Craig's 328i Sport - e36 Track Car Build Thread

[s.mac]

sounds like you are really enjoying the car, best of luck which ever way you take it, car looks

[Craig]

News in brief; got bored, clean bolts...



Used a bench grinder with a wire wheel attached to it to painstakingly clean 160 nuts and bolts, take precautions such as safety glasses as those little wires like flying all over the shop, most ended up stuck in my torso!!

Once cleaned, all threads were checked and a few nuts and bolts had minor thread imperfections removed by use of a tap and die set or thread file. I also split the BBS centres down so there is no plastic left in the centre cap lock nut, this will allow them to be acid dipped, shot blasted and powder coated.



Planning to powder coat them over the next few weeks... a local wheel specialist who appreciates the work I’ve put into the car is willing to let me help out with the refurbishment, whilst teaching me a few new skills along the way!!

[Craig]

Just a few snaps of the car parked up outside the house, the neighbours must think ‘WTF!?’ sometimes especially when they see all 6ft3 of me jumping in and out of it over the roll cage daily.

[Bounce]

Looking good Craig,you aint done a bad job there.

[mattCSLnut]

Great work there Craig The car looks

[Craig]

It’s with great sadness I post the following pictures;











Driving home late last night, having been up since 04:00 due to work, I simply had a temporary lapse of concentration when on a road I’m vaguely familiar with.

I was travelling down a country lane in the rain and mild mist, this road has a T-junction in which I would normally turn right and then immediately left on to continue down the same road. On this night the junction appeared to come out of nowhere, bearing in mind I was only travelling at around 50mph, I panicked hit the brakes and just slid straight up a high kerb and into a tree-like hedge.

Gutted doesn’t really describe how I feel, I’ve crashed cars before and obviously felt bad about it but this literally feels heart breaking knowing how many hours worth of work has gone into the car over the last 20 months not to mentioned all the memories it’s made too.

I did a damage assessment this morning and to get the car back to where it was before it’ll need;

- 4x Wheels & Tyres
- 2x Front Wishbones
- 2x Anti-Roll Bar Drop Links
- 1x Rear Camber Arm
- Air Conditioning Radiator
- Power Steering Pipe
- Front Slam Panel & Bumper Bar
- Headlights & Indicators
- Bonnet & Grills
- 2x Wings & Arch Liners
- Inner Arch Work
- Front Splitters
- Paintwork

From the above list I can’t really see it been viable to repair the car, if I could do the bodywork side myself I think I’d have give it a go but this is one area I’ve always had to enlist the help of friendly body shops.

Maybe it’s time to break and move on?

[shimmy]

Sounds and looks bad Craig, but surel you can't need all that stuff, Inc 4 rims and Tyres?

I was hoping you'd have her all ready for Spa in October

[mattCSLnut]

Bad luck Craig but I hope you're OK Would be a real shame to brake this car after all the hard work you've put in, especially on the interior. Surely most of the panels you need are bolt on and cheap enough now to source second hand, then send them off individually to the body shop and reassemble at home. Everything else, except perhaps the A/C rad. you can source off fleeBay/ BMW breakers s/hand as well Unless of course the chassis is bent, then I'd say get another E36 328i coupe and transfer all your bits over Keep us posted.

[whopwop]

aH bOLLIX......................
I was scrolling down through the pix and thought thats stunning until I got to post 96............. tough luck

[mickaldo]

fukin gutted for you craig been following this from the start.you dont seem to have a great deal of luck with bm`s.