hakhawks cosmos e36 coupe

[MarkOwl]

This is what an E36 is all about.
Black.
Mean.
Loud.
Fast.

And you mate, made it right!

That rear-end reinforcement is something i will follow closely. Hope to see some pics and explanation of the works!

Great job so far!

[anth]

I thought E36s were meant to be slow, ground scraping, and on BBS's. SW has lied to me!

[MarkOwl]

Everything that's fast can be driven slow. The opposite doesn't happen that often.

And if you can drive it slowly, closer to the ground, on BBS's and still be able to go fast and look mean while you do so, why not?

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants as long as it is black." - Henry Ford.

[hakhawk]

I thought E36s were meant to be slow, ground scraping, and on BBS's. SW has lied to me!

haha, i sometimes look at the car and wish it was as low as it used to be, but then i get in the car and go for a blast, and forget all about how it looks parked

Everything that's fast can be driven slow. The opposite doesn't happen that often.

And if you can drive it slowly, closer to the ground, on BBS's and still be able to go fast and look mean while you do so, why not?

"Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants as long as it is black." - Henry Ford.

damn right!! cant wait to get around to bodywork, and get the paint looking how it should

[hakhawk]

dad welded up the reinforcement plates for me yesterday, and i threw some seam sealer on the subframe ones yesterday

got a bit done today, put the threaded rod in for the rear strut brace and the front subframe bolts



the trailing arm reinforcements were harder to do, lack of space didnt help, but theyre welded in and should be fine



lower part of brace is bolted on, just need to do the other shock mount, and bolt all the braces in



put the 6cyl rear tailshaft in, and someone was smart enough to mark the original locations before pulling them apart last year



then i bolted in the subframe, diff, upper and lower control arms and new swaybar. still need to tighten the control arms up properly once the cars on wheels again(needs to be done with suspension in normal position)



i went to grab the trailing arms, and noticed that we forgot to mount the dustshields(they also hold the handbrake shoes) before putting the hubs in. oops. ive cut a section out to slide them on, since taking the hubs out is a pain in the ass. if the shoes dont like the section missing, ill hack up the dust shields from the old suspension, and add the missing piece



unfortunately, jsut as i was about to do the second one, the trailing arm decided to slide off the bench and onto the floor. i tried stopping it with my ankle, but all that did was give me a bruise. the wheel bearing has a bit of wiggle in it now, so ill most likely be ordering another bearing tomorrow, but dad wants to check it out first.

theres really nothing else i can do to the car until the trailing arms are sorted, so i might have a couple days to relax while i wait for the bearing if i need it.


edit: bearings fine, it shifted coz we hadnt pulled the hubs in far enough, dad pulled the hub in some more, and everything fixed itself!!

new cv shafts landed in aus today, so looks like ill throw the new ones in straight up

[hakhawk]

today went well, got the trailing arms and brakes all back on



and since i had nothing else to do until i got my axles, i finished installing the rear strut brace. this things pretty solid, i did have the intention of removing the top bar if i need to put long stuff in the boot, but i dare say ill try and make do some other way, its not the easiest thing to remove :p

need to finish dying my side carpets black, and put them in, then sort out a false floor to work around the bottom section of the brace



aaand what do you know, the new axles came in. i was going to put the old ones in, but these were cheap enough, and came in pretty quick.



so tomorrow ill put the axles in, drop the car on the ground(read: blocks of wood because its too low to get my fat ass under) and tighten everything up.

will need to get the rear aligned, but if i can ill hold off til i get the front control arms in(should arrive later this week hopefully), so im not having it done twice.

[hakhawk]

didnt take any progress pics today, was too busy getting everything done before the heavens opened up, which happened as i was about half way through putting the exhaust back on.

but, im happy to say the rear end is all done, and working well. i need to adjust the exhaust position a touch more, to kill some 3-4krpm reverb, but ive had to do that everytime i remove/install the exhuast.

ill do the front control arms when they arrive, and the car should be good for maintenance stuff for quite a while.

couple driveway pics for the hell of it.

[hakhawk]

was measuring up space between current wheels and coilovers before(im only window shopping for new wheels, i swear!!) and took a quick snap



so far nothings come loose or broken, i dialed out some camber yesterday. even without an alignment yet, the car feels the most sure footed its ever been, the helical lsd certainly makes a difference aswell.

cant wait to get these control arms in and wheel alignment done, will be that much more confident driving it, especially when the supercharger goes on

[Zic]

Lovely progress man!
Get some style21's with R888, would look awesome.

[hakhawk]

cheers dude, ive considered the style 21s, near impossible to find over here, so id have to import a set, and whatever i go for next set of wheels i want to go for 9s all round

[hakhawk]

front control arms are done, tomorrow the cars booked in for its first wheel alignment since i bought it!!

took a couple shitty weather pics, didnt get any of the control arm install, as i was fighting the rain the whole time

[hakhawk]

had the wheel alignment done today, front toe was ridiculous, so thats all fixed now, rear was pretty much spot on, so we didnt touch it. car feels much better on the road now, will see how it goes over time, and try and get alignment a touch more often

went to work to collect some parcels, and ended up playing with my amps.

ended up removing the rear speakers altogether, and mounting the amps where the speaker box screws in. sits them up higher out of harms way, and will allow me to get into the shock tower area easier. just need to finish dying my carpet trims and put them back.

before



after

[hakhawk]

well its time to build up another set of wheels, so i picked up a set of faces off here. just need to decide what lips i want and what colour to paint the faces, and try and find some cheap center caps

ill be sticking with a sensible setup, no stretch, and the faces look to all have the same offset, so ill probably run 9" all round.

[Nico]

nice choice of Wheels :> have a set 8,5x17 an 9,5x17.

but please i want read updates here

[hakhawk]

havent really done much with the car bar driving it lately, so thought id do something this weekend after cleaning the shed a bit

so i drilled and tapped bolt holes, and enlarged the center hole from the dodgy looking NOS ports on the plenum, to suit the bypass valve.

it didnt come out as well as id hoped, but it will work fine. i still need to clean up the inside edge of the hole, along with some other crappy bits inside the plenum

you can see in this pic, the other NOS port is the same as what i had to work with, the spare one i think will get a blanking plate, which i'll drill and tap for the air temp sensor, and maybe the vaccum line for the bypass valve(cant remember if it has to go there, or after the throttlebodies). either way, im sure ill find some way to neaten it up.



run back to the charger inlet should be nice and short, simple and easy



and my rough as guts hole. think ill just round off the inside edge a bit. itll never be seen once everythings bolted up