Anyway long story short, by the time this is running I wouldn't have previously owned a road-going E30 for nearly 6 years (only just worked that out...ouch!), and now is a good time to get back into the swing of things. The purpose of this car is to get it on a track and to have a nice 'play' car.
Moving on..spent the last few weeks lurking on the Zone and preparing the shopping list, first thing off the list to be purchased was a N-reg E36 328i - found one just up the road on Ebay for £1000 or best offer, after a few rounds of negotiations and a test drive I took it home for £600. One of the perks is a new engine was fitted in 2003 and has only covered 34k since. Here she is (was!):
Earlier this week I tracked down a 728i for breaking and got the sump and accessories for £20, haven't been able to find any hard evidence if the pickup pipe and dipstick tube will do the job or if I need to find the bits from an E34.
Due to the various bits and pieces needed from other cars I have been spending the last few days keeping an eye on the local scrappy's website, on Friday an E36 325i turned up, so on Saturday morning I got up nice and early to get the inlet manifold and throttle body. Glad I put the effort in here, as I was barely able to get my toolbox open for 2 lads to walk round the corner in the hope of pulling the manifold for themselves. After a near 2 hour struggle (the bonnet was propped up with a baby seat due to another car being sat on top of this E36 and so the bonnet wouldn't support itself...) I left the scrapyard £30 lighter but with inlet manifold and throttle body in tow, but I fucked up and left the throttle body elbow/boot in the car (a long with a few other stashed bits) mainly down to the relief/back spasms that I had got the bloody thing off in the first place.
Drove the car to my mates new place last night, he moved in last week - the garage was still nice and empty and he was only too kind to offer the space! Work commenced this afternoon, the goal was to basically get the engine ready to be lifted ASAP (hoist not available until next weekend), unhooked the loom and various ancilleries (I couldn't resist but to take off the inlet manifold, much easier without a bonnet or car sat on top getting in the way!)
As my mates have only just moved into the place their tools were all over the place and I only had the essentials, unfortunately the angle grinder couldn't be found so we decided to take the whole front end off, which made life a lot easier. The biggest issue we had was having to take a blow torch to the exhaust bracket as it had been welded on and we had no other way of getting round this royal pain the arse.
Final pics of today's work:
There was a nice result in the radiator has been replaced fairly recently as it still looks new.
The exhaust is off, prop is off and we're ready to undo the engine mounts. Forgot to take apart the gear shifter linkage though so will have to do that one night this week, along with strip the rest of the shell of the morsels to make a few quid back, and also make space for the E30...
..don't even have an E30 yet! Have got my eyes on a shell that is ideal and would definitely like to own but I need to shift my mountain bike to make funds available for that. I hope this will be resolved within the next 2 weeks.
Plans for next weekend are get the engine and gearbox out, strip the car of any final bits and pieces to sell before getting it scrapped, and take the exhaust manifold off and given to another mate for cutting/welding.
I love how the front of E36's come off and you can just drag the engines out.
, should neve have passed on those you had 
.
always easier to bring an engine out with the loom still attached to it 