bringing an E36 back to life in the philippines

A little background on this E36.

My dad bought it pre-used, The car had no badge to specify if it's a 320 or a 325, but it has six cylinders, anyway. last 2008 he crashed it to a taxi cab, the hood crumpled, as well as the fender and bumpers. Damage to the engine bay was mostly to the radiator and good thing the engine was spared. The car was still repairable.

Given the fact that there was only 1 BMW dealership in our area and almost all shops either rejected to repair the car or charged us with ridiculous amounts. My dad hated to sell the car as junk and so he asked a friend to repair the car, unfortunately all they did was partially repair the hood and fenders and bought a new bumper, and that was it. the car never ran again

2008-2011, the car rotted in our garage.

when I was in college I decided to continue repairing the car. The car has not been running for 3 years, they just left it in our garage without protective covering or prep the car for storage. It was in a bad state.



October 2011,

I finally took my mechanic to the garage to prep the car for restoration, we already had a tow truck ready. but no one really thought about the key when we got there, it took as the whole morning trying to find the key.




here's a throughout inspection of the car, it's not much damage but here in Cebu philippines parts are really hard to find.





and so here's the list of what i did to the car

Painting works
-Front Bumper and Mounting
-Hood (inside and outside)
-Front Right Fender
-Roof Panel
-Rear Baggage Cover Panel

Welding
Hood, Bumper and Brackets
Interior Detailing


additional cost:

1:Brand new fuel pump , had to be ordered from manila


FOR ENGINE WORKS
6-spark plugs
1-fine tune the engine
1-calibrate the injectors
1-replaced the fan belts
1-cleaned the timing chain
1-replaced fuel filter and air filter
1-8 liters of oil and oil cell plus oil filter


FOR RADIATOR and AIRCON
1-refabricate multiple rubbes hoses
1- inspection of compressor
1- Freon

almost had to gave up my DSLR for this,

some issues:
1-aircon doesnt cool yet, will be assesed next week maybe because of freon.
1-interior smells like moss (tried placing uling but no use)
1-headlights lens does not match, i bought the wrong replacement
1-no working lights at all from corner light, interior lights to headlights
1-wipers need replacing
1-fog lamp bracket still needs replacing

Check engine light has been solve
1- had a professional mechanic check the obd

We found out that cylinder no.5 was not firing due to broken ingition coil

1-ingnition coil from manila again.


Radiator problem has been solved.
1-i had to replace the plastic tank mounted on top of the radiator it was cracked during the collision

Aircon probelm
1- replace evaporator ( i have to remove the entire dashboard)

Upside:

test drive it, runs so fast and while on idle you can really feel the power of the engine, totally worth the money

Downside:
1-Check engine light is on, a notification is displayed in the console, but sadly the LCD is deffective, i cant read the code.
1-Air bag light is always lit.
1-Abs light is lit


After one year of troubleshooting, painting and welding the car was ready for the road, but there were still problems with the car


it's almost midnight here, I'll finish this tomorrow.

Awesome! Looking forward to more photos!