Visceral M3 / My Estoril E36 M3/2/5

[Mike0032]

Got my new DEPO's in so I swapped the FX-R retrofit over into the new one and spent a few hours getting the panel gaps closer and aiming the headlights. Took the car for a drive around town and took a few pics as well. I'm pretty happy with where the car is at now, just need to get my ass in gear and execute the plans I have for the interior.

IMG_4327 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4307 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4325 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4272 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4266 2 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr

[Mike0032]

Another Sunday morning update: nothing much new. Just been driving the car here and there and enjoying it.

IMG_4332 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr

IMG_4337 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr

IMG_4379-2 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr

Took the car to dinner one night, missed the turn to Flavortown and ended up at Angryville.



Developed a strong misfire right as I was parking the car. With no tools on hand, nice clothes on, and a dinner reservation closing in, I had the car picked up and towed to work to deal with it the following day.



Got to work the next morning, put some fresh fuel in it, checked spark plugs and was poking around looking for vacuum leaks when all of sudden the misfire cleared up and car went back to normal.

Turns out I’m just a big idiot. There’s a first for everything and it looks like I can now say that I’ve ran a car out of gas.



While I was there I finally made the remaining brackets for lower radiator duct piece and bolted everything up.



As are the brackets that mount to the core support, they are carbon fiber L-brackets, one side riveted for strength, one side attaches via zip-tie for easy removal if needed.



Still need to clean up some edges with edge liner and fine tune the fitment, but it’s pretty good now. Going to have to figure a way to block some of the gaps on the edges but I don’t want anything close to rubbing on the condenser/radiator/lines. Maybe some high density foam.



Separate little side project; I had a spare DEPO headlight laying around in the garage. I had the idea of keeping the low beam-projector fully functional while having a clean looking duct in place of the high beam. I’ve seen a couple of attempts at it but nothing that flows super clean.




Something like this that is clean that follows the natural lines.



Since I don’t have the tools or the talent to cut the glass lens that comes with the DEPO, I sourced a set of old and faded OEM headlights. After a couple of stints in the oven and a lot of patience, the OEM plastic housing was off.




Quick 30 minute sand and polish cleaned it up pretty decent.



There will be some tweaking necessary to fit the OEM lens on the DEPO base, but nothing that should be too difficult. That’s all I’ve got for now, I’ll continue to work on this when I’ve got some free time and motivation, but my next focus is finishing my rear seat delete so I can finally install the roll-bar that’s been collecting dust for a while now.

[Mike0032]

Another overdue update, so let’s jump right in.



Things with the car have been pretty tame lately, it mostly sitting a lot as the wrath of late summer in southern Texas begins to come to a close. Every now and then I go into the office on a Saturday so it’s bit of a tradition for me to park it up front, right outside of my office, so I have some eye candy throughout the day.



That old blue M3 caught the eye of an ambitious and slightly frustrated coworker, however. Frustrated, as my rollbar had been taking up space in the back of the shop for nearly a year now. Ambitious because he wanted to put it in. So the car went around back and into the shop for him to start on.



I went back to the office, dropping in periodically throughout the day to lend a hand when needed or check in with water and food. This guy is one of the few people I trust working on the car without any sort of supervision or intervention, the surrounding cars you see are assembled, tuned, maintained, and ran by him.



He delicately trimmed the carpet to make flaps for the mounts to be clean and hidden while carefully positioning the rest of the assembly in place. Although when I bought this roll bar, it was said that it was for a sunroof model car, however it certainly took some persuading to get it to it’s final resting place without really wrinkling the headliner.

You may notice the main harness bar hoop is still not wrapped with leather. Originally I made one continuous piece to stitch in, however after further thought realized that in the future I will run a proper harness setup rather than the Schroth Quick Fit Pros. Because of this, I decided that this piece will need to be separated into individual pieces; one on either side of the harnesses so that they can properly be affixed to the roll bar itself. It’ll be a chore to stitch it in the car when final, but not impossible.




Rear outer seat bolsters were trimmed to surround the rear support bars while still clipping into place, retaining the full factory interior. Since the seats were already out, and I had a long road trip planned in the coming weeks, I decided to replace the driver’s bucket seat for the Vader.



All said and done, the install is nice and tidy and I’m stoked to finally have this piece in the car. Originally I planned to delete the rear center fold down seats and the bottom cushion with tasteful and OEM inspired pieces to help offset the gained weight, but the full interior is kind of growing on me. I can, however, definitely feel the extra weight.



With the weather starting to shift from summer patterns to fall patterns I’ve been driving the car to and from work a bit more, which led to a unique photo opportunity seen here. F50’s are pretty amazing to look at in photos, but their presence in person is unrivaled. Truly one of the best cars to ever roam the streets.



I’m going to get off topic briefly; Although there were only 349 F50’s ever produced, and every one of them being very special cars individually, this one is particularly special and exciting which is why these photos deserve their own quick excerpt here.



This license plate may not seem like much to many, but to those who are fans of Rosso Corsa it may ring a bell. This is Ferrari Chassis #99999. What this means is that this exact F50 seen here is the first F50 ever produced. This is the developmental prototype. This is the car driven by Nikki Lauda and other great test drivers at Ferrari’s test track. This is the media car, used for the initial press releases over hundreds of magazines, the car that was used for development of all the F50 scale models and toy cars to come, the car that was on the poster hanging in so many bedrooms over the late 90’s. There’s a plethora of information online to those who would like to know more.



It’s a seriously special car and I was pretty excited to share space with it for a bit.

IMG_4737 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr

Moving right along, I’ve fallen off the wagon a bit on using my DSLR. I took it out one Sunday afternoon and took a couple snaps. This set will be linked to Flickr to try and save some image quality.

IMG_4753 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4757 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4762 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4770 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4788 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4798 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4825 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr

The city (and roads) of Houston are flat, straight, 90-degree angles of boring intersections and rough pavement. Any road that engages you as a driver is at least an hour outside of town, and even then, mediocre at best and over by the time you get your heart rate up. For the near five years I’ve lived here I have asked other like minded Texas petrolheads for a list of their favorite driving roads, and the list always came back the same: Hill Country.

Hill Country is a section of midwest/western Texas, mostly between Austin and San Antonio, both of which are roughly three-four hours away from me. However, the consistent mention of Texas’ “Twisted Sisters” had peaked my interest for quite some time. The Twisted Sisters are composed of three farm to market roads about an hour west of San Antonio, some 300 miles from Houston. They’ve come highly regarded by everyone I spoke to about them, so I figured it was time to see for myself.



First things first, the rear diff has had plenty of miles to be broken in now, so I decided to drain the fluid, inspect the magnet, and refill with fresh 75w140 before the 1,000 mile trip.



Next was to make some minor adjustments to the alignment. I could have pulled out some camber and made other adjustments to make the car more “long distance friendly” but the whole point of driving out was to try and have some fun on some curvy roads, so it was left on it’s aggressive specs.



Last thing left to do was to give it a fresh wash and vacuum, a pre-road trip necessity.



We left on Friday morning and made our first stop in Austin to do a quick local hike. Austin was a mad house as it was Formula 1 weekend at Circuit of the Americas which ended up being the largest attendance to an F1 event ever, if I heard correctly. Lots of traffic around the Austin area, so we decided to do our hike, hit a favorite local road around the lake, and get out of town. Blkstrm (and anyone else from Austin) will recognize this gas station.



Took a bit of a leisurely route to our next stop, the small town of Fredericksburg. It’s still pretty warm in Texas, so those fresh A/C components got to get some use.



Later that afternoon we landed in Fredericksburg. This town is an old german settlement turned tourist attraction / destination for women obsessed with Pinterest and farmhouse-chic decor. Still, there’s some cool things to do in the area and a lot of good restaurant and wineries in the area.



Final destination for the day was our AirBNB for the weekend, a remote little cabin about 45 minutes south of Fredericksburg. Lots of rough roads and loose gravel.



We had a great little covered parking area complete with an outdoor kitchen, dining area, and rocking chairs to watch some quality Texas sunsets.



Saturday morning called for an early departure to head over to Lost Maples State Natural Area, one of the few spots in Texas where you can get real fall foliage colors, something we miss as native Midwesterners. As you can see, our AirBNB was in a pretty remote area with plenty of free range livestock.




We saw some good colors but were maybe a week early for peak foliage. Still, always good to be outdoors. Time for the hour drive back to the cabin to shower and relax before dinner.



No cell service, no worries.



We headed back into town for dinner at a local winery. Obviously the sun had set while we were there which made for an exciting drive back through rural Texas. I’ve said it before but I’ll say it again, the FXR retrofit with quality bulbs is one of the best things I’ve done for this car. The photo above is of low-beams only, with the high-beams on I could see all the way into the future.



Sunday morning consisted of what I had been waiting for for quite some time, the Twisted Sisters. The morning started out cloudy and drizzly for the hour and a half drive to where the route started. Unfortunately, right as we arrived to the beginning, we came across a downed motorcyclist. Luckily his friends were there with him, help was on the way, and that he was still well enough to give me a thumbs up. We moved on and took the first leg of the 100-mile loop at a relaxed pace.



By around 11:00 AM the skies cleared up and the roads dried out, with my conscience cleared a bit I could start to dial up the rhythm a bit and put the car through it’s paces.



335/336/337, the Twisted Sisters, offered some great driving and some great views. Very few side of the road stops for overlooks, however, hence the lack of pictures. That’s someone else’s stain, by the way.



Towards the end of the route I really started to up the pace and stretch the car’s legs and it performed flawlessly. Water temps were rock solid, brakes didn’t even break a sweat, and the suspension and tires ate up every corner. If you really want to, this car can haul down a mountain road at a truly laughable rate, but that’s not something I want to do with the fiancé in the car with me.

Overall, the sisters were good, but a bit underwhelming. It was nice to be on an uninterrupted winding road with elevation changes but the really technical sections seemed to come to an end pretty quickly and then I was left waiting for the next set of curves. Still, I’ll come back again for a weekend of driving.



Afterwards we made our way back to Fredericksburg for an afternoon of poking around the shops. As the sun started to go down we stopped by a local spot in Comfort to grab a pizza to take home.



I think she wanted some ‘za.



Monday morning we loaded up our gear and made the drive back to Houston, about a four hour drive. Although the 3.46 diff had the car at 4,000 RPM the entire way home, it was a nice and flawless drive home with the A/C and good music on. Another road trip down without any sort of issue whatsoever, an impressive feat for a 25 year old german sports car with 168,000 miles on it, at least in my opinion. Still, the tires and the suspension show their purpose on instances like this and make it known that this car is far more geared to track days then long distance cruising. This is another reason why I’ve been heavily considering an E90 M3 lately.

But for now, all that is left is to clean off 1076 miles of bugs and dirt before it sets on the PPF. Luckily, that’s another chore I enjoy.

[S14]

Awesome read! I had a bit of a laugh on your description of Fredericksburg, it's spot on!

I have a good friend selling 17x9 SSR type-C's, are you still looking for a set?

[Sharocks]

Yo that F50 might be the most baller car posted here on this forum.

[Mike0032]

Awesome read! I had a bit of a laugh on your description of Fredericksburg, it's spot on!

I have a good friend selling 17x9 SSR type-C's, are you still looking for a set?

I'm pretty content with the ARC8's for now, but I'm easily tempted

Yo that F50 might be the most baller car posted here on this forum.

It's pretty rad. Full Tubi exhaust, no mufflers. It sings.

[Sharocks]

I'm pretty content with the ARC8's for now, but I'm easily tempted



It's pretty rad. Full Tubi exhaust, no mufflers. It sings.

Mike you should post a video, ya know for science hehe

[Mike0032]

Sometimes no news is good news. Nothing terribly exciting to report as of late.

I’ve been on the hunt for a nice E90 M3, preferably in LeMans Blue. One popped up for sale in Long Island so after a couple of e-mails and texts the car was scheduled for a PPI. After that came back clean I placed a deposit on the car and bought a flight to NYC to inspect the car myself, hand over the funds and complete the transaction. Luckily for me the $500 round trip flight and 3600 miles of flying in a single day was worth it. The car turned out to be not at all what I expected and was in need of roughly $7500 worth of work right off the bat. I ended up unwinding the deal and am still on the hunt for the right E90.



Other than that, life and work has been hectic as we close out the year and finish up our holiday shopping and plans. I’ve been driving the car here and there as the weather is still in the 70’s on average.




The car again shared space with some pretty cool stuff over the last month.




One of my friends picked up a well sorted E92 M3 with a lot of the right ingredients already installed. I borrowed it for a day, and god damn are those great cars for the money.



All in all, after this year is over and we’re through the holiday season, I’ll probably get around to finally installing the dual-fuel pump setup I’ve had in a box for a few months now. With temperatures being pretty pleasant this time of year, I’ll try and get back to the local track for some more fine tuning and hopes of a 1:46.

[cornerbalanced]

Sorry to hear about the E90!

Best of luck with the hunt. Having owned 3 E36 M3s and 4 E90 M3s…I can confidently say they’re both incredible cars. My bias leans slightly towards the E90 however.

If you thought the E36 was quick in the mountains, the E90 might surprise you considering how much of a pig they are. A well tuned E90/92 M3 will keep up with just about anything imaginable in the corners, while still being comfortable enough to drive every day.

[Mike0032]

Sorry to hear about the E90!

Best of luck with the hunt. Having owned 3 E36 M3s and 4 E90 M3s…I can confidently say they’re both incredible cars. My bias leans slightly towards the E90 however.

If you thought the E36 was quick in the mountains, the E90 might surprise you considering how much of a pig they are. A well tuned E90/92 M3 will keep up with just about anything imaginable in the corners, while still being comfortable enough to drive every day.

As I get older I would like some more comfort and usability to go with my "fun car" which has lead to the hunt for a V8 sedan. Originally I was dead-set on an E39 M5, but I'd rather have something that's a bit lower-maintenance involved right now. Also, I don't think I'll ever plan to sell the E36, it's just such a great car. I've got a few friends who have E92's that are well sorted and they are basically the "Poor Man's GT3." They can hustle some serious speed.

[Mike0032]

The camera on late generation iPhone’s has found me spoiled and leaving the DSLR at home 95% of the time. However, there’s still a lot you can’t do even with the latest and greatest phone, so I’ve been trying to carry my DSLR with me every day, just for the random times a good opportunity pops up.

Every day on my morning commute I drive past an open plot of land in the middle of a neighborhood. Sometimes the conditions are just right and the morning sun shines through the trees and creates a little foggy patch, just in this one plot. I’ve driven past it many times, thinking “I bet I could make that look nice.” And many of those times I was driving the wrong car, or running late, or simply the sun/fog combo wasn’t there. Finally however, all of those prerequisites came together and I was able to stop for a few minutes and grab a few photos.

IMG_4869 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr
IMG_4856 by Mike Ellington, on Flickr

With how much of Houston is composed of concrete and metal and glass, it was nice to get a feel for Autumn, if only briefly.Shop’s empty, time to finally get around to installing the dual fuel pump setup I ordered four months ago.



Getting the rear seat base out with the roll bar in place was one of the harder parts of the install, the rest of it was pretty straight forward. I was pretty surprised to pull out the fuel pump to find it was the original to the car, May of 1996! 168,000 miles and almost 26 years of service, I’m impressed.



New pumps in and oriented.




Orienting the float on the driver side pump took a little trial and error, but nothing beyond 10 minutes of work.



No matter how hard I try, I just can’t get the hang of wiring. Master Mechanic Miles saves the day, again.



Finished, now to haggle the rear seat back into place and clean up.



Next day was Sunday morning car church, although it was only 40* or so out. Good times with other enthusiasts as always!




Now that everything is squared away, I’ve set a date two weeks from now for another run at the track to try and crack a 1:46. My best so far is a 1:47.70 so I’ve got a ways to go.

[Mike0032]

It's that time of year in Texas where the weather is perfect with sunny skies and highs averaging in the 60's and 70's.



A nice Sunday evening drive led me to this spot downtown to grab a few pics during the golden hour.



Another scheduled track day coming up meant it was time to pull the Vader out and put the bucket in, this time with a friends Recaro SPG. Every time I switch from Vaders to a bucket I'm reminded how much I hate the stock seats. I think it's time to finally bite the bullet and buy the Pole Positions I've been eyeing for a while now.



During the annual oil change and track prep I found this lovely surprise on the passenger front. I knew they were getting low on the inside edges, but not this bad.

I quickly hopped on Tire Rack to order a set of Direzza ZIII's, but they showed only one in stock in Louisiana and no ETA on the rest. A couple of phone calls later, I found a second tire in Colorado and both on the way for delivery before the weekend track day.



Track day prep always includes a fresh wash. LTW splitter is pulled out to full on scrape mode.



I had some numbers sitting in the garage for two years or so and decided it was time to throw them away. Rather than throw them straight in the bin, I decided I'd run them for the track day and then throw them away.



Do those numbers look familiar?



Anxiety relieved, the two tires showed up the day before the track day. Freshies up front, old RE71R's out back.



Filling up at the station next to the track, a wild 996 GT2 appears!

Conditions were awesome the day of. Got to the track around 9:00 AM and it was overcast and in the low 50's. As the day progressed and the sun came out the temperature came up to about the mid 60's.

With new tires up front and three year old RE71's out back, I was having some heavy braking/heavy weight transfer oversteer but nothing that was beyond manageable. I just started braking a little bit earlier and trailing off more as I would enter the hairpins. By the third session of dialing in tire pressures and suspension settings the car was feeling really good.

My personal best last time for this track was a 1:47.6 (running the opposite direction) so when the lap timer indicated a 1:47.3 in lap one I was pretty stoked. By lap four (of the session above) when I had a clear track ahead of me and in the zone, I managed a 1:46.05. When it first popped up I thought that the timer must have glitched. A few laps later I clocked another 1:46.6 so I knew all the changes were working and it must have been accurate!

When I started coming to this track a few years ago I was really excited to be in the upper 1:40's which is a respectable time for a car of this power to weight ratio. Every time I come back I shave a little bit more, thinking "This has got to be the ceiling for this car." I would have never thought a full interior E36 M3 with only an intake and an exhaust would be knocking on the door of a 1:45. All things said and done, I'm beyond pleased with the car in it's current format. I still have the Porsche MAF, 24# injectors, and BBTB that I can add to get some more power and a rear seat delete that will help bump me into the 1:45's, but until then!

[Mike0032]

Sunday morning: update time.

Time to finally finish up the stitching on the roll bar. Originally I designed the main harness hoop to be one continuous piece of leather from side to side, however I realized I needed to change this to three separate pieces so that the harnesses would rest on the bare metal itself and not rub the leather and stitching over time.

While using harnesses that mount to or drape over a roll bar you want to install a collar system to ensure the belts stay precisely where they're supposed to be. I had some silver collars but once mounted to the bar they stuck out like a sore thumb.



Easy fix; paint them in a wrinkle black finish to match the bar itself.



Once everything was coated and cured, I noticed another little quirk that needed to be addressed. The black hardware had become crusty and unsightly. I thought a little bit of polished silver hardware would be a nice accent on these.



Much better, right?



Next up on the interior was something I have been wanting for a long time and putting off.

The factory Vader seats are cool looking seats but that's about as far as it goes in my opinion. They're uncomfortable, absurdly heavy, provide nearly no bolstering, and my biggest gripe: they sit so high that my head brushes against the headliner.

For a long time my plan was to get Recaro SRD's since they are period correct and provide decent bolstering, however as my needs have evolved I found that ultimately these wouldn't provide the level of support I'd like for track days. I switched my focus to another period correct Recaro, one that is still tolerable for a street car but provides a far better hold on the occupants; the Pole Position. The Pole Position has been used as a factory seat in many euro cars and are especially popular in 80's/90's Porsches as well.

Since the rest of interior is composed of leather & vinyl, I knew that I would need to get the same for the seats, otherwise the fabric seats would look out of place. For a long time I was considering the newest generation Pole Position, called the ABE, which flares out the lower bolsters to make room for the factory seat belt receptacle. Functional, but looks a little funny in my opinion. Finding a non-ABE in vinyl/leather was proving to be a tough feat, as most of the Porsche guys snag them up quick. I was ready to order a set of ABE's and call it a day when a listing popped up in one of the BMW groups and only 20 minutes from my house!

I went by the sellers's house the next day and as I pulled up I found not one but two IMMACULATE E90 M3's. I'm clearly in the right spot. After chatting for a bit we struck a deal and I came back the following day with some cash and a lot of excitement.



I got home and quickly ripped the Recaro SPG out. I quickly learned a few things:

1. The design of the Pole Position bucket sits lower / the mounting holes are higher than the SPG and the Sparco I had used previously. The shell of the seat base was rubbing on not only the hardware the locates the VAC side mounts to the VAC seat base but it was also so much lower that even without any hardware installed the seat would rub the lower portion of the side mount bracket itself. What this meant was that the lowest rear mounting position possible was on the highest possible hole on the side mount.

2. Doubling down on this inconvenience meant that I was limited to a nearly vertical seating position, as the best I could do with these mounts was all the way up in the rear, all the way up in the front. The seating position is low, but there's next to no recline with this setup.



Still, I was very happy to get this mounted in the car and sit in the seat I've wanted for a couple of years now.

However, the seat mounts needed to be changed. I searched for a while for manual E46 seat sliders to use with the Brey Krause mounts but gave up and secured the regular fixed mount from BK. Originally I was on the fence about this fixed mount but then I realized no one else drives the car and I never change my seating position anyways.



While waiting for the mount, I pulled the seat back out and put it on the bench next to the SPG and learned some other notable things.

• The Pole Position, while still a fixed back bucket seat, offers a noticeable amount less bolstering around the thighs. Great for a street car, less ideal for a track car. Looking at the photo above you can see the sides of the seats tailor down at a 45-degree angle on the PP, while the SPG ends with closer to a 90-degree angle down.
• The PP is almost two inches wider throughout the base of the seat. The mid section is nearly identical and the cushions are interchangeable here.
• The shoulder harness openings are a couple of inches lower on the PP than the SPG.

Eventually the BK seat mount showed up. No glamour shots of these as they're pretty straightforward, but lots of putting the seat in, sitting, taking the seat back out, making an adjustment, putting the seat back in, sitting.....you get the picture. Finally I landed on a great seating position with a comfortable recline and right where I want to be. The BK mount is slightly off center, like most E36 mounts, but not enough to be uncomfortable. It's a very low mount and allows a lot of tailoring of the seating position.



Last thing to do was to add the bolster protector and a little flair with some badges I had laying around.



A previous acquaintance stopped by for a conjugal visit.



Lastly, while the weather is still cool I've been getting up early on Sunday mornings to go drive uninterrupted. It's been a pretty enjoyable watching the sun rise from the drivers seat.



Brought my friend and his track prepped AP2 along for the ride last weekend.



Until the next update!