, yes I did.
Doh. So I then put the fuel in, hooked the pump back up and gave it a go. It started straight away! And boy, was it good to see/hear it running again. I ended up leaving it that night as it was too late for doing a compression test. The next time I fired it up in daylight was when I realised it had the coolant leak between the water pump and thermostat housing. Once I fixed that, we were good to go.
I removed the cover on top of the engine and was pleased to see six identical coils, rather than a mix and match assortment:
Plugs:
I replaced the plugs with some NGK PKR7A that I got cheaply via M3Cutters.
I was quite nervous about doing the compression test. The shell is a bit rough ont he car so I knew that if the engine was in a bad state I'd basically flushed thousands down the drain.
But my results were as follows:
Cyl 1: 174psi
Cyl 2: 175psi
Cyl 3: 175psi
Cyl 4: 171psi
Cyl 5: 174psi
Cyl 6: 172psi
Not quite as high as I had hoped but still very healthy and all very close to one another. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and I've pretty much decided that I will track the car for this year then I will probably consider a winter rebuild next year.
That effectively brings us up to date. I need to buy some ARP rod bolts and a set of King Race bearings next, as well as arranging to have the front crossmember powdercoated. That will allow me to finish working under the engine and get the engine mounts and new front wishbones on and that will be another step forward.
Cheers for reading.
Now, unfortunately the water pump wasn't as good a fit as the one I removed. Having checked over the removed one, I ended up cleaning it up and putting it back on. The new Meyle one leaked where the seal was between it and the thermostat housing, plus the metal hard pipe out of the back of the stat housing also leaked. I found that all the pissing about trying to get the bolts to line up through the stat housing to the water pump had basically torn an o-ring on the hard pipe and warped the other. Great!
As the old pump also had a metal impeller I decided to just reuse it:
Once this was on, I set about pressure flushing the crap out of the cooling system. I used a garden hose and blasted as much water through as possible and cleaned out both the radiator and the pipes around the block. I removed the block drain plug and let it run out of there.
During removal of the cooling bits, the TPS had to come off. Unforunately it had really knackered screws on it!:
Replaced these with new:
I also then added a couple of new radiator silicone hoses but seem to have failed to take a shot of them. I'm really happy with the quality of the Roose Sport hoses. They really are a nice bit of kit.
During all of this work, it was playing on my mind that I should have compression tested the engine before I took anything apart. I was eager to get back into a position where I could do this and find out if I had a solid base to go forward with, despite its 156k miles!
I decided to use the Triple QX 5w-40 fully synth oil for now as I can flush the engine with it and it will only be running on my drive at the moment. I added a magnetic sump plug. Will be interesting to see if anything turns up on this. Hopefully not!:
I got the oil filled up, put in a load of Comma Xstream G48 coolant and bought a new Bosch S5 110 battery. That thing is huge! I will want a lightweight battery eventually but we're not there yet and I need something solid and reliable in the meantime.
I put the the inlet back on and got all the hoses attached, which was fun, and I connected everything underneath. The induction kit went back on and the engine was finally all back together again. With much trepidation, I went to start it....
Lots of cranking, but no firing. Balls. I decided to go out and get a bit of fresh fuel and give that a try. After a nice little round trip, I walked through my gate and it suddenly hit me: Didn't I unplug the fuel pump a while back?
Yes, yes I did.
Doh. So I then put the fuel in, hooked the pump back up and gave it a go. It started straight away! And boy, was it good to see/hear it running again. I ended up leaving it that night as it was too late for doing a compression test. The next time I fired it up in daylight was when I realised it had the coolant leak between the water pump and thermostat housing. Once I fixed that, we were good to go.
I removed the cover on top of the engine and was pleased to see six identical coils, rather than a mix and match assortment:
Plugs:
I replaced the plugs with some NGK PKR7A that I got cheaply via M3Cutters.
I was quite nervous about doing the compression test. The shell is a bit rough ont he car so I knew that if the engine was in a bad state I'd basically flushed thousands down the drain.
But my results were as follows:
Cyl 1: 174psi
Cyl 2: 175psi
Cyl 3: 175psi
Cyl 4: 171psi
Cyl 5: 174psi
Cyl 6: 172psi
Not quite as high as I had hoped but still very healthy and all very close to one another. I breathed a huge sigh of relief and I've pretty much decided that I will track the car for this year then I will probably consider a winter rebuild next year.
That effectively brings us up to date. I need to buy some ARP rod bolts and a set of King Race bearings next, as well as arranging to have the front crossmember powdercoated. That will allow me to finish working under the engine and get the engine mounts and new front wishbones on and that will be another step forward.
Cheers for reading.
Well here we are, just over a year after buying the M3. And it still hasn't moved 
I'm now getting very frustrated with it. There's still so much to do, and I just want to drive it. It's very tough seeing everyone else enjoying theirs and doing trackdays and being six months past the point where I thought we'd be doing them!
Anyway, it's about time for a little update. I picked up a set of 17x8 Z4 alloys as a spare set. There are 4, but only 3 are pictured:
I also bought a UUC double shear selector rod for my shifter refresh. That will go on with the ebay short shifter I bought a while back:
Oh, and I bought a 12 ton press!:
The Vanos on these cars is known to be a bit troublesome at times, so one of the jobs on my list was to change the Vanos seals. Another "not that difficult" job that turned into something much bigger.
The seals were clearly leaking as I could see the oil around the bottom of the unit. I started by doing the piston covers and replacing the seals and the bolts with the kit from Mr Vanos. The unit had clearly been opened before as the cutout on this cover for the Vanos filter screw was not in the correct spot!:
All going well, until......
So yeah, the Vanos solenoids were surrounded with red silicone. I later found out that this was a "fix" from BMW to try and prevent issues with the solenoids and leaking etc. It was a complete nightmare to remove and get the solenoids out. Around the same time, I was advised that I should clean out the solenoids with compressed air and brake cleaner by a member on another forum. I also had to use a 9v battery to open and close them during cleaning. This ended with them all having a really nice satisfying click to them when activated. Another job I wasn't planning to do though!
Changed the Vanos filter too:
And finally the seals on the pressure relief valve screw:
Before putting these bits back together, I also resoldered the joints on the PCBs on the solenoids. I forgot to take any photos of this unfortunately!
All back together:
There hasn't been that much more to report at the moment unfortunately, but hopefully that will change quite quickly. I'm really determined to press on with this now. I have purchased a dual pipe fuel pump unit and will swap the spare evo pump into that. The tank needs to come off this week and when that's done I can do the following:
Finish the decrusting above the subframe
Do the dual fuel pump mod
Make up and fit the replacement rear brake pipes
Remove the prop, fit the shifter and gearbox mounts and new prop donut and bearing
Once that little list is done we won't be far off and I will feel a heck of a lot better.
Hope those out there with E36s are currently having a better time than me!
I'm now getting very frustrated with it. There's still so much to do, and I just want to drive it. It's very tough seeing everyone else enjoying theirs and doing trackdays and being six months past the point where I thought we'd be doing them!
Anyway, it's about time for a little update. I picked up a set of 17x8 Z4 alloys as a spare set. There are 4, but only 3 are pictured:
I also bought a UUC double shear selector rod for my shifter refresh. That will go on with the ebay short shifter I bought a while back:
Oh, and I bought a 12 ton press!:
The Vanos on these cars is known to be a bit troublesome at times, so one of the jobs on my list was to change the Vanos seals. Another "not that difficult" job that turned into something much bigger.
The seals were clearly leaking as I could see the oil around the bottom of the unit. I started by doing the piston covers and replacing the seals and the bolts with the kit from Mr Vanos. The unit had clearly been opened before as the cutout on this cover for the Vanos filter screw was not in the correct spot!:
All going well, until......
So yeah, the Vanos solenoids were surrounded with red silicone. I later found out that this was a "fix" from BMW to try and prevent issues with the solenoids and leaking etc. It was a complete nightmare to remove and get the solenoids out. Around the same time, I was advised that I should clean out the solenoids with compressed air and brake cleaner by a member on another forum. I also had to use a 9v battery to open and close them during cleaning. This ended with them all having a really nice satisfying click to them when activated. Another job I wasn't planning to do though!
Changed the Vanos filter too:
And finally the seals on the pressure relief valve screw:
Before putting these bits back together, I also resoldered the joints on the PCBs on the solenoids. I forgot to take any photos of this unfortunately!
All back together:
There hasn't been that much more to report at the moment unfortunately, but hopefully that will change quite quickly. I'm really determined to press on with this now. I have purchased a dual pipe fuel pump unit and will swap the spare evo pump into that. The tank needs to come off this week and when that's done I can do the following:
Finish the decrusting above the subframe
Do the dual fuel pump mod
Make up and fit the replacement rear brake pipes
Remove the prop, fit the shifter and gearbox mounts and new prop donut and bearing
Once that little list is done we won't be far off and I will feel a heck of a lot better.
Hope those out there with E36s are currently having a better time than me!
bungz said:
Fair play bud.
Fairly typical of a car of its age, everything that you come to do is usually twice the job you plan and even small stuff takes all your time!
I am going to resit making comment about the gopping wheel too just to be nice
Thanks for that Fairly typical of a car of its age, everything that you come to do is usually twice the job you plan and even small stuff takes all your time!
I am going to resit making comment about the gopping wheel too just to be nice
Flat bottomed wheels are all the rage now, don't you know? It was cheap and it puts me on until I get sick of it and spend more
Well last night I went to remove the fuel tank. Can't be that hard right?
Wrong!
The bloody fuel tank has an expansion tank which has a couple of hoses that are impossible to disconnect. I spent a couple of hours trying to disconnect two hoses last night and eventually had to give up and call it a night.
I'm not happy.
Wrong!
The bloody fuel tank has an expansion tank which has a couple of hoses that are impossible to disconnect. I spent a couple of hours trying to disconnect two hoses last night and eventually had to give up and call it a night.
I'm not happy.
d fuel tank! 
Hi all, there hasn't been an update to this for quite some time has there? Truth is, I've been very busy with the Impreza. There's always far more to do than I imagine. That's become a common theme!
So, the main reason for this update is just to let you all know that there's been a bit of a change of plan. I've decided that I just don't have the heart to strip and track this car. I just can't do it. It's too rare now. It deserves better.
So I am aiming to save it rather than race it. It's obviously going to take a fair old while yet to get it back on its own wheels, but it's very much back to the forefront in my mind.
Might even stick an OEM steering wheel back in
So here's a question, do I stay original or do I go OEM+ and stick some Vaders in?
I've now completed a level 1 C&G welding course, so while I'm still nervous as hell about doing it, I might actually get the bloody welding done soon!
Wish me luck all.
So, the main reason for this update is just to let you all know that there's been a bit of a change of plan. I've decided that I just don't have the heart to strip and track this car. I just can't do it. It's too rare now. It deserves better.
So I am aiming to save it rather than race it. It's obviously going to take a fair old while yet to get it back on its own wheels, but it's very much back to the forefront in my mind.
Might even stick an OEM steering wheel back in
So here's a question, do I stay original or do I go OEM+ and stick some Vaders in?
I've now completed a level 1 C&G welding course, so while I'm still nervous as hell about doing it, I might actually get the bloody welding done soon!
Wish me luck all.
Ah the Impreza is a bit simpler for sure! That's not to say that all Japanese cars are that way though. In my previous life as an MR2 Turbo owner there was much swearing and tears involved in spannering
I'm still going to forge ahead with some of the upgrades such as the dual fuel pump mod etc. as I would definitely like it to see the odd track day to really have fun in it but that won't be its primary use now. I could actually see me keeping it a while and then moving onto an E46 but it's one of those cars I know I might not own again if I ever let it go....
I'm still going to forge ahead with some of the upgrades such as the dual fuel pump mod etc. as I would definitely like it to see the odd track day to really have fun in it but that won't be its primary use now. I could actually see me keeping it a while and then moving onto an E46 but it's one of those cars I know I might not own again if I ever let it go....
TroubledSoul said:
Ah the Impreza is a bit simpler for sure! That's not to say that all Japanese cars are that way though. In my previous life as an MR2 Turbo owner there was much swearing and tears involved in spannering
I'm still going to forge ahead with some of the upgrades such as the dual fuel pump mod etc. as I would definitely like it to see the odd track day to really have fun in it but that won't be its primary use now. I could actually see me keeping it a while and then moving onto an E46 but it's one of those cars I know I might not own again if I ever let it go....
They're great when everything is working properly and make superb track cars. I wouldn't own another one though.....life is too short!I'm still going to forge ahead with some of the upgrades such as the dual fuel pump mod etc. as I would definitely like it to see the odd track day to really have fun in it but that won't be its primary use now. I could actually see me keeping it a while and then moving onto an E46 but it's one of those cars I know I might not own again if I ever let it go....
Interesting thread and a good read, its amazing how knackered literary everything is on a car of this age! Well done for having the patience to keep at it! Im sure your adventures will be useful information for many others who are thinking of doing a similar project but perhaps otherwise wouldn't know what there letting themselves in for.
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