e36 318ti - 2014 GRM Challenge hopeful

I am starting this thread to keep track of our 2014 challenge build. It is being entered by two friends (brothers), my brother and I. So two sets of brothers. Even though we live in Florida and very close to the challenge, we have never participated or even attended any of the challenges. We have all been readers of the magazine since before the first challenge, but for one reason or another never participated. Hopefully we can finish this one and finally attend with a car of our own.

Some background.

This all started back in the early 2000's. We were going to go ahead and finally bring a car to the challenge. Ideas flew in all directions, a few cars were chosen and then life got in the way. Fast forward to 2013 and the thought of doing something finally started to surface again. This time we had no excuses; actually we do, but can’t use them to procrastinate anymore.

We started by "building" a couple of cars on paper. This way we would have more options once we started looking for candidates. The main goal was to bring a car that had never been entered before; this is not as simple as it sounds. Sometimes there is a reason why people always start with the same platforms. We finally settled on either a BMW or a 1980s Mercedes Benz coupe; the later mainly because we knew of one rotting away. The heart would be BMW either way as we had a complete M20B28 along with a stroker crank and rods.

After scouring Craigslist for a month, we finally found a car that looked promising. A '96 318TI e36, asking price $900.

I mean, look at this picture ... this has to be the perfect car. It was obviously owned by an "enthusiast" that really cared for it ...

I am sure that e36s have been entered previously, but at least not a compact. Two of us went down to look at the car and after driving it and talking to the owner decided that it was crappy enough to offer $500, it was the perfect car. After an hour of back and forth negotiation the price was agreed at $550 ... that is until "someone" threw an extra $5 dollar bill at the guy for "beer". So the purchase price was $555.

Done deal

Low, well cared for, miles

The car was overheating, but we decided to drive it anyways the 15 or so miles to a safe place where it could be stored for the next week. As we left, we realized that the steering wheel was locked straight, it only happens until you try to turn a few times and shake it loose. We'll figure that out later. It took 5 stops and 2 hours to get it to it's temporary home, as we did not want to overheat the motor in order to be able to sell it.

The next weekend, we had AAA tow it to what will become its home for the next 7 months.

It made it

The next step will be to clean it up and see what we really have. Stay tuned.

Great buy on a 318ti, even an overheating one!

dculberson wrote: Great buy on a 318ti, even an overheating one!

We missed out on another one that was listed for $1100 and was in much better shape.

This one has been used and abused. Surprisingly the auto transmission was silky smooth. It said GM on it, did not know they used their auto transmissions.

Awesome.

I'm building mine for solo STX. Minimal prep on a college budget on mine. Looking forward to see what smart budget ideas you have to do on this car!

MINIzguy wrote: Awesome. I'm building mine for solo STX. Minimal prep on a college budget on mine. Looking forward to see what smart budget ideas you have to do on this car!

Glad you like it. We have a good idea what we want to do with it and already did a lot of the work, but probably will not break any records. We mostly want to do this for fun and to push ourselves to see what we can come up with.

The next weekend, we all got together to see what exactly we had. Only two of us had gone to pick up the car, so up to this point half of the team had not even seen the car.

The day we were looking at the car I happened to open the fuse box and a nice cockroach came out of it. Not a good sign. I was the one that had to drive the car, the thing was filthy. So we decided to clean it up and then put it on the scales before anything was removed.

I really did think that these cars were lighter; my e30 with a heavy six cylinder engine is lighter. It came in at 2773 lbs. Oh well, we’ll have to dig deeper to get rid of some of this weight.

Some pictures after it was cleaned up as much as possible. You can see the paint is shot, plus it was hit on the driver’s side bumper and the fender is all messed up.

The paint was like this all over the car

And that lovely M44

Yep, unfortunately this is a ’96 car and therefore OBD2 with the lovely EWS2. It is going to be more difficult to do an engine swap on a challenge budget, but we’ll figure it out.

I don’t know how someone could drive this car, the smell inside was unbearable. It was so filthy that we decided to discard most of the interior. Not because we were afraid to find buyers, but because we really did not want to store or touch any of it. I have never seen a car with so many live cockroaches in it.

Keep posting.

If you wanna sell me those door panels, I'd be interested! Don't junk everything!

MINIzguy wrote: If you wanna sell me those door panels, I'd be interested! Don't junk everything!

Door panels went to the trash a while ago. Honestly they were all messed up, they had holes and were attached to the door with wood screws.

We kept some of the electronics. We have the whole HiFi sound system I believe.

We do have the whole engine transmission combo that I would let go really cheap. It would come with all accessories and wiring. We did a compression test on the engine before it was removed and the transmission worked great.

What about that rear parcel shelf? I sent you an email through this forum, did you get it?

MINIzguy wrote: What about that rear parcel shelf? I sent you an email through this forum, did you get it?

I will check and see if we still have it. If I remember correctly it was one of the few things in good shape. Never got your email. Try

How do you get that many cockroaches into a car? Houses, I can understand - there's food - but eugh.

Should just bug bomb the entire car now that you've stripped the interior to make sure you got 'em all. And then never turn on the HVAC fan.

Do you have any better shots of the front passenger corner? Usually when I see cars at auction with those little stick-on convex mirrors I know that both wheels on that side are curbed and there's a few hundred bucks in bondo and repaints in it. The fact that mirror isn't even the same colour as the drivers' side one makes me even more suspicious.

Rear parcel shelf is gone.

If you want, email me a list of what you need and I will check to see if we have it.

ssswitch wrote: How do you get that many cockroaches into a car? Houses, I can understand - there's food - but eugh. Should just bug bomb the entire car now that you've stripped the interior to make sure you got 'em all. And then never turn on the HVAC fan. Do you have any better shots of the front passenger corner? Usually when I see cars at auction with those little stick-on convex mirrors I know that both wheels on that side are curbed and there's a few hundred bucks in bondo and repaints in it. The fact that mirror isn't even the same colour as the drivers' side one makes me even more suspicious.

We started finding coachroaches when we were taking it apart. Probably over 20. You dont want to know what we found when we removed the dash, hopefully I have pictures.

Regarding body work, it looks like mostly the driver's front fender. The door has a crappy repaint, but appears to have no bondo. The fender is so screwed up, we will replace with one from a sedan.

I was on a zoom call the other day after the challenge with some GRMers and was asked whether I ever attended. I mentioned I did without a car back in 2014 or so ... but I had a car I was building and stalled on. 

Well this is the car. I might start the thread back up, not sure it will ever make it. My threads are all an abandoned disaster. 

Just to show the car's current state after all these years. It runs but there is a lot of work that was done to get to this point and much more to go. 

We swapped an M52 in with M3 cams and an M50 intake. All the interior and engine bay have been painted as well. 

Awesome!!

And it's a manual now right?  RIGHT!?

I want this for a track car.

Finish it!

akylekoz said:

And it's a manual now right?  RIGHT!?

I want this for a track car.

A kind Z3 at the junkyard donated both its ZF 5 speed along with its LSD rear end :D