Like a good story, this one started many moons ago. Many, many moons. I was a young buck and started to catch pieces of this new thing called "drifting." I gathered all of my pennies and dimes and looked for a cheap manual rwd car that would be powerful enough to drift and reliable enough for me to drive to and from the track. I ended up with a 96 sn95, which was probably the single worst car I could have bought to accomplish my goal. After a year of suffering with that underpowered, no-turn-radius yet glorious-sounding animal, I bought a grey-market s13 and retired the GT to daily driver status.
After a few years of driving it around and liking it as a daily, it began to not want to pass smog. It did, but just barely, so I decided to sell it, but told my new wife that I had every intention of replacing it soon. Well, a bit of marriage advice, replace it first.
As time passed, any mention of getting another car was met with increasing skepticism. I was okay with this, but still yearned for a cool little car to drive around instead of my truck.
About that time, I came up with the idea of starting a drift school that would piggyback on the stunt driving school I had worked at for a decade. I would only do it for friends, and it might help promote my young career. First things first, I need to get a car! I figured I'd get another s13 to complement mine, but I figured I might as well get something street legal that I could drive around when I wanted to. The s13's are too weak stock, and there are no smog-legal options I know of to remedy that so I broadened the search net. We had started our family so I figured while i was at it, I should find a 4-door in case I wanted to haul the kid(s). There weren't too many 4-door, rwd manuals that weren't $$$ but I heard that there was a short-run on e36 sedans and, knowing that they drift pretty well, I looked for one of those.
Found one on a forum in San Franscisco, and ended up working out a deal with the guy that seemed perfect. He was going to drive to San Diego in a few weeks and could just fly home. So that's what happened.
I'll forego the frustrating part where he never showed up and didn't answer his phone because he decided to drive down to san diego instead and figured he would drop it off on his way home. It was also missing a bunch of stuff he said it came with ("Couldn't find that..." "those wouldn't fit." "uhhhhh....." ) including the title. In retrospect, I should never have taken the car, but in spite of him being a somewhat less-than-honest guy about several things, he did mail the title and I became the clear and complete owner of a 98 m3 sedan.
Shortly after getting the car I did some hard thinking about doing a drift school and decided that I would have to charge my friends way too much to make it worth my time. Luckily all I had done to advance in that direction was buy the car, and it was then that I remembered that I still had to replace my old mustang. Problem solved!
I drove the car a lot for the first few months, loving that I actually owned a fabled ///M car. But over time, i drive it increasingly sparingly as it ended up being easier to just jump in our 05 prius that got 50 mpg and wasn't blocked in down our single-lane driveway.
Then I had a problem that should have been simple but ended up really being an ordeal that continues to perplex me. The alternator went out, and it took me a while to find one that would work. There are two different styles of mount on the bottom and either can work, but I wanted the style that came on the car. After visiting about 4 different auto parts stores, I located one that worked.
At the same time, it wouldn't pass smog and seemed to be the cats. I was smelling a rotten egg smell from the right rear of the car. Weird, as the exhaust is on the left, but that sulfur smell is indicative of bad cats I was informed. A friend lived about 40 minutes away and had just pulled the motor out of his e36 coupe to make room for a LS. He said I could have his exhaust, so I took the m3 with the new alternator over there to get them.
I got to his house and the smell was powerful. I popped the trunk and saw the battery steaming. And smelling. Like horrible, very rotten eggs. Hmmmm.... This seems like a situation that could get really bad really fast. I borrowed his multimeter and reluctantly fired up the car. 16 volts.
Ugh.
I loaded up the cats, no longer sure that mine were bad . I figured mine still are likely bad based on the smog numbers and hoped they would fit but not sure as his was a 2-door and mine was a 4-. I then decided to drive it home instead of a tow because I take dumb, unnecessary risks sometimes.
I got home without incident and promptly removed the alternator. I then put the car on stands and it sat for a month or two while I swapped out the exhaust and fought with autozone about the alternator and the damage. The battery seemed fine but the stereo no longer worked.
I ended up getting the car back together after a while and triple checked the charging voltage. After driving for a little while, I also discovered that my little OBC (on-board computer) no longer showed any functions that required a speed input (max speed, range, miles per gallon, etc) and that my cruise control had stopped working.
I also got sick of cleaning off the tree sap that continually fell on it, so I just left it, knowing we were about to move and that I would just clean it all off at once once we got to our new place.
I know this is WAY off topic but your avatar worries me alot ....is there a build thread for this?
