My condolances to any e36 m52 owners ...

[gale]

What a pain in the ass these little pieces of sh*t are to work on, hardly any room to get to anything. I'm finally tackling the cracked oil pan repair on my wife's car. I consider myself reasonably skilled and patient when dealing with confined spaces but this one is a royal pain. And what's with the 16 mm nuts on the motor mounts. I've never encounterd a 16 mm hex in all my years/decades of wrenching & don't even have a 16 mm in my vast collection. Luckily a 5/8" socket fits just fine. Jeez :(

[markus]

theyre not hard to work on. the oil pan i know is a PITA to do on those things. my M3 was pretty simple to work on.

i guess u didnt have time to fabricate some clutch return spring brackets.

hey when u routed the lines for the clutch hyrdaulics, what did u use for the hard line that ran from the clutch master to the slave cyl? i was thinking about using a piece of hard brake line and bend it to work. and use a piece of rubber hose the connect it to the slave cyl.

[gale]

Taking a break from the !@#% e36 oil pan job, got ALL of the bolts out including the 3 Torx from the trans & the 2 long ones in the back & it's still hung on something, maybe a dowel in the bellhousing? I can feel them with a putty knife, it wiggles but won't come off. I finally found where the squirrely b*stards hid the fuel filter -- where's that phalidamide dwarf when I need him?

Yeah, the clutch spring bracket is near the top of a short list. I went to the local indie VW shop & bought a few short lengths of metal brake line for the clutch hydraulics. VW, Audi, Mercedes, etc. all use the same metric bubble flare Iso thread brake fittings. I bought the rubber intermediate line from the dealer, it was $56 back then and likely more now. In retrospect, I could have used a rear rubber brake line, 34 32 1 159 878, it's only $14 at Pelican Parts.

[Jon K]

The best part is putting those long torx bolts back in - they're so long, and the oil pan is on an angle, that its damn near impossible without a very very small light source and a 1/4" drive torx socket. It's such a bitch.


You should try swapping an M52 OBD2 manifold for an OBD1 manifold - TALK ABOUT A PAIN! I am currently doing a '98 M3 Supercharger swap to an OBD1 intake manifold - this is such a freaking pain in my ass.

[gale]

THOSE SADISTIC BASS-TURDS!!! They tucked 2 more bolts in the back between the engine & trans. I had to count holes on the pan vs. the new gasket & sure enough, there are 2 small openings on the forward edge of the bottom of the bellhousing & buried about 3" deep in the inside are 2 more hex-head bolts -- barely got my socket to fit thru the openings.

Now the real pisser -- after thoroughly cleaning the pan, I can't find any cracks or any signs of suspicious leak sources. I have the pan straddled between 2 sawhorses, filled with water & red food coloring & the outside is dry as a bone. What I thought were cracks are casting marks. I carefully whittled the head of the rivit that holds the windage tray in place & removed that (will have to tack weld it when done). Sent my boy out for some liquid dish shop. When he gets back, I'll try the old soapy water & air nozzle from the inside trick & see if it forms any bubbles on the outside. Maybe all the worse my little floorjack incident did is tweak the gasket or perhaps there is no leak afterall and the dripping oil was from draining & some of it pooled on the skid plate? None the less, despite the pain in the ass to work on it, I'm glad I removed the pan just to leave no stone unturned.

I was able to slide the pan out without removing the pickup tube, by lifting the engine as high as it would go from the front hook, with the motor mounts & subframe dropped. At least it's easy to drop the subframe on an e36 compared to an e28, e32, or e34. :)

[winfred]

welcome to my world actually e36s aren't that bad, you want bitch i can find you some bitch jobs if you really want it :D just about anything but basic electrical, electrical problems on e38/39s retarded wiring and retarded diagrams to go with it and mystery boxes that need a dealer level equipped shop to recode them just so you can even swap one to see if it's the problem, nothing burns my ass more then sending a car down the road because i don't have the $ five figure computer to tell it that it's ok to use this module, ****ing ews!!!

[DanDombrowski]

Fortunately, I haven't had to do any serious jobs on the E46 with the M54, but at 60k miles, a clutch is probably around the corner, so I'm guessing I'll have to do a lot of the same work.

Dunno what to tell you on the leak, good luck finding it. The test we do at work for cracks is called flouropenetrant inspections, which are mega $$$, but mabye you could look up the procedure and come up with something improvised?