New to me daily driver.. 95 M3.

[Dave-ROR]

Originally Posted by King Tut

Always garaged, never tracked?

Seriously, give me first dibs on it. I promise you will be happy what I end up doing with it.

Always garaged and mechanically maintained. We can leave it at that

[zygrene]

Originally Posted by Dave-ROR

Before getting into this I should state that my car was bought with ~177k (high 176,000 something). It now has about 184k on it. I fly up to DC, went with the seller to PA and drove it back to FL without concern.


E36 M3's have had a lot of issues. The good thing now is that the majority of cars out there have most of those issues resolved.


The weakpoints of the chassis are: suspension pickups and rust. The pickups can all be reinforced and many cars will already have the most common reinforcements. If building a track car you'd take that a few steps further but not much of an issue for a daily driver. Rust.. well it's an old car so.. yeah.


Engine weakpoints: Vanos issues (rebuilt ones are cheap and they aren't that hard to replace), cooling system (plastic thermostat housing, water pump with a plastic impeller, radiator, engine fan explodes [seriously]) and oil leaks from old gaskets, etc. Coil packs can fail, but it's a 19 year old car so that shouldn't really be considered a negative. Power Steering stuff tends to leak. My biggest leak is from the dipstick tube, pain in the ass to get to so I haven't bothered yet. Lightweight flywheels make them noisy and occasionally will stall them out when you put the clutch in rolling to stop, fault of the flywheel more than anything else though.


Drivetrain is solid, but find a car with a good or new flex disc (giubo as BMW people call it). Diffs, axles and trans are all mostly bulletproof. I'm sure you can break one but no one I know of ever has on anything remotely stock, even full race cars (road racing).


Body electrical, the on board computer displays go to shit but cheap to replace and/or fix. Automatic windows get flaky but again easy to fix, just takes time. Door panels fall off on many cars (mine are still perfect, but most you will find have been re-glued or just screwed in).


In general, any good E36 M3 for sale right now should have at least the shock towers reinforced, all new (or close to new) cooling system with the new plastic thermo housing or a metal one and a metal impeller water pump. The Z3M radiator is a common cheap upgrade. Many people remove the fan (my car had a brand new one so I still run it) and just use the pusher in front of the condenser and radiator, or put an electronic fan one in.


So far in ~7,000 miles and about 8 months or whatever I've owned it for I've replaced nothing besides oil out of need. I did buy some seals for it, some mods, new spark plugs (still haven't installed them), etc. I did document one issue I had above, I have that $13 or whatever part also just haven't installed it. In 8 months it's happened twice so not exactly a rush.. and I can temp "fix" it in about 30 seconds now. I did buy some new rotors for it from tire rack, I think they are $55 per rotor all around, that's the most expensive thing I've spent on maintenance so far but those old rotors have been on the car for awhile (I think about 3 years) with a few track days.. I ran hawk blues on it and killed them Long answer but with the rotors and not with mods I've spent about $400 in maint on it (including oil, filters, diff fluid swap, trans fluid swap, new drain/fill plugs all around, seals, plugs, rotors). It came with BNIB OEM pads so I don't know what those cost, however most part prices I've seen are pretty similar to Honda part prices, lots of OEM but not BMW branded options also for a lot less. Oh I also bought all new bolts and used OEM springs when I dumped the coilovers for bilsteins/oem springs. The car was up north so I always replace all bolts I touch on northern cars but I didn't include that stuff in the ~$400.


The critical thing on buying one of these is to really look into the car. Make sure the common issues have been addressed, get a PPI done, etc. Don't be in a rush and buy the first one you see if you want one.. there's a chance it's the perfect one but it's probably unlikely I couldn't find a single local one I would have considered buying for anywhere near asking price.


I'm actually getting ready to sell the BRZ now since I never use it anymore (I did drive it this weekend. 20 feet to get it out of the garage to clean up the garage and 20 feet back in.. 40 feet of driving in 3 months isn't bad....).


What's really amazing is that you own a 99 Si in Cali and it hasn't been stolen! Congrats on that!

Thanks for sharing your wealth of knowledge! Based on all the above, I think I'd better steer clear of the E36. I don't mind putting some extra time and money into a 2nd fun car (my S2000, which curiously enough is extremely reliable), but for a daily driver I just want something reasonably reliable, comfortable, quick, and fun. My Si is extremely reliable, but not super comfortable for more than 2 people. It's quick enough but only when above 5.5k rpm, which isn't how I want to drive my car on a daily basis. Fun? Kind of, but again only if I rev the living hell out of it. Plus, the transmission with 115k miles on it is pretty clunky and requires a *perfect* rev match on both up and down shifts, otherwise it jerks like no other.

Honestly, I've only owned the car for about 2.5 months. It hasn't been stolen (even though it's 100% bone stock which is unheard of for an EM1) but someone did try to rip out the AC/stereo while it was parked in front of my house one night. When I woke up the next morning I found the radio/AC trim broken and partially ripped out, but literally nothing had been stolen, including my Raybans that were just sitting on the driver's door. But I think it happened due to faulty locks that didn't lock the passenger's side door when I clicked the key, and not because someone actually broke into the car. Either way, I'm kinda itching to get rid of it and get something with more torque, comfort, and space for around $10k that will mostly be worry-free in terms of theft and maintenance. I guess BMW's aren't a good choice for my budget. Now I'm considering the early models of TSX, G35 sedan, and WRX.