My E36...

[BenKoflach]

this car car is sex! I want a wagn sooooooo bad!

Haha thanks...

[BenKoflach]

Managed to get a few minutes lastnight to do a couple of bits I've been meaning to do for a while.

First up, I took my Performance BMW stickers off. While I will be representing at shows later in the year, I'd quite like black stickers, so I'm going to have a word with our sticker man and see what we can do. Hello limited edition coloured stickers... If I get my way

Secondly, the trim below my glovebox kept falling down and rattling. It was the most bloody annoying thing in the world, I usually just tucked the corner of the trim into the speaker grille but I fixed it properly this time. Much better!

I also trimmed by shifter-hole bung/grommet, as that's where the airline goes. So I now don't get a self-inflating gear gaiter whenever I open the window, which is nice, and it's much quieter too. My clutch release bearing is really rather noisy, so this was welcomed.

Then, in my crazy evening of hyperactivity, I took the rear bench out. Being half Italian, I managed to get olive oil all over it thanks to my salad dressing leaking out of my packed lunch. Great. So I took it out, cleaned it all up, gave it a wash and stuck it in my room to dry during today.

What this has highlighted, however, is that my diff seems to be pretty noisy, which is annoying. It was weeping a bit of oil from the output flanges so fingers crossed a top-up will sort it for now, though I need to look at changing the seals at some point soon. As long as it's ok anyway... If not I may have to look at either getting another or getting this one rebuilt.

So essentially... my drivetrain is feeling a bit fooked! All will be sorted in good time though...

I'm down at Raw Motorsport on Tuesday so fingers crossed Rob might have a couple of pointers, and I've got some spare diff oil in my boot which hopefully he can bung in. He'll also be fitting my M50 manifold and giving my tracking a once-over

[BenKoflach]

As mentioned, I was down at RAW Motorsport in Southampton yesterday getting my M50 manifold fitted

After a bit of research, I thought I'd try something other than the tried and tested Alpina527 route, and went to the fair expense of importing an M50manifold.com kit, which includes everything you need, including instructions, to fit an M50 manifold. It includes a special one-piece silicon breather hose, all the little other vacuum/breather hoses, a few special little brackets for various bits, new seals for between the head and manifold and a special throttle body seal.

This is the kit, which I got through http://m50manifold.com/



The guy there, Eric, also offers M50 manifolds and adapted M50 fuel rail covers - as I picked up a manifold for £50 beforehand I had no need though. I'll be on the lookout for a fuel rail cover soon, mind you.

I arrived at RAW to find that Robin and his team were very busy prepping PBMWC E30s for the season opener at Brands this weekend, as well as building quite a few interesting projects



Anyway, with the Touring rolled inside, things could begin.

Of course, quite a few bits first need disassembling:









Then the old manifold could come off!



Looks complicated under there...



Anyway, Rob set to work making sure everything fitted alright and also modifying the original under-manifold bracket.



Ta-dah, all done - now to take the stuff off the manifold and fit it to the engine.





As mentioned, the kit comes with new seals for the manifold, so Rob swapped the new ones in.



A slight bit of modification to the manifold once it was on...



...and the fuel rail could be bolted down with the supplied adapters





With all the hoses and everything re-attached, everything could be finished off - on an M50 the throttle body seal is in the manifold, where as on an M52 it's in the throttle body, so the seal that comes with the kit bridges the gap and replaces both seals. If that makes sense.



Hey presto!





Rob then just put the last few bits back together and we were ready to go!



Rob's done a fantastic job, keeping everything neat and making sure everything was really clean before putting it all back together. He refused to let me take any snaps of him cleaning stuff though, because he wouldn't look very manly!

He's a properly decent guy, I've obviously been lucky enough to meet him a few times thanks to the number of feature cars he's built. If you're down that way I'd highly recommend paying RAW a visit, all the guys there are really friendly, have a great sense of humour and most importantly, know their sh*t! Their contact details can be found at www.rawmotorsport.co.uk

The Touring is now a real hoot to drive, it really pulls well and though it actually feels kinda like before, the speedo needle really comes round very nicely indeed. Admittedly low-end driving seems a little less keen but for pootling around that doesn't matter. It's after 3k rpm that it really takes off, and does so right to the redline.

Rob also had the time to give my noise a bit of investigation, looks like it's probably my diff. I know of someone who breaks M3 Evos and can do me a complete rear axle for £250, all I'd then need is an M3 Evo prop I believe. Could be a go-er...

[Jorge]

Impressive work Ben, how come you didn't try to fit yourself? I thought you were handy with a spanner?

[BenKoflach]

Impressive work Ben, how come you didn't try to fit yourself? I thought you were handy with a spanner?

Lol, I did about a month ago but getting to some of the bolts was pretty fiddly, and I'm also not too clear about the breather/vacuum stuff on more modern cars. So I thought I'd best not risk breaking anything

[Jorge]

Aaah nice, worth the upgrade do you think?

[BenKoflach]

Aaah nice, worth the upgrade do you think?

Yeah definitely! Before the engine felt so strangled, really seems freed up now. In theory it should be around 190-195bhp which will do nicely for now, a big bore throttle body will give it another bit of extra go when I've got some more cash.

[BenKoflach]

Gave myself a bit of a task for today - to get my aFe induction kit sorted. It was a good quality kit, just had a couple of bits that in IMO could have been better.

What needed reworking was the heatshield. It didn't give any clearance for the alternator - whether that was due to some sort of difference between US and UK cars or what I don't know, but I wanted to rework it.

This is how it sat before - I'd actually done a bit to it in this pic but you get the idea.



The other problem was that the heatshield actually blocked off the cold air feed. So that needed changing! This is before:



So, to the alternator problem. There was nothing for it but to attack it with a hammer!



After checking it for clearance and doing a few trials got it pretty good.

Then it was time to sort out that cold air issue. First up I sawed off the bracket that you can see sticking forwards in the first pic. Then I started sawing another line to allow a bend for drawing in cold air.





It then looked like this!







Then it was time to paint, which I'm still doing now - it's in etch primer here

[jkh]

hey... is this the same car, on PERFORMANCE BMW..????


good work.!!!!!

[BenKoflach]

hey... is this the same car, on PERFORMANCE BMW..????


good work.!!!!!

Yeah, that's it! And thanks!

[Minuki]

Great work, Ben. Looks great!

[BenKoflach]

Thanks!

Random mini-update, just fitted my UUC clutch stop. Haven't been out on a test drive yet but it feels great! Much better than the pedal just sinking into mushy carpet.

New vs old - the nut and washer are for adjustment of the height of the stop



And in!



An awesome 2-minute modification that should really improve the feel of things!

[BenKoflach]

My drivetrain has been gradually getting noisier over the last few months, and a quick diagnosis by Mr Morley yesterday lunchtime didn't result in good news.

He reckons that not only is my diff not sounding good, but my gearbox isn't either. Not good

However, I've bought a complete M3 Evo rear axle, which I'll be picking up from RAW Motorsport next week sometime - it's from a car being broken, so I've bought the front topmounts from it too.

I'm also hoping to buy Cozy's gearbox off him, and then I just need to get an M3 3-litre prop. I'll also be ordering a UUC stage 2 clutch/flywheel combo, new discs/pads/shoes if needed, fitting my UUC braided hoses, refreshing fluids, fitting new or poly bushes throughout and maybe painting it up, before fitting the lot.

[Jorge]

How much was the clutch stop? I just used a bolt in my E46 with a plastic pad designed for the bottom of a chair leg on wooden floors, cost like 50p in total and worked as well.

Unfortunate about the drivetrain, but the upgrades sound good.

[BenKoflach]

How much was the clutch stop? I just used a bolt in my E46 with a plastic pad designed for the bottom of a chair leg on wooden floors, cost like 50p in total and worked as well.

Unfortunate about the drivetrain, but the upgrades sound good.

It's $20, I ordered one along with a few other bits I was getting from UUC. TBH I don't know about on an E46, but on an E36 the clutchstop mount bit doesn't sit directly behind the clutch pedal, so hitting it hard would break anything that wasn't very strong. Mind you, sounds like your solution was pretty clever! Lol