Are you going to try and do an alignment yourself?
Are you going to try and do an alignment yourself?
Probably not. I'm going to see if either of the two nearby BMW shops do alignments and see how much they cost first.
Why not do a quick alignment just to try your hand at it then take it to the shop and see how far off you were, you are going to pay to have it done anyway. Then if you are close you will know that you can do it and save some $ in the long run.
If you come and help I'll try my hand at it 
I watched a few videos of DIY alignments, and it seems fairly easy, if a little tedious.
Didn't have a lot of time yesterday so I knocked out something I have been meaning to do, paint the bumper trim. It comes off very easy and I just cleaned and used Krylon Fusion paint. Looks much much better. Might to the door trim too but they are attached differently, so I'm waiting on that. Still haven't ordered any new parts, might do that here in a few minutes. I'm waiting on the suspension components because I want to have a look around under the car before I buy anything.
Here is the front bumper trim before:
And the rear:
After:
Its much better looking then the picture makes it out to be. It was hard to get a good shot given the brightness outside.
Spent some time on the car today getting some things done that I have been putting off. I found the source of the rear end noise I was having over sharp/deep bumps in the road:
The tire was rubbing the fender lining along the outside edge. I trimmed it down a bit and hopefully that will stop.
I also completed the clutch delay valve delete. Here it is on the car:
and off:
It keeps you from being able to drop the clutch and prevent drive line damage but can also make the clutch hard to manipulate. I am interested to drive the car without it. Everyone online says its a huge improvement. Yay for free mods!
I shook down the front suspension and surprisingly the front ball joints and tie rods are very solid. I think I will hold off on replacing them but I did order new poly control arm bushings, since my old ones are toast. Also have a new valve cover gasket on the way so I should have that and new spark plugs installed before the weekend. There is an autox on Sunday that I am planning on going to as long as it doesn't rain. I am taking my buddy and letting him drive my car since he has never participated before. Hopefully he will be hooked and will pick up a car soon.
Also thinking of trying out a spray paint duplicolor fix on my fender and hood like this guy: http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?2056426-My-%28new%29-E36-325is-and-project-list/page5
Tempted to buy an m3 front bumper at the same time and paint it too... I'm not usually one for doing exterior/visual modification but they look sooo good.
I have gotten a fair bit of things done lately, just haven't gotten all my pictures uploaded until today. Replaced the valve cover gasket, made a home made clutch stop (out of a bolt, washer, welder and a furniture foot pad), replaced the front control arm bushings with poly bushings, and changed the spark plugs. The clutch stop makes a huge difference. I was disappointed the control arm bushings didn't make a bigger difference, since my old rubber ones were very worn out.
Auto-crossed as well this past Sunday, ton of fun but not very fast. I think tires would be the next logical upgrade but I'm not sure i want to spend that money since my tires still have a lot of life. I also don't autox very much so I'll most likely wait on tires.
Left is stock plastic clutch stop, right is new clutch stop.
Inside the valve cover, pretty good for 214xxx miles, no gunk. The valve cover gasket however, was shot, it was hard and brittle.
AKG street performance poly control arm bushings:
Auto-x
Wow that really does look good for over 200k on it. Also looks like a easy motor to do a cam swap in. Might make it a bit faster, but it all depends on how much a cam would cost you.
You can get M3 cams for around $250 and they are good for a good little bit of power. Anything aftermarket jumps up in price a lot and I would much rather do forced induction.
Couple of updates, I decided to plasti-dip the wheels gold, turned out pretty good.
Hopefully it holds up good, it was incredibly easy to use and not that expensive. Its an easy way to changes things up for cheap and have the option of easily returning to stock. Also they are more gold then you can see in the pictures, kinda of an 80s rally look.
Then today I pulled the drivers front fender to repaint the top half. Hopefully it turns out good, I'm really taking my time and in the long run its going to be hard to look worse then it was. $40 in paint and sand paper and a few hours of work. I have the primer on now and I'm waiting a full 24 hrs before I wet sand it.
On another note, my thermostat housing is leaking so I ordered a lower temp thermostat to put in while I have it cracked open to fix. I plan on deleting the clutch fan and either running with only the aux fan or putting an electric fan in. The clutch fans are known to disintegrate and take out your radiator and lots more when they do. I also ordered a new windshield cowl since mine was in rough shape and had to come off to remove the fender. Once I see how my paint turns out I may go ahead and order up an M3 bumper.
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