From "Breaking Up" to "Braking Up"

Greetings!

Had an especially productive weekend, which I'll share with you now. In a break from tradition I'm going to show you the end, first... Pretty impressive though, I'm sure you'll agree!

Tadaaaaa!!

Nice clean workshop - all o'rrible remains of E36 disappeared. So now how this magical goal was achieved...

Oops

Started off from where we were last time with the back end remaining. My good ole mate Trev turned up and we tried the same trick with the rear window, but our impatience got the better of us this time, and the rear window wasn't quite as forgiving as the toughened and laminated front glass (I'll have to record on the timesheet 1 hour's rework for sweeping up broken glass!!)

Nimble incisions removed the roof rather quickly:

I love that 9" grinder

Flipped over and begun the same procedure on the underside, but took an age because of the huge amount of strength and stiffening in the floor:

"Surgery" nearly complete

Many, Many hours and several cutting discs later...

Incredible amount of stiffness / rigidty in the  boot floor, but then it is an impact zone

 ... It was finally broken up into handleable pieces. Well, some pieces "handleable" by the engine hoist, but meh. Done.

A lot of clever packing and stacking and finally managed to get the whole lot on one load:

Needs to be secured, but at least it will go in one trip

Then lashed it all down and put a tarp over it. (Don't worry it was incredibly secure and perfectly stable, despite what it looks like!!) And that was that - the bitter end of the 1995 328i 4 door MontrealBlau Saloon picked up for £400 on eBay. Rust in pieces!!

With that superb milestone achieved, and the pieces nearly on their way to BMW heaven, it was time to celebrate. However, the champagne cabinet was empty, no party poppers available, and stood there on my own with a 9" grinder in my hand; I decided just to carry on rewardless. Ah well.

This did mean that I can start refurbishing some of the parts harvested from our erstwhile 90's repmobile. Starting with the rear axle / drive assembly

Lifted this huge lump onto the bench and started attacking the rusty bolts

Unfortunately the iphone started playing silly buggers, so missed a few pics of the axle dangling in mid air, which was a bit annoying.

As said earlier, this car spent a good deal of its time near the sea, the salty spray working its magic and converting what was good steel into pure rust - so a lot of the bolts for the hub carrier, brakes and spring seats; required WD40, scaffold tubes on sockets; and heat (or a combination) to undo them. Where I finished late sunday night (with a magnificent roast calling my name) was to have dismantled all the brake assmblies front and rear, ready for refurb:

Crusty, rusty and generally not very nice.

After being fed a hearty meal, I spent the rest of the evening having a look around on the 'net, and found that you can actually refurb each caliper quite reasonably (£11 per corner for the seals and dust covers) whereas a newly refurbished one would set you back between £75 and £250, EACH! I think I'll go with the refurb option. Used the compressed air to pop the pistons out and they had a very good seal, and bores were still polished as if like new. I'll replace the rubber as it looked perished and give 'em a wire brush and paint; but otherwise they should be good to go. Discs were OK ish, again wire brush and check the thicknesses with a micrometer and they should be fine. I will need rear shoe assemblies for the handbrake, in case you don't know the handbrake has shoes that go inside the disc. Quite a clever design from a space / weight reduction point of view; not so clever for "extreme marine corrosion" resistance. Whole new mechanisms needed!

All told, I'm quite happy with that. Worst case scenario was shelling out for an entirely new braking system.

Next time, should have the results of the weigh in (and final cash total from the old bimmer); and will begin refurbing and painting the diff.

Thanks for reading!

Cheers,

Steve

Quick dismantling update - Chop chop!!

So - quick update on progress comprising two weekends work...

Finished the interior strip out - got the dash/console out, although even with the Bentley manual couldn't find all the hidden screws and fastenings, so brute force won over anything else. (wasn't really in good enough condition to re-sell anyway). Then proceeded to carefully take the loom out - quite proud that I managed to keep it entirely in one piece. It was a headache following every single wire to a connector to unplug it, but should be worth it and easier to piece together all the necessary pieces afterwards.

Spaghetti Central!! Arghh!

Bare shell

Next was the manky carpet ( maggots, sand and scummy cigarette ends and all). Glad to see the back of that! 

Manage to then fill the trailer entirely with plastics, foams, rubbers; and other stuff that wasn't steel which could be weighed in for scrap or sold on eBay as spares. And yes, I got the usual amount of grief from the people at the tip (standard rant for those of you who live in Plymouth and want to take more than grass clippings and newspaper recycling to the tip)

Off to do battle with the forces of evil at Plymouth dump

Which then left a pretty much empty shell...

Car hasn't felt like this since it was born 17 years ago

... And a desire to buy a weapon of mass destruction - E36, meet your doom!!

Insert evil, and slightly deranged chuckle

First off, safely remove the fuel tank (stray sparks from a 9" grinder, nicht so gut) and sunroof casette (might be able to sell that, although fairly hard work to remove without hitting your head).

I set off by chopping the front structure - although arguably this is the strongest part of the car. Load bearing for the engine, and all the strength of frontal impact / crash protection meant it was an absolute pig! I cut everything I could see and it was still hanging on for dear life! In the end I got the trusty hi-lift jack and used it in "spreader" mode and finally the two front chassis rails let go.

After a LOT of grinding, this was the only way to get them to part company

First the right...

...Then the left

 

Then, my good mate Trev turned up with a cracking idea on how to get the bonded windscreen out (using an old throttle cable as a cheese wire - thanks for all the blood sweat and tears mate!), which left the roof and front windscreen open for some judicious surgical cuts. Nurse! Scalpel! (OK, well Trev, pass me the 9" grinder)

Windscreen and front of roof coming apart

Then finally, cut across the width of the car along the floor and up the transmission tunnel to seperate the front bulkhead from the floor pan

It's a cut and shut motor, only without the "shut" part

If you read this blog in reverse, it's a detailed guide on how to build an E36 BMW

Oh and on the new build, another tiny bit of progress -   engine mounts fitted. Series 2 V8 Land Rover were the perfect height, screw thread and consistency. And a snip at £2.20 + vat :-)

And that was it for 2 weekends! What remains now is a trailer full of scrap, and about 2/3 of a BMW shell. A few people have asked so I'll answer the question "Why?" Well, the local scrap metal merchants won't accept a car whole (no matter how little remains), unless the V5 is provided so they can dispose of the car. Well, I'm not sure how that plan would pan out for me keeping the V5 to prove the age of the donor vehicle parts to get an age-related plate for the finished car. I also thought about selling the shell to someone in case they wanted some bizarre project of their own (rally car? track car? touring car?) but with the amount of copies of the chassis number engraved, stamped and stuck into the shell, there'd still be nothing to stop someone finding out the previous details, re-registering it; and tearing around sending me little gifts such as speeding fines and parking tickets in my name. Far fetched, but not keen on that idea either. So the safest (and arguably most fun) option is to destroy it myself, get the age-related plate; and afterwards inform the DVLA of the fate of one of Bavarian Motor Work's children.

Next jobs, finish cutting the shell, weigh in the remainder, and sell sell sell on eBay! For those of you keeping a running total, in terms of scrap and eBay takings; the car owes me a measly £140. Hopefully would be able to get that fairly easy, and hey presto I've got all the donor parts for free!!!

The missus says this part looks like a car from a ferris wheel... who knows, maybe there's a market for rear-end BMW ferris wheels? All I need is another 50-odd cars and a lot of steelwork to find out...

Cheers,
Steve

Breaking up is hard to do

Greetings

Brief update from the weekend's activities; continuing to break up the old E36 Donor. 

The first goal was the rear hubs, driveshafts, and diff. After several failed attempts to budge any of them with their deeply rusted nuts and bolts that rounded off just by looking at a spanner or socket, I gave up and went for the "big bang" solution; undoing the 4 bolts that hold on the rear powertrain and suspension assembly and lowering the whole thing to the ground. (Quite scary undoing the nuts when you're lying underneath it, wondering if it'll shear off and leave you wearing about 100kg of steel!)

Rear diff / driveshafts / suspension etc. assembly.

Close-up on rear powertrain lump

Next challenge will be to attack those aforementioned rusted bolts, although much easier when it's on the bench and you can get to it, opposed to lying underneath with several socket extensions flailing them around your head! A challenge for another time methinks.

The car has spent a lot of time by the coast / beach, evident from the 3 buckets of sand I managed to collect so far from various nooks and crannies during the dismantling. Not to mention the colony of maggots in the carpets under the seat, and the several fag butts, fingernails and 47p of loose change. Mmh nice, just what I wanted to buy into.

Interior is mostly stripped now, just after this photo was taken I got the rear parcel shelf apart and then the steering wheel off

Interior stripped. Dont' look too closely you might see the delights the previous owner left for me to find

Then moved onto the dashboard itself - a job I particularly loathe on any car. No matter how many nuts and bolts you take out, there's always one or two you just can't find, inevitably causing you to have to wrench the damn thing apart and break something! (Lucky it won't be going back then.) Couldn't find the elusive fastenings, and then it was tea time; so gave up and went home. The best labour saving device of today is definitely Tomorrow.

Did one final job to end on a high. I think it's very important for morale boosting on a project, particularly when you invest your own time and money on it - the last thing you want to do is get demotivated and it become a chore; you simply won't enjoy it at all. Need to seek out the small wins every now and then! (Anyway, that's enough motivational speaking, by rights I should be charging for my consultancy fee as a motivational speaker!) So, to that end; I dry fitted the hand brake lever with a spring clamp. Mostly pointless as it'll probably have to come out and be fitted after the gearbox, but still it made me happy and I left with a smile on my face!

First part of the "build" - handbrake lever!! Incidentally, Land Rover Steering wheel is entirely optional.

So the old E36, looking ever sorry for itself is getting closer to its fate with the 9" grinder. Last things to remove are fusebox and all electrical units / wiring, petrol tank (keep for kit car bits), dashboard (bin) sunroof (sell if it's serviceable), front and rear windows (if I can be bothered with the hassle); and that's pretty much it!

Until next time!

Steve