cheap M3, whats the worst..

MOT is booked for Wednesday (tomorrow) at 1pm. My mum is kindly taking it along for me.

i had a final going over of the car today. checked hub nuts etc things i may have forgotten. bulbs, the basics, and put the evo wheels on too. it looks brilliant.

chucked a couple gallons of super in there and it should be ready. all i had to do was temporarily swap the mk3 battery over and id be done.

wrong. mk3 battery was so much smaller than the original that the cables didnt reach the terminals!

a few minutes of intense head scratching later and i made a couple calls at about 9pm and a mate of mine from clubgti came out trumps with an old battery he had had laying about for over a year which happened to still show 12.something volts.

a quick dash round to his, bring back the battery and it fires first time :D
 
oh, almost forgot. i carried out some more important de-chav work today

i had a nasty M3 badge on the front grill. instant MOT fail i thought

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quality item obviously
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as much as the whole "M" thing is great, plastering badges over the car is a touch desperate.
 
MOT failed. three items

Headlight alignment.
I hadnt tightened one of the nuts on the offside adjustable camber arm.
Excessive corrosion on rear jack points (which really cant be that bad as ive had it on axle stands for months)

I have to take it somewhere to weld. i cant weld myself but i also dont really know any garages so its a bit of a stab in the dark.

heres a funny one though. transferred insurance from mk3 golf to m3 today. i was quoted an eye watering additional £570 for the remaining 10.5 months of the policy. i could take out a brand new policy, with the same people, for £400.

i had forgot to tell him i wanted to change from TPFT to FC.

requoted me on FC and additional premium was £140 :D
 
another few £££ later the old girl has an MOT and the rear jacking points look nice again (i actually think it was just the floor around the jacking points as they worked just fine) but its all be stripped back, cleaned and repaired. no pics as its something i didnt do myself.

its being picked up tonight so itll be back on my driveway.

given the date, i wont be taxing it until saturday now

i ought to get a new maf ready for it really and hopefully drive it up to Elite for geometry on saturday afternoon

£££s for MOT
£££s for MAF
£££s for Geometry

Im still not certain if the thread title is sufficiently answered
 
before the paint on the rear arches, the new head/tail lights, lambdas?

good thing i like to fiddle

spending on the BMW will slow down for a while. i have a half built garage, which would be so much better once the roof is on, so i want to make sure i have the readies ready for when it comes to finishing that.

obviously ill be able to get far more car stuff done once i have a proper garage :D
 
there is a proper beam thats going to be going across. it will have a block tackle / engine hoist

the same beam will also support a projector, the compressor will also be going in the roof

sadly, now that the BMW if functional and has moved from the front of the house, i really ought to actually carry on with painting the house as the car was stuck there so long, nothing has been done at the front
 
its back on my drive. being a newb at bodywork stuff i had to ask if it was undersealed/protected and it is and waxed inside apparently. ill have a look myself when its up in the air again

next little adventure is tax it this weekend, get some geometry done and then drive it.
 
Tax disc applied for online.

After midnight tomorrow night, Ill actually be able to drive it :D

Can anyone recall how serious an offence it is to use a car that doesnt display a valid tax disc?
 
hi there

its maiden voyage was a success, just got back in. i didnt get pulled over once (its probably still showing as SORN) and i didnt buy or sell any illicit substances

this evening i had the intake system apart as the idle wasnt satisfactory. the idle on mine seems to hang at about 900rpm as youre coming to a stop and then drop to 600rpm when you do actually stop and it does it consistently. i dont know if that is fluke or broken, any ideas?

all in all it drove nicely considering its dodgy geometry and feels quick. the shove feels in the region of 200lbft ish but its most surprising thing is going from 2nd to 3rd flat out, it really does pull well but i think there is more to come.

it responds well going on and off throttle, its easy to drive it smoothly. its relatively lazy to drive as there is a fair chunk of easily accessible torque almost everywhere. you seem to be in a gear higher almost everywhere compared to the Golf 1.8t. An Evo M3 must feel great as they are meant to have an extra 30lbft in most places

the sound is lovely. i wont be modifying the intake or exhaust unless i find a supersprint at a very good price.

only unexpected noise was the rear diff in slow tight turns. i did choose to use 75w90 oil. there is a lot of talk on the net about 75w140 fixing everything

the drive/hoon netted just over 25mpg average which i thought was good

temps all behaved as expected, even the interior is relatively rattle free, im actually slightly smitten with it. just need to sort those lights out to make it look less of a spacker.

geometry in the morning :D

its been a lot of work but im dead happy with it so far. for not a lot of money i think i might have a bit of a belter

i might rig up my phone as a camera and take it for a drive. it might be a bit of a boring video but im sure someone would be interested
 
ill have to go back to the drawingboard regarding the diff then. the noise is not a good thing. would be nice if an oil could fix it.

however. i have put 100 miles on the car today. i got back lastnight at 0130 and was up and out again at 0700 to head to rainham.

people talk a lot about good garages and waste of time garages. ive always taken my cars to Elite as ive felt theyre bloody good. well they saved me a lot of hassle at the expense of a little embarrassment today.

the car was put in the air and within minutes the guy spotted a big mistake

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see in the end of the trailing arm there is a holder/bracket that bolts to the car, look at the orientation in that picture. the bracket goes "into" the car. i refitted mine wrong, ie pointing outside.

so we got spanners out and correct that then he went about sorting the geometry.

i had it set to 10 minutes at the front, 20 minutes at the rear, -1.5* rear camber. front is -2.2*

i paid and left and within 100m you could feel the car was totally different, i mean it had no resemblance to how the car drove before. the traffic was naff and i did a lot of town driving but in the couple fast roundabouts i did, it felt amazing.

i will be keeping oe spec for the suspension. the car drives so well, im not uprating or upgrading anything.

so thanks for your advice everyone regarding geometry, the hardware, the oils etc

i now have a e36 that goes and sounds nice when you put your foot down, feels amazing when you change direction.

im still a long way from the end but i will have an ace car at the end of it. the main thing is that its now on the road and drives like it should.

100 miles has netted c.25.5 mpg according to the computer with a real mix of driving

it appears i have a slight coolant leak but that can just go on the "things to do list"
 
Took it to work today, the car geeks swooned. Took it to a friends place after work and realised I'm either completely not used to having a "look at me" car or I'm getting really attached to it as ive not feet as paranoid about leaving a car in a slightly iffey in very long time. With plain looking vag stuff you know your car won't be noticed when its parked

With regard to iffey areas, two dead car batteries were pinched from my front garden today. Downside of living in a very quiet area, people can get up to all sorts and not be noticed :-(

Even when I get the CCTV sorted, what can you do about gyppos?
 
sigma said:
Sounds dodgy! Are M3s easy to nick/get started? I know some cars have top immobilisers as standard which makes them hard to steal quickly.
Click to expand...

Its 1994 technology, it bet it would be away in a flash. Plus things like mirrors and bumpers, chavs love that sort of stuff. Being bright red it doesn't seem to blend in at all (ill have to get some pics up, I think its wonderful, but I could be biased!)

Vince, you have your car back on the road now? There was a 966 I used to see about which I thought was yours. I think this calls for ganglandesq OCUK hand motions at passing cars if you think the may be from the board
 
mine is still creaky, seems louder when its been stood a while btu once on the go you dont hear it

when i get a chance ill get the "different oil" and try that

will be a waste of the 75w90 stuff i put in though



with regard to the car standing or it being my imagination, so many people have commented on the car to me today.

oddly, even though i am from the chav capital of the world, there are very few e36s about. the ones that are are chavved to high heaven, mine is a complete rarity being a nice standard looking one
 
Close to 300 miles on the car since the MOT now.

So far it has been very well behaved and the fixes to the intake system on friday night have all worked. the idle is now perfect and power is consistent all the time in every gear.

it despirately wants a wash. after countless passenger rides this week the wheels are now black.

GF drove the car lastnight and didnt like the throttle pedal, it had started to become sticky for the first 10mm of travel, i had possibly not put the cable back together properly when i did the intake system on friday

i had a fiddle with that and now the throttle is perfect, she has even attempted to H&T downchange a few times. she really likes driving it but isnt confident enough to go banzai just yet.
 
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