Project Introduction - July 31, 2024: Some of you are reading this "new" E36 thread might be wondering, how is this new? The E36 chassis has been out for 33 years - the 1992 model brought the E36 chassis to our shores, and 1995 model brought the E36 M3 - but we don't have a single unified "E36 Development" forum thread that is still active.
This is a teaser of where we are with Project Hellrotten in October of 2024 - full suspension upgrade, 4-point bar, seats, & 265mm tires
All of our old E36 forum threads are now lost or just fizzled out about 14 years ago, when we last owned one and quit making updates to those threads. Of course Vorshlag has worked on countless E36 cars, and even owned several examples of the E36 chassis. We have even written project threads for each of those and most of them are "lost to history" now (on forums we no longer frequent).
The "for sale" thread for our unicorn "no sunroof / M-technic interior" Silver 1997 M3 coupe (top left) is still around (here). I thought we got good money for that car when we sold it in 2011, but the new owner saw this red M3 build and offered to sell it back to me!
Don't ever look at a car in the rain - the paint ALWAYS looks great when it is wet. The paint was totally fried on this 1995 M3 once dry
We now have a "new" E36 project in the shop, the 1995 Hellrot red M3 coupe shown above. I figured it was a good time to start an E36 "Development" thread, which ties in old projects and new, and we have already made numerous new E36 related parts using this car. We will gather the data we have from working with this chassis over the last 20 years and put it into one easy to search forum thread.
This is what we started with on the "barn find" we now call on Project Hellrotten - a ratty 1995 M3 that had no clear coat and a lot off issues
We rescued this car from a long term "non-running" status and have turned into a street legal track car in a couple of months of work. If you want to learn more about this barn rescue to race car, and about other E36 tricks we have done over the years, maybe this is your forum thread. We will keep updating our 1995 M3 build here but also bring back some previous E36 chassis work we have done - and sometimes E46 work, which is often nearly the same.
And while this was posted in November 2024, I mostly finished this update July 31st - and that is where the project updates mostly stop.
PROJECT HELLROTTEN - INITIAL INSPECTIONS
Back in July of 2020, a customer reached out about this red 1995 BMW M3 his brother had owned, which was parked in a military barracks lot for "a number of years" in the sun, and not running. It ran when parked, but we know how that usually turns out. I first looked at the M3 on a rainy day (some of the pictures in the section above), and was somewhat smitten...
But I know a wet car always looks good, so we went back on a dry day and saw the poor condition of the paint in a better light. We haggled over price, I let the seller think about it for a few days, then once we came to a number we could all live with, Amy and I hauled it back to Vorshlag HQ. We were SLAMMED at the time so we left it next to our many "potentials" parked outside the shop, under car covers.
Somehow FOUR. YEARS. WENT. BY. That's right, time snuck up on me! On July 10, 2024 we finally had room in our schedule to bring this car in for a look. We dragged it over to the shop with my tractor and realized that the extra 4 years waiting outside had done the car no favors. We washed it off then pushed it into the shop to take a closer look - to see whether this could be a restored M3 or a race car candidate. Once I saw that it had 214K miles on the odometer, plus the condition of the paint and interior, the restoration plans were thrown out.
We looked closely at the interior, the exterior, engine bay, underneath, and more. I began factoring in costs to fully restore this car, and researched what they are bringing on the market with 214K miles. It became clear that restoring this in stock form made no sense from a financial perspective. It needed too much time / parts / money for what it could ever bring in a sale. It would be a Money Loser.
But a race car doesn't care about paint or mileage! Vorshlag had hired a new technician earlier in the summer that was good at diagnosing problems, so we threw this M3 on his schedule and he got busy. This car had so many issues to sort through that it would tie him up (between other projects) for a good three months. But what could we do with this race car build?
My wife Amy had sold her 2023 Subaru BRZ in early 2024 (above left) after racing it for a year in SCCA Tuner 3 class and winning the regional T3 championship - and we used it for developing a lot of new 86 parts. She had also just finished the 2024 SCCA TT season in our region winning 6 of 6 events in her 2024 Mustang Darkhorse (above right), on which we also developed new products on and it was going for sale in August 2024. So she needed a Time Trial car for her to run through the 2025 season, while we finished her 2013 FRS widebody LS swap build.
We started bench racing different classes and builds for this car, and settled on SCCA Time Trial Max4 class for the 2025 season. This lets us upgrade all of the suspension, add some aero, and put on as wide of a 200TW tire as we want. We can also do a cold air intake / full exhaust and header, plus a tune, and stay in one of the "slower" Max classes with the 2993 cc stock S50B30 engine.
And perhaps we can develop some NEW solutions for this 30 year old car - using techniques and solutions we have developed over the last 13 years since we last campaigned an E36 on track or autocross courses.
INITIAL TRIAGE + PARTS LIST
There were a number of things likely wrong with this car, and as the seller told us 4 years earlier it wasn't running then. Some tires were flat (time does this to tires), all but 1 of the 5 undertray pieces were gone, there was a lot of oil residue underneath the chassis,
We knew the battery would be junk, and since the car had sat for at least 7 years, we knew the gasoline would be trashed after only about 24 months. So I asked Christian to check the fuel pump wiring, and then pull the pump housing and the secondary fuel level float on the other side of the saddle tank.
With 12V applied to the pump nothing happened - it was shot, so Christian pulled the pump and float and sure enough, it was all ROTTEN. This car sat for a very long time. The fuel pump submersible fuel hose was broken, the electrical wiring was frayed, one of the floats had disintegrated, and the seals were trashed. A parts list was started.
The battery was junk, so that was added to the list. He then pumped out all of the old fuel from both sides of the stock saddle fuel tank, then wiped the insides clean. It saved time over just dropping the tank and power washing it. We looked closely at the brakes (junk), front hubs (junk), suspension (trashed), and many other areas.
Before throwing money at this rotten mess I asked Christian to do a compression check - and it actually came back pretty healthy. So the parts list was compiled and the credit card came out...
FIRE THE PARTS CANNON!
This is one of my favorite times in any restoration or race car build - the first round of parts ordering. We had some known bad parts and some unknown as well, and the fastest way to get a mess like this going is to "fire the parts cannon". This is a somewhat derogatory term used by hack mechanics to fix problems - just throw enough new parts at a car until you stumble upon a fix. But it works!
Five days after rolling this mess into the shop we had parts arriving. And with all of the rotten parts we had found on this car, and the Hellrot Red color this was painted, the name for this project was found: Project Hellrotten.
Some of the first parts to arrive were the "blue" fuel pump assembly and fuel level float assembly. These were relatively inexpensive and immediately installed into the now cleaned fuel tank. We hadn't replaced the battery yet but with regular charging it was good enough for initial testing.
Of course with a car that has rotten fuel you always replace the fuel filter as well. We filled the tank with 5 gallons of fresh 93 octane premium fuel, as well as some Lucas Fuel Treatment, to hopefully clean anything downstream from the fuel filter - like the injectors. We had some Lucas Oil Treatment as well, which I will discuss later.
continued below
This is a teaser of where we are with Project Hellrotten in October of 2024 - full suspension upgrade, 4-point bar, seats, & 265mm tires
All of our old E36 forum threads are now lost or just fizzled out about 14 years ago, when we last owned one and quit making updates to those threads. Of course Vorshlag has worked on countless E36 cars, and even owned several examples of the E36 chassis. We have even written project threads for each of those and most of them are "lost to history" now (on forums we no longer frequent).
The "for sale" thread for our unicorn "no sunroof / M-technic interior" Silver 1997 M3 coupe (top left) is still around (here). I thought we got good money for that car when we sold it in 2011, but the new owner saw this red M3 build and offered to sell it back to me!
Don't ever look at a car in the rain - the paint ALWAYS looks great when it is wet. The paint was totally fried on this 1995 M3 once dry
We now have a "new" E36 project in the shop, the 1995 Hellrot red M3 coupe shown above. I figured it was a good time to start an E36 "Development" thread, which ties in old projects and new, and we have already made numerous new E36 related parts using this car. We will gather the data we have from working with this chassis over the last 20 years and put it into one easy to search forum thread.
This is what we started with on the "barn find" we now call on Project Hellrotten - a ratty 1995 M3 that had no clear coat and a lot off issues
We rescued this car from a long term "non-running" status and have turned into a street legal track car in a couple of months of work. If you want to learn more about this barn rescue to race car, and about other E36 tricks we have done over the years, maybe this is your forum thread. We will keep updating our 1995 M3 build here but also bring back some previous E36 chassis work we have done - and sometimes E46 work, which is often nearly the same.
And while this was posted in November 2024, I mostly finished this update July 31st - and that is where the project updates mostly stop.
PROJECT HELLROTTEN - INITIAL INSPECTIONS
Back in July of 2020, a customer reached out about this red 1995 BMW M3 his brother had owned, which was parked in a military barracks lot for "a number of years" in the sun, and not running. It ran when parked, but we know how that usually turns out. I first looked at the M3 on a rainy day (some of the pictures in the section above), and was somewhat smitten...
But I know a wet car always looks good, so we went back on a dry day and saw the poor condition of the paint in a better light. We haggled over price, I let the seller think about it for a few days, then once we came to a number we could all live with, Amy and I hauled it back to Vorshlag HQ. We were SLAMMED at the time so we left it next to our many "potentials" parked outside the shop, under car covers.
Somehow FOUR. YEARS. WENT. BY. That's right, time snuck up on me! On July 10, 2024 we finally had room in our schedule to bring this car in for a look. We dragged it over to the shop with my tractor and realized that the extra 4 years waiting outside had done the car no favors. We washed it off then pushed it into the shop to take a closer look - to see whether this could be a restored M3 or a race car candidate. Once I saw that it had 214K miles on the odometer, plus the condition of the paint and interior, the restoration plans were thrown out.
We looked closely at the interior, the exterior, engine bay, underneath, and more. I began factoring in costs to fully restore this car, and researched what they are bringing on the market with 214K miles. It became clear that restoring this in stock form made no sense from a financial perspective. It needed too much time / parts / money for what it could ever bring in a sale. It would be a Money Loser.
But a race car doesn't care about paint or mileage! Vorshlag had hired a new technician earlier in the summer that was good at diagnosing problems, so we threw this M3 on his schedule and he got busy. This car had so many issues to sort through that it would tie him up (between other projects) for a good three months. But what could we do with this race car build?
My wife Amy had sold her 2023 Subaru BRZ in early 2024 (above left) after racing it for a year in SCCA Tuner 3 class and winning the regional T3 championship - and we used it for developing a lot of new 86 parts. She had also just finished the 2024 SCCA TT season in our region winning 6 of 6 events in her 2024 Mustang Darkhorse (above right), on which we also developed new products on and it was going for sale in August 2024. So she needed a Time Trial car for her to run through the 2025 season, while we finished her 2013 FRS widebody LS swap build.
We started bench racing different classes and builds for this car, and settled on SCCA Time Trial Max4 class for the 2025 season. This lets us upgrade all of the suspension, add some aero, and put on as wide of a 200TW tire as we want. We can also do a cold air intake / full exhaust and header, plus a tune, and stay in one of the "slower" Max classes with the 2993 cc stock S50B30 engine.
And perhaps we can develop some NEW solutions for this 30 year old car - using techniques and solutions we have developed over the last 13 years since we last campaigned an E36 on track or autocross courses.
INITIAL TRIAGE + PARTS LIST
There were a number of things likely wrong with this car, and as the seller told us 4 years earlier it wasn't running then. Some tires were flat (time does this to tires), all but 1 of the 5 undertray pieces were gone, there was a lot of oil residue underneath the chassis,
We knew the battery would be junk, and since the car had sat for at least 7 years, we knew the gasoline would be trashed after only about 24 months. So I asked Christian to check the fuel pump wiring, and then pull the pump housing and the secondary fuel level float on the other side of the saddle tank.
With 12V applied to the pump nothing happened - it was shot, so Christian pulled the pump and float and sure enough, it was all ROTTEN. This car sat for a very long time. The fuel pump submersible fuel hose was broken, the electrical wiring was frayed, one of the floats had disintegrated, and the seals were trashed. A parts list was started.
The battery was junk, so that was added to the list. He then pumped out all of the old fuel from both sides of the stock saddle fuel tank, then wiped the insides clean. It saved time over just dropping the tank and power washing it. We looked closely at the brakes (junk), front hubs (junk), suspension (trashed), and many other areas.
Before throwing money at this rotten mess I asked Christian to do a compression check - and it actually came back pretty healthy. So the parts list was compiled and the credit card came out...
FIRE THE PARTS CANNON!
This is one of my favorite times in any restoration or race car build - the first round of parts ordering. We had some known bad parts and some unknown as well, and the fastest way to get a mess like this going is to "fire the parts cannon". This is a somewhat derogatory term used by hack mechanics to fix problems - just throw enough new parts at a car until you stumble upon a fix. But it works!
Five days after rolling this mess into the shop we had parts arriving. And with all of the rotten parts we had found on this car, and the Hellrot Red color this was painted, the name for this project was found: Project Hellrotten.
Some of the first parts to arrive were the "blue" fuel pump assembly and fuel level float assembly. These were relatively inexpensive and immediately installed into the now cleaned fuel tank. We hadn't replaced the battery yet but with regular charging it was good enough for initial testing.
Of course with a car that has rotten fuel you always replace the fuel filter as well. We filled the tank with 5 gallons of fresh 93 octane premium fuel, as well as some Lucas Fuel Treatment, to hopefully clean anything downstream from the fuel filter - like the injectors. We had some Lucas Oil Treatment as well, which I will discuss later.
continued below
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