Hi guys, I figure it’s time to make a build thread for my S54 swapped E36 M3. My first car was a 5 spd dakar yellow E36 M3 with a couple of dinan goodies. That car was a complete pile of shit but I loved it to death…. It taught me how to work on cars and more importantly taught me how to drive.
But being 16 and dumb, I sold that car due to some unfortunate circumstances and that was the start of a bad disease. After selling that car I got into E39 540/6 and E46 ZHPs and had a phase of jumping into different “newer” bmws until I decided it was time for me to get back into another E36 M3. I had shit luck finding a “nice” one because around 2019 ish, finding a clean e36 m3 was difficult for some odd reason for the sub $3-5k range. But I did stumble across this alpine white coupe. It was a track car and a street car. It was built really well but the paint had severe clear coat failure and a good paint job isn’t cheap so I sold it off to an enthusiast.
3 days after selling that alpine white car, I ended up picking a cosmos black E36 M3 coupe that was really well sorted and very clean. I owned that car for about a year, gave it my touch and did pretty much everything you could do to a NA S52 car.
The next step for that car was S54 swapping it. At the time, I couldn’t source an engine from a reputable seller or find a decent parts car to swap it. However, to my luck I found a couple running and driving cars in the 15-20k range. So it made sense to jump into an E46 M3 and that’s exactly what I did. I bought this imola red e46 m3 and built it my way. While I owned that car, I also owned a hellrot/modena E36 M3 that was an EAG car. I was going to s54 swap that car but I sold it before I “ruined” it.
After building the E46 M3, I kinda got bored with the car. I was on the fence about selling it for a while and I was always nervous about finding a good candidate for it’s replacement. One day, all of a sudden an alpine white E36 M3 pops up on my local facebook groups. And before I even knew it, I had to have it. So I reluctantly sold the E46M back to the previous owner. I paid Austin (previous owner of my E36 M3) a deposit for the E36 and booked a one way ticket to Maryland.
I was pretty nervous to say the least to buy a 24 year old car sight unseen that has 250k on the shell. But after talking to Austin over the phone I was a lot more confident in my purchase. The car was pretty much exactly what he said. I drove it to Ohio and it didn’t miss a beat.
It’s very much of an OEM plus build but the car has some room for some improvements. The very first thing I did to the car was get a tune from HTE tuning and that really woke up the car. At first, the car felt fast but you could tell it was missing some HP. It barely pulled on a stock E46 M3. But after Hassan tuned the car, it’s a completely different beast.
But being 16 and dumb, I sold that car due to some unfortunate circumstances and that was the start of a bad disease. After selling that car I got into E39 540/6 and E46 ZHPs and had a phase of jumping into different “newer” bmws until I decided it was time for me to get back into another E36 M3. I had shit luck finding a “nice” one because around 2019 ish, finding a clean e36 m3 was difficult for some odd reason for the sub $3-5k range. But I did stumble across this alpine white coupe. It was a track car and a street car. It was built really well but the paint had severe clear coat failure and a good paint job isn’t cheap so I sold it off to an enthusiast.
3 days after selling that alpine white car, I ended up picking a cosmos black E36 M3 coupe that was really well sorted and very clean. I owned that car for about a year, gave it my touch and did pretty much everything you could do to a NA S52 car.
The next step for that car was S54 swapping it. At the time, I couldn’t source an engine from a reputable seller or find a decent parts car to swap it. However, to my luck I found a couple running and driving cars in the 15-20k range. So it made sense to jump into an E46 M3 and that’s exactly what I did. I bought this imola red e46 m3 and built it my way. While I owned that car, I also owned a hellrot/modena E36 M3 that was an EAG car. I was going to s54 swap that car but I sold it before I “ruined” it.
After building the E46 M3, I kinda got bored with the car. I was on the fence about selling it for a while and I was always nervous about finding a good candidate for it’s replacement. One day, all of a sudden an alpine white E36 M3 pops up on my local facebook groups. And before I even knew it, I had to have it. So I reluctantly sold the E46M back to the previous owner. I paid Austin (previous owner of my E36 M3) a deposit for the E36 and booked a one way ticket to Maryland.
I was pretty nervous to say the least to buy a 24 year old car sight unseen that has 250k on the shell. But after talking to Austin over the phone I was a lot more confident in my purchase. The car was pretty much exactly what he said. I drove it to Ohio and it didn’t miss a beat.
It’s very much of an OEM plus build but the car has some room for some improvements. The very first thing I did to the car was get a tune from HTE tuning and that really woke up the car. At first, the car felt fast but you could tell it was missing some HP. It barely pulled on a stock E46 M3. But after Hassan tuned the car, it’s a completely different beast.
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