welcome to wacky Wednesday's where everyone has a chance to show off their
car mods, and here's this week's winner hey youtube
hey scotty fans my name is philip this is my 1999 BMW 323is, it's got 321,000 miles
and I've had it for almost five years, I'm gonna show you the
pros and cons of living with the 20 year old German car,
I'm gonna go through the history and also some of the maintenance that I've
done on this car, and naturally I've got plenty of quirks and features to
show you, so the e36 had a production year from 1992 to 1999, this particular
one is the last year, so you see tons of these driving around in California
especially, people love them as daily drivers, however where they've got the
most recent attention is in the recreational activity known as drifting
these cars are no stranger to motorsports, they have a rich history and
DTM with the German Touring Car Championship, got near 50/50 weight
distribution fully independent rear suspension, so unfortunately we can't
include any clips of DTM cars in action due to copyright issues, but here's a photo of
our friend's car which is actually a DTM replica built from the
ground up, we've got rear seats you can actually use, it's more well balanced
you've got better suspension geometry a better setup which works better in motorsports
and drifting, now this video wasn't meant to be a 240 road
session, but take that as you will I just want to tell you how great this model
was, it was featured in car and drivers best 10 cars every year it was produced, the
car has taking me from point A to point B year after
year reliably, but of course there have been some things that need to replace
none of which have actually left me stranded on the side of the road
thankfully, most recently this summer I actually did the head gasket on this
vehicle, a shop would have quoted me about 4 grand to do the job, with my
friend here the cameraman he helped me out, parts and labor only were
about $350, labor was free of course, but all the gaskets and associate parts that
were replaced ran us about that much, and took us about two weeks to complete the
job, cylinder head had to come off of course, intake manifold and the nest of
vacuum hoses basically, most of the engine minus the block had to come out got
got the infamous BMW cooling system which is
perhaps the worst thing about these cars they're all made of plastic it gets
brittle with age, and they are prone to dozens of leaks if not addressed
prematurely, for me I've already been through two water pumps, you can make a
joke there if you like, if you're willing to do the
DIY maintenance on these cars you'll save a ton of money, I would never really
recommend that anyone buy a German car if they're not doing the work themselves
unless they've got deep pockets and they can pay someone to do the work
but the best part about owning this is just doing the work yourself, there's so
much you can learn about cars that you know you wouldn't be able to learn from
buying a newer Corolla, not enough things would
go wrong for you to learn about how to work on cars, that pretty much covers the
stuff in the engine bay that I've done I've also replaced the driveshaft
because the u-joint was actually bad when I bought the car, it remained
undiagnosed and untreated for several years and I had the nastiest clunking
coming from there whenever I accelerated yeah it's amazing it didn't grenade the
transmission or the differential but honestly these cars can take quite a
beating, despite what people say, maybe that's also why they're so well liked
for drifters, you know whether you put them into a wall or you blow the engine,
they're like Legos you know, you slap on new body panels, new engine parts, now
that we've covered some of the big-ticket items we'll do a walk-around of
the car and I'll show you some of the things I've
done to it, other than those things I've replaced it's really just been basic
maintenance throughout the years and some cosmetic items, it's wearing the m3 contours
17-inch HTR z 3 tire in the front, and we got federal
SS 595 s in the back seventeen inch, it's a square set up seventeen
by seven and a half, you can see here got the lovely trim piece missing because we
all know how great German plastics are, exhuast is stock,
the trunk in here pretty spacious, got to finish it off with some nice
pink emblems, started off as more of a joke but now I just run them on the whole car
coz I think it's funny and you know maybe some guys will leave me a love
note after they see the pink emblems thinking you know, a chick that's into cars
is driving this, well they're in for a surprise, the car has 321,000 miles,
obviously it's not gonna drive like a car that has 90,000, what's important is
that the power train is still in one piece it gets me to my destination
everyday reliably, this model it's got a pretty Spartan interior, luxury cars back
then are certainly not what they what they are today, the seats are leather
they're nice, well padded, it's got manual adjustments for the seats,
it's got vinyl door cards and speakers that are okay, obviously they don't even
compare to the speakers in a lot of economy cars today, but it's still good
enough for you to listen to your music let me just leave you with a couple of
tips for longevity for any car but particularly older German car, the thing is
you need to drive them, there's definitely a divide between the purists
who do everything by the book and would rather see the car low mileage and cared
for, then seeing a beat to hell example that gets driven every day and gets used
for its intended purpose, these cars were meant to be driven, and I think that's
really the best way you can care for them, just drive them, do the routine
maintenance, change out the fluids, that's the one way you'll get these cars to
300k miles plus, it's really not that difficult for them to reach these types
of mileage, just obviously there's Achilles heels in every type of car, but
addressing those and preferably addressing those yourself, will save you
both a lot of money and a lot of headaches, thanks for watching and thanks
Scotty for featuring me on your channel well that was this week's video and to
have your car mod shown on my channel here check this out,
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell!