Sunny winter

The new year has just started and winter was supposed to be in full swing, but it seems that spring is the right term for this weather. This may be sad for skiers but I'm quite happy as I can work outside on my car (I don't have a garage).

As I was waiting for the roll cage to be manufactured in Italy, my friends were up to "no good"... Below you can see and E30 with a 2.8 M52 engine swap and a few other mods.

After a few runs in the city we made our way to the mountain and the guys proceeded to lay some rubber.

I love the sound of my DIY exhaust I made for my E30. This E30 belongs to one of my good friend's and runs a 2.5 M50 engine with my exhaust on...

With the weather so nice it was an open invitation to work on my car and so I begun to strip a perfectly good stock E36.

As I removed the parts I weighed them and in the end I removed over 100 KG of interior trim.

As usual the sound deadening was a pain to remove, but with a heat gun I finally did it.

3 bottles of brake cleaner later I finally was able to remove all the gunk left behind by the sound deadening. I actually got high on brake cleaner...

The dash went out for the....

roll cage to be fitted in.

Next is the roll cage making its way in my car...

The darkest hour is just before dawn

As the new year is beginning so is my story, the past year was a year of both good and bad fortune, I was side swiped while going at highway speeds by a "fellow" motorist so the car spun and I hit a traffic barrier that cut the car like a can opener

Had I done anything to recover the spin the traffic barrier would have hit the drivers door and the consequences would have been...tragic

So I began parting out the car, because I didn't want to build an other E30 as the parts are getting harder and harder to find and the chassis dynamics are less than perfect...

The right car for my requirements, about which I'll write later on, is E30's newer cousin the E36, so I went on and bought an unregistered one brought from Germany. A no frills, no options (not even a sunroof) bone stock 320i just a year younger that my E30. I especially wanted a clean rust free, unmolested car.

Then I promptly put on some winter tires and went out drifting...

Afterwards I took the E36 to it's first competition an autocross, but it was rather boring because I couldn't drift the car.

I came up third (I'm the first to the left and one of my good friends came second in his E30)

And now the E36 requirements.... I wanted a street car that I could drift and rally semi professionally and the E36 is simply the best car in my mind for this. So with that goal firmly in my sight I went on and bought a few parts needed for a race car, mostly race safety things and a nice set of wheels that came by cheap.

Here you see a set of BBS RC 040 wheels, a Sabelt race seat, a Momo steering wheel, a FIA 6 point safety harness, a Wilwood hydro brake, a master switch and 4 pot Porsche calipers.

The rollcage has been ordered and will arrive soon enough. The are happy times ahead... I Hope