hakhawks cosmos e36 coupe

[PassionGarage]

HOLY FUCK ITS BEAUTIFUL, reckon you'll come up for Halfway Hangz ??? keen to see this is person man

[AtlantisTouring]

That tech2 looks lovely! Nice ride

[SebastienPeek]

Much love

[Bflat]

Love it Troy. Widebody without the need for tacky pop-rivets. Breath of fresh air compared to all of the LW and RWB internet fodder getting around.

[hakhawk]

HOLY FUCK ITS BEAUTIFUL, reckon you'll come up for Halfway Hangz ??? keen to see this is person man

whens halfway hangs? i dont think id make it as much as id like to, but never know!

soooooo many things to sort out on the car still

[hakhawk]

so yesterday i tackled one of the big things that were needed after the widebody kit, inner guard liners.

we were left with a decent amount of space between the fender skin and original sheet metal, so i got to hacking up some old kia liners dad kept for me for the rear, and modified new oem fronts

onto the somewhat dreadful pics. iphone doesnt like taking photos of black plastic in low light!

this was part way through modifying the fronts



this is drivers front(looking towards back of car), can actually see the line where the old liner sat. only needed some minor trimming and new screw holes to get the fronts fitting reasonably well



and looking forward. theres a few gaps around the bumper, but its better than what used to be there!



drivers rear, looking back. probably couldve cleaned some dirt off the liner but eh it works. sikaflexed a strip of rubber c channel to the fender which the liner slots into, and screwed to chassis. simple but effective.



and passengers rear, this was the first one i did. its a little wonky, but still seals.



played with the height while car was in the air, dropped rear some more and raised front a bit. overall the car sits much nicer i think. still need to dial out a bit more camber in the front

(this pic the rears sitting up a bit)





the simmons are pretty much a perfect fit. just need bigger inner barrels oneday



overall ive taken out a bit over 1 deg camber all round, so with another alignment i should be getting a bit more life out of my tyres too!!

[hakhawk]

pulled my vaders apart amd swapped the foam/material from side to side, try and get some more life out of them before i retrim






also had the interior detailed, sooo needed it(hint: look at the backrest on the seat on the right in above pic, it looked like the colour was all faded, but nope, just dirty!)

[hakhawk]

have some pics from downshift meet on sunday

[hakhawk]

so its been progressively getting worse to change gears in the car, and seemed to go from crap to downright stupid in an instant not long before i dropped the car off at the panel shop.

i decided to finally pull the gearbox and see what was wrong, and replace some other bits while it was out

got home friday and put it on ramps(who can see my problem, seeing as im removing the gearbox)



so it seems i neglected to take many pics this time round, but heres the important bits.

remove the fork and throwout bearing and im greeted with a nice dusting of bronze EVERYWHERE, a broken fork retainer spring and next to no pivot pin left



heres a comparison of the new oem bmw steel pin(only used on certain cars, m5, 850ci, etc) and the "better wearing than oem plastic" silicon bronze pin that i put in ~80,000ks ago when the engine went in.



the wear on this actually managed to let the throwout bearing spin 90deg and make changing gears shocking

you can see the marks in the fork(theres wear on the proper pads, so it did go in correctly in the first place)



little bit of wear on the pressure plate fingers but still a decent amount of material on the clutch, so it stays for now



gave the box a quick scrub down, as there was fluid all over the top of it at the back, coming from the breather, so rigged up an extended breather for it, checked some of the seals and replaced the end piece on the shifter shaft

also threw some fresh fluid in, last lot wasnt too bad, but hey, its out might as well.



box ready to go back in. guibo and mounts were fine, so didnt bother replacing.



changed the starter motor, original one was starting to feel a bit sad, and again, box is out, was easy enough to do. no pics, its only a starter :p

and installed my mid section exhaust, been waiting to do this for a while. took some fluffing about, drilling out the front flange bolt holes, modifying brackets.

but its in, lighter, sounds better, high flow cats lets motor breathe a bit more too. unsure how many ks on the mid section i had in there, but i dare say they werent pretty inside.

old pic of exhaust, didnt take pics today, was busy messing with it



overall car feels better to drive, feels more alive with the exhaust, and gears are a dream to change compared to before.

i'll try and get some video of the exhaust once it breaks in a bit more

[hakhawk]

looks like ive finally got my ongoing vanos issues licked, after fully rebuilding the unit, replacing solenoinds, it turns out my "spare" vanos ecu was faulty, threw the original back in and shes all peaches for now. will see how it goes

and today after work i installed a set of trackspec motorsport bonnet vents.

install went nice and easy, few cuts, bit of paint, couple holes and some rivets and an hour later they were on.

first cut(drilling the initial holes was far less daunting than one would think). they come with measurements in the instructions, which i missed(who reads the instructions anyway!!), but turns out i wasnt far off anyway.



i covered the bay with a big ole piece of cardboard, worked for the most part



and all done



think ill get some of the plastic caps to keep water from settling around the strut bolt holes

[hakhawk]

so long story short, the fenders were stuck on with sikaflex before being glassed and bogged, obviously, cracks started showing not long after i got the car back.

the shop i did it at have essentially decided to wipe their hands of it, after continually saying "we'll cover it, we got you". the actual paint "may" be done in their booth, but i have my doubts(and really dont want them touching it if possible)

my mate who works there that did the finishing work and painting has taken it upon himself to help me out and redo it all. both him and myself are going to be out of pocket, but hey, thats cars!

a mate of his that owns a rod shop has kindly let him tuck the 36 away in a corner and work on it after hours and weekends.

i stripped as much off the car as i could before dropping it off and have helped him where i can to remove parts for him to do the work. if i had any skill with bodywork id be there every weekend lending a hand, but im not so im leaving that to him.

the good thing is he has been able to even out the overhang, the panelbeater that put them on didnt compare sides, so one side had about a 20mm difference in the rear, and front was 10mm difference.

the blend from fender to door edge was also rather abrupt previously, my mate has cut more fender off to smooth it out more.

so, onto a few pics

first he stripped back the join lines and cut the fenders off, every area to be bonded was taken abck to bare metal. the back of the fenders hadnt been prepped at all, and there were areas of sikaflex that either didnt stick at all, or didnt even touch car/fender



proper panelbond applied to every bit of bare metal behind fenders, so no rust should ever show its face



fronts received the same treatment, along with a bit more trimming of the original arch



no shortage of clamps!!



then onto glassing. he used some glassfill in a few deep areas to build up before the glass mat. heaps more coverage than the first time



my ducktail spoiler was removed and redone, sans about 2kg of bog. it was also installed with sikaflex originally.



then smoothing and recreating bodylines



and these last few pics are from saturday when i went to help him remove the last few things to finish certain areas

pulled my bonnet vents, as the bonnet is getting resprayed aswell(essentially whole car minus bumpers and skirts is)



mid way through him working on the rear quarter. the first time, the fender tapered in around 4" from the door edge, this time its much better



keeping good company, my cars definitely the ugly duckling in this place!!



so thats where im at right now, waiting again for my car. hes smashing out some decent hours on it though, so not too long to go hopefully.

the guards feel more solid than they ever did, and hes confident there should be no failures in the bodywork.

if anyone is looking at getting similar done, definitely look into the place you get to do it, dont use someone that relies on insurance work as the base of their business.

enjoy the pics and expect way more when i get it back, i have a few new goodies on the way for it aswell!!

[CTG]

I think this is the best e36 build i've ever seen!!!

What was the exact wheel/tire/camber/suspension setup while you had the bbs rf's with non-widebody?

I've read the thread on my mobile and must have missed the specs

[hakhawk]

I think this is the best e36 build i've ever seen!!!

What was the exact wheel/tire/camber/suspension setup while you had the bbs rf's with non-widebody?

I've read the thread on my mobile and must have missed the specs

cheers!!

the rf's are 17x9 et19, 245/40 tyres, 4deg camberfront, ~2.8deg rear. coilovers are gaz golds, 600lb front springs, 350lb rears(on full coilover rear)



cars still getting bogwork done to blend in the fenders. my mates essentially doing an hour or 2 after work each day and saturdays as much as he can to get it done for me

[C2_mad]

car looks/looked amazing. shame the bodyshop screwed you over. the only thing i didnt like was the hood vents, looked kind of like an after thought. you spent so much time and money blending everything in and then with the hood vents, just cut a hole and screwed them in. Might be a good oportunity to blend the hood vents in, think they would look much better.

[hakhawk]

car looks/looked amazing. shame the bodyshop screwed you over. the only thing i didnt like was the hood vents, looked kind of like an after thought. you spent so much time and money blending everything in and then with the hood vents, just cut a hole and screwed them in. Might be a good oportunity to blend the hood vents in, think they would look much better.

yeh the hood vents were a compromise. i dont think blending these ones in will work too well, just given their design.

its something ill live with unless i find a better solution.