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

[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 :-)

[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

[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.

[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

[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.

[The Simps]

Smart

[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

[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]

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 :-)

[BBBDDD]

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

[#MrBenz]

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

[DeltaAlpha9]

I'm not a fan of the E46 front but love the BTCC look with the center lock wheels and lowness.

[DER E30]

If it wasn't for the dry sump tank it'd be happy days....ah well, I like a challenge!

Challenges are the best! I'm fueled by a challenge ha

Looks great, I wanna see this done!

[andy318is]

busy trunk will be busy

curious how you'll manage to get a clean setup in there

good progress tho

If it wasn't for the dry sump tank it'd be happy days....ah well, I like a challenge!

[P78]

busy trunk will be busy

curious how you'll manage to get a clean setup in there

good progress tho