Anyone moved to mini PC?

[jabski]

I am using a Beelink Ser5 Max just for everyday browsing etc. Would be fine for you use case

 

[Defy Belief]

Ah see I'm the other way round I prefer the boxy 80's/stocky look of a 36 coupe. A 46 is nice but it's a bit girlier/curvier, can't stand E36 M3 mirrors though, in the bin they go, my mate with the E30 M5 engine swap above even took them off his E36 M3 hahaha!

E46's are way less reliable and have crapper designed access when working on stuff, for example the E36 you just pop the bump strips off the front or rear bumper and 4 nuts hold the bumper on into a rail either side of the wing and you can get the fitment spot on everytime and adjust it. The 46 you have to use a rachet vertically in the grille mouth and **** the grille/bumper as you're undoing it. Very silly, they also took away the awesome sill mounting jacking points which the OEM jack has legs that go into the E36 sill and let you jack up even the most slammed/lowered car, versus using a folded section on the sill or a plate, the E36 had a jacking point underneath too, but the sill access option was the one!

I agree, I re-bought my e36 above and the owner had put the m3 mirrors on, so i'm going to be changing those, luckily he spent the cash on genuine m3 ones, so they're worth quite a bit of money - The actual view out of those mirrors is so bad you almost may as well not bother even having anything!

I agree to a certain extent, though my e36 is having a new clutch being fitted right now, A lot has had to come out to get to the clutch! With it being nearly 30 years old a lot of seized bolts too

 

[Removed User 345456]

I agree, I re-bought my e36 above and the owner had put the m3 mirrors on, so i'm going to be changing those, luckily he spent the cash on genuine m3 ones, so they're worth quite a bit of money - The actual view out of those mirrors is so bad you almost may as well not bother even having anything!

I agree to a certain extent, though my e36 is having a new clutch being fitted right now, A lot has had to come out to get to the clutch! With it being nearly 30 years old a lot of seized bolts too

Yeah man, they're awful, I hate them, the visability is beyond a joke, the funniest thing is seeing those diagonal wonky replicas with the reversed LHD motors, you can see even less out of them!

Go for a LUK clutch, IIRC they're the OEM brand, I fitted one to my last one and didn't bed it in and it's still going now 40k onwards and has been drifted and driven very hard all it's life, do NOT forget to do the rear main seal and release bearing though, the sump needs to come off to do the rear main seal properly or it WILL leak. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise, whilst the sumps off do the oil pumps o ring that the dipstick slots into and the o ring on the dipstick tube thank me later.

Yeah I just buy all new hardware whenever I do anything and copper grease everything and use a torque wrench, getting old bolts off, your best bit is a £7 impact screw driver off ebay, I use mine on everything to undo it the first time, you can **** the **** out of the end of it and it takes half inch sockets/screw driver/allen/torx bits, and works in reverse thread and normal, one of the best things I've ever bought!

 

[Defy Belief]

Yeah man, they're awful, I hate them, the visability is beyond a joke, the funniest thing is seeing those diagonal wonky replicas with the reversed LHD motors, you can see even less out of them!

Go for a LUK clutch, IIRC they're the OEM brand, I fitted one to my last one and didn't bed it in and it's still going now 40k onwards and has been drifted and driven very hard all it's life, do NOT forget to do the rear main seal and release bearing though, the sump needs to come off to do the rear main seal properly or it WILL leak. Do not let anyone tell you otherwise, whilst the sumps off do the oil pumps o ring that the dipstick slots into and the o ring on the dipstick tube thank me later.

Yeah I just buy all new hardware whenever I do anything and copper grease everything and use a torque wrench, getting old bolts off, your best bit is a £7 impact screw driver off ebay, I use mine on everything to undo it the first time, you can **** the **** out of the end of it and it takes half inch sockets/screw driver/allen/torx bits, and works in reverse thread and normal, one of the best things I've ever bought!

My dad is doing the work for me, luckily BMW apparently quote £2k labour for the job...ouch

Its a Valeo clutch, single mass flywheel kit, it came with the car when I re-purchased it. It drove back from nearly liverpool (3 hour drive) perfect, then a day later pedal just slammed to the floor, changed the master slave cylinder but same issue...

When my dad took it all apart, we found out that the clutch fork had snapped. So could have just replaced that but at this point it may as well have the clutch fitted!

Noted re the impact screw driver, my dad broke 3 sockets and used I think 2 cannisters of gas to heat up the bolts to get the clutch off

Noted the other things to replace, I bought loads of parts off the back of my dads recommendation (about 40+ years of being a mechanic) so I imagine those are the parts, but I will double check for sure now you say this.

 

[Removed User 345456]

Ah nice that's awesome!

Yeah ridiculous prices! IIRC about 5 years or more ago BMW were charging £130 an hour + VAT! And if you have an ///M you pay for a mastertech at even more!

Ah nice, love me a SMF conversion! You will love that!

Yeah such a useful tool, even if you combine it with cheap impact sockets you can still smack them and they'll get it done.

Do the sump gasket at the same time when you take the sump off, another thing to watch out for is how tight your diff's drain/fill bungs are done up and don't use non geniune replacements, I put the tiniest hair line little crack below my fill bung and it weeped, ended up replacing the front cover plate grr! Luckily my mate just had one in stock as per usual lol.

Somewhere I have a pic of my fully rebuilt enhanced M3 LSD and all the brand new pieces lined up on the workshop floor, it is a very satisfying pic as is the one of it assembled haha!