The RWD Project

Now this is what i'm talking about....

The freshly sprayed, laquered and cured bootlid...





And a little close-up...





The oh-so-sweet facelift nose-cone and kidney grilles...





And a crappy phone pic close-up of them too...





So hopefully they'll be going on the car over the weekend.
Should be on in time for the 'BMW & Mercedes' meet down at Ace Cafe on Monday evening.

Other than that, all I can say is, top notch work Jay and Dean!

Stampers wrote:

Now this is what i'm talking about....

The freshly sprayed, laquered and cured bootlid...

That is a nice bootlid - but how is the Windows 7 IQ coming along?

they look quality mate!

if this is anything to go by, my bumper/grill/wings should look amazing! can't wait to get everything put together for monday night! (if it's done in time!!!!!)

that grill is going to look the nuts cant wait to see what it looks like
pics when you put it on mate

Ok, time for some more updates!

Bought a couple brand new genuine BMW 'Design' range badges for the car.
One for the boot, and one for the bonnet. I've only fitted the boot one so far as its not on the car (the car still has the cracked laquer badges).

Here's a couple of pics...







I also got the new nose-cone fitted with the black grilles.
Was a bit of a pain in the arse doing this, as there's an irritating amount of bolts in awkward places, not to mention some insanely designed bar in front of the radiator that feeds through a hole in the nose cone at the back!

Needless to say, Jimmy + myself + swearing + pissy oil covered hands = SUCCESS!

A nice sexy little shot for you...





And another shot with the NightBreakers fitted all round...





Also to mention...

I bought some Lamin-X last week. Way too much to be precise.
All in I ordered 2 sheets of 12" x 24" (the largest size) of Gunsmoke to cover the headlights and indicators. Did them both during the week using only one sheet and they looked pretty sweet.

Got the new black nose-cone and grills ready to put on and thought it was a bit overkill with all of that black. Also I've gone off the fact of having Angel-Eyes (thats why you cant se them in the pics above) as to get the exact colour match to the lightbulbs, i'd have to get a HID kit (cant be arsed with that sh!t). Anyway, I took the front half of the lights off with the lamin-x and angel-eyes and put them in my shed. Then put the standard light lenses back in and I think it looks better.

Unfortunately I havent got any pictures of the lights when they were fully blacked, but you can see in the pictures above that the inidcators are still blacked out.

Also, If anyone is interested in a sheet of 12" x 24" Gunsmoke Lamin-X, then give me a holla! Got the knife and squeegee that came with it too.



This weekends projects (fingers crossed):

*Get the new bootlid on the car.
*Replace the front badge with the new 'Design' one.
*Coilies should arrive by Saturday so they'll be going on!
*Might be going to pick up a black cloth interior to replace the grey seats (I want the 'black-on-black' look and BMW E36 leather isn't all that great...)

doing a bit of the same here mate with mine been looking at them badges
and im picking up a bmw just for some bits off it black seats and carpet door cards and so on as mine are gray too plus it has some oem 17s on them i want for mine oh and by the way looking cool dude black is best

Right, another week, another update!

So this week i've got a load more stuff done.
First off, on Wednesday night Jay and Jim came down and gave me a hand bolting the new bootlid on. That was the easy part. Re-wiring the thing back in was a pain in the arse.

Wired it all back up, then went to lock the car and only one door would lock. The central locking had packed up. So checked all the wires and they seemed fine. Then replaced a couple of fuses and 'POW!', it jumped back into life.

The new smooth bootlid (no more dent!)...





New badge on the bonnet to match the rear (looks sick imo)...





Badge close-up (sweet!)...





Then on the Friday, I got home to another nice big box in my porch.
Ordered it on the Tuesday, order processed and shipped out from Belgium on the Wednesday, and arrived here on Friday. Now thats what I call service!

Nice big euro-box...





With a nice new set of coilies in it!...





In the meantime I had totally forgotten to get anything else sorted so was hoping on getting the coilies fitted this weekend but realised I hadn't got hold of any spring compressors or new top-mounts (as I cant be arsed with all of the hassle incurred trying to get the old ones off...) so popped off out to ECP in Cambridge and picked some top-mounts up.

Todays goodies...





And thats it for the time being!
Currently in the process of stripping the boot out to get to the rear mounting points of the suspension, ready for installing the coilies next weekend. Also got a nice little interior mod for this week to get my iPhone mounted in a custom holder that integrates with the interior. Should be cool!

Time for some stripping!

So hopefully i'll be giving the rear suspension a good going over tomorrow, but before that I need to be able to get to the top mounts.
BMW have kindly wrapped them up in 2 layers of thick moulded carpet thats nigh-on impossible to figure out how to get through.

Had an hour to kill this evening so though i'd prep the boot ready for tomorrow.
Let the stripping commence...

Pulled the rear bench forward to be presented with this...





Then removed the left hand side of the boot interior...





Which left me with some nice easy access to the top-mount...





Then out came the right hand side of the boot lining...





To leave me with ample access to the other side...





So that's the inner boot lining ripped out, ready for the bashing, swearing, and filthy grease to get involved tomorrow evening.
Some people take the rear speakers out as they hang over the top-mounts and others even go as far as removing the whole parcel shelf. I think I should be able to get away with leaving them in.

So yeah, It should be pretty straightforward tomorrow, but as we all know best laid plans dont always work out...
Fingers crossed!

good work dude! it's definitely going to be worth it to when the coilies are in!

Id love to say i'll give you a hand tomorrow but im not about, i am on wednesday night though!

IF you want to borrow my tools though, let me know tomorrow and i'll swing by between work and the pub!

liking where this is headed m8, what make coilies are they? im trying to sort out an intergrated iphone dock for my TT aswell, found a really cool 1 in th US but they wont post over here

I may be about tomorrow evening but can't promise anything, sucks how i won my coilies before you....and they are in the UK...yet you order yours from Aaazerbejan or wherever after me and they get here before mine
!!!

matty_mk1 wrote:

liking where this is headed m8, what make coilies are they? im trying to sort out an intergrated iphone dock for my TT aswell, found a really cool 1 in th US but they wont post over here

will they post to canada?

Jay wrote:

I may be about tomorrow evening but can't promise anything, sucks how i won my coilies before you....and they are in the UK...yet you order yours from Aaazerbejan or wherever after me and they get here before mine
!!!

sorry jay

billybug wrote:

matty_mk1 wrote:

liking where this is headed m8, what make coilies are they? im trying to sort out an intergrated iphone dock for my TT aswell, found a really cool 1 in th US but they wont post over here

will they post to canada?

I thought that too homeslice and was gonna ask ya, ill email them and ask n let you know

looks so good mattybatty. I need some better coilovers, what are those weitecs like?

Lupton_20vt wrote:

looks so good mattybatty. I need some better coilovers, what are those weitecs like?

What of Matty's looks good? He hasn't put any pics of anything up.
Wrong thread maybe?

Lupton_20vt wrote:

looks so good mattybatty. I need some better coilovers, what are those weitecs like?

I think you posted in the wrong thread christoph?

some how i did. whooops. that was for your mk2

matty_mk1 wrote:

billybug wrote:

matty_mk1 wrote:

liking where this is headed m8, what make coilies are they? im trying to sort out an intergrated iphone dock for my TT aswell, found a really cool 1 in th US but they wont post over here

will they post to canada?

I thought that too homeslice and was gonna ask ya, ill email them and ask n let you know

yaaaaaa if you can wait i can get jayne to bring it home with her in august so free shipping from here

Time for more pictures!

So like a kid in a sweet shop, I had all the bits I needed to get started on the coilovers, so yesterday evening I thought "Lets do it!".
Got all the tools out that I needed, and popped to Halfords beforehand to grab some multipurpose grease (for the coil thread) and some WD40 (to loosen the shock bolts).

So then I got stuck in!

Wheel off and shock in removal stage...





Getting that spring out wasn't gonna be easy...





The necessary tools to tackle the situation...





Both rear sides done, time for a break!...





So yeah, managed to get both the rears done on my own in one evening.
I set the rear adjuster cups to 9 full turns away from fully decked so that It wouldnt be slammed in the rear and nose high up front.
It still ended up being pretty low at the back, but that'll be fine for a couple of days.
Not too bad I thought! But as usual with most things that I do, it was inevitable that there would be a c**k-up.

Took the car out for a quick spin around Soham to make sure that it was all bolted together fine. Got halfway round and it seemed fine.
Then heard some creaking and minutes later a clacking noise.
Pulled over to the side and popped the boot to have a look inside.

The rear left shock had managed to pop through the top-mount and was wiggling around in my boot. So drove the car back home and swapped both of the Rokkor shocks back to the standard ones, whilst leaving the lowered springs in. Not sure why it popped out. Apparently E36 and E46 rear top-mounts are notoriously badly designed and this is a common occurence. Either that or I hadn't tightened the top nut up enough.
Personally I think it was a combination of both...

But the standard shocks seem to be holding up fairly well for the time being!

Give it a month and i'll have some rogue engineering rear top mounts that should solve the issue (at £98 they bloody well should!). Might even try and get hold of some camber adjustable front top mounts to see how they come out, but I think i'll give the standard ones a trial installation first.

Hopefully later in the week i'll get started on the fronts (with more success too!)

Good work dude! cool that you got it done by yourself - sorry i couldn't be any help yesterday! i was going to text you in the night to see how the drive went, but then i started watching family guy...my bad.

Coming along nicely stampers,

Your a bad influence though, I just bought a e36 328i for daily usage!!

Well at least it's german

jim-uk16 wrote:

Coming along nicely stampers,

Your a bad influence though, I just bought a e36 328i for daily usage!!

Well at least it's german

Hey, nothing wrong with repping the BMW scene!
Let me know if you want/need any bits for it mate as I've got a fair few laying around including a set of angel eyes that have only been used for a couple of weeks...

So it's been almost a week since the last update, so time for a little more...

I left off after having done the rear suspension, so the next thing to tackle would be the fronts to even it out. At the time I was rolling around on a lowered rear and a nicely high front. Not the best, but it got me to work. So I got home one evening and I knew it was gonna be light for a while so I set to work on the fronts.

Jimmy came down to give me a hand, and It was definitely needed. The bolts were rusted on so hard it took all evening and the strength of both of us to get one of the fronts off. So we managed to get the front right changed and fitted, then wound it all the way up so it matched the front left. Coilovers at 75% finished!

Ok, then started on the other front shock the next day, along with some new wipers that came through the post.

Before fitting them...





New wipers...





A simple clip 'n' slide and they're on!...





Bin time for these little buggers...





Time to start on the front shocks...





Built with the top-mounts on too...





Coilies on! Go Go Go!





At this point in time, (after getting both the fronts done) everything went well. Then I went to lower the front down and there was one grave mistake I had overseen.... rubbing.
Unfortunately for me, BMW like to make wheels with stupid offsets. The standard 15" pavement eaters were rubbing on the coilies on the inside lip. So I wound them all the way back up nice and high so the springs would be nicely compressed above the wheels like so...





Then I bought some Halfrauds 10mm spacers and found out my M14x1.5 40mm extended bolts from my old MK4 dont fit my hubs (BMW's are M12). So the spacers had to wait until I got some new bolts in. Which came along yesterday...





So got them on straight away and here's how she sits...





Another shot of the slammage...





And the now non-existent arch-gap...





And thats it for the time being!
I know the wheels look pretty rubbish in the arches at the moment, but thats because they're only 15". Saving up for some 17's, so hopefully it'll sit nicely on them. I don't really want to rush into buying wheels for this car, as I managed to get through 7 sets when I owned the Golf...

Anyway, more updates this weekend hopefully!

Getting there ant not really liking the darkness of the front with the light rear lights but other than hat i like it