This true story will make you weep... E30 M3 3.2 Conversion

[Darylzimm3]

Ohh, shut up Mr no neck, and get back in that piece of red poo that people mistake for a skip...

[bootyman]

You're back then Daryl. Ok i'll shut up now . Good to have you back anyway dude

[bmpaul]

me thinks this thread needs to be locked cos its gettin silly!

[MFree]

no it doesnt. people just need to do what Ben said... post on topic - i mean the man himself (CharlE30 - aka Justin) just messaged me and said he was really annoyed that anyone sought to bring what is a personal matter onto this thread. So now thats done, and MB and Jonb have also had their go.. MAYBE just MAYBE as ben says, this can stay on topic!!!

AS I said last week... i will post when i have serious progress to update. That will be early next week i think.

Cheers

MFree

[Patm3]

i have read this thread but have never commented, but i have offered help through another zoner, i know kind of what you are going through as i am going through kind of the same thing, but my car was vandalised both interior and exterior, insurance took the mick for 6 months before a decision was made, and the resprayer has had the car for three months, but i am not bothered at present as he is doing a good job and i dont need my car at present, no worries Mfree, your car is in good hands with Phil and i can not wait to see the finishing result when you post it.

[stevetigger]

Im sorry, I was wrong to put up my message. I will edit it now!

[MFree]

no worries steve. there are few people about these days with decent enough character to admit an error of judgement and apologise for it. You are clearly one of the few.

Thanks and no hard feelings.

I've felt so under attack on this thread of late, that whole Maasterbates slanger of an evening really got to me (which is his aim, its what he does it for) and made me not want to ever bother with the thread or the zone again, `but in the end i decided that it couldnt get any worse and primarily i do want to conclude this increadible project here and let everyone see what a corking\stonking job phil is doing!

i WILL POST an update next week ok?

Till then everyone'#

mfREE

[stevetigger]

Big shout out to the Project Massive

[MFree]

Cheers Steve

Finally balance is restored once more!

Anyway apparantly the floor welding is still in progress but alot of the refurbed engine parts are back and being assembled.

So i will post some photos soon

Cheers

MFree

[Demlotcrew]

Mfree dont let the guys get you down over the car, its now in very good hands and once finished will be a beautiful car to be proud of!

Andrew

[stevetigger]

Mfree dont let the guys get you down over the car, its now in very good hands and once finished will be a beautiful car to be proud of!

Andrew

Well said that man!

[aauser]

Good luck Mfree, hope the car eventually lives up to your expectations, by the sound of things, it's now in the hands of people you can trust to do a great job

Ray

[raj]

MFree, i was at Phils the other day, and i must say that the car is in Very good hands, i was there when they were welding up the "Very small Bits" that needed doing, phil showed me around the car and for all the people that are saying that the car is "rusty" Etc Etc it is not, when it is complete then the "haters" will see.

I wish you the best of luck with it mate and im sure that Phil and the lads will have it done in no time...........

[MFree]

Raj - Phils is one of the industry's best kept secrets and my car will be a shining endorsement of what he is all about...

Current work is as follows:

We've sent the spare wheel off to Image Wheels because all my AC splitties are 8.5inches wide and although its a small point, I do think the M3 looks better with wider rears and we want more tyre width anyway so we are getting them to make 2 new outer rims 1 inch wider to become 9.5".

the engine has been in and out a few times for plumbing reasons, the new brake lines to replace John moffat's spaghetti-like hand-bent efforts and for budget reasons we are not at this stage getting an AP setup on the front, as its £1200, we are having Kos's Tarox discs and pads for now and wil do the upgrade when the cars done. The floor welding is almost done now, and i think Demlotcrew visited CPC and testified to what a super quality paintjob it has overall. We are getting the exact paint mix made up again to repaint the bootlid and rear wing as they were poor and to do a bonnet which was never painted.

Other than that its lots of small things. We await the crucial carpet from mr Walsh, once thats in after the weldings done, things will move on inside much quicker... Im still trying to sell my seats to buy 2 black ones!

I will post some photos when Phil makes some available!

till then

MFree

[bottlecapE30]

all the best mate can't wait to see that color

[domross]

Blimey....how unluchy is that!!! Good luck bud....Please keep this car if you can....think you'll have a few months of a bit of a twitchy sphincter until you've gained trust in the car that nothing is going to go wrong with it once its (finally) finished...but once that's passed you are only going to enjoy it...so hope you get those contracts!!! The thing is you will always regret it if you do sell it without getting at least some good use after all this turmoil..Nothing you don't know tho'
Think this is probably the ultimate proof of 'Sod's law'.Puts the fact I was sold a 325 cab with a duff cylinder head slightly in perspective!!!!(And I would happily lynch the guy for that!!!!)
Hope the finishing line is in sight

[MFree]

hi all

Well the welding work is finally done, Mr Walsh has doen us proud sorrting all of the rot out properly... it amazes me that even though John moffat at Zoom wasn't really that focused on the job most of the time that still he was totally prepared to bolt everything back together after the wonderful paint job yet leaving 11 (YES *ELEVEN*!!) holes in the floor and inner arches to be welded!! Increadible huh?? just shows that apparant reputations mean zilch in the end!

Anyway, currently the engine is in and the loom is being re-braided, then its a question of all being wired up and new alternator and hoses being installed, then its a move to the interior and Mr Walsh's carpet he' sold me going in with whatever seats i end up getting to replace the Red Saprco's that Kos is having off me to replace them (I have my eye on some lush Prodrive Recaro's on Ebay but they are £600!!! so double what im getting for my seats!).

Phil is in the States for a week but when he returns the badly painted bootlis, rear wing base and bonnet which we never had in the first place to BE painted will go off to be sprayed, the wheels off to be re-furbished and then its a matter of a clutch of assembly tasks really, all the tough stuff is behind us now!

Here are some pics of the efforts made to get the quite dirty/tired looking engine to the same standard as the rest of the car is looking - As you can see Phil's vapour blasting of the throttle bodies has brought them up looking like new, the front ally part of the engine is not bad for a clean up and we have all new thermostat and oil filter parts (not shown here though). I just thought I'd take a photo of my AC Schnitzer wheels and how one looks at the back for reference... not the right tyres at this point but when they ARE and the rear is another 40mm lower they are gonna look the dogs danglies!!!

Till next time then...

MFree

[e30bmlover]

loveing the schnitzer rims.....

[MFree]

Hi

I agree about the rims, but sadly having sent them to Image wheels to get the outer polished part duplicated twice to make 2 new ones for the rear 1" wider makin them 9.5" not 8.5" Phil says and the photo does back it up that they wouldnt fit inside the arches! now can someone tell me HOW then unless there really is alot of effectively 'wasted' thickness on the inner/middle part of my wheel which instead of allowing just the (approx) 2.5" dish i have instead to be more say 4" or somthing? because if you look at Bootymans's E30 and its not even an M3 with its wder arches - his rear dish is HUGE compared with mine and im sure his rims are 10" - now i can understand this with rims like Kos's as the face is flat allowing for mush more width to be used on the rim, but with Bootyman's i just dot get how I cant even get 9.5" to fit!! must be the offset of my rims....

Its a shame though becasye i really think deeper dish / wider rears look special on the E30 M3 compared with the front wheels... any thoughts? I think the clearance i have is about 10-15mm and i was and still am tempted to do it anyway maybe by 3/4 of an inch because combined with a sloping 'go-kart look' tyre profile if I fit 235/40's to a 9.25" rim then I think while the rim edge itself might be exactly parallel with the surface of the wheel arch and thus techincally wouldnt travel up into the arch if it had to under hard cornerning, muy view is that the tyre would however go up inside and combined with the camber change that takes place as the roll occurs this would make the wheel happily run up inside the arch but in ANY CASE it has to be said that as my suspension is race-car firm and there is no rubber bushing to give in the suspension AT ALL, it is unlikely that my car would ever roll so much as to allow the tyre to go up inside the arch that far!!

My rear suspension is going to be dropped enough to make it so that the top center highest part of the tyre will be just in line with the wheelarch edge, meaning it has the depth of the tyre in travel before the rim itself needs to go up inside the arch. Naturally you can see my cautiousness now as i dont want to spen d £260 making 2 new rims which cant practically be used... I think i will play safe and go for 3/4 of an inch and u the 235's on jt and see how it does.. even 3/4 of an inch on an outer rim which is about 2" at present is noticable!

So thats my plan... i just hope image havent sent the test rim BACK yet as it will look like we are a right pair of charlies if we keep changing our minds and sending the wheel back and forth!!

Also Markus Glaums lovely Red Sport Evo Im sure has the rare ACT BBS copy 17" split rims in 10.5" width AND he used spacers too i gather!! If i remember reading the article about the car right which i am 99% sure about then this makes my 9.5" impossiblity seem crazy as where is his additional space / dish idth coming from without pushing the edgeof the wheel like an INCH outside the arch?? I know his ARE techinicaly outside the line and his wheelarches pulled out rudely but still...

answers on a postcard to the usual wally-brain me on a sunday afternoon after beer!


Cheers

MFree

[Moofles]

one day i'm going to read the update and it'll actually be finished, lol!

regarding wheel widths, ignore ben's car - an m3's arches are nowhere near as wide as the rieger kit (his rears are 12" too, i think). Compared to other m3's, though, what are the offsets?

[Globulator]

The car is really looking very very good in those photos, love the wheels too, I've always had a soft spot for a decent 5 spoke!

I admire your preserverance, what started as a simple engine/tranny implant (sort of like the Glenn/Dips V12 in a way I guess) seems to have spiralled into an epic journey. I suspect this happens to far more people that we'd imagine, I'm sure you are not the first and sadly not the last to be taken advantage of, I guess we're all here to learn.

My fuse is a bit shorter than yours - I go down the DIY route very easily, I'll damage my own stuff for free rather than pay a bunch of monkeys to do it for me - I'm curious why you did want to do that, car work can be very rewarding and you can take your time and care. I suppose it's the ultimate end of the spectrum of paying for a job (which to be fair should be possible in todays world!) through to micro-management to DIY. Plus you get to play with air tools ;)

I was very disappointed to hear about the spray work - that just sucks so badly leaving all of your panels in the corner, I hope you get some comeback as spraying them now is taking more time and money.

I can't see that there is any 'jinx' with the car - it looks like it was plain unlucky being ignored and botched by so many people, John's brake pipes are un-fxxxing believable and as for ignoring holes for a respray - that's just plain laziness and mean spirited - nothing to do with your car. It's like a botched operation on a person - it's not the patients fault, its the surgeons. As for the money, I wish I'd bought IBM in the nineties, gone in to other property, joined some firms before IPO etc. Hindsight is a wonderful thing - who can predict how much money they will or will not have? - you're still firmly in car money territory - think of the guys who bought classics in the 80's boom and lost house worths of cash taking some real baths!

It sounds like it is in good hands now though - they appear to actually be working on it and the idea of yours for photo updates is fantastic for quality, progress and accountability! One I would say is that sometimes a car is never quite finished. I know you've thought about brakes, roll bars etc. etc. as a way to get to the ultimate car, I'd also consider the phased improvement approach - as you run it and things settle in you'll think of other stuff and your priorities will change in what you want to be done next - especially if you do get into racing.
Me - I'd plot a good straight line to the finish, not change the spec too much, and return for later enhancements.

Keep up the good work, it's clearly getting there!

[EndaW]

Jayson has said he is still more than happy to map the car when its done completely free of charge including rolling road time.
We are aware of the problems at Zoom but am confident that at this point in time you are understanding in that not everything said at Zoom was truth.

[kdevitt]

Have just read all 16 pages and have to say its one of the most thoroughly depressing threads I've ever read on a car site...

Really hope it all comes together soon - love the colour.

[Rosc0PColtrane]

Have been sifting through this thread for some time now, ignoring some of the nastier parts. Mate, you need this serialised into a franchise of movies, comics and novels. It's a real Rocky type story!! (make back some lost £Â£Ã‚£'s )

How long before this baby is laying down rubber? I'd be sooo excited. The meticulous attention to detail is astonishing.
It wil be like Thor's hammer, a thing of legend, with the soul of the many hundreds of man hours sweated and bled into it.

Keep posting, I (along with many others) look forward to it.

[MFree]

Moofles - you and me brother!

Globulator - I think i could have probably done it myself by now too! It would have cost me less in actual time spent/work lost too! Sadly I didnt go that route! And sadly though Stratos and Zoom no longer exist for my 'testing the water' to be able to warn off prospective customers of theirs, I can certainly say that of GTS Motorsport and although I dont like being a crash test dummy for car tuners, I am alot wiser for the experience and wouldnt have ever met Phil and worked with CPC were it not for this experience, which although this doesnt make up for what preceded it, is certainly a positive end to the story!

EndaW - I will speak to Phil about this as I have his wishes to consider too given that the car may well play a future roll for CPC, but thanks for the offer and yes, I DO certainly recognise that much of what i was told by Zoom/John was full of it, he still owes me £1500 in CASH which i kindly lent him for his PERSONAL problems when he had no money to live on and havent heard from him since he moved (how low can you get!?) and HOW dumb do i feel now!??

Kdevitt - thanks - yeash the colour is gonna look good with the grey carbon parts....

blatantarogance - too funny! Yeah it is quite a saga and will sure provide whoever does the article on the car with a few problems of how to summarise all of its torrid history!!!And I am excited about it, of course, though CPC have kept extending the completion date as is de rigour for this project, Phil has assured me it will be ready for my birthday on June 4th... if it isnt he too had better watch out because he's had enough time now!!! im sure it'll be done!

Phil has been in the states this week seeing some suppliers and stuff so nothing to report but next week we are meeting up so i will do a report then...

Cheers

MFree

[stevetigger]

And more photo's PLEASE

[jonb]

m-free

balls! me and a loyal friend had a wager on you car being made into razor blades in the next few months.

im £1.25 out of pocket. damn...

[Karan]

i shudder to think how much has been spent on this and its sad it went rusty...shit happens i guess especially when someone else does work for u which is why i never get someone else to do anything for me unless i really have to or its a mate.

best of luck anyow and lets hope its done soon after all this is now a very well documented conversion in bmw land.

Jon u shit me up im bak in bristol nxt week so u know what that means

Karan

[jonb]

karan

that means beer, and fat women. all good.

[tim_s]

lol and i thought he was coming onto you jon. karan, your s38 and the nissan are both looking spot on fella.

[MFree]

Its that Chariots of Fire moment as he's falling for the tape

(keep telling yourself that MFree keep telling yourself that...)





...yeah if he's falling through a spray shop, wheel refurbishing place, seat auction in those 5 metres....

sadly i think not.

regards

The 4th of June Campaign Group

[EndaW]

EndaW - I will speak to Phil about this as I have his wishes to consider too given that the car may well play a future roll for CPC, but thanks for the offer and yes, I DO certainly recognise that much of what i was told by Zoom/John was full of it, he still owes me £1500 in CASH which i kindly lent him for his PERSONAL problems when he had no money to live on and havent heard from him since he moved (how low can you get!?) and HOW dumb do i feel now!??

Cheers

MFree

From what I have been told by customers and on forums over the past few months your not alone, I think it totally over £20,000 and Jay is yet to be paid for the work he did for John as well.
Its a shame as he is a knowledgable bloke and could of made it work but chose to blame others and cause conflicts instead of knuckling down and finishing the work he had in which would of pulled him through and made a fantastic reputation for himself and his company.

[jonb]

Its that Chariots of Fire moment as he's falling for the tape

(keep telling yourself that MFree keep telling yourself that...)

M-free

not chating to yourself again.....

[Karan]

tape/bait???

[MFree]

Ooh there's some mixed metaphors in there arent there!

Jon - Yes, for sure, but in a totally open and innocent way where one expresses an afterthought one has after writing or thinking somthing by using brackets and referring to oneself in the first person as i did there...

Don't concern yourself... im way past the point of being driven mad by the project!!

It already sent me mad years ago!

MFree