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

[sailorbaz]

Could I have seen these photos on another forum somewhere Craig? If it was back in August, it's quite likely right enough.

Looks well mate, good work.

[Craig]

For awhile now I had planned to do track days at both the Nurburgring and Spa-Francorchamps, in April I was lucky enough to do the first Destination Nurburgring and now, after many visits to Spa as a passenger or additional driver I finally bit the bullet and booked for Monday 4th October through Circuit-Days.

The trip first involved a few days socialising at Nurburg, from the moment I left the house till the point we arrived in Germany it like been stuck in India during monsoon season! I feared that it was going to be a wet weekend, but the weather gods were on our side and as we rolled up at Adenau the weather was damp and foggy but the rain had eased up. The weekend just got better from there, on Saturday I was sat in a queue for fuel and the temperature gauge read 26.5 degrees in the baking sunshine!!!

Monday came, and we made it to Spa just in time after a few minor detours. Signed on, completed the drivers briefing and then after a few sighting laps we were good to go... they say pictures speak a thousand words;























The day was not without drama, we decided that the latest we could leave for the ferry port was 15:30 in order to make it in good time. I decided at 15:10 to do one last session, famous last words I guess but at 15:24 I saw the coolant light creep and amongst a lot of swearing I pulled over to find that the car had burst a coolant hose!!!



Panic set in, but fortunately the whole group chipped in and we managed to by-pass the hose that went from the block into the heater matrix valve using one of the existing pipes, this would leave the car without a heater but still least it would get us home. We had to make another sacrifice, the scuttle panel cover had to be cut off as we could not get the wipers to release, but this is easily replaced. Work complete the car was filled with coolant (read: tap water) and it was time to go, we left Spa at 15:57 and had some time to make up, but fortunately made the ferry with 6 minutes to spare!

All in all had a fantastic weekend, already planning to do some more days at Spa it’s a great circuit and gives a different ‘buzz’ to the ‘Ring, I’d happily drive both most weekend and not get bored!

[Craig]

Well winters well and truly arrived, had a planned outing at Mallory Park booked for the 28th of November but that got cancelled due to the snow and the cars barely moved a wheel since then!

I managed to pick up a Rover 400 cheap, which very quickly got nicknamed Snover R400, to use through the snowy months... that is if it lasts that long, its verging on the edge of the dreaded head gasket failure and the massive mounds of snow I’ve rammed it through have started to pull its exhaust off at the flexi-pipe!

Anyway, less Rover talk; I now need to decide what to do with the BMW whilst it’s off the road. Do I leave it as it is, keep using it till it dies then let its soul rest in scrap heaven or do I spend some money on the old girl? To get the car exactly to how I want it to be, at the bare minimum would involve replacing the suspension (again!), fitting a roll-cage, fitting a different steering wheel, fitting a GT splitter and spoiler, replacing a rusty wing and maybe sort a few bodywork niggles out before the tin worm starts to spreads. This all costs money and that doesn’t take into account the worry that the car is now on 182,000 miles and could be due a clutch / gearbox / engine at any moment.

Decisions, decisions... What I do, like, no LOVE about this car is the fact that its stood for 4 weeks under a huge mound of snow and all I did was clear the snow, turn the key in the ignition and it fired straight into life as if it has only been run the day before!

Its moments like these that make me want to stick it out, keep the car and turn it into my vision of a perfect e36.

[mattCSLnut]

Originally Posted by Craig

Well winters well and truly arrived, had a planned outing at Mallory Park booked for the 28th of November but that got cancelled due to the snow and the cars barely moved a wheel since then!

I managed to pick up a Rover 400 cheap, which very quickly got nicknamed Snover R400, to use through the snowy months... that is if it lasts that long, its verging on the edge of the dreaded head gasket failure and the massive mounds of snow I’ve rammed it through have started to pull its exhaust off at the flexi-pipe!

Anyway, less Rover talk; I now need to decide what to do with the BMW whilst it’s off the road. Do I leave it as it is, keep using it till it dies then let its soul rest in scrap heaven or do I spend some money on the old girl? To get the car exactly to how I want it to be, at the bare minimum would involve replacing the suspension (again!), fitting a roll-cage, fitting a different steering wheel, fitting a GT splitter and spoiler, replacing a rusty wing and maybe sort a few bodywork niggles out before the tin worm starts to spreads. This all costs money and that doesn’t take into account the worry that the car is now on 182,000 miles and could be due a clutch / gearbox / engine at any moment.

Decisions, decisions... What I do, like, no LOVE about this car is the fact that its stood for 4 weeks under a huge mound of snow and all I did was clear the snow, turn the key in the ignition and it fired straight into life as if it has only been run the day before!

Its moments like these that make me want to stick it out, keep the car and turn it into my vision of a perfect e36.

Stick with the 328i Craig U've done a great job with it so far and you're just inches away from the perfect E36 Track Toy
Now could we have some pix of the Snover R400 Pleeeeeeeezzz

[Craig]

I don't think I'll ever be posting pictures of the Rover online, lol... if you're that interested search 1998 Rover 416i with Regatta interior in google, its lush! Ha!

In a bid to motivate myself into finishing off the car properly I decided to give it a good winter once over to remove any of the salt that might have been sat feeding the tin worm. Not much of an update, just any excuse to post a picture I guess... ohh and my brother was dying to try out his new fish eye lens.

Cleaning the car also gave me the chance to see how the shell is standing up to the winter conditions, to be honest its fairing up well if I was to be fussy there’s two small chips on the doors that are slightly starting to bubble, and one of the rear arches looks like it’s getting a trace of bubbling on the inside edge. Driver wing is shot, but I knew about that as this was the only flaw with the car when I first bought it.

I think if I go ahead and finish the car off I’ll have to seriously consider either leaving the bodywork be (after all, it’s a track car!) or going the whole hog and getting it all sorted at once!

[Craig]

Well I guess it’s time for another update;

Got bored the other week, decided to go into the garage for a play... I’ve always hated the faded purple rear parcel shelf so decided I would remove it to re-black it, easier said than done with fixed bucket seats and harnesses as the only way to get in was to remove these first. Anyway, got the cabin clear and made my way into the back all that was needed to do was pop the lights out the C-Pillar, remove the covers from either side then the parcel shelf simply lifted (well, more jiggled) out.

It was at this point I noticed a load of fibre sound deadening as well as the usual stick on tar sound proofing, and decided to remove it whilst I had access to it.





Well, one thing lead to another and I decided since I had the heat gun out I should finally get round to removing all the tar sound deadening underneath the main carpet, after all I’ve been bleating on about doing it since April!!

First off was the centre console, shortly followed by the sill covers and front speaker covers. Then the driver’s side lower dash cover was removed along with the glove box and lower cowling, next came the on-board-computer and finally the centre of the lower dash. Once all this was removed the carpet could finally be lifted up, I was not going to take the heater matrix out to removed the front carpet so got some new Stanley and cut as closely and neatly round the heater as possible, this would make re-fitting the carpet easier too, and the centre console completely covers the cut / join lines.







Next up was removing the under floor heating channels, then it was onto the tar. With the promise of beer and pizza I had managed to lure in a few friends to help with the removal, this really did make life a lot less stressful it only took three people and hour or two to complete including larking around. All that was used was a heat gun and some plastic ice scrapers, I chose to use plastic scrapers so that the paint didn’t get damaged underneath.





With the tar itself removed, all that was left was to get rid of the sticky residue. After trying all sorts of different techniques over the years, I have found using petrol soaked flannel (Sorry Mam!!) in a well ventilated area the best, a cut towel will suffice too. It would appear that flannel / towels work better than old t-shirts and rags due to the larger surface area caused by the plush bobbly bits, yes that is the correct scientific term for them too, ha!







As you can see in the last picture I have pulled back all the un-needed rear wiring, I will eventually removed this, along with the air bag wiring at a later date. The aim is to just have the bare minimum amount of wiring, which is the rear lights, central locking filler cap and boot locking mechanism even the third brake light has been removed due to the spoiler that will eventually be fitted.

Not content with just removing the rear aerial wire, CD changer lead, rear speaker wiring and other optional extra wires that weren’t needed I decided the stereo loom was too cluttered too. So below as you can see is the standard stereo loom, now going the Club Sport route I decided that I would keep the main front speakers and door tweeters for those long road trips where a little music was required, so most of the wiring in the below loom could be hacked out.



I didn’t like how the OEM loom went into an ISO lead, then into the Alpine power lead so decided to make a loom from scratch using all existing OEM/Alpine connectors. Below is all the wiring that has been removed from just the sound system in the car alone;



Now my new loom consists of the following;

- Live (Fused)
- Switched Live
- Neutral
- Front Right Speaker (+/-)
- Front Left Speaker (+/-)

I have utilised the OEM BMW power plug which connects under the carpet in the passenger’s side foot well and the Alpine head unit connector plug. The speaker leads run into some existing aftermarket cross over boxes which power both the door speaker and tweeters, after re-fitting and testing everything worked flawlessly. Here is my new lightweight no-frills loom;



As Porky Pig would say... “That’s all folks!” well for now!

[azrael]

Are you sure you weren't sent to your room! Talk about doing hard time. Admirable though!

[glendog74]

Nice update Craig - you've put some work into that 328!

I would have removed all of the stereo components and loom as an iPod works so much better on long trips than the crappy OEM setup

[Craig]

I did think about that and it may still be an option, but I found that the stereo equipment had been upgraded heavily and it was running some nice gear in it so just left it in... its also been dynamat'd behind the speakers and around them, I left this as it was really awkward to remove, it was not worth leaving a black gooey mess in what looks like a nice clean floor pan.

[alexk]

Good stuff Craig !


Question, did you weight the bits that you removed ?
I am in the process of reducing weight from my Z3 coupe.