e36 noise

Mon Mar 19, 2007 12:46 pm

my mates e36 325i has started to make a loud clunk from the rear everytime the clutch is put in or out when moving any ideas could it be the dreaded rear bushes?

Mon Mar 19, 2007 8:56 pm

Could be the diff bush has perished?

Mon Mar 19, 2007 9:04 pm

E36 has 2 diff bushes

is this at speed or at stand-still? if its at speed, is it worse when faster/slower, round corners, etc?

having a bit more info will help to determine the cause. I've known of a lot of E36's ot suffer extremely bad rust where the subframe bolts upto the chassis. so much so, that the floor pan had rusted through, and only 2 of 4 mounts for the subframe were actually holding it onto the chassis. Ã‚£3500 was the estimated repair bill, needless to say, he scrapped the car!!

his complaints were clunking when changing gear (clutch activation) and hard cornering

Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:05 am

I recently sorted a similar thing on my mates E36 318is.
Turned out the diff mounting bolt had sheared off leaving part of the thread left in there.
Was a bastard to do without taking the diff out!
Symptom-let the clutch out and heavy thud from the back end.
If you dont have access to a ramp,lie down at the back of the car and get your mate to slowly jerk the car using the clutch,should be able to see whats giving

Tue Mar 20, 2007 12:26 am

Pm sent

Andy

Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:04 pm

any news?

by the way, Andy325i, those Contour 21's look awesome on your car mate

Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:08 pm

eko wrote:I recently sorted a similar thing on my mates E36 318is.
Turned out the diff mounting bolt had sheared off leaving part of the thread left in there.
Was a bastard to do without taking the diff out!
Symptom-let the clutch out and heavy thud from the back end.
If you dont have access to a ramp,lie down at the back of the car and get your mate to slowly jerk the car using the clutch,should be able to see whats giving

its the floor pan on this apparently needs reinforcing plates as the mounts have torn free. do you know any local bmw specialists that might want to do this job?

Wed Mar 21, 2007 1:04 am

Nev, Here are the plates I mentioned:

stuartgallafant wrote:any news?

by the way, Andy325i, those Contour 21's look awesome on your car mate

Thanks

Both them pics are photoshopped, but is how it looks after fitting the compact back end this week

The front end will be soon

Andy

Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:11 am

Andy325i wrote:
by the way, Andy325i, those Contour 21's look awesome on your car mate

Thanks Both them pics are photoshopped, but is how it looks after fitting the compact back end this week

Sorry to go off topic for a moment, When you fitted the compact hubs, was the offset the same? Someone recently said you had to use E36 wheels, you couldn't use a E30 M3 wheel???

I have a set of contour 21's... (Well 3 off anyway!!) don't know if to sell them and source some 16" BBS for my project car...

Wed Mar 21, 2007 8:45 am

so these need to be welded to the original mounts then?

Wed Mar 21, 2007 9:01 am

nev325isport wrote:
eko wrote:I recently sorted a similar thing on my mates E36 318is.
Turned out the diff mounting bolt had sheared off leaving part of the thread left in there.
Was a bastard to do without taking the diff out!
Symptom-let the clutch out and heavy thud from the back end.
If you dont have access to a ramp,lie down at the back of the car and get your mate to slowly jerk the car using the clutch,should be able to see whats giving
its the floor pan on this apparently needs reinforcing plates as the mounts have torn free. do you know any local bmw specialists that might want to do this job?

i thought it might be this!! so more common in the E36 nowadays!

my dealership wont even touch an E36 if it doesnt get the floorpan refitted, which comes at the cost of about Ã‚£3000+ of your hard earned

so i dont know who would be willing to do this work for you

Wed Mar 21, 2007 9:04 am

been quoted 400+ by the only local specialist we could find! cant believe bmw designed them so poorly!

Wed Mar 21, 2007 10:30 am

nev325isport wrote:so these need to be welded to the original mounts then?

Yes, there isn't a lot there to start with, so hence BMW fitted these plates as standard to the M3 shells to take the extra abuse.

E30Mark wrote:
Sorry to go off topic for a moment, When you fitted the compact hubs, was the offset the same? Someone recently said you had to use E36 wheels, you couldn't use a E30 M3 wheel???
I have a set of contour 21's... (Well 3 off anyway!!) don't know if to sell them and source some 16" BBS for my project car...

Hi mark, not sure how much of this you know but here goes:

The compact use an E36 offset, so hence the hubs sit further out than an E30 M3 setup would, so using E30 M3 wheels on the compact arms would mean that they would sit further in than the E36 wheels so the track would be too narrow?

E36/E46/Compact/Z3 etc run less offset on the wheels than the rest of the 5 stud cars (E30 M3, E28, E34, E38 etc)

I have seen a couple of E36 cars running E34 BBS wheels, now that does look mean, but of course totally wrong offsets lol

How would we go about measuring the distance, hub to hub face for comparision as I guess this changes in relationship to where the suspension is sitting?

I hope this helps, if you need any more info just shout, hopefully it will be at a Dorset meet soon

Andy

Wed Mar 21, 2007 1:08 pm

nev325isport wrote:been quoted 400+ by the only local specialist we could find! cant believe bmw designed them so poorly!

thats the E36 for you!!