Practically Classics Forum

I bought this back from a customer a few days ago. I had it for a good while and loved it but he really did offer me more than what the car was worth and so I let it go on the condition I get first refusal. Now on 454000 with original everything bar the alternator I fitted a few days back. Still have a pulsing of the lights so need to sort that out and I think a new set of wings and front door cards will bring her back to her former glory. Still have the dealer service history to 425000 and she still drives like all the other e36 coupes I've had, maybe even tighter than most.
I worked for BMW on the prototyping - pre-production team and therefore know about how early cars are built (early in the sense of introduction of a new model that is). They are normally built by a small well trained team as the car goes down the production line, not by the normal associates on the track. The result is a well built car with all torques to exact specs and a bit more attention to detail and usually better quality parts. The quality tends to drop off during production as costs become more important than launching a brand new model that could potentially be a press car. As part of the team that prepared press cars I know how much these are pampered in order to get positive reports. At this point in it's life I think she also could do with a new MAF (which is the old mechanical style carried over from the E30 based motors) as she surges during acceleration.

Hi there Lance1a,

Great story, you don't say what engine is in the car (4 or 6 pot) but congrats. Up until last year I had an E36 325i saloon and until its last months it was a great car. Upon nearing 200,000 miles I had a lot of problems in quick succession starting with a failed fuel pump, and then its death knoll was a weird problem where randomly the car wouldn't accelerate, and would sometimes rev up massively for no reason when idling in traffic. I traced a fault in, and changed the throttle sensor which fixed it for about 50 miles. As I needed a reliable car for work I ended up buying another but it was a sad end.

Tip: The 6 cylinder E36 can develop a problem with hot starting. If the car wont fire up when standing for 10 mins or so when hot, but runs up fine a bit later, the injectors are known to leak off sometimes. Stick a bottle of injector cleaner into the tank to cure it

It's a 6 pot 2.0L. I went to the scrappy yesterday to find a MAF but they were all gone. I'll get one in due course but it still drives ok for now. This has the cast iron block that was only fitted to the early M50B20 motors (alloy later) and are known for having slightly different characteristics than the later cars. They sound different too, but mainly they last forever. I've had about 30 E36's in various guises and most of the time I try to aim for the early cars when I can.

Cool, mine was registered in Sept 1993 on an L plate so was early-ish but I think it had the alloy block.