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

[Craig]

Time for quite a positive update;

Mid-week I contacted Chris @ CR M-Tech regarding some bits, he informed me that he had an immaculate ’99 M3 3.2 Evo in ready for breaking, he mentioned that he’d seen the pictures of the my 328’s build and demise and would be more than happy for me to come down and break the car for bits myself as I had previously requested.

So, roll on 05:00 this morning when I fuelled up the trusty Astra Estate steed, purchased purposely for this job at an almighty price of £200.00 (with Tax and MOT!!) and set off on route to Shrewsbury. The journey down was pretty un-eventful as most parts runs are however I arrived in good time at 09:00 just as they’d opened for business.



Next I was greeted by a stunning purple M3, the colour is one I’ve always had a soft spot for and thought it’d make a great track car, I was even more shocked when I found out this was the car to be broken... aside from the fact it was an SMG and had a sun-roof it was very, very tidy.



Work begun and within an hour it was missing most of the front end;



Next I tried the bonnet up for size in the Astra, to my amazement it fit which was a good as I really didn’t want to have to hire a van and hunt locally for a bonnet which would be in nowhere near as good condition as this one.



With the panels off, next it was time for the engine and gearbox. All this had to be removed as I wanted the front corner chassis to aid the repair of my own car. It was only a good few hours into the job and the engine was out ready to be split from the gearbox and cleaned.



Now it was finally time for the car to rest in pieces, what was a beautiful M3 was now banished to the world of scrap in less than a few minutes, all in aid of repairing a lesser 328i.
First up; grinder at the ready!!



Ooooh and arrrr’s at the ready, it was now time to give the garage some light commencing with an array of orange and yellow sparks; sparklers ain’t half got better since I were a lad!






And here it is, one OEM BMW bandage ready to heal the 328’s wounds.



Back to what I mentioned earlier about the engine; cleaning. I couldn’t help but notice everything in Chris’s parts store was spotlessly clean and free from grease and grime usually associated with second hand parts from breakers.

It turns out, even though he doesn’t like to admit it, Chris has a cleaning obsession everything must be cleaned before it leaves the premises. Even though I wasn’t bothered, he insisted he cleaned all the parts before I left so that they were good to use straight away. I also noticed he was very anal about making sure all parts are supplied with the correct nuts and bolts, which was for me, a nice thing to see as I hate receiving parts only to find out I need to go buy a load of fitting hardware to mount the damn thing.

Next the Astra was loaded;



It may not look to bad but in this car there is as follows; bonnet, wings, bumper, crash panel, inner arch section, under trays, arch liners, wishbones, brake ducts, rear control arms, headlights, grill panels, aircon pre-rad, electric fan, a big box of bits and four wheels complete with tyres!



I got home and was able to cross off every single part I required off my list, and more!



I’d highly recommend Chris and CR M-Tech ([email protected]) for any of your e36 needs it was nice to deal with someone who also had a passion for the vehicles that were been broken. I liked how everything had to be right, if a part on the car wasn’t 100% it wasn’t allowed to be taken instead a perfect replacement was taken off the shelf, I also liked the fact he trusted me with his own tools and to disassemble the car at my own free will.... so I’d just like to say thanks Chris!!

Now... Let the re-build commence!!

[Sailorbaz]

Jesus H mate, that's seriously good going and a stroke of good luck I might add.

Much did he lighten you of for that lot, if you don't mind me asking? See the chassis leg though, forgive me for asking but doesn't it look damaged also?


What was wrong with the car that it was to be broken anyway?
Astra looks tidy enough for £200, I so need one of them!

[mattCSLnut]

Your persistence is admirable Craig :thumbs: Good luck with the rebuild :thumbs: Loving the "Cash Point Special" Racing Red Astra :smokin:

[Craig]

No, they already have bends like that it as a crumple zone if it didn't have them mine would have caused more terminal damage. It was a good price, but you have to take into account I stripped the car down for him.

[Craig]

Progress... huge thanks to Iain Fitz who came down from the Scottish borders on his weekend off to help with the panel work, I say help he did most of the work whilst showing me the ropes along with way.

Below pictures just shows the panels offered up to the car, nothing has been tightened up or aligned yet. A quick test fit later showed it’d align right and then we called it a day ready for a Sunday roast to warm us up after getting soaked wet through.

Next step is to take everything back off, and re-build it again with all the bolts and clips in their correct locations and of course get some colour shot onto the panels.

[Sailorbaz]

Excellent mate, that's some progress already. Looks weird but definitely a step in the right direction.

Looks like some good polish on the TV M3 too, why was it being broken up?

[outnumbered]

How tricky is it going to be to weld that bit of donor chassis back - presumably the fit has to be absolutely spot on given that you've got half the shock tower there ?

[Craig]

Ahh you don't use the whole section I cut off, I just lopped the donor leg off in any random place as I first thought I only needed to section two parts out of that leg, in the end it was only one part (the tail end of the leg that supports the bumper) more pictures will show you what's been done these will follow shortly.

[azrael]

Great effort Craig and nice write up

[Craig]

Here’s a proper update to elaborate on the previous post’s repair work;

Upon arriving at my house, Iain and I decided it would be best if we first attempted to straighten the panels that were already on the car, this would eliminate any issue of miss-matching seam sealer and would keep the OEM under seal. We had great success with the inner arch, wing rail and bumper brackets, so much so that we didn’t need to use any of those panels off the purple section I’d previously sourced.

Next was to make sure the car was straight, fortunately I was lent a CD with all the e36 jig info which gave all the alignment and measurement information needed to check the car was still true, and it was the only casualty was the bumper support cup on the end of the chassis leg. We at first tried to pull this straight, and although there was a small bit of success we weren’t happy with it, it was not time to face facts and one again the grinder was out.

First a bit of spot the difference;

Before...



After...



As you can see the only part used was the end cup, this was now to be welded onto my existing chassis leg. It was handy getting the whole sections as it allowed us to take measurements and cut correctly... measure twice, cut once.

Once welded, the welds were cleaned up with a grinder.









I wasn’t ready to prepare the surface and paint yet, so I used cling film to temporally protect the bare metal surface from the elements.



Today all the front end mechanics were done, new wishbones and anti-roll bar drop links fitted. I also took the time to strip down the front end and re-build everything using anti-seize compound and also re-lubricated the poly bushes which were surprisingly dry considering they’d only been fitted over a year ago.





Unfortunately the power steering pump pipe got a bit bent by debris that was dragged under the car, so was replaced.



The plastic power steering pump pulley also took a knock, this too is to be replaced... obviously!!



Next it was time to replace this;



Believe it or not this DID NOT get bent in the accident, it got bent with the straps used to winch the vehicle onto the tow truck, there is a lesson to be learnt here as only after researching this did I find it was a common occurrence due to the arms been so weak and designed to fail in a knock.

All the online jargon said due to running a large case differential there was no way this arm could be replaced without the whole rear arm been dropped or the differential lowered out of the car. Now I’ve replaced one before with a medium case differential and that was a royal pain in the back side, so I couldn’t see this task been any easier.

After removing the outer and inner control arm bolts it was obvious the diff was going to have to be moved, but I wasn’t convinced it’d have to come out. Instead I removed the two lower diff bolts (pictured below) which hold it to the rear support bracket, after that I used a trolley jack to lift it up, and a pry bar to move it across and the bolt just to say come out.

Job done, without half the hassle that was expected bonus!



New arm in place, ready for the car to be re-geo’d.



As well as all the above, I also got round to starting the prep work on the inner panels but it started raining so quickly covered them back up and will hopefully get to resume work tomorrow!!

[Sailorbaz]

Excellent progress mate, keep up the good work.

[Craig]

Don’t worry, I haven’t given up on the old girl... I’ve just been that busy with work and rushing to get the car finished in time for its final holiday of the year to the Nurburgring and Spa-Francorchamps that I’ve not had time to update this thread.

First off, I must apologise for the lack of pictures but as mentioned above time was not on my side so the last thing on my mind was stopping to take photos along the way, plus as dark nights loomed I often found myself laid on my back in the pitch black!

So, carrying on from the last update; I’ve managed to remove any imperfection to the surface, mask up the surrounding area and prepare the repaired panel for paint. First step was to acid etch prime the surface, for this I used Acid #8 from Halfords.



Next, not shown in the pictures there were several coats of Halfords Red Primer. The primer was then allowed to harden before been flatted down and painted with some colour matched Hellrot Red base coat.





Whilst still tacky I removed the masking tape to avoid any flaking of the paint of harsh lines.



The final result, although it looks a little ‘glossy’ over the last few days of using the car it’s dulled down and blended in with the OEM finish quite nicely. Compared to how the car looked a few weeks ago, who’d have thought it’d have looked this good once again!

Next up was to replace the PAS pulley, which wasn’t too much of a task once I’d figured out how the tensioners worked.



Un-fortunately this is where the photo’s stop, here’s the repair once the car is all back together and a picture of the multi-coloured front end... afraid I just ran out of time when it came to getting the panels done in time for Spa, I was still doing the alignment and geometry 30 minutes before I was meant to leave on route to the ferry port.





Next up, was the problem of vision, and lack of it! At this time of year the low sun and no sun visors was really causing a problem, fortunately Alex had a spare sun strip and was kind enough to donate it to me. This simple, yet effective measure saved me at the ‘Ring and Spa where without it I would have been pretty much blind 90% of the time.



And here’s a few pictures complete, just for good measure... the purple is really growing on me!





Winter plans, well where does the list end? Main priority will be to re-build the back axel and run some new brake lines, and of course paint it red again! Whilst I’m at it I really want to get some good 3-way suspension on there... rumour has it HSD & Track Culture are in the process of making an awesome yet affordable track set-up so I’m going to hang fire and see about giving these ago as after driving an e36 M3 with the normal HSD’s they really do seem like good value for money.

As always, stay tuned as even I don’t know where this one is heading!!

[alexk]

Looks very good Craig !

[Craig]

Well the long awaited magazine feature is here, it’s in this month’s Total BMW (May’s issue) and the feature is fantastic! The car has a small slot on the front cover, the inner index and a full centre spread five page feature, it’s all well written and the photo’s came out as expected to so I couldn’t be happier.













And as for an update, the TVR has been sold which leaves more time to play on the little e36 first plans obviously will be to get it all back to one colour and a GTR front splitter re-fitted. The BBS split rims are 90% complete, more on these shortly and I’ll have to get the BBS Sunflowers re-coloured to black or maybe even a light anthracite haven’t decided yet.

[alexk]

:thumbs:

looks cool