My E36 Vert

[ver328i]

So After selling my Subaru I wanted a cheap, decent, fun car.
I first tried to find a nice E30 325i...looked everywhere and probably checked out most of the ones on gumtree but could not justify the asking prices for any of them...poor condition cars asking for premium prices:argh:

Then figured I'd go e36 and looked at getting a 328i sedan but also could not make the move back to e36 as most of the ones I saw had tasteless aftermarket wheels lowering kits(been there) :yuck: Not what I was looking for...

Then decided, Fukit, Im going the vehicle finance route again and started looking at e90's and while looking stumbled across this well cared for e36 at a dealership. It was a trade car so I immediately made an offer and to my surprise they accepted...so no turning back. The money I was gonna use as a deposit on a e90 paid for this car and i still have change so Im pretty happy :rollsmile:

Specs:
201k odo, FSH, Autotragic gearbox, clean soft black leather, Clear back window, almost new roof(previous owner used hardtop), Original hear unit with cd shuttle, all manuals
Plans will be different to what i did with my previous one. I'll try to go OEM with this one and limit aftermarket parts...call it a restoration then:thumbs:

:thumbs:

 

[KarshS]

very nice congrats :bravo:

 

[Tareeq]

Very nice find Bud :bravo:
Wishing you many trouble free K's enjoy it Bud :thumbs:

 

[Sabretooth tiger]

very nice :bravo:

 

[Demontec]

:bravo: Extremely neat cab there
is it a 325 or 328?

 

[ClassicB]

Looks very clean :thumbs:

 

[cOlDFuSiOn]

Wow what a clean example! Enjoy :thumbs:

 

[zabbo]

Congrats ... cabbie looks goodraise:

 

[ver328i]

Thanks for the comments guys

She's a 325i but feels so much smoother/better than my ex 328i vert. On the look out for a wind deflector and hardtop now:thumbs:

 

[444YYY]

Looks very well cared for :thumbs:
Congrats!

 

[ver328i]

wind deflector installed!!! It makes a huge difference...drive top down without loosing hats :rollsmile: dont know how I managed to go without one in my previous vert. scuse the celll pics...posting from mobile device












thanks for looking:thumbs:
hopefully will find a hardtop next

 

[Peejay]

Wow. Very neat.

 

[ver328i]

Excuse bad pics(cellphone) and bad grammar :rollsmile:

Did a sound upgrade...well sort of



I Got tired of listening to just CD's and radio but did not wanna change to an aftermarket head unit - just love the OEM becker professional unit!!!

So did some research on adding Aux. For starters, there's very little info on this head unit and this mod on the web so i had to feel my way through. So if i did it wrong :tease:

Here goes...
To remove this unit you must pry the cover off and that will reveal two allen key bolts(left and right) that will release the head unit.



Mine is already loose here but you can see the screws on each side





Next is to pull the deck forward and unplug the harness...Then I opened it up and looked for any obvious sound points on the PCB that I could tap into.



Found a brown ribbon that takes sound from the cassette player to the main board so i decided to tap into that. I unplugged the brown ribbon in this pic



Then cut up an Aux extension cable - Cut off the male side- and did a test connection. The typical aux cable will have three wires...Left, right and ground.





Ignore the horrible wires...this was merely to check sound

Once I was happy with the sound, I heat shrink ed the exposed wires and routed the female plug through the center console to its final installation place, the ashtray:thumbs:




So, I can now plug my phone or tablet into my car and listen to all my music with the existing oem player in tact:thumbs:
It sounds great, All I have to do is put a blank cassette into the deck, select tape mode, plug my phone into the aux port and listen to all my downloaded tracks:joy:

But:
My rear speakers sounded like crap...not surprising - just look at it :yuck:




Not wanting to go full aftermarket and cut the original harness and things I decided to reuse the speaker housing and just ad whatever I could fit in there.

Stripped out the old



Bought these 4 " JVC's...not the best but it does the job :thumbs:



Fitted aftermarket screw clips (whatever its called) to the oem housing



The fit like so :rollsmile:







All done, Thanks For looking

 

[bmw325i]

Congrats bud!!!

 

[ver328i]

I'll be updating this thread as a sort of car journal or something like that :rollsmile:

Thanks to members' advice received here http://www.bmwfanatics.co.za/showthread.php?tid=53311

I went to pick my hard top this morning. Its in a good condition and just needs a color...im thinking black but not 100% sure yet. May just end up with white.







Thanks for looking

 

[FaSTandFurious]

Looking good man. Congrats

 

[Cape_Tonian]

Looking good, bra :thumbs:

That hard top, did you buy it from Junkmail perhaps?

The reason for asking is that, there was a guy selling a grey one more than a year ago and he wanted 9k at the time.

 

[ver328i]

Looking good, bra :thumbs:

That hard top, did you buy it from Junkmail perhaps?

The reason for asking is that, there was a guy selling a grey one more than a year ago and he wanted 9k at the time.

thanks man. No, bought it from a used car dealer who is selling a vert...carnections in plumstead to be exact

 

[Magneto]

Congrats. Enjoy her.

 

[ver328i]

HEADLINER REPAIR DIY

So worked on the hardtop this weekend :thumbs:

The interior lining was crap and the headliner was sagging making the whole interior look and feel like shit:yuck:

so saturday morning I ripped it apart

For those interested in doing this: Start by removing the c pillar covers. They are held in there by a few clips so you have to tug them towards the inside of the car.

Then unplug the rear cabin lights

then move on to the headliner.
To start, remove all the handles- Theyre held up by some hidden screws:rollsmile:

The driver front does not have a handle but there are still screws.

then remove the latch handle...theres a allen key hole in there somewhere

Once all of those are removed the headliner should already start coming down so just pull down the rubber seal and gooi the headliner on your grass:thumbs:

To be continued....:rollsmile: