Gastropod E36, building a $2000 challenge car, then going wheel to wheel racing with it?

Finding this car started with a Facebook message from a friend, one of those friends that you constantly swap links to bad ideas for sale. 

I had been casually looking for a suitable GRM challenge car since I'd already agreed to make the trek down to Gainsville with xflowgolf this year and taking my own car sounded more fun than watching someone else play with their car.

In this case the ad was one of those "this could be a really good deal or it could be a complete hornets nest" most of the listing photos looked like this:

However this photo piqued my interest, no signs of quarter panel rust. shoddy repair job? diamond in the rough?

The marketplace listing was pretty scant on details.  From the photos I counted at least 3 different wheel diameter/styles on the car.

Checking the buyer's profile out I discovered we had a mutual friend (my brother in law) using that connection I was able to get more info about the car. It ran well but the automatic goes into limp mode, sometimes after 3 miles, sometimes after 300 miles. Often enough it was no longer deemed suitable to drive. It had been parked, battery poached for a different project and with no battery it needed a trailer, hence not running.

The car looked reasonably clean from the terrible photos and I wasn't worried about the transmission limp mode, a manual swap fixes that!

I brought a battery along to fire up the car just to check that it ran and evaluate the motors condition. To my surprise it fired up immediately and purred away without any of the usual valvetrain noise or blown head gasket smoke that I associate with e36's. 

The car was even nice enough to avoid going into limp mode long enough to drive onto the trailer!

with a bit of negotiation I wound up spending $350 and drove away with a clean chassis and these extra 17" BBS looking wheels.

There's not actually still snow in Michigan, but I promised Mrs. Klodkrawler 4 months ago if she conceded to let me buy this car I wouldn't start wrenching on it until I graduated from school. Well, exams are next week, so I thought I should get a build thread started and up to date before I really get going on the project!

Nice buy! Look forward to see where you go with it. 

Sweet! Great starting price.

excellent! 

I was wondering why you weren't nose in a book. very well carry on. 

looking forward to watching this over the summer

Kick ass! I love those wheels 

Gastropod and then GLTC? So make it a normal-ish car now and then tear it all apart when you get home?

Nice!  I enjoy a cheap e36 myself!

In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :

yup that’s exactly the plan! Get as much of the drivetrain sorted as $2k will allow, while keeping it a useful car. Shake down this summer/fall. Then over winter remove the interior, add safety equipment and go racing!

I'm reasonably good at turning wrenches and bolting parts together, but neither I nor my 2 current team mates can weld. That puts crazy challenge appropriate motor swaps out of the question. However we'd still like a bit more power than the 189hp this car left Germany with some 200,000 miles ago.

To that end, Facebook once again came to the rescue! Per Patricks reply in this thread: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/2000-challenge/budget-question-with-parts-lot/154079/page1/

So we now have a $80 S52 donor motor. While fundamentally it's the same engine that's in the car already. We gain variable intake timing, half a point of compression, some more aggressive cams and .7l of displacement. All in that nets roughly 50 more horsepower!

One "small" issue and part of why the whole parts lot was so cheap, the  previous owner began to refresh the car this motor came out of, including installing a lightweight flywheel. Turns out reusing the factory hardware instead of the included hardware isn't a great idea.

Thankfully before the car was ever driven he attempted to turn the motor over by hand to TDC to perform a vanos rebuild and discovered the motor wouldn't turn, investigating the only change (flywheel) lead to discovering the issue.  

I've contemplated simply knocking the edge of the main cap down ever so slightly and then putting a new bearing in and checking the clearance. If that works it would save machining cost and free up budget for other things. On the other hand...if it doesn't work, and the motor spins a bearing on track I'm back to square 1 with 189hp again. So I think we'll sacrifice the budget hit and get a line hone done and all new crank/rod bearings in the name of reliability. 

The machine shop that provided the most reasonable quote mentioned that it would cost extra if the motor needed to be cleaned first. And it definitely does:

About 2 hours alternating back and forth between a stiff wire brush and a air hose gave me a reasonably clean surface, then I ran over it with my wire wheel to get any of the really stubborn stuff. It's not really good enough to paint yet, but it's significantly better, so now I can move onto disassembly (once my vanos tools arrive)

I'm still researching the best/easiest way to clean off the grungy aluminum parts and very open to feedback if someone knows a good way. I've spent entirely too long researching how to build my own hot tank. But that might be overkill?

apologies for the huge pictures, I'm not sure what I did differently this time.

In reply to klodkrawler05 :

Pictures look fine on mobile! Seems like the right plan on the motor. Looking forward to watching it move to the next step. 

In reply to spacecadet :

Thanks! I was inspired by your cleanup of Hazmat, I don't think the transformation on the motor will be quite as awesome but, clean parts are more fun to work with anyways.

I've been trying to give myself 1 hour to work on the car every night before bed, it's not a lot but I've been pleasantly surprised by the amount of work I can get done in an hour.

Yesterday I got the engine stripped down to a short block, hopefully my next hour I can get the rotating assembly out and ready to head to the machine shop. 

I did break one of the timing chain guides during removal, looks like that will be an unexpected $11-12 hit on the budget.

Today I spent an hour during daylight doing some scrubbing of parts to try out a few cleaners, this home depot branded citrus stuff works reasonably well:

It's not hugely impressive work but I think it will make re-assembly much more enjoyable.

New post exactly one month later! I'm behind where I hoped to be at this point but yesterday I finally dropped the block off to get repaired and the head to get inspected and make sure it's in good shape.

According the machine shop they should be ready to pick up early next week. if that happens, I can begin assembly next week and potentially start working on the swap next weekend!

Progress! 

Glad you're moving forward now.

will be interesting how cheaply a motor can truly be freshened up like that.  machine shop tear down certainly opens a can of potential worms.  Hoping for the best!

Still waiting on the machine shop, which makes it somewhat unlikely that I'll have this ready for my target deadline of Gridlife Track Day Picnic at blackhawk farms. (which is next weekend)

After ordering all the parts I think I'll need to get the car running I was starting to worry that I'd really have to get thrifty to get the car setup how I imagined within Gastropod rules. With the higher re-cap allowance for challenge in general I'd be well under budget still so there is that.

And then this popped up.........taking a page from spacecadet I started thinking about other cars before even using the current car. I'm heading to check this out after work today as I think it will be a much more gastropod appropriate car with less work. By the time I'd manual trans swap the white e36 and get an interior as decent as this car looks I'd be well on my way to eclipsing the $1500 mark.

Bonus points, the 328is already has vanos and a bigger motor.
 

Nothing set in stone, we'll see what the CEL codes are and how rust free it really is, then go from there.

The proper number of project cars is n+1. 

This shirt I saw yesterday is appropriate:

Yesssssssssss 

*thinks about northern cars*

Please no whammies

Please no whammies

Please no whammies

Good luck man!!

I understand.

https://petrolicious.com/articles/owning-a-bmw-leads-to-owning-more-bmws

(Also applies to Miatas.)

Well, it photographs well! Every panel has a ding or dent of some kind but it’s rust free. Which is always the hardest to find in MI.

after a cursory scan I think the secondary air injection (emissions) are causing the rough idle. We’ll find out later today when I start digging into it. 

In reply to klodkrawler05 :

Rust free in Michigan is impossible.  

In response to your comment on my thread.. 

"Theres no flipping the bird emoji on GRM, but just know I'm flipping you the bird" 

RIGHT BACK AT YOU! 

That is so well bought for a northern car. 

Check the Idle Air Control Valve.  I had a '98 328iS with fewer miles and was idling rough.  Pulled it off and the little flapper in the IAC valve that was supposed to rotate (IIRC) was frozen in what appeared to be a carbon buildup.  Several hours later and the application of much brake/carb cleaner it started to move a little.  A little more soaking and working it gained full range of motion.  It felt loose but when reinstalled but it worked fine and the idle returned to normal.

Is it silver or that light silvery blue?

 Great score.