96 M3 Swapped 318ti
 

Post Forward. No Relation to Seller.

http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/cl...-m3swap-174280

I saw this on craiglist and no longer there. Maybe it got sold?

Indeed it did.

I purchased it about 2 weeks ago. I paid a bit more than I wanted to pay - especially considering that the exterior and interior are pretty rough - but the major work has seemingly been done well. All I really need to do is sort an idle issue, the thermostat, and a check engine light . Once that's done, the car should be mechanically straight. Then begins the chore of tracking down and fixing leaks (i.e. tearing apart the interior).

Nice! Yeah i was thinking about getting that but, seems too much for my price. I think it would be funner to drop one myself and go through all those. Congrats you got it! post em pictures up once u get it done!

Will do!

Great buy! Building something very similar now ... Minus the clean leather interior ... Enjoy!

Cool project! Have fun. Any progress?

Hi guys. Thanks for the feedback (if I can call it that).

I've made progress in stripping the interior. I've stripped all of the interior including the carpet; the only thing left is the dash, wheel, and driver seat. The interior of the car is essentially a shell. I've also removed all of the non-needed electrical components as well as their corresponding wires. I will be thinning the wiring harness as much as I can.

The things I have removed so far include:

Radio,
Speakers,
Amplifier,
Power windows,
Power locks,
Power mirrors,
Cruise control,
Alarm,
Sunroof
Antenna and related components,
Rear wiper and related components,
Heated Seats,
Dome Lights (the center dome light above the rear-view mirror will remain),
Air bag module,
Air bags (soon to be removed).

As I said, I will be removing all of the wiring associated with the above electrical components thus making the wiring harness as simple as possible. There will be just the essential electrical components in this car.

Having removed all of the above, I got a bit of a surprise - there is quite a bit of rust under all of the carpeted areas. The person from whom I bought the car took care of it but the original owner trashed it. Underneath the carpet I found over $10 in change and a dozen cigarette butts. I even found two butts behind the C Pillar covers (how the hell does that happen?). There is a fair amount of surface rust on the floor areas that were covered by the carpet. The original owner was a disgusting ass.

The main plan for the car is as follows:

1. Remove all the sound deadening (as it is hiding rust), sand the rust out of the medal, and paint the interior with POR 15.
2. Find any sources of water leaks and sort them out.
3. I have not a single wire inside the doors (I removed the full door harnesses). I will be converting the windows to manual wind.
4. Complete new interior minus the rear seats which will be replaced by a rear-seat-delete.

I will see how the sanding down phase goes. If there's too much rust, I'm going to buy a clean shell from down south and swap the drivetrain over.

Basically, the plan is to make this car have 5 main electrical components in the cabin: the instrument cluster, HVAC, heater rear window, light switch, and the steering column electrics (horn, indicators, wiper). That's it.

The exterior is a given: M3 & M-Tech parts, European clear rear lights, European front lights with Xenon.

This is going to be a long-term project so I'll be making a dedicated thread for it in the near future.