BMW E36 Blog

Hi all, It’s time for our monthly model post. In today’s post I’ve found this cool BMW M3 and decided that it deserves to be featured here on the blog as miss April 2008. Please pay special attention to the car’s interior. The rims and the painted calipers. The car looks great! I hope you like my choice for this month. Please feel free to let me know what you all think.

BMW E36 Blog: The ultimate BMW E36 M3 information source.

I’ve found a thread on the bimmerfest forum which was made by E36youngster. E36youngster was doing some checkups for the storage buildings of his marina company when he opened one of those storages and found these cuties stored there 😮 . They’re a fantastic collection of cars and I can say with confidence that their owner has a real good taste in cars 🙂 . Imagine that you have all these great cars in your garage and everyday you wake up in the morning and having a really hard decision to make . . . that is, which car I’m going to drive today? hmmm… that’s a hard question, isn’t it? Well, I know that most of you will decide to go with the E36, but for me, I would enjoy them all AS much as I can.

Take a look:-

BMW E36 Blog: The ultimate BMW E36 M3 information source.

Well, I didn’t really expect you guys to fall for this joke and to fall that easy! 😈 Actually yesterday was the April’s 1st and I thought I would try to do a silly joke and see if you guys will fall for it or not. To be honest, I was expecting one of you to say "Hey Tony! This is not your car, are you kidding me?" (take a look at the rims and the side skirts). But what can I say! you all just fall for it. I hope you all have a laugh at this and find it funny. And I want to thank you all from my heart for sending me your messages and comments which were filled of compassion. My car is safe and sound and you can see it here! it’s unharmed. 😀

BMW E36 Blog: The Ultimate E36 Information Source.

Hi folks, yesterday I decided to go an enjoy my car a little bit because it has been a bit too long since the last time I went out. I’ve been very busy with work and I felt that I wanted to feel some speed and doing some crazy things, so I went to a place that I know which isn’t normally crowded and started enjoying my car. The area is great and it’s usually quite so you can try to drive as fast as you can without anyone disturbing you or stop you (police!). After a while I was driving in a very narrow street and there was this tuck which was trying to make a turn and I was doing like 110km/h or something like this when I saw him. I knew right away I won’t be able to stop the car before I hit him, so I started using the horn hoping this stupid A$$ will stop, but he didn’t and I hit him really hard. Luckily I didn’t suffer any injuries and the accident didn’t reach to me (at least one good thing in this bad day), but my car is really really destroyed. Take a look at these photos. I think I will need a fortune to get my car back the way it used to be. Damn it!

BMW E36 Blog: The Ultimate E36 Information Source.

I have mentioned in my previous post Turning Your BMW Lights On Automatically At Night . . . System Testing that while I was trying to get the auto light inside my E36 to work, I’ve burned something. Actually, what I have burned was the Trip Odometer LCD light. At first, I thought this is something really serious and that I have to pay some serious bucks to solve the problem, but after some research, it turned out that it’s actually a bulb in the cluster that needs to be replaced. Piece of cake, right? So, I followed the steps in Installing Silver Gauge Cluster Rings for your BMW . . . DIY! post to remove the gauge cluster. It’s a really good DIY (Do It Yourself). Anyway, please follow these steps for a quick guide on how to do this nice fix.

Disclaimer: Use this info at your own risk!! I’m not responsible if this didn’t work for you :-).

Take a look at my Trip Odometer LCD light. It’s not working and my cluster looks really bad and ugly. Isn’t it?

To start the fix, you will need to remove the gauge cluster. You can start by removing the screws that hold the gauge cluster. There are two of them at 11 & 1 clock. Take a look at these:

When you remove the screws, simply push the bottom of the cluster to the back a little bit and it will move. After that you will need to pull it slowly and carefully. The ultimate target is to slide the gauge cluster from behind the steering wheel like this:

You will notice that there are some wires that are connected to the cluster and they will prevent you from sliding the cluster out. There are three of them, one on the right and two on the left. Take a look at the following (it’s the one on the right)

Before removing it, please disconnect your battery. I didn’t disconnect it and a warning sound started out. I don’t know what this sound was, but it was really annoying. So, I say unplug your battery to make sure the process goes as smooth as possible.

IMPORTANT: If you have the OEM radio from BMW, do NOT disconnect your battery unless you’re 100% sure that you have the PIN code that can unlock your radio.

Removing the three wires is a real pain and they need a lot of attention, but eventually you can do it. When you unplug these wires, you will be able to slide the gauge cluster out. Now turn it and look at the back, here’s the light that needs to be replaced.

Using a flat screwdriver, you can remove that light. Now, here’s a thing that really shocked me. I had the light that I’m going to use as a replacement right here and these lights are usually just pull-out and put the new one instead PERIOD. Surprisingly, this was not the case here. The light was stuck and not going to be pulled out easily as I previously thought, so I had to remove it from it’s plastic cavity to find out that the light bulb is connected to the light connectors. Take a look:-

God damn it! So, I thought, ok lets cut the old bulb wires and solder the new wires instead, but to my surprise AGAIN 🙁 , it didn’t hold. So I finally was able to squeeze the new bulb inside the plastic cavity in a way its wires will be connected to the steel connectors. After that, I tested the bulb and it worked.

Alright, now the nightmare has ended! So, I put everything back in the reverse order and here’s the result. A clear trip odometer LCD . Awesome!

So, what do you think? Isn’t that a cool fix or what?

Are you looking for more do it yourself procedures (DIY) ? I recommend the Bentley BMW 3 series service manual for you. I got it and I think it’s a gold mine for us -BMW E36 Owners-. If you didn’t grab your copy yet, get it right now! I’m sure you’ll find this book worth every penny you’ve paid for. Get the Bentley BMW 3 series service manual

BMW E36 Blog: The ultimate BMW E36 information source.