My M5 engined, Touring car wheeled, air bagged suspension'd E36 Coupe

[#MrBenz]

It's...different! But I like it! Keep up the good work.

[BBBDDD]

It's different...I like a good in depth build thread

[andy318is]

Thanks for all the comments fellas :-)

I don't post much but am on here pretty much everyday checking out other peoples builds so glad mine still has some interest :-)

[bennkishh]

This is out of control, I absolutely love it. A good ol' S62 is the motor I'd like to slip in to my E12 some day, in a perfect world of course

[andy318is]

2 updates in 2 weeks! WTF!?!!

Seem to have a little momentum at the moment so thought I'd best capitalize on it and get some more shit done!

After digging out my old Optima that I've had for 6+ years (which I bought secondhand anyway) I slapped it on charge to see if it could be saved. I've a CTEK reconditioning charger so gave it its best hope, unsurprisingly it wouldn't hold charge! Not the end of the world but did mean I had to sort out a new battery to run the ICE and airride etc... so last week I dropped past to see Am @ BladeICE to pick up a new XS Power XE12-40, as batteries go these are pretty epic! Super small and super powerful so will be ideal for the power hungry ICe install and air compressor.



So moving forwards it meant I needed to make a battery tray which will tuck in under the air tank and behind the dry sump tank.... raiding my metal of cuts pile I found some 20mm box section.



Which I then cut down along to opposite corners to give me 4 L sections, which I then cut to length to suit



Then stuck it all together...





So that give the battery something to sit in, then I had to rustle something up to hold it in place.... some bracket of cuts, threaded bar and a piece of aluminium...





Got it positioned in the car and made the necessary brackets to hold it square and level



I'd previously knocked up the air & breather tank brackets along with the oil tank stand so all that was put into the car and tacked in place!

Now I know the oil tank stand in on the piss BUT the pre-dilled holes in the mounting plate aren't square so I positioned the stand to suit (before anyone comments lol)



Battery in...



Quick picture of the elevel on the left of the boot



Breather tank...



And as it stands pretty much at the moment! I'm going to be concentrating on getting the air plumbed and wired so the oil tanks will be coming out the way but I think for a while I'll run with this layout and see what happens.....



I have left space down the right side of the spare wheel well to possibly cut out and reform that area for the exhaust for the right bank of the engine! :-D

[The Simps]

Smart

[RocketSled]

I am amazed at the amount of work you put into this, and I really like the touring car wheels. Just make sure at the end, the whole thing makes sense.

[Mehowski]

It's approaching 1 in the morning so I've not had time to read all of this, but I did quickly flick through all the pages. After noticing you were going in for the e46 front end conversion I was a bit meh, but you've actually pulled it off really well! In for more

[Invalid Username]

Love this build! Even if people aren't keen on the custom work on this car, such as the E46 front end, I highly doubt anyone can deny the quality of the conversion. Your skills and efforts keep blowing me away.

I can't get enough of your current wheel and brake setup either - stunning!

I really hope this doesn't come across as condescending in any way, but have you thoiught about some anti-vibration mounts for the air compressor? I think they would really complement the high standard of the rest of the car. Also, apologies if you have already thought of these!

Never lose interest in this build, please, haha.

[andy318is]

Love this build! Even if people aren't keen on the custom work on this car, such as the E46 front end, I highly doubt anyone can deny the quality of the conversion. Your skills and efforts keep blowing me away.

I can't get enough of your current wheel and brake setup either - stunning!

I really hope this doesn't come across as condescending in any way, but have you thoiught about some anti-vibration mounts for the air compressor? I think they would really complement the high standard of the rest of the car. Also, apologies if you have already thought of these!

Never lose interest in this build, please, haha.

Thanks for the kind words :-)

The air compressor has little anti-vibro mountings already, just cant see this very well in the pictures

[andy318is]

Unfortunately my build threads have been well and truly neglected in recent months think guess the main part is due to social media and just sticking picture on Facebook or Insta ops: so I thought it was well overdue I tried to wrap up the goings on of the last however many months because believe it or not the project is still going strong!! LOL. I'll start where I left off.....

To enable me to move the car around the garage easier as I've collected more tools which equals less space I picked up some cheap(ish) dollies and got the e36 loaded onto those



Some people may or may not know I picked up a side line project for a few months that distracted me somewhat over Christmas of 2014, carried out a pretty reasonable restoration, decided I wanted to get back onto the e36 so sold the 6 series.

The neglect the e36 suffered....



One of the final shots before the e24 went...



I was digging through some parts I'd tucked away for the e36 and found some old newspaper packing! LOL



Anyway, back to business.... once the e24 was out the garage and up for sale it was time to uncover the e36 and drag it out the corner of the garage, I must admit I'm always excited to get back into the old girl after having some time out!





The only trouble these days is I just like to crack on with the work so I don't take many (if any) progress pictures so the picture below is me deciding to remake the back quarter of the e36 / 46 bonnet as I was never really happy with the quality of the work I'd done god knows how many years ago!

So a template was made and fresh steel cut, shaped and held in place in prep for welding



After super slow tack welding, some fit and finish I put the bonnet back on a mocked up the frontend, it was nice to see a face after so long!! still along way to go but it was a good feeling to see some decent progress being made



I had a little reminisce about some of the wheels and seats that I've bought and sold most without actually fitting on / in the car! haha. The Civic Type R seats or the cloth Vaders never actually made it into the car but I'm happy to say both pairs of Cobra Misanos did with them both actually living on in other peoples projects!



I must admit a couple sets of these wheels were destine for the Bang Bus.... but the Impuls & ZW1's were for the e36....



Talking about wheels though I did end up find myself buying another 10 BBS centrelocks! :lol: damn you interwebz and boring lunchtimes at work!!!



I reminisced a little more about the old Bang Bus.... did love that thing but again it was keeping me from the e36!



Back on the bonnet, after making the new skin and trying it back onto the car it was clear the bracing hit the intake on the v8 so I ended up cutting out the bracing for clearance which left me with a very flappy bonnet so I had to do something about that.... I needed some new bracing.... and before that I needed a metal folder to make that bracing.... so £10 of angle and box later, some welding and bish bash bosh...



Which let me fold nice angles like this....



I'll leave it there for the moment, there is a whole lot more progress to update which I'll try and do tomorrow! So I hope you've enjoyed this for now :-)

[kinglui]

Wow man can't wait to this completed


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[andy318is]

Ok, back into the update on this old heap!

So I'd the metal folder made I wanted for the bonnet bracing so that only left me with one thing.... to start making some! Bending, chopping and so on making sure I had plenty of clearance for the intake of course! I must admit it was nice seeing the folder I'd made actually working to a fairly reasonable level of finish LOL



A hell of a lot of hours went into this! I plated over any holes on the underside that weren't necessary (read as all of them lol) ground back all the welds, finished up any little jobs trying to get it ready for the fillering



It'd have been rude on to have tried the bonnet back on to make sure I still had the clearance needed, I think I must have sat for about 20 minutes just looking over the car still picturing the final article and looking like this it seems to be sooooo close!! (but its not really LOL)



Leaving the frontend in a stage I was happier with I got back onto a problem that I think will be the bane of the life for the entire project! Manifold (header) clearance. I'd relocated the steering coloum position on the bulkhead and made a slimline slined link to the rack but the routing still hampered the header space so it was back to the drawing board, jumped on the net and order some UJ's and bits, thought about where the best position for the column would be a got the grinder out



Got the principles set so I was happy and then carried on



In the mean time I needed another run around as the 6 was sold for picked up a Beetle to run around in knowing I really wouldn't bother modifying it because I **** Porsches!



Anyway, back to the car..... sounds stupid by the e46 headlights have never properly been fitted so I corrected that issue, scratched my head, made some brackets, welded some stuff and happy days!!

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Love it or **** it I dont care, this is exactly how I pictured it would look and I love it!!!



Unbelievably there's still more to come but I need to get back to work.

[19birel]

This looks really top notch! Great work!

[Robitussin]

Putting e46 parts on an e36 is stupid.
















Unless you know how to do it right. Good job, looks like the car came that way