Now that I have the back seats out and have started to strip out unnecessary parts of the wiring harness I feel like I'm really at a major turning point for the car.
What was once primarily a street car is on the cusp of becoming primarily a track car that will remain street legal. At the same time, trimming the wiring harness and stripping out interior components feels both like new levels of commitment and complexity but also like a point of almost no return.
Sure I could store away all of the interior pieces I'm removing but realistically once the rollbar goes in there is no going back.
Speaking of rollbar I really need to find a reputable source for a welded in bar that could potentially become the basis for a future cage. Once I've got someone nailed down to do the work I'll feel much more comfortable about fully prepping the car for track centric duty.
Got the old girl up on jack stands yesterday and attempted to replace the fuel filter. Unfortunately I couldn't get the car high enough to successfully remove the shielding panel covering the filter. Rather than play sill tricks with my jack to add some height I decided to just let my local shop install it when I drop it off for inspection in a week.
Got back out to the garage today and removed all of the grab handles, visors and dome/cabin lights so I could pull the headliner.
Attempted to go through all of the rear speaker wiring and got the passenger rear working again and bundled all of them and routed them cleanly with existing wiring.
Test drive later in the day revealed that now the driver side rear is acting up. And that the car is loud as hell now without the headliner and rear seats in place.
This poor girl has been in garage slumber for far too long. After spending some time as a spectator with my boys at Hyperfest I'm feeling my passion for the car reigniting.
It didn't hurt that we saw our drifty doppelgänger there.
I also think the trip got my boys much more stoked to work on our car!
Projects planned that I think the boys can easily get into with me are:
- removing front seats
- remove carpet
- MKAH door cards
- pulling remaining interior trim bits, pillars and whatnot
Current plan is to get it as stripped down as possible inside and ready for fixed back seat selection and roll bar install.
Radio and speakers are all going bye bye along with a ridiculous amount of wiring.
I'm going to try to find a cheap used drivers seat on marketplace or something because once the interior is out I need to get it sold and out of here or I'm all out of room to work.
Still just as good looking as I remember! Tell us the BMW color name again please?
Morea grun which sure seems like German for "sea green"
If anyone here has the door cards or has recommendations I'm all ears.
These guys https://www.trackcardoorcards.co.uk have some cool options for the E36 sedan but I'm not sure how I feel about dealing with shipping from the UK
Got the rear speakers out of the car this morning while waiting for my pot of coffee to brew. Antenna blocks/amps? on the c pillars will be next to go once I confirm neither of them feed power to the rear glass defroster traces.
Shop manual says the antenna amps do carry power to the defroster traces but berkeley it, I can live without rear defrost so out they come.
I still have to trace the antenna to the front but the rear deck is now clean and wiring is coming out along with carpet a bit at a time.
weird when the can being full counts as progress
One of the ways I'm going to involve my sons in the process is that they are going to be in charge of pricing & selling off any/all interior parts.
Should teach them some ins and outs of online marketplaces and negotiation at a minimum.
Swapped the E46 into the garage and the E36 now lives parked in front of the garage.
Working in it outside earlier stunk even with all of the doors open. We get home tonight and had just about 90 seconds to get it covered before a storm rolled in.
I hate car covers but the last time it was left out uncovered the spare tire well was a fishbowl after rain.
Could use some wisdom from the hive mind
E36 roll bars seem to all have a with and without sunroof cassette option. I haven't pulled my sunroof and replaced it with a fill/delete panel yet.
For those of you who may have gone down this path and rather than purchase a panel, instead reused the stock sunroof exterior "skin" - how did it go, did you regret your choice, are you constantly resealing it?
Also a set of Z3 M wheels for sale if that has any interest here. Not posted anywhere yet but happy to share pictures if anyone is interested I'm midway between Philly and Wilmington.
As I've been stripping much of the interior and wiring I've been trying to figure out how to maintain some level of "legal" streetability so I can occasionally attend a cars and coffee or local autox without also needing to subject the car to annual PA DMV inspections.
Its plated/titled as a classic now which has kept me from needing to deal with emissions but safety inspections are still required. However, having just turned 25 years old the car now qualifies as an antique which drops the safety inspections requirement as well so $225 later and my application is now on its way to Harrisburg.
Hopefully I'll have new plates in 4-6 weeks!
I do hope to find a car hauler open trailer before winter rolls around but with the antique plates even if I don't have the trailer I should still be good for any events within an hour away.
Plan for the moment is to maintain all HVAC functions, lights and signals and put off a trailer purchase until the right deal materializes.
Cars and coffee with the oldest boy (15) this morning and we took the E46 M3 which got some admiring looks from a few of the attendees.
However our votes for best cars this morning were:
We didn't stick around long as we had work to do when we got home.
Now that we've got the front seats out along with the rear we can get them cleaned up and get pictures taken for ultimate sale.
While these are by no means pristine with dings and one missing cargo net in the back the seating surfaces and bolsters themselves are damn near mint.
trumant (Forum Supporter) said:
One of the ways I'm going to involve my sons in the process is that they are going to be in charge of pricing & selling off any/all interior parts.
Should teach them some ins and outs of online marketplaces and negotiation at a minimum.
Just out of curiosity, let us know how much do you want for the vaders and whether shipping them is an option. I know from when I removed mine's they weighted 70#s! So they are probably a pain to ship.
trumant (Forum Supporter) said:
Could use some wisdom from the hive mind
E36 roll bars seem to all have a with and without sunroof cassette option. I haven't pulled my sunroof and replaced it with a fill/delete panel yet.
For those of you who may have gone down this path and rather than purchase a panel, instead reused the stock sunroof exterior "skin" - how did it go, did you regret your choice, are you constantly resealing it?
I bought a carbon fiber replacement part from S2 something and never installed it. I decided to leave the sunroof cassette intact and put a rollbar with it. I really did not want to deal with water getting in.
@Slippery if you have still have that CF fill panel I'd love to buy it.
Six10 dash Niner3Uno Ate2FiverNine if you want to discuss.
Kirk Racing roll bar and Garagistic driver & passenger seat base and side mounts are ordered.
Bimmerworld has a Memorial Day weekend deal where any purchase of $600 earns a $100 promo code for future purchase later this year so they got my roll bar order. I'll end up using the promo code toward seats and harnesses so I feel like im getting a decent deal and BW is getting some repeat biz so win/win.
Perfect weather this morning and the boys were in a helping mood so we organized and catalogued all of our parts haul. We filled 2 17 gallon storage totes of interior parts and have seats and wheels and tires besides.
While I was hoping we'd also get everything moved out of the garage to the basement at least we now have a spreadsheet with our parts list and basic photos of part numbers and the like. Once we do get everything inside we will get it all cleaned up and final sales photos taken.
And we filled yet another trash can full of non saleable crap like beaten up floor mats and the like so we are definitely still winning the war of reclaiming floor space.
My wheel cleaning secret weapons, pink silicone "bottle brush" from TJ Max for $3 and Iron X
Wear gloves and make sure you've got some great ventilation when it's time for the Iron X though. Easily the worst smelling chemical involved in any detailing.
Attempted to make a deal for a Corbeau FX1 Pro this morning from FB marketplace but the seller wanted to sell both seats with mounting hardware only and wasn't having any of my attempts to just buy a single seat and leave the rest.
On the plus side he has about 14 E30s and a few E36s so I'm sure we will end up doing business one of these days for something else.
Going to check out a Racequip containment seat tomorrow after work. I'm hopeful we can make a deal as I think it will fit my lady and my older son perfectly.
Son can't drive yet but he's getting his permit any day now and I want both he and she to be as safe as possible as either passengers or drivers.
I'll give it a trial sit as well but I have a feeling it's going to be too short for me. Racequip basically says at 6'1" that you are rolling the dice on proper fit and I'm 6'2".
