How did you get on with it all today jord?
Tried to crack on with some of it over the past few days, as I thought things like the rack took longer than expected (due to dirt/rust/sh*te) but got there in the end.
Few issues meant that its gona be another couple of days work before its driving again, but thats no biggy. I had planned to use the braided lines I had on the E30 (To eliminate all the copper), but some of the lines were the wrong length/fittings etc. I had got some adaptors so everything would go on at the same time but the company I used sent me the wrong thread pitch for the Banjo bolts so they are going to have to wait until mid-week.
Anyway, couple of days ago cracked on and removed the old wishbones/hubs/struts/bushes from the car. I had planned on fitting E46 front arms, which meant I needed E46 bushes for the 'lollipops' at the back of the wishbone. If you get the 60mm E46 PowerFlex bushes (instead of the facelift 66mm) they fit into the E30 lollipops. I burnt out the bushes and cut the sleeves out leaving me with..
Then pressed the bushes in with a vice..
The reason you need to use E46 bushes is the E46 wishbone is a HEX shape, whereas the E36 is round. When comparing the wishbones you can see how the E46 item is longer..
Not to mention about 1/3 of the weight which I was surprised at. This literally bolts straight upto the car with the bush..
The next thing I wanted to sort was the steering rack before any other new bits went on. I used an E46 (067) rack on the E30, they have less turns LTL and are the preferred swap out on E30/E36s giving less turns, better feel and are not expensive to get hold of. I sourced another locally. It was a huge effort removing the old rack as the splines were so tight with hardly no room to work in, but eventually it came free..
I got some E92 tie rods (to give me enough thread to play with due to the extra width) and some new E36 track rod ends. These bolted directly upto the rack with the E36 gaiters...
Bolted the rack assembly back up to the car then fitted the hubs to the new E46 wishbones and connected the track rod ends up. I then set the coilover height off the car to the same for both front struts, with no spring pre-load and the damping to 8/16..
..and fitted them to the car, adjusting the top mounts to keep '0' camber and the same castor as a standard M3 top mount would have..
The last piece of the puzzle for the front end was the anti roll bar drop links. On a 328 the drop links usually connect to a hole in the wishbone, but considering I am now using E46 wishbones this would no longer be possible. The HSDs have the M3 style mounts on the strut for a droplink, as an M3 uses a much longer item that goes upwards. On the HSD struts you can adjust the position of the drop link mount, but for now I've just set it to the 'stock' location.
M3 drop links are quite pricey, so I decided to use rosejoints/turnbuckles instead - which actually worked out cheaper. Seems a common thing on the E36/46 forums when fitting coilovers. Collected the bits..
Which are all based around M10 thread, with the turnbuckles having a LH thread in one end, and a RH thread in the other, allowing easy adjustment if required in the future..
These were then bolted upto the strut/ARB and set to the same length on both sides..
...and thats about as far as I got. Still got the brake lines/rear coilovers and a handful of other bits to do, but managed to make a fair dent in the list over the past few days. Il get some proper pictures once the rest of the coilovers are on, but to give you an idea of what extra width and camber the E46 arms give..
The top mounts are still set to '0' camber, so it can be taken off or more added as required. Gives for a lot more clearance in the arches too compared to where my wheels were rubbing on the inner arch at times. More soon!
What did you wash it with, a brillo pad ? 
