88 PERFORMANCE BMWOUR CARS
ELLIOT T’S E36 323i
Well, last month I talked about my new
guilty pleasure, that being the purchase of
an E36 323i Coupé bought for just £500.
Being a hardcore VW fan (and editor of sister
publication, Performance VW) I’d only bought
the car as a cheap and cheerful runaround to
use until my new VW T6 arrived, but after plans
changed I’d now been left with the old Coupé as
a daily... but was secretly loving every minute
of it.
Having owned the car for best part of a year
(time indeed fl ies when you’re having fun) and
done nothing to it other than checking the tyre
pressures and topping-up fl uids I was feeling
pretty guilty about it. The car had fl own through
its MoT back in December and I’d literally
thought nothing else about servicing the car,
which had been running like a dream! When
June arrived, however, I decided it was time
for an overdue service to change the obligatory
fi lters, generally check the car over and also
investigate what sounded like a noisy rear wheel
bearing that had been driving me slowly crazy.
I decided to book the car in with my good
friends at AD Autotechnik (www.adautotechnik.
co.uk) in Newchapel, just outside of East
Grinstead, where Danny Appleton and Si
Davidson could give it a good once over.
Although the chaps will turn their hands to
anything they mainly specialise in German
metal, so I knew the car was in good hands and
after a quick inspection I think they were pretty
impressed with my new purchase. Well, they
were so far...
The service itself was pretty straight forward
and just involved the regular oil, air, fuel and
pollen fi lter changes, plus fresh oil, brake fl uid
and new plugs. Other than new wiper blades
and screen wash, there was nothing too drastic
to report on. I wish I could say the same for the
rear wheels bearings, though. Funnily enough
Simon had only recently tackled a wheel bearing
swap on an E46 and claimed it was something
of a nightmare. He’d actually had to remove the
complete rear hub assembly in order to press
the driveshaft out using an industrial press and
then access the bearing. Hopefully my E36’s
would be easier to remove, but it soon became
clear that wasn’t to be the case.
We tackled the nearside bearing fi rst and it
just wouldn’t budge, so Si decided he would
need to remove the entire rear hub assembly so
he could, hopefully, repeat what had been done
on the E46. After removing the hub assembly
he then popped to a fi rm around the corner to
borrow its heavy duty press which we hoped
would be a simple job now that the carrier was
removed from the car. How wrong could we be?
Around 15 minutes later Danny got a phone call
and I soon realised from his body language that
it was Si on the other end of the line and the
news wasn’t good. Ten minutes later Si returned
with a look on his face like he’d done 12 rounds
with Colin McGregor and, on closer inspection,
a wrecked hub assembly. Long story short,the driveshaft itself hadn’t wanted to budget,
but something had to give and in this case that
something was the cast assembly itself which
(as you can see from the photos), snapped in
two places.
Luckily, the guys have a number of contacts
and Danny was soon on the phone to one of his
friends who drifts BMWs and within half an hour
we had the call back that he had a complete
E36 assembly sitting on his shelf. As we were
running out of time by this stage I left the car
with them and popped back the following week
to collect it, after they’d managed to fi t a new
bearing in the replacement hub assembly. Job
done and boy did it sound quieter! The lads
decided against doing the offside bearing until
they had checked I was totally happy with the
new improved (and quieter) car, which I was.
There was no point risking another snapped hubassembly if the noise had gone.
All in, the service (and new hub assembly)
cost me the best part of £700, which seems a
lot on a £500 car. However, if you consider I’d
already had 12 months of cheap (free) motoring
and will hopefully receive the same going
forwards then it’s actually pretty cheap. The
guys did a grand job and the car now drives like
new, plus I don’t feel guilty about using it either.
Oh, and with the boring bits now taken care
of I could seriously focus on the fi rst stage
a modifi cations, that being fi tment of the CA
Tuned coilovers and M3 Sunfl ower wheels. I just
need to book a slot in with Hack Engineering.
Watch this space, yeah.THANKS AND CONTACT
AD Autotechnik
http://www.adautotechnik.co.ukFresh fl uids all-roundFixing the rear
wheel bearing
turned out to be
a nightmareSpot the
difference...A full set of
fi lters and fresh plugsPBMW217.our_cars.ed2.indd 88 07/08/2017 08:36