BMW Car Club - Scotland

Buying

After just over 3 happy years driving about in a 1997 Ford Puma 1.7, I decided it was getting a bit tired and a more substantial alternative was required. My family has been going to Henry Brothers in Glasgow for many years, so I headed to their website to see if inspiration struck. Browsing through their Approved Used stock, I spotted a very nice 328i coupe. 1 quick call later I had arranged a test drive. After a good look round the car and a successful test drive, I decided to take the car. I was very impressed by the AUC Warranty (I had 3 new tyres, paintwork damage rectified, switchgear replaced and window seals replaced all before I took delivery). I also took advantage of the BMW Shortfall Insurance which means that for the next 3 years, if I have to make a claim for replacement of the car, BMW will make up the difference from market value at the time of replacement to the original purchase price. All-in-all, an excellent buying experience.

Insuring

After a marathon search for 2001/2 covering 52 insurers and brokers, I settled with Tesco insurance. They seemed to have a good policy and had a very competitive price. No marks at all to Churchill, eSure, Halifax, Lloyds TSB and Royal Sun Alliance who all refused to insure a 26 yr old on a 328i! Outright disbelief at Eagle Star's £1918 quote. This is with 9 years experience and maximum no-claims! Honourable mention for Livingstones (08000186258) who almost pipped Tesco. (Tesco were again the winners in 2002/3 with many folk still refusing to quote due to the car/age combination.)

2003/4 was probably the most heartening year so far in some ways. I got quotes from 37 companies and only 1 was stupid enough to quote into 4 figures. Hill House Hammond - shame on you for wanting £2400! The rest were a lot closer to each other that previous years, although 6 (including the BMWCC official scheme!) would still not touch me at my in age in this car. Bell Direct were this year's winners including legal, protected NCB and car hire.

Servicing

So far the car has been into my local dealer Menzies for an Oil service, Insp I, Speaker replacement and headlamp alignment. All have been carried out with a minimum of fuss with a courtesy car being supplied each time and I have returned to a well valeted car each time.

Henry Brothers in Glasgow are now looking after the car again as it suits me better vis-a-vis my work. They've carried out an Oil service, MOT and body work. Standards have been generally high although some valet work has been below standard and I had a bit of bother with the In.Pro headlamps/MOT (see headlamp section below).

Changing Amber Indicators

To freshen up the front of the car, I decided to change the front and side indicators from amber to clear and smoked respectively. The parts were sourced from Halfords (~£40 for the fronts and ~£20 for the repeaters)and were manufactured by In.Pro. Fitting was very straightforward using the clear instructions supplied. My only note would be to make sure that there is plenty of light where you are working on the car as the snap-fixings for the front indicators can be a bit fiddly to release. To complete the clear effect, I added as set of Philips SilverVision bulbs (not too cheap at ~£12). Results can be seen here.

Alloy Wheels

I decided to replace the standard 15" 10 Spoke OEM alloys with something a bit bigger. After extensive searching I settled on a set of replica M5 alloys from the current M5. 17" wheels with the correct E36 offset finished off with Yokohama A539 235/40 V rated tyres. I sourced the wheels from Checkpoint in Aberdeen who have been fairly good. I had picked a shop based dealer as I did not want to run the risk of dealing with a mail order outfit should there be any problems. It turns out that this may have been a good move! Immediately after having the wheels fitted, 1 proved to be porous. This was immediately rectified by Checkpoint. With the 4 non-porous (!) wheels on the car, I put about 2000 miles on them before noticing that the 'smoked-chrome' finish which had so appealed to me was beginning to corrode off! A phonecall to Checkpoint confirmed that I was not the only recipient of these wheels to suffer this problem. They had already returned one to the manufacturer - Autopart - for an engineers report. Autopart acknowledged that the wheels were sub-standard and would replace them under warranty. 4 months later I was still waiting for a delivery date from Autopart. An extremely poor response from a company that had previously supplied wheels in under 3 days! A garbled tale was passed from the supplier through Checkpoint - something to do with the manufacturer shipping 2 pallet loads of E34 fitment wheels instead of 1 pallet of E36 and 1 of E34. Faced with another 4 months wait, I opted for a different style of wheel - a Lenso SN, based on the ACS Type II alloy. They are now fitted and do not appear to be faulty in any way... long may that continue! Other than the supply issues, I have been delighted with the look of the wheels and the changes to the car's handling. Motorway speed stability has now improved and power oversteer is now preceded by some warning understeer which I find MUCH safer.

In.Pro 'Angel Eyes'

While browsing about the excellent DTMPower.net I spotted a craze for adding 'halo' effect headlamps similar to those from 5 series BMWs to all sorts of cars, especially E36 3 series. I thought they'd go nicely with my 5 series style wheels, so, with a bit of hunting, I tracked down an In.Pro set through Euro Car Parts in Glasgow. Fitting was very easy with In.Pro's instructions being very straight forward. The only part I didn't do myself was the headlamp alignment which was carried out by Menzies of Stirling for ~£20. On the car the halos look great and, as an unexpected bonus, the main and full beams are both brighter than my old headlamps - a fact I attributed to the 'yellowed' appearance of the units I replaced. The only downsides of the In.Pros are that it is now very difficult to replace the side indicator bulbs (without removing the side indicators) if required as the units are larger than OEM ones and that if one of the 'halo' bulbs blows then the whole unit has to be removed in order to get at the tiny W3W bulbs - this in turn will, of course, require the headlamps to be realigned. Picture.

When the car went in for its MOT @ Henry Brothers in Glasgow, it failed on beam height and beam spread. Trouble was, Henry Brothers could not fix this as the lamps do not fit in their beam setting machine and they neither choose to instruct their 3rd party contract MOT tester to rectify faults nor perfor 'manual' adjusments themselves. In the end, I put the OEM units back in place because I can't be bothered with the hassle.

UUC Motorwerks Magnum Gear Knob

To go with the soon to be installed Short Shifter, I purchased one of UUC's stainless steel gear knobs. They are much heavier than BMW standard - a feature designed to smooth the shifting feel. Having installed this, their heaviest, I was amazed at the difference. My gearshifts now feel much smoother.

UUC Motorwerks Short Shifter

The gear shifts on BMWs have never really been known for their snappiness and after the Puma, I was finding the BMW a little long in throw. UUC Motorwerks to the rescue with their 'Ultimate Short Shifter Competition Evo II'. A trusted local mechanic - MMV - has now installed this. What a difference! The throw is much more positive and far shorter. I cannot commend this mod highly enough - come and try it out at one of our meets, you'll be amazed at the difference from standard.

Roundels

Just for a bit of a change, I decided to go for carbon fibre effect roundels. There's a helpful chap in the US - Matthew Smith - who sorted me out with these. Picture.

Stereo

The factory fit CD changer finally gave up and died, so it was time for a replacement. I opted for an MP3 capable single disc unit as I wanted to do the install myself. I'd used CEL Direct before and they were well priced for the CDA-7893R I chose. Fitting was slightly more involved than simply plugging in the loom adaptor and head unit as it requires a 20amp rated feed directly from the battery. The wires now run from the headunit, down under the glovebox and through the grommet behind the carpet there and on to a +ve connection at the fusebox and a GND near the suspension turret. Sound quality is excellent and, inevitably, I am now looking into upgrading the speakers...

Speakers

As feared, the temptation of a more capable head unit grew too great. My ears are now enjoying the sound of some smart new JBL speakers. 5.25" GTO-525e for the front and 6"x9" GTO-935e for the rear, mounted using Autoleads custom adapter. The front speakers were slighty deeper than the OEM ones, so I modified the OEM grill cover using the supplied JBL grilles. Passenger Footwell & Driver Footwell

BMWCC Dealer Discount

For me, one of the biggest material benefits of the club was the promise of dealer discounts. So far I haven't had much luck with both Menzies of Stirling and Henry Brothers claiming they do not subscribe to the scheme. Following an eMail to the Customer Service manager @ Henry Brothers, he claims it is in place. I will try again next time I need a part...

Rear Clusters

To get rid of the last remaining amber indicators on the car I went to BMTown. Service was friendly if a little haphazard. See them on the car. Fitting was easy and I had made sure to get a set compatible with my car's check control so no spurious warnings :-)

Rear Window Seals

These things perish and look tatty at some point in every E36 coupe's life. Replacing E36 coupe rear window seals how-to...