E36 M3 - jacking points, gear box & performance chip?

[sargeants]

Just looked at a quiet nice E36 M3 Coupe. 93K miles FSH, recent service, drove ok but a couple of questions - if someone could answer, it'd be greatly appreciated.

Gearbox was a bit notchy on some changes - not all. Clutch was usual fairly vague and bit quite low, could this be simply the need for a braided hose, or is this symptomatic of a pending gearbox rebuild/replace? From memory, I think teh guy said it had a clutch at around 60K.

In the history, I found a bill for 3x jacking points (can remember the value), and couldn't see any obvious signes of work in those areas - just thinking, could these be the rubber bits?

Finally, the car is mercifully standard except for a performance chip (can remember the make) and air filter (does come with original standard chip). What benefit do you get from these? Car certainly pulled well and had a nice induction roar.

Cheers.

[NickXX]

Jacking points will likely be the rubber pads - they have a tendency to fall out.

[pat_y]

Performance chips on these cars don't actually tend to do much, BMW did a pretty good job straight out the factory, best gains tend to be from having the thing serviced properly and running the correct grade fuel.
see who fitted the chip, if it's one of the well known 'M' specialists like Bexley or Thorney etc then it might be worth having, apart from that you'd probably be better of on stock ECU parameters.

[dan101smith]

You're talking about a chip, so assume this is a 3.0 M3.

In which case, the gearbox shouldn't be notchy. The 5 speed is much smoother than the 6 speed, which is notchy.

Wouldn't worry too much about the chip/filter. Jacking pads are a couple of quid each and do tend to drop off.

[sargeants]

No, it's a 3.2 Evo. Still not heard about the make of chip (the guy did show me the receipt & box but I've teh memeory of a goldfish!).

[dan101smith]

You can't chip an Evo, unless you mean a piggyback ECU like a Dastek Uni-Q.

[T-bagger]

Jacking pads are £7.00 each from BMW, mine needed 3 when I bought it a couple of months ago, but I got them from Ebay for £2.50 each. They tend to catch speed bumps etc and get knocked off of crack and fall out.
As the the gearbox being notchy, if you're not used to sports cars then yes it is a little. I can recommend a gearbox oil change, I recently did mine and it's made a noticable difference especially from cold. If your car uses ATF for it's gearbox oil then checkout Opie oil they are doing a 15% discount on Amsoil ATF this week which they recommend for the E36 M3 (if orange label on gearbox then it's ATF).
As for the chip, as many others have said it's very difficult to improve on the factory setup, BMW were really pushing the tuning of this engine in order to claim 100BHP per Litre to satisfy the marketing men (hence why hardly any make 321!). I'd be inclined to junk the chip/piggyback ECU and get the valve clearences and throttles set up properly, keep it serviced regularly and just enjoy it.
Oh and another thing that would make me nervous about a chipped engine would be a tendancy to over rev. Engines that spend a lot of their life over 7000RPM have a tendancy to stretch the stock big end bolts (ARP do uprated ones) and spin big end shells.
Hope this helps