I know this isn't a car forum, but I figured someone might find this topic of some interest ^_^'

As I mentioned in the Random thoughts thread, I bought a BMW E36 328i! Now, I've wanted the M3 version for quite a long time, but unfortunately, I just can't afford one. There were a few within my budget, but they were so shagged, that the work needed to really bring them up to scratch would blow way past it, or they were in unrecorded accidents (one had a rather obvious and sloppy welding job on the front-right side of the chassis, just to the left of the engine when looking from the front).

So I settled for a 328i SE instead!

I had originally written off the 328s, mainly because their prices had also gotten to rather ridiculous levels (>£10k for a half-decent manual nearing 100k miles), so it just didn't really seem worth it. My one, however, I managed to find on Car & Classic listed for just £6500, with 58k miles on the clock!

It was being sold by a mechanic, so we even got to properly see what it looked like underneath thanks to the lift.

Underneath, it looked pretty damn immaculate, except for some surface rust on the open diff. Not a big deal.

Unfortunately, the car wasn't taxed or insured, so the seller wasn't keen on letting me have a go in it, but he took us for a quick spin around a private trading estate, and everything seemed mechanically fine. The AC didn't work, the idle is a bit ticky, and it smells of damp inside, but... well, it's an old car ^_^'

I talked the seller down to £6200, and took it to my dad's home that day! I left it there as it was still untaxed, and I had to go to the post office to sort out some discrapancies first, but I took it a few days later.

Since then, I've done a few minor things to it:

  • I replaced the hub caps (BMW 36136783536), all four, £15.60 each from Amazon
  • 4 new tyres, Dunlop Sport BluResponse, 205/60R15 square setup, £116.16 each
  • New cabin air filter. This actually came with the car, but the seller didn't want to deal with potentially breaking the interior trim.

I wish I took a photo of the old filter, but my lord was that thing disgusting. Driving the car with that filter has probably taken a good few years off my life - it had shit growing on it.

I also panic bought a new fuel pump for it. The seller says he already replaced it, but I noticed that it's rather... noisy:

I contacted the seller, and his response was that that's just how they sound. I remained skeptical, but ok. A week or so ago my dad had a go in it, and to him, it sounds perfectly fine. So I guess I'll just leave that for now. Might just return the pump I bought and get the £100 or so back.

Today, I took on the task of replacing the alternator.

So last Thursday, as I was preparing to leave work, I start the car, and it's groaning. Groaning, moaning, something like that. Well that sucks, but I gotta get home, so I drive.

On the way, I try to figure out what it is. It pitches up and down with the engine speed, so it's obviously something driven by the engine. It doesn't seem to get any louder or quieter when I steer, so it's probably not the power steering pump. It does, however, seem to partially disappear and reappear as I press the clutch. Damn, guess it must be the throwout bearing, or maybe the clutch or flywheel attachments.

The next morning I go to start the car. It starts, but it definitely sounds like the battery's a bit low. Strange, maybe it's just a fluke, so I drive to work with no issues aside from the groaning.

Work's up, so I go to the E36 to drive home, except when i unlock the door, that's the only door that got unlocked. Normally, all the other doors also get unlocked by some very 90's-sounding servos. Well shit. I go to start it, but, as expected, it's totally dead. Now, it's like half an hour after quitting time, as I tend to get out of bed rather late. Fortunately, one of my colleagues was also staying late, so he managed to give me a boost with his Aygo!

So with the E36 running, now realising that the problem is most likely the alternator, I drive home. I get stuck in some traffic almost straight out of the gate, so I'm idling. After a minute or so, the dashboard starts to light up. Well alright, I had this with my Volvo before when it had a fucked battery. So I just keep the revs up while sitting in traffic, and all is well. I get home without much issue.

Now what I should've done, it get my mum or dad to drive me to my dad's so that I can get my Volvo. It has its MOT booked for Wednesday anyway. Now, I had a pretty crappy weekend for some reason, so I totally forgot to organise this. This is a problem. What I did do, however, is buy a new battery. Cheapest one Halfords had, around £80. I put it in the E36, it starts no problem. I shoved a multimeter on the terminals. ~12.6V at idle. That's not good - a fully charged lead acid should sit at around 12.8V. At 2000 RPM it hovers at around 13.4V. Again, not good - the alternator should charge at 14~14.4V. I turn on the headlights... 12.6V, 12.5, 12.4, 12.3V, ... Headlights at 2000 RPM, same story. Well I guess that all but confirms it's the alternator. I take out the new battery, and put both old and new in my mum's Merc. We have lead acid chargers at work, so I should be able to charge them both back up. I can't take it on Monday, of course, but I should be able to on Tuesday.

Normally, I can work from home, so it isn't too big of a deal if I can't make it into the office. This time, of course, my rather urgent work requires access to some specific hardware that is only at the office. Another thing I forgot, is that my mum's Mercedes has its MOT on Monday, so I have no way to get to work. I'm really stressed out at this point, but oh well, not much I can do now, other than try my best to at least fix things in the code from home.

Monday evening comes, mum gets home. I expected her car to also be home at this point, but alas, not. She takes it to a garage that just gets around to the car when they have time. FFS. Alright, guess I'll have to get my dad to pick me up. Fortunately, he's happy to do so, so I collect my Volvo. I also ordered a new alternator (OEM number 12311744567 for reference) - the STARK SKGN-0320215. It's not OEM (that would cost £500~£800), but hopefully it'll do the job well enough for £200. It's also a bit of an upgrade, with a 140A over the 80A the stock one produces.

Tuesday, I go to work in the Volvo, no problem. Since at this point, who knows when the Merc's gonna be available, I borrowed a leisure battery from work to shove into the E36. It's big enough to hopefully get me to work and back on one charge.

I get home... Merc is still not there... As luck would have it, it failed its inspection due to a leaky fuel line. Well ok, guess I'm taking the E36. We put the battery it, and it fortunately works fine!

My Volvo initially failed its MOT due to a worn out track rod end ball joint, but it was all sorted on the same day, so I could take it to work on Thursday and Friday.

Friday, however, was also the day the E36 was scheduled to get its AC regassed! I had returned the leisure batter, and charged the new battery at this point (old one was too dead to save), so I could get it to the garage. As expected, there was no gas in the system, so the regassing cost quite a lot (£100 or 120). I also asked them to take a look at the alternator and ticky idle, just in case I ended up being wrong. If so, I could just return the alternator. But no, it is indeed the alternator. They also suspect the poor idle might have been caused by the low voltage, so we'll see. The alternator also arrived!

Sunday (today) comes around, and I have the time to do the swap, so here goes:

First, I just check to see if it's still alive.

Nope, dead as a rock. Just to confirm:

Yep lol. And yes, the battery is in the boot for E36s. Not super unusual, but it does surprise some people. Alright, before starting, I disconnect the positive, and cover it up. It's unlikely that anything would happen given how dead it is, but if it was still charged, then leaving it connected would be very bad!

Now behold, the engine bay! Home of the glorious M52B28, 2.8L straight-six, producing around 190 bhp @ 5900 RPM, and 280 Nm @ 3950 RPM! Not quite the M3's 280 or 320 bhp, but it's still plenty quick enough.

Circled in green is the airbox. This is what holds the air filter for the engine's air intake. We need to remove this, as the alternator is underneath. At the back of the airbox is the MAF sensor, and at the front we have the intake duct.

In the image below we have the old alternator.

Before I start taking things apart, I lay a couple of tea towels under the work area. Since I'm working on gravel, I'll likely never be able to find any nut, bolt, or washer that I might drop. Fortunately, there's no need to get under the car for this job.

Removing the airbox is straightforward enough - the only fixings are those circled in green. The two clips holding the airbox to the MAF sensor that I already undid come off easily by hand, and the two nuts just require a 10mm hex socket.

Make sure to clear out any crap that might've gotten through the air filter somehow 🤔

The airbox requires a bit of wiggling to remove. I unplugged the MAF sensor while doing this to avoid damaging the cable or connector should I give it too much welly. Get the airbox off of the nut brackets first, as those restrict its movement to a single axis. Then it's a matter of just wiggling the MAF and intakes out, and pulling the airbox out.

This is also a good time to check the air filter. There's no need to remove the airbox to do this, of course.

Looks clean, so we'll just put it back in :) Make sure to shake out any crap from the airbox too.

And now we have a clear view of the alternator!

This alternator is air-cooled with its own intake, so we need to remove this. Circled in green is the hose clamp securing it. Just loosen it with a flathead screwdriver, and wiggle the hose off.

I also removed the bit of ducting before the hose, as it was loose and kinda in the way.

So before we try removing the old alternator, let's see what the new one looks like.

So on the front, we have the pulley, and two holes. From looking up reference videos beforehand, I also know that the hole at the back is for the same long bolt that goes through the bottom hole at the front.

And at the back, we have what look like three terminals. Later on we'll see that it's just the two in the shrouded area.

Next, we have to remove the serpentine belt from the alternator. Most tutorials seem to remove the belt entirely, but I don't think this is really necessary unless you're replacing the belt as well. Mine seems to be in good condition, so I'll leave it alone.

Circled in green is the tensioner pulley. Currently, it has a plastic cover obscuring the 16mm hex head we need to latch on to in order to loosen the belt.

You can use a flathead screwdrive to remove it. I used a plastic trim removal tool to avoid damaging the pulley.

Make sure not to lose the cap! It protects the tensioner from the elements, and don't leave it inside the radiator fan shroud should it ping itself inside there. The radiator fans are quite fragile on E36s.

Now to loosen the belt, all you need to do is get a 16mm socket onto the tensioner, and lever it clockwise. It's sprung, so as soon as you stop pushing down, it'll tension right back up. While it's held there, the belt is loose. I can't rotate the tensioner and remove the belt with one hand, but you should get the gist from the video.

So instead of removing the belt, I just slipped it off, and left it like this. Circled in green we also have the front top bolt holding the alternator in place.

We can also just about see the bottom bolt. The serpentine belt is slightly in the way, but it's flexible, so it's okay.

Both of the bolts are 16mm hex heads. You'll probably need an extension to reach the bottom one.

Now these bolts have been in there for quite a long time (26 years in my case), and they are long. It's probably a good idea to spray them with some penetrating fluid and letting it sit for a while, but I didn't. Fortunately, even though they screeched a bit, none of them snapped.

You can take the bolts out all the way. The alternator isn't going anywhere. The shorter bolt is the top one, and the longer the bottom one. They are plain bolts, so they're only threaded at the end. It wouldn't matter if they're fully threaded, as the tapped holes are only at the back of the mounting system. It would make them more difficult to insert/remove though.

As far as I can tell (I don't have a set of calipers on me), the shorter one is an M10x110 mm, and the longer one is M10x125 mm. The washers are 3 mm thick, and have an outer diameter of around 22 mm. Both bolts are 8.8 high tensile steel.

Now you should be able to wiggle the alternator free, by essentially rotating it around the bottom mounting points until it comes loose. Mine wasn't having any of that, so I resorted to levering it out with some flat spanners.

Once it finally comes out, you can tilt it forward, and you should be able to rest it. This will reveal the two cables feeding the elecrical system and battery going into the the shrouded bit on the back of the alternator. It also has a rubber weather seal on it that you can pull up to reveal the contacts.


We have a similar arrangement to the new alternator, and we can see that the larger termainal (13 mm hex) is for the positive cable, while the smaller (10 mm hex) is for the negative. What looked like the third post is actually irrelevant.

Since we disconnected the battery earlier, we can safely remove these, and finally take the old alternator out of the car. If you haven't disconnected the battery yet, do so before disconnecting these cables, otherwise you could end up shorting them to each other, or to the chassis, potentially killing the electronics.

With the alternator removed, we can more clearly see the mounting system for the alternator.

Here we have the old alternator.

It even seems to spin fine, which is surprising. Maybe that's just because it's no longer under tension from the belt. Either way, I was expecting it to be more difficult to turn, or some roughness. Oh well.

Now we're ready to put the new alternator in! The process is basically the same, but in reverse. So rest the new alternator like we did the old one, and wire in the cables like we saw before. The sizes and lengths are different anyway, so you'd have to be impressively stupid to get them the wrong way around.

Now, here's the part where I would be showing the alternator sitting in its mount. However, there is a problem. The more mechanically astute may have noticed that the bolts are only threaded on the end, and the chunk of metal the bottom part of the alternator fits in actually fits within the two holes. This means that for the bolt to properly hold the alternator, the bottom rear hole on the alternator must be tapped, otherwise the bolt is just gonna sit there, until it vibrates itself out.

Now let's take another look at the new alternator. Here's the front bottom hole. No threads in this one - they would be pointless anyway since the bolts aren't fully threaded. And even if they were, as this hole goes in front of the hole on the mount, the bolt would not actually secure the alternator any better. So we're all good here.

Now the back...

So I'll have to get a longer bolt for the bottom, and a nut to secure it. Not ideal, but apparently this is how it was done on some earlier E36 models. Of course, none of the local shops that are open have the right sizes, so I ordered these from Accu. As I'm already spending a stupid amount of money on a bolt, I may as well do both, and get them in marine stainless.

The top bolt will be the same size as the stock one, but for the bottom, I ordered 150 mm instead of 125. This should hopefully let it protrude enough to fit the flanged M10 nut onto the other end. I went flanged to avoid faffing around with a separate washer. The two washers that I ordered will go between the heads of the bolts, and the mounts, like the originals. They're a bit thinner than the originals at 2.1 mm, but I can't imagine that being a problem.

The DIN 931 bolts have a slightly larger head at 17 mm. Hopefully this won't be a problem. I could've got the ISO 4014 variant with 16 mm heads, but they don't have the 150 mm one in stock, and wouldn't get it made until late August. So I went with DIN 931 for both to avoid having to swap sockets when mounting/dismounting in the future.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish the installation on Thursday evening, when they're meant to arrive. Otherwise next Sunday ^_^'

    I'm also taking suggestions for a better thread title ^_^'7

      14 days later

      malmon will look into it.

      pretty nice car though! really rare to find one with such low mileage.

      your thread kinda makes me wanna start a general car thread though, i recently bought a car i wanna show off and it would be cool to see everyone else's cars.

        Apologies, a bit of a late followup, but here's the rest!

        So the bolts arrived on the 10th, nice and shiny ^_^

        So time to get back to it! I also only just today realised that the passanger-side headlight sprinkler if fucked again >_< Looks like it isn't reseating properly for some reason. Oh well, I guess that's for another day.

        Fortunately, it looks like both bolts fit nicely, diamater-wise! So M10 it is.

        So like before, connect up the wires to the new alternator, and secure the weather cover thingy in place. It requires a bit of stretching and force to properly get it around the rim - it helps to get the "bottom" part (i.e. the end into which the cables disappear) on first. The alternator will now be quite difficult to turn by hand when connected to the rest of the electrical system - don't do it :)

        Now it's time to finally mount the new alternator. This is pretty straightforward - it just sorta fits into place. However, it isn't very well supported in its mount without the bolts, so it's probably easiest to get the top in first, slide the bolt through, then swing the bottom into place.

        Remember to slide the washers onto the bolts before putting them in!

        Just double checking that 150mm is enough for the bottom bolt:

        Looks like there's plenty of thread to work with there ^_^

        Getting the top bolt in is rather straightforward since we can access it quite easily - do not tighten it yet!

        The bottom one, however, is kinda buried behind and under the alternator, so you might struggle unless you have twink arms. Fortunately, I have twink arms, so I could feel my way around to hand tighten the nut first, then get a 15mm flat spanner onto the flanged bolt I bought with the bolts.

        Do not tighen all the way yet!

        You may find that the top bolt is actually a little bit loose side to side. Line the alternator up, then tighten the top bolt all the way - the slack should disappear :)

        I'm not sure what the torque specs are - I think I read somewhere a number around 30 Nm, but I don't have a torque wrench that operates in that range, so I just tightened until it felt okay. Remember, the engine block is made of aluminium, so it is humanly possible to overtighten, especially if you're using long tools.

        Apparently some manuals give numbers in the 70-80 Nm range - this is almost definitely for the alternator pulley itself - you'll most likely wreck the threads in the engine block by applying that much torque to M10 bolts. Damage isn't as likely with the bottom bolt in this case, since it's screwing into a stainless steel nut, not the aluminium engine block, but still.

        You can use a bit of thread locker if you're paranoid - I'll probably just check to make sure it's still tight after a while.

        Once you have the top bolt tightened, go ahead and tighten the bottom. In my case, the alternator has that smooth insert for the bolt. As I tightened, the insert got pulled further in by the bolt/nut. This is probably fine - it'll likely just make the alternator more difficult to remove, like the old one was.

        It's in!

        Now just to get the drive belt back on. Wipe any dirt of dust that might've accumulated on the pulley first. Same process with the tensioner pulley, get a 16mm socket on it, and loosen the belt until you can slip it over the alternator pulley.

        Make sure the belt is sitting properly on all of its pulleys! That means neatly in all 6 grooves, with no overhangs!

        Remember to put the protective cap back on the tensioner!

        Now all that's left is to get the air ducting all back in. Start with the alternator's air intake. Make sure that no crap has fallen in before you reassemble everything.

        This is all quite old plastic at this point - I probably would just replace it if I was do this again. The duct for the alternator intake is split on the intake side to allow it to more snugly fit with the hose clamp tightened. It can help to pull these "tabs" apart a bit, and to unscrew the hose clamp all the way without opening it.

        Since the alternator end has some wiggle room thanks to these tabs, it was easier for me to get the front end in first, and then to shimmy the alternator end in. Make sure to tighten the hose clamp. Not too tight though - remember, it's brittle plastic. Just enough to secure it.

        In hindsight, it looks like that corrugated bit should detatch from the front bit - that might've made it a bit easier.

        Now to refit the intake. You'll notice that the duct has this little hook in the middle.

        As far as I can tell this is supposed to hook onto the bit of bodywork that the duct is pushed against. But there's nowhere near enough space to get your fingers or any tool into there to turn the hook - you'd probably have to go through the front grille. I can't be arsed to do that - the airbox holds it in securely anyway.

        I found it easiest to reattach the duct onto the airbox first, since there is absolutely zero wiggle room for the duct once the airbox is mounted.

        Shove the airbox into position in its mounts, but leave the nuts loose for now. The slight bit of slack will be helpful when reseating the MAF sensor into the airbox. It's already seated in the images below, but because it all seems to be rubberised, it was really quite difficult to get it in. You just have to shimmy it in, slowly, but with quite a lot of force. Secure it with the metal clips.

        Now to reinstall the battery! Mine was just in the boot of my Volvo, since I had collected it from the garage from which I borrowed another battery to get the E36 home.

        Just a quick sanity check before I hook it all up. 12.9 V should be more than adequate. A fully charged lead-acid battery usually sits at around 12.8 V for a 12 V.

        After connecting both terminals, a slight voltage drop is to be expected, as the electronics start pulling current from the battery. But the drop is only slight, so we don't have any shorts :)

        Now, for the moment of truth!

        She lives! And sounds terrible!

        So there seems to be some sort of rattle, and a whistling noise.

        Well, first thing's first... let's remember to actually plug the MAF sensor back in >_>

        That didn't help though v_v.

        So the rattle I initially assumed was the belt. Perhaps it was loose or improperly seated. But no, it was fine. Fortunately though, it went away after a while. Whatever it was must've just settled into place after being moved around.

        To this day, however, the whistle remains. It's either only present or only audible at idle or low revs. I'm unsure as to whether it's a vacuum leak of some sort, or maybe the new alternator is just noisy. The noise definitely originates from the front of the engine bay.

        I've been driving the car daily since the installation (13th of August), so whatever it is doesn't seem to be too detrimental, but it is at least quite annoying.

        If anyone has any ideas, please share >_<

        I took the old alternator to a local-ish place to be repaired, so hopefully I can just go back to that one if it's the new alternator that's super noisy.

        a month later

        I took the E36 to a body shop today. Can't remember if I mentioned it previously, but someone squished in the front panel, and there are some dents/chips on the bonned I'd like to get rid of, and some tiny bit of bubbling under the paint on the roof.

        Apparently the front panel just bolts on, so it's more economical to buy and pain a new one than to try and repair the old one. Just for the bonnet and roof though, I was quoted around £1k.

        I ordered a new front panel, and dad and I will have a go at doing it ourselves ^_^'

          8 days later

          Ugh, of course, the panel/frame was packaged by a monkey, and the driver side bit came bent. Not sure how I'm even supposed to package it to return it, since the original "packaging" was so poor.

            2 months later

            havent been on in a while this is cool though

            I'm glad you like it! I got a couple of minor updates to write up still, but currently I've parked it up at my dad's place for the winter. I got some rustproofing done, but I'd rather be safe than sorry with the salt spreaders starting to make their rounds.

            20 days later

            Alright so, a few updates.

            The front frame panel thing (41338225982, don't think I mentioned the part number before). They sent me another one (no instruction on what to do with the first, bent frame), this time in a box. Now typically, a box is what I would expect for such an item, so I was initially relieved to see that they had engaged their brains. Unfortunately, the box was not sized even remotely appropriately for the frame. It wasn't wide enough, so the frame only fit inside when jammed in diagonally. The box was deep enough that the frame was otherwise free to bounce around inside. As a result, this frame ended up being even more bent than the previous one!

            Fucking brilliant. So I message the seller again, asking to return both of the frames. They initially offer me half a refund in return for keeping the frames. What the hell am I going to do with two bent frames? Fine, they offer to take them back. So I request a return via eBay, and I get a Royal Mail label. I stuff both frames into the same box the second one came in (they're both munted anyway), stick the label on, and take it to the delivery office before work the next day.

            Around lunchtime at work, I get a photo from my mum:

            I laughed out loud! Fortunately, they had refunded me regardless, and eventually (like 2 weeks later), said I could just throw them away. So that is what I did v_v.

            Jaded from the experience of ordering off-brand parts online now, I decided to just go down the OE(M) route. Looking online, a new frame would cost around £300, probably a bit more with shipping and taxes (only Danish and Italian companies seemed to be offering them online). I also called up the local BMW dealer, and much to my pleasant surprise, they were only asking £226. So I ordered it over the phone there and then. Now, it's quite a bit more than the £80 or so the eBay one cost, but at least I can be pretty damn sure this one will fit, and I get to collect it from the dealership myself, which I did, and it was surprisingly painless.

            I waited about 15 minutes until the parts guy came out, just carrying the bare frame in his hands - no packaging or anything. While this may sound bad, it was actually quite releiving, because I was collecting it in my Volvo S40 (my E36 doesn't have folding rear seats, so the frame wouldn't fit), and there was every chance that the frame could've arrived on a pallet or something equally cumbersome.

            The frame is now sitting in my dad's workshop until we have time to paint it.

            A couple of other things I neglected to document...

            I changed the transmission oil a couple of months ago or so. The car seems to be rather reluctant to go into 1st when stationary. It's not a huge issue, but can be rather annoying at traffic lights or so, and I've shoved it into reverse by accident a couple of times now. I replaced the oil with some Redline D4 ATF (even though it's a manual, it takes automatic transmission fluid), as that seemed to be generally what what people on the internet recommended. Of course, as always, reviews are mixed, but the balance was tipped towards that one, I think.

            Anyway, that was a literal pain of a job on rough concrete floor. Having to drag myself to and from the underside of the car. It's rather messy even with a syringe thing, as the liquid is heavy enough to spill out despite the vacuum. One thing of note with this job, is to make sure that you can remove the inlet bolt before removing the drain bolt. Otherwise if you drain the fluid, then find that the inlet bolt is siezed, you're fucked. At least you're fucked until some penetrating fluid does its work (hours/days), or you have an impact wrench that doesn't just snap the bolt. Fortunately, I'm not speaking from experience, just passing on what I've read!

            Unfortunately, the new ATF didn't help with 1st. But at least I have a bit more peace of mind. Maybe the synchro is just a bit tired, or the clutch is on its way out. Time will tell!

            And finally, just today I changed the engine oil. I recently found that it's burning/leaking a bit - had to top up roughly 500ml a few weeks ago. But today I changed the whole thing. I gave it some Millers Oils EE Performance 10w-40 Fully Synthetic Engine Oil. Now, I have no idea what was in it before, but the engine certainly idles much nicer now - nowhere near as much rattling or ricketing. I read that these engines prefer slightly thicker oil (hence the 40), so maybe it previously had oil that was a tad too thin.

            I'm still yet to replace the diff oil... Unfortunately, there's very little clearance between the fill bolt and the body of the car, so I'll need to get some specialised tool for it. That is if I can be bothered to get around to it before I put an LSD in or something lol.

              22 days later

              I mentioned in another thread that I took my E36 to get rustproofed, and completely forgot to mention it here!

              So, last summer, I took the car to Krown Rustproofing (https://www.krown.co.uk/) in Tipton, Birmingham. It's only been a few months since, so I'm not endorsing them yet, but the franchise is run by one friendly Latvian man, Robert, and he was perfectly content with my hanging around the work bay while he did his thing. Essentially, he gave the bodywork a rough clean first with compressed air and brushes (perhaps it would've been nice to see it get a more thorough clean), and then went into every nook and cranny he could possibly get his spray nozze into, and coated the bodywork with the Krown stuff inside out.

              I had initially heard of them via an RX-8 forum in the UK, and they seem to be pretty well regarded in Canada too.

              I found a few bubbly patches undernear the taillights. I'll have to just sand those down and respray those bits once my dad and I get around to painting the front grille frame.

              The treatment cost £272, which seems pretty reasonable to me. I had toyed with the idea of going for a full CO2 blast and stuff, but that sorta work would cost £2-3k. Hopefully this holds up!

                Another issue cropped up this week! I refilled my windscreen wash last Sunday, only to get a warning light on my dashboard and OBC saying that the fluid's low... on Tuesday.

                Now, I know for certain that I had not been using the screen wash enough since Sunday to squirt through 5 litres of the stuff, so there must be a leak!

                Today I finally had the time to check, and yep, there's a leak.

                Not visible in the photo, but it seems to be dripping out somewhere from the rubber bit between the container and the pump. So it'll probably be one of three things:

                • The container (61678366420, £150): whatever plastic all the rubber fits to could be cracked.
                • The pump (61661377830, £50)
                • The rubber gasket between the container and the pump (61661365657, £1.50): The most likely culprit.

                I'll see if I can get a new gasket first, since that's cheap as fuck to replace, and I can't really drive the car this time of year without windscreen wash anyway if it turns out to be something else.

                  COUPLED At least I hope it will be! There's a buncha other stuff I need to spend money on soon ^^'7

                    a month later

                    I should make a thread about my station wagon. Actually, can you still call the Subaru Outback a wagon? It kinda blurs the lines. ^^'

                      23 days later

                      malmon That does sound like it'll cost more than the car is worth. Don't forget we're dealing with a sedan (not as valuable) and a gas bimmer (may fail and if it does it'll be expensive. I'd hold off on that and learn to do odywork instead.

                          Rooky_Ghost uwotm8? I got a new primed frame from BMW for £225. We're planning on doing touchups ourselves, and even if I was to go for a full respray, it would cost less than I paid for the car (was informally quoted ~£5k).

                          The sedans are plenty valuable here (much more practical than coupes and cabrios), and the M52 is pretty bulletproof assuming the previous owners weren't retarded.