As always, cheers! It will be interesting where the rest of the tale goes
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Following this as it's always interesting to see the 'real' side of ownership of these kind of cars, once very expensive but now affordable for normal people!
Jealous of the DN16 trip, definitely need to get on one of those in the years to come.
Absolutely. It is one reason why I put the car here. RR started after all with 'reasonably' priced cars in that price bracket which were old, but not super old
. My story gives some perspective on what comes with it hopefully but of course variable will always creep in! Are you going to Bicester again this year? It was great to catch up!
These breaks are killing me!! Great work so far.
Agreed!!
Also agree about the road trips, I MUST get things like this booked in, Soa, Nurburgring, Le Mans. The hardest bit is booking it! Doing it is easy and brilliant. Did the ring in 2010 with mate and it was awesome!
In which case there is more to come! I somehow went to three countries, and out of my local area! I only wish I did it many years ago! Hindsight can be a wonderful thing however.
Good read. I have personally never been drawn to this model but an M3 e36 in yellow could turn my head. Your having more than your share if grief here. I bet they all have cracks given a proper inspection/strip down.
I came to the same conclusion as you regarding the E46 RACP cracks. But there is *slightly* more grief to come. Partially self-inflicted in hindsight but we have all been there.
t's about time I come back to that big elephant. You know, the one that smells a bit and is a turd that won't flush. Previously I alluded to me thinking the high pressure power steering hose had gone. It's no uncommon. It did after all have some misting on a join and the fluid level seemed low at first glance. Except it wasn't the hose. There I was removing the undertray and I noticed that the undertray was soaking wet, right at the front by the radiator packs. The cause? A leaking oil cooler.
This is something I hadn't bargained for and not something I particularly wanted to do so! Most people go secondhand here but I had a history with oil coolers and potentially 4 gearboxes destroying themselves ; if there was a painful lesson here the
This Stag was it. The fact that Ashcroft transmissions refuse to warranty a gearbox if it is found to be on an old cooler irrespective of how it has been cleaned/flushed! Did I mention S54s while strong units do have weaknesses that can kill them? Or that the engines really do attract M-Tax, at £3k+ secondhand? Who is to say the secondhand cooler wasn’t attached to a grenaded engine? No breakers out there are truly honest! It didn’t help that most had seized pipes on either. I initially thought this would be a minor problem to contend with.
The way I saw it I had a few choices:
-Go new/OEM ; At £360 they're not what you'd call cheap ; this is an option a few mates in the trade and engineers favoured
-Go secondhand for £70-110+ ; The cheapest option but oil coolers aren't exactly common in the M-world at short notice. For the aforementioned reasons I also had this one down as a last resort
-Uprated kit ; These believe it or not are more than a new cooler! A stock position uprated item is £650 from CSF! The Misimoto kit with new lines etc. is £850! What, for a generic(ish) cooler, adaptor plate and braided lines? Really?
-Aftermarket cooler ; I searched extensivly couldn’t find an option. ECP didn’t do one and neither did GSF or any local factors.
-Repair mine ; I asked a local rad recorer and as I mentioned alloy oil cooler he refused to touch it ; he was saying he tried varying ways but that it was never successful. Wonderful news!
-Make a kit up myself using Aeroquip lines, BMW to normal line adaptors and a Mocal cooler ; I did debate this but it was quickly discounted with it being my sole car. I’ve been here before as have other friends and I couldn’t really afford to have teething issues! The M3 has quite a cramped engine bay and while things can be fitted there is a high risk that things will rub/cut which only driving the car would solve. A cop out on my part? Maybe. That and I doubt the cost would be much less than a new OEM item ultimately for a lot more hassle short of trying a Chinese cooler kit. The OEM item is a strange shape but also does get good airflow too.
But suddenly come the very end of March I had an answer. An NRF branded oil cooler from Mister Auto for the princely sum of £170. I’ve used NRF products before and they are a great bit of kit, dealing with all OE manufacturers. With that in mind I placed the order on Thursday 30th March. No worries, I’ll have the cooler by Wednesday, giving me two days to fit it I thought. Just in time for the Evo Triangle Trip on the 4th March. Not too bad at all I thought.
Come Monday the cooler had arrived. Wow, that’s quick service from France! On first impressions all looked rosy! It had the BMW stamps on it and the cooler was clearly new! Great! That was until we took a closer look. Initally all was well! But then we spotted something a little more disturbing.
Yup, it was missing a chunk out of the pipe. A quick test by blowing through it seemed to confirm all was well. But would it work in the long term? That mark put a question mark on the cooler. No problem I thought, I’ll return it! Except Mister Auto seemed oblivious to the fact that I needed a new cooler! I even asked if I could buy another and pay more cash on top to get it sent on a priority delivery! They weren’t interested at all, despite my email and telephone attempts. With it now being Tuesday night and the Evo trip being 3 sleeps away I needed a solution, fast! A friend offered me his spare cooler but he needed it back soon! While it could have been done there was a chance I'd slip outside of his schedule. And as it turned out, I still would have run into problems!
What was the solution? Yes, I went to the dealer. You can call me stupid, silly, or having more money than sense, I probably deserve it! After getting a price from another dealer I really did almost beg to have some discount on it! Ultimately it cost me £280 ; not great but not terrible either. Surely, I’d have to fit it and that was it right?
You can see there were irrelevant yet more flaws with the cooler I obtained from Mister Auto. OEM stuff is the same from motor factors right? Err, Yeah...
So did it fit fine on the Thursday evening? I’m afraid not. Like some on eBay my cooler pipes had welded themselves onto the cooler. So much that I broke the flange off my old cooler!. Putting some heat onto the remains of the pipe and bashing them off wouldn’t touch it! I’m sure I could have got it done but there would have been a question mark over those flanges TBH! Yet again, another £100 went towards the dealer at the last minute to get some pipes! It’s a shame as my pipes were otherwise perfect!
That is what they are meant to look like, OK, without the bungs obviously
By this point it was Friday morning and I had to go to work. With no time at all being given off I had basically an evening to put together the M3 for the Evo Triangle trip. With a friend wanting to leave the next day at 10am despite being well aware of my situation it really did look bleak! They were sick of my moaning, I was sick of the car and the cooler fiasco and TBH I really considered taking a torch to the bloody thing! That Friday night after 6pm I went back home, partly missed a good colleague’s leaving do and began spannering on the driveway. By 9pm the cooler was on and mounted up and the car fired up once I primed the car’s oil system by cranking it over. At that point it was a great relief off my mind! But I still had the plastics to put back on. It was late so I went inside, had a meal, and tried to forget the entire ordeal.
Somehow, in my rushed state I had the heart to change the VANOS seals and VANOS filter on the pressure regulator. Thankfully mine was reassuringly clean for the car!
When Saturday morning arrived I was gutted that no one had nicked it! Not that you would knick a car on ramps It was 8am and I began finishing the remaining pieces of the puzzle. All of the engine dressing, loose parts, clean up (there was oil everywhere as you can imagine working into the dark!) were done along with a road test. Still feel dejected over the fiasco and having made my friend delay the start until 12PM I bumbled down to Hopwood Services, still in a foul mood, arriving at 12:15, after one busy morning! A couple of the guys wanted me to have the car cleaned as theirs were but in truth I didn’t have the time to do so or even the heart to throw a bucket over the wretched thing. After all, my wallet was £1.5k emptier and I was tired and annoyed, while the rest of the guys assembled. Would all of this grief really be worth one trip to a country full of sheep and rain?
Wow, maybe the recorer was right. Those are remains of the fins from the oil cooler as I removed it! Lovely.
With a quick trip taken to Halfords for last minute 'what if' bits I did at least bump into another fellow 3 Series owner! Don't they look lovely!
Once I got deeper and deeper into Wales it seemed like it would. My mood was ebbing away into happiness and the fact that the car had never ever felt this sorted! Any previous tramlining had gone, the car itself was working together much better! With the roads being superb as we got closer and closer to Pentrofoleas it was fair to say I was a little more at ease! Why wouldn’t I be? Just look at it!
Spot the dirty one.
What can I say? My friend loves sun and road signs! Or maybe he has the hots for the woman who designed them in the first place. But let's get onto what company I had.
That is a good friend's RS4. It's been offered to me once and it is a lovely thing. It's a little high on the miles for some people but I doubt you'd find a better example. He's a little pathalogical about perfection:
The BMWs. The other car is an E89 Z4 30i sDrive with some pimptastic wheels specced when new.
It's funny how bad feelings can go away quickly in the midst of a hurt wallet! Just look at that scenery! It was a perfect day! No, not the late Lou Reed's song, but how things were going! It was April for goodness sake! What happened to the April showers?
The poser's shot! That wasn't my idea for the record! But it does add to how the day was going!
The next day we had another guest arrive. The later successor of mine! That M4 is quite unusual however. It's a manual, a super rare non-cost option on those! It's certainly interesting driving both M Coupes and seeing how they differ!
On this trip it became apparent some would need fuel sooner than others!
With that done it was time to head back home after a tea and a great weekend away. It's a shame I don't have the footage (I think) but we must have bumped into the Mini run as several went past that pub! What a way to end things!
Even the car wasn't too horrendous on fuel! Maybe I should have tried harder:
It's funny isn't it? You end up being so bitter after so many issues occuring within a short space of time. Yes, dailying an old M3 isn't probably the wisest decision. But what a way to end things!
Besides these photos can I bore you folks with anything else? Of course, a dull video of me driving the M3 in its element!
The thing is these trip wouldn't end! I had another trip on the horizon barely a month away from this Evo Triangle trip! Maybe this trip served as a shakedown for it? But that can wait for the next time.
. With all of these exciting cars there was only one thing left to do. Book some road trips!
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I don't think I've seen an M3 in that colour before, think it's my new favourite colour for one, wheels set it off lovely. Evo Triangle is only a few miles from me, but it's in the news every other day about how the Police are sitting waiting, and even though I go round legally (there's kids in my car) it sort of takes the shine off, like I'm having supervised playtime, so haven't bothered in ages. 
