Project Green Hell: 1995 BMW 325i/4/5 Sport

[Jake]

I finally got photos taken in decent lighting of my new DD, so now I can make a project thread. Woohoo!

So, I can't introduce Green Hell without first mentioning Blurple. In a half-priced-margarita-induced hangover on a Saturday morning, Joey and I found ourselves in Ashburn, looking at a 1996 328i sport package sedan. It was a cool color combination, Montreal Blue (aka, blurple) on Dove Gray. And it was a sport pack, with the good seats! And it was only $1,000!



...and it had rust. Rust that I thought I could fix. Rust that, when I got home and examined the car more closely post-haze, was far beyond what I wanted to take on as a project. I quickly said "oh, shit, what have I done" and put the car back on Craigslist after throwing $400 in parts at it (pads/rotors/battery/rear shocks). I flipped it and got my money back - a large black man named Nigel rode the Metro from Maryland to buy it... and plans on driving it to Georgia. With a rusty shock tower. Yes, really.

So, after owning Blurple for eight days (if anyone is curious, it cost me $4.67 to insure it for that time), I sold it and also sold the E34. Suddenly, the "new DD because Jake is tired of DDing a 21-year-old car" search was on.

I found this car up in Maryland and jumped on it. It's a 1995 325i, sport package. I insisted I didn't want another black car... in an ironic twist, this car was originally black. It was repainted at a BMW dealership about four years ago, and is now Oxford Green. So, I have an Oxford on Black sport sedan, which is apparently rare. Probably because they didn't sell Oxford on the E36's (not to my knowledge, watch me be wrong). And most green ones came with the "meh" tan interior.



It has this many miles on it, I bought it at 146,050:



The paint job seems pretty quality on it.



Seats aren't dried out and/or torn!





After putting ~900 miles on it in about a week, I discovered a few little items that needed attention. This weekend was Round One of the Bimmerlympics. I replaced the rear shock mounts as they were busted and making a little clattering noise. Since the shocks come off to do that, and were presumably original, I replaced them with new OEM sport shocks at $35 per side. Thank you, Rock Auto.

A new head unit was priority like... 1.5. The car came with a Clarion unit that, I'm sure, was really pimpy and nice in 1997. It played muddafuckin' CDs, yo. Unfortunately, there was no auxiliary input, the CD player skipped over the smallest of bumps, and (a pet peeve) it lit up green in an otherwise amber-lit interior. So, I fixed that with a Kenwood "Digital Media Receiver" which is ├╝ber-pimpy.

And since we were doing the wiring for that, it only made sense to run wiring for my subwoofer as well.



The sub is the same 10" BassLink I've had in the E34. Still sounds good. And that 25.x MPG readout is a highway/city mix. I love that I can beat on the car and still get 20+ MPG. That never happened in the 535. It'll do an OBC-indicated 30-31 MPG all highway, too.

All 184 hp of fury right here.



Joey and I got our E36's washed yesterday, too. Dan and others will certainly rag on us for going to a touchy-feely carwash, but when you don't have the facilities to wash the car yourself, you take what you can get.



All spiffy and clean:




So, that's Green Hell. Custom plates are coming shortly and I need to source a Nurburgring sticker to put next to the rear plate (get it now?). Otherwise, the car needs a few little things (rear door lock actuator, rear deck speakers, I think that's it) and it'll be a pretty sweet DD.