My Cosmo black E36 loon'

[matt752]

Hi all,

I've been a member on here for a while now and I love this site. When I joined here I was pinging photo's of my car around like a whore with no background information or explanation as to why my car is what it is.

Four years ago I was running a 250bhp Seat Ibiza Cupra, nice little car, very quick and very thirsty.



Anyway, I was in an accident at work and could no longer afford my little Ibiza as I was out of work for three months and government sick pay is rubbish. So I sold up and bought a Mk2 Golf GTi 8v with big bumpers. Spent some money tidying it up and making it look presentable.



This car was great fun but not really me, not for a daily anyway.

A friend I worked with at the time, an older gentleman (62 to be exact lol) offered me his BMW as he wanted to travel Europe with his Mrs in their campervan. So I sold the Golf and bought it.





At the time I didn't know that I'd fall in love with this car in such a big way. There was only one other four wheeled love in my life and that was my Civic.



I owned this car for three years, I bought it completely standard, like the BM, and made it my own. I only sold it after a break with my girlfriend of six years and the car had to go because of the memories, biggest mistake I made in my life to be honest but without that mistake I wouldn't have my BM so, swings and roundabouts.

Anyway, having not been into the Euro scene, as such, before I wasn't really sure where I wanted to go with my BM. So I joined a couple of BM forums and spoke to friends who had E36's before. I knew I wanted something simple, reliable and clean.

[matt752]

The first and most important thing this car needed was a clean, so I spent the first weekend I had it stripping the interior for a deep clean and cleaning every nook and cranny to make her look presentable.



As you can see in the picture I had a broken fog light so this was next to be addressed. As I searched a local scrap yard for a fog light I stumbled across a black E36 saloon with an M3 kit and the fog lights, a cheeky £130 later and I walked out of there with the front bumper, fog lights, side skirts and back lights (don't ask me how I pulled it off because I don't know). A friend helped me fit it all in a morning.

[matt752]

This was the start of it all really. As you can see I didn't get the M3 rear bumper as I didn't feel it was necessary on a diesel saloon. With plans to have it colour coded in mind I ended up in a shunt from behind by someone who's breaks had 'failed'. This worked in my favour as I got a new exhaust system, a free MOT and a new, painted, rear bumper.

[matt752]

After this, with a bit of compensation money, I paid off my insurance for the year and bought a couple of bits. I painted my front grills and bought some carbon effect roundels

[matt752]

Lowering came next. A friend of mine sold his E36 coupe and donated his spare springs to me. 60mm Jamex on the front, 30mm PI on the rear. Fitting them was relatively easy, I'm sure there's tons of write ups so I won't bore you with the details.









While I was there I cleaned the arches and painted the drums and calipers to freshen up the chasis a bit.

The result

[matt752]

The rear wasn't really low enough for me, but the springs improved the handling and the car looked better than it did before so I was happy. At this point I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my wheels, they were pretty corroded



In the end I decided a DIY refurb would sort them out temporarily until I knew what I wanted and, as the corrosion was pretty bad, black was the best option to cover up the years of abuse from the previous owner. So I set about rubbing them down and repainting them black

My mate Dan and Mighty Mouse the sander


One wheel primered


One painted and so forth


At this point, with my creativity on a crazy spree I decided that I needed pinstriping.......everywhere





Yes, even the fuel filler cap


This look didn't last long, it was a phase of madness that I thought, at the time, looked great and personalised my car. In the end it all came off

[wheelfetish]

Thank god you took the pinstriping off lol It looks good, keep up the nice work.

[matt752]

The next thing to be sorted on my car was the interior.



My girlfriend was taking the BM away for her best friends Hen do so I wanted the interior to be presentable but on a budget as I was pretty tight for cash. So I set started to check eBay and forums and local scrapyards and nothing really jumped out at me then I came across a member on E36coupe.com who was breaking a silver 328 saloon as he'd bought it for the engine. I sent him a message and asked about the interior, he said I could have the seats and door cards for £100 if I was prepared to do the 150 mile journey to collect them, which I was.









I managed to transform my sea of grey plastic and material into a black and grey leather interior for £140 (inc fuel). I couldn't have been happier at how my car was taking shape!

[matt752]

Thank god you took the pinstriping off lol It looks good, keep up the nice work.

LOL! Thanks Dan

[hinrichs]

looks good, awsome transformation so far....and its soo cool its a diesel

keep up the good work

[matt752]

looks good, awsome transformation so far....and its soo cool its a diesel

keep up the good work

Cheers fella. There's more to come yet. I hope to bring this little build up to speed by the end of the day, UK time.

[matt752]

So, with the inerior half way to completion, yes there's more to come regarding that, I set about enjoying my car as it was pondering what to do next. The car had never had floor mats unfortunately so I spent some time looking for a decent second hand set. These are hard to come by over here, dealerships want in excess of £100 for a set and specialists aren't much better. After a month or so of regularily checking the local scrap yard a set came up in good condition. I told the bloke running the place they were from a Ford Puma hoping for a discount and got them for £5! Result





With the change from the £30 I had budgeted for these I bought some M6 style front grills, which I *****. They looked OK off the car but God awful on it





These very quickly found their way off of my car and into the nearest bin in exchange for some standard chrome ones, which were later painted black like the original set lol

[matt752]

Back to the build. Since I'd owned the car I had noticed the roof liner in the car wasn't in great condition and one hot day (yes we have them in the UK occassionaly) the glue melted on the headliner and it started to peel from the front of the car toward the back. I re glued it and stapled it back up until I could find a black saloon headliner. One day whilst at work a friend emailed me and asked if I was busy after work, I said 'no, why?' he said 'because I've found and bought you a new healdiner for your car we just have to pick it up tonight and fit it'. Result.

Of course this was only the roof liner I still had the grey A & C pillars to replace. So I thought to myself, why replace when I can recover? So I did. I bought two cheap black t-shirts and some spray adhesive and retrimmed my old pillars







Retrimmed:



Old roof liner:



New roof liner and A & C pillars fitted:



I deliberately left the sunroof panel and lights grey to match my door cards and I replaced the handles and sunvisors with black equivelants so the contrast wasn't OTT.

[matt752]

I didn't do much to the BM for a while due to saving up for a holiday in Vegas with my girlfriend and her family, highly recommend it by the way



Then after Christmas I stumbled across an 18 button OBC in a scrap yard which I got for the bargain price of £10. Of course I had to work out how to fit the damn thing myself which took a bit of research and reading but I managed to figure it out and get a temp sensor in too which is great.

Old analog clock:


(Yes I removed the dash's, I thought it was cool)

Instrument clusters out:



Wiring in:



Installed:



I have links to the diagrams I used for installation if anyone wants them. Took me about 4hrs to do.

[matt752]

After this I went for a bit of an OEM theme.

Ditched the clear repeaters for ambers:



Painted the fogs yellow:



Then I decided to tint my ambers after seeing an awesome E36 on here, think is was Balleurs??



Soon got bored of that look and painted my side light lenses yellow:



And then, in true Matt Mason style I went back to the clears I originally had on the car in the first place: