Simple M3

[Graphitemk6]

Those look like some nice fun roads to drive on. Also what exhaust are you running?
Vader seats are pretty damn nice you should definately pick some up if you find some

[Fruttolo]

I am firmly against vaders for driver cars, yeah they are hype af and look proper but not much more restrictive than normal seats, and they weight a metric ton each...nothing beats a bucket when you start to push it hard. A nice fixed back seat with low sides for easy in/out is where I'd go, especially with this being a sedan so rear seats would be still useable

[cblock406]

I'm not a fan of Vaders in sedans. The sport seats are more comfortable than Vaders anyway. Aftermarket is probably the way to go if you want cloth.

Awesome project and cool to see this getting more and more sorted out.

[bwwaaaa]

Those look like some nice fun roads to drive on. Also what exhaust are you running?
Vader seats are pretty damn nice you should definately pick some up if you find some

The exhaust is a UUC system U with the DTM tips. I picked it up used off of a local part out. Sounds great in short doses, but after a couple hours of beating on the car I was pretty sick of it. I did just discover I may have an exhaust leak though, so I’ll check that out and see if it helps first.

I am firmly against vaders for driver cars, yeah they are hype af and look proper but not much more restrictive than normal seats, and they weight a metric ton each...nothing beats a bucket when you start to push it hard. A nice fixed back seat with low sides for easy in/out is where I'd go, especially with this being a sedan so rear seats would be still useable

I thought about going the bucket route, but I’ve yet to find a bucket seat I’m super comfortable in. Given the direction this car is headed, it may be my only option though haha.

I'm not a fan of Vaders in sedans. The sport seats are more comfortable than Vaders anyway. Aftermarket is probably the way to go if you want cloth.

Awesome project and cool to see this getting more and more sorted out.

Thanks!

I think if I went the cloth route I’d just have my seats reupholstered. Short of something like Recaro Pole Positions, I find most other aftermarket seats to look out of place in the E36 interior. Or at least of those I’ve seen, I need to do some more digging. Either way I think just going to cloth on the stock sport seats would give it a very LTW feel while still being comfortable/grippy.

[bwwaaaa]

Health and Safety

So a while back, when the car was gushing oil, some got on my exhaust and would smoke pretty badly. It obviously put the fear of fire in me, and I started thinking that it’d be nice to carry a fire extinguisher on board. I forgot about it for a while, and then some friends shared a video of a GT350 burning down at a track day, and it got me thinking, it’s cheap insurance to have an extinguisher on board. I rather make a mess and save the car.

I ordered a floor mounted bracket from VAC Motorosports. It’s advertised for the E36 and E46 chassis. I got it with a 2.5lb auto rated fire extinguisher from them as well, it came with a mount that lines up perfectly with the holes in the bracket.

I decided to put it on the passenger side, since I don’t often have passengers anyways. I did have some concern that it could burn the shit out of someone’s leg in the Arizona summer, but that’s a problem for future me to figure out. In the meantime, I now have some peace of mind. I’m not actually sure realistically how useful this extinguisher will be for anything other than a small electrical fire maybe. Any large fluid fire will easily out pace a 2.5lb I feel like. Also, I guess this is the only splash of color in my otherwise monochromatic car. Everything is silver and black, except this one very, very red thing.

I was hoping I’d also have the tune done by this update, but that will wait for another post.

[Fruttolo]

Paint the very red thing silver and slap a "bmw motorsport" sticker on it please
Other than that I'm with you, put my extinguisher on a year ago and it's nice to know I can at least try to do something if anything happens

[MommysLittleMonster]

As someone who's had a small fire onboard and used a fire extinguisher... good choice. Shit saved me from burning down my Nova once, and that was reason enough to outfit all of the "toy" cars.

[bwwaaaa]

Paint the very red thing silver and slap a "bmw motorsport" sticker on it please
Other than that I'm with you, put my extinguisher on a year ago and it's nice to know I can at least try to do something if anything happens

Hmm, I do have some leftover Titanium silver paint from my fog light deletes. I may just do that to make it a little less obvious. Good idea!

As someone who's had a small fire onboard and used a fire extinguisher... good choice. Shit saved me from burning down my Nova once, and that was reason enough to outfit all of the "toy" cars.

Thanks! To be honest I don't know why I hadn't thought of it before now on other projects. Shit happens with old cars, best to be prepared.

Tuned

So another small update today. Yesterday RKtunes finally sent my file back for the M3. The tune, as best as I can tell, is 100% placebo. Maybe it's because it's so hot here in AZ right now (109 yesterday), but after a lengthy test drive I found myself more impressed with my ceramic tint than I was with the tune. I know you can't expect much from an old NA car with a handful of intake bolt ons, but it seems to be about the same. But that's just fine with me, because I actually primarily ended up tuning the car to code out the SAP.

Since I bought the car, it would throw these codes constantly. A common fault for E36s, and I wasn't really willing to spend the money to replace the pump anyways. For the same price I could tune it out and (theoretically) get a little more power out of the car.

So for the first time since I bought the car, I am now CEL free. I suppose it's nice to know the car is also appropriately tuned for the manifold now, but as far as I can tell, in our heat soaked desert, it feels the same as before.

Now I get to go back to focusing on matters like "Why does my car handle like shit" and "What is that clunking noise?"

[DawsonLiri]

I thought about going the bucket route, but I’ve yet to find a bucket seat I’m super comfortable in. Given the direction this car is headed, it may be my only option though haha.

Like what I said to Fruttolo, I tried the Recaro Profi XL and they're pretty comfy for a fat person like myself (I don't wanna say you're fat, but if they're comfy for me they're for everyone).
They're pretty comfy for a bucket seat, but the real MVP is the inflatable lumbar support. I was skeptical at first but damn if it change your life!

[bwwaaaa]

Like what I said to Fruttolo, I tried the Recaro Profi XL and they're pretty comfy for a fat person like myself (I don't wanna say you're fat, but if they're comfy for me they're for everyone).
They're pretty comfy for a bucket seat, but the real MVP is the inflatable lumbar support. I was skeptical at first but damn if it change your life!

Thanks! I'll keep it under consideration. I've been very big on the whole OEM+ thing, but after a certain point I think I'm willing to sacrifice some looks to drop weight in the car and not slide around on the leather haha. Though I have a few more important things to take care of until I get to that point.

Radio Woes

You may remember I mentioned earlier that I was having some headaches with my radio repair. I sent the stock unit (which was having problems) out for repair. The business I sent it to basically made it worse, refused to take responsibility, and now we're dealing with a credit card charge back and all sorts of fun stuff. It's annoying. I didn't want to buy another radio or try to fix this one again until that was resolved, but I was also sick of looking at the hole in the dashboard.

So I decided to order the OEM radio delete plate. It is not a permanent solution, I would like to have a radio in the car again at some point. But at least it cleans up the dash, and lets me pretend I have an LTW for a little bit.

[bwwaaaa]

Weird Flexes

So I’ve mostly left the M3 sitting. I drive it around every once in a while to keep things going, but I haven’t otherwise been doing much. Two small updates however.

First I picked up a Bonrath mono wiper conversion. A friend of mine found it on eBay Germany, sent it to me. After thinking about it for about 30 seconds I bought it. It needs some refurbishment, and I’m actually not 100% sure if it will actually work. But it would be cool to have a single wiper just like the actual STW cars. So more on that when I get around to actually fussing with it.

Second, I have a working radio! I picked up a CD43 from someone local. It came out of their Z3 Coupe, and works perfectly. For those thinking of sending their OEM headunits in for repair with German Audio Works, just don’t. I’m stoked to have an OEM headunit that works now, it may be a weird thing to insist on having but I **** the look of aftermarket radios. So this was an incredible win for me. It works perfectly, sounds great, what more could I ask for?

The car is actually going to a shop today for a few driveshaft repairs. New guibo, CSB, trans mounts, etc. Nothing I couldn’t do at home, but without a lift it’s a real pain. So they’ll be buttoning that all up for me and hopefully the car is finally mechanically sorted.

Also per everyone’s suggestion, I am now on the hunt for some comfortable but supportive bucket seats. Looking at the Recaro Profis currently, it’s just hard to commit to ordering them without testing first. Hoping to hit up my first track day at the end of October when things cool off a bit here in Arizona.

[bwwaaaa]

Clunking

So I’m having some serious troubles, and I’m hoping someone can give me insight on the cause. I have been chasing a drive train vibration/clunk/knocking sound for a few months now.

From a dig/barely moving start in 1st or 2nd gear, if I launch the car (WOT) a very loud vibration/banging will come from the transmission tunnel. If you’ve followed my thread, I have now replaced the motor mounts, rear subframe mounts, RTABs, reinforced the RTAB pockets, done suspension, wheels and tires, ruling out a lot of issues like wheel hop and other items shifting. However the problem has persisted through these replacements.

I just had the transmission mounts, guibo, center support bearing and differential bushings all replaced this week in hopes that would finally do it.

Here is the problem, despite now everything short of the physical two pieces of the drive shaft being new, I’m still having issues. Video attached, the noise is at the very end, it sounds like an impact gun in the center console.

https://youtu.be/FYLPfs5Y4XY
(Only way I could share the video was through YouTube I guess)

What I thought was the driveshaft center support bearing failing, must be something else, but I’m a little at a loss. The car drives otherwise perfectly, there are no vibrations, clunks or rattles under normal driving conditions, or even spirited driving at higher gears or not from a launching situation. This only happens from a launch which is why I initially believe it had to do with the rear subframe or rear trailing arms causing interference or movement. If you watch the above video, the rattling of the plastics in the car amplifies it, but the source sounds like it is coming from directly under the arm rest (roughly where the CSB is give or take. But it seems as though the sound is likely traveling up or down the driveline from it’s source.

At this stage my thoughts are: the u-joints in the driveshaft may be bad, the differential internals may have some sort of problem, the clutch/flywheel may be having some sort of problems, or the trans itself has some sort of internal problem.

I’m going to dig deeper into this obviously, but I **** to just throw random parts against the wall to see what sticks, especially with such large jobs like clutch/flywheel. I don’t feel/hear anything off about the clutch currently that would have been alarming, and likewise the differential doesn’t howl/shriek/grind or act strangely.

Any suggestions?

[OrangeBlue]

https://youtu.be/FYLPfs5Y4XY

Any suggestions?

Seems the park brake cables are very close to the driveshaft. I'm not familiar with the rear axle/suspension geometry.., but if the
suspension compresses it looks like the park brake cables could be pushed forwart and contact the driveshaft...

Continental makes old school looking radios if you ever want to get a modern one...

[gnmzl]

How long have you been having this issue? If the driveshaft itself is hitting something, there will be marks on it, I'm sure you have visually inspected it.
That sound does not point to a clutch assembly or gearbox internal problem, it is way to pronounced to be internal, at least that's what I draw from the video.
Looking at the pictures - when you had the flex disk changed, new hardware was used which does not appear to be OEM. Here are my thoughts - if the bolts are not the exact same length as OEM ones, upon hard acceleration when the engine/trans combo flexes to one side, the rear subframe remains somewhat in its place due to the poly bushings, the flex disk does what it's supposed to do and flexes. that's when a bolt that is a bit too long will come in contact with the casting ribs of the transmission behind the output shaft flange. The noise in the video resembles this very strongly.

[bwwaaaa]

Seems the park brake cables are very close to the driveshaft. I'm not familiar with the rear axle/suspension geometry.., but if the
suspension compresses it looks like the park brake cables could be pushed forwart and contact the driveshaft...

Continental makes old school looking radios if you ever want to get a modern one...

On the cables, they are close but there were no signs of contact on them. There’s not too much room to move them elsewhere, but nothing near them should really interfere, short of something being severely wrong. After another round of test driving yesterday it seems as though it is coming from the center of the transmission tunnel.

On the radio, I had looked at the Continental one, but ultimately decided against it because it’s slightly off from the OEM look. So far I’ve been delighted with the CD43 I got. It works great and looks perfect, so I’ll call that a win!

How long have you been having this issue? If the driveshaft itself is hitting something, there will be marks on it, I'm sure you have visually inspected it.
That sound does not point to a clutch assembly or gearbox internal problem, it is way to pronounced to be internal, at least that's what I draw from the video.
Looking at the pictures - when you had the flex disk changed, new hardware was used which does not appear to be OEM. Here are my thoughts - if the bolts are not the exact same length as OEM ones, upon hard acceleration when the engine/trans combo flexes to one side, the rear subframe remains somewhat in its place due to the poly bushings, the flex disk does what it's supposed to do and flexes. that's when a bolt that is a bit too long will come in contact with the casting ribs of the transmission behind the output shaft flange. The noise in the video resembles this very strongly.

This has been an issue well before the car had poly bushings anywhere. Truth be told I started doing bushings partly to try and remedy this problem. Initially I thought I had some sort of wheel hop problem, given the symptoms. It hasn’t gotten any better/worse through all the bushings changes or guibo change.

Right now my two leading theories are:

1. Driveshaft. I have replaced all the mounting pieces, but the physical driveshaft halves themselves are original. It seems as though it could be u joint failure at this stage.

2. Clutch/Flywheel. It doesn’t sound internal to the transmission, but it’s the only other thing in the driveline that remains untouched. I have a rear main seal leak anyways, so it may be worth changing just for the peace of mind.