McBMW McE38 from Scotland

[cwspellowe]

Hey guys, here goes. I'm no stranger to a build thread but i've been out of the forum scene for a while so i'm sure i'll be rusty to start with here. Bear with me..

So yeah, I recently introduced myself as the guy with an E38 735i from near Glasgow, Scotland. After spending a couple of years with my E36 drift cars and not really paying any attention to keeping things looking pretty I picked up the new daily back in August and i've been taking the time to try and do things properly. Bigger car, bigger expenses, but it's been so worth it, such a dream to drive.

From these:





To this:







Picked it up from an old man that couldn't afford its 15mpg around town any more for a mere £900, dog hair and all. Interior was in fantastic condition though and the exterior only had a couple of small blemishes, certainly in great nick for the money. Aspensilber, Lavendelgrau interior. Cruise control, full leather, "smoker's pack" ie ashtrays and cigarette lighters everywhere, wood trim, GPS, about a million speakers and DSP. Bloody DSP, i'll get to that later.

Oh and yes. A fucking car phone. How very vogue.



So, as lovely as it was to drive, it needed beating with the lowering stick hard. Plus why have a lump of a V8 if you couldn't hear it sing? Off to a local man who goes by the name of Boso Billy to get those massive rear boxes chopped off and straight pipes welded in. Much better noise!



Noisy video --> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jk2AUI4KgPQ

Need to sort some decent tips for the pipes but they're pleasing to my ears.

The eagle eyed amongst you would have noticed the different wheels, right? Well, the Style 32's just weren't my cup of tea and the 235/65's were comfy but horrific to lay my eyes upon. Being the poor person I am, I took the easy route and went for.. wait for it.. XXR's. Eww, right? But I liked the look of them and i'm not out to win any awards. XXR 968's in 18x9/10.5. Fronts have weak offset but the rears are ok for now. Still they're shiny, and Mojo's E38 had me in love with 18's on an E38, some will say they're too small but I prefer them like that.

A wise man on here once wrote "coilovers then wheels". Unfortunately I didn't see that post until after I bought wheels so I was stuck driving around in a tractor for a few weeks, a tractor with skinny ass tyres and heated leather seats.







Is there a word limit on posts? I dunno. I'm going to play it safe and sign off this post while i'm ahead, i'll venture into another post to continue. I have a habit of talking a lot. I'll leave you with the weak offset for now

[cwspellowe]

Ok, here we go. The ride height and fitment were all kinds of wrong, but it's a start. Foundations for a nice build. What it really needed was coilovers. Now this is usually the point I head to eBay and buy some cheap coilovers from Germany but unfortunately (well.. probably fortunately) they don't make E38 fitment TA/Racelands/whatevers. I considered E39's but after speaking to the guys at SS Autowerks they advised against it as they wouldn't be a direct fit, so I bit the bullet and went for some BC BR's. The most i'd ever spent on suspension but it had to be done or i'd be stuck with a tractor for forever, and that's not a good thing in anyone's book.









Fitted them, only pain in the arse was the rear arch liners, I couldn't wiggle the old struts out with them in place. New ones slotted in fine even at maximum height. Speaking of which, maximum height?



...just no.

Didn't get chance to get them lower til later that night, multi storey car park round the back of my house and C-spanners in hand, got it a bit more respectable by bed time. 20mm spacers up front bringing the ET to a better +15 but still a bit narrow, will be sorted in due course though.



Treated her to a clean too, roads are covered in salt this time of year and I stay on a main road, car's filthy even if I don't drive it for a week. Other little tidying up jobs over the course of ownership are a new front plate, HEKO wind deflectors and debadged rear.





Starting to get towards where I want it. Couple of small issues, one being the BC BR's don't go any lower which is frustrating, i've heard talk of shorter shocks but they'll be an investment next year. Fitment is still weak too, the rears only need 10-20mm to be spot on but the fronts are ET35 out of the box and I want them around ET-5 so you do the maths. Don't like spacers that size, but 968's aren't common in 5x120. First world problems, probably end up just buying new wheels that fit better!

Here's how she sits for Winter though. Lost a grille after some daft bastard in a 4x4 reversed into it outside my house, bonnet pulled out straight enough but I need to secure the grille as the clips broke off it. I'm happy though, loving V8 life and enjoying having a car I can take pride in again. If anyone's interested i'll update this whenever there's anything interesting happening, but for now thanks for reading

[Dutch]

Always wanted an E38 ever since driving my dads old 740 sport... may have to consider saying bye bye to my B5 and compact to make way for one.... this thing is awesome man

[Mehowski]

Fucking hell mate your E36s are what my dreams are made of

[cwspellowe]

Fucking hell mate your E36s are what my dreams are made of

Haha, don't want to ruin any of your dreams but they were absolute riots up close and personal. First one, the polizei car, the arches were rotten, leading to cutting the panels off a donor car and riveting them on over the top. The rear subframe was so rotten a mount sheared off completely. It died at about 50mph backwards after a misjudged entry at Driftland. Hell of a lot of fun building it but it was my first BMW and I fell victim to classic E36 problems. The yellow one was the reshell and it was solid underneath, polybushed everything and it was a dream to take on track but it took so long to finish the build I'd lost interest and wanted a car I could keep nice. That got sold and the money went towards the E38.

Always wanted an E38 ever since driving my dads old 740 sport... may have to consider saying bye bye to my B5 and compact to make way for one.... this thing is awesome man

Id honestly recommend anyone who fancies an E38 to drive one, I fell in love straight away. Even the fact it's an auto doesn't bother me now and it's just.. Nice. Urgh, I **** that word. But it really is just a lovely place to be. You've driven one though so you know where I'm coming from. One thing I will say though is the BC's transformed it, it's still comfy just not wallowy any more and to be honest, it handles surprisingly well for a boat

[BenVAG]

Loads of E38's are starting to be modified in the UK, there was only really 3 around at shows at the beginning of 2015 and now I have seen atleast 10 or 11 being built ready for show season 2016.

makes me sad to be selling mine!

since you are a drifter, i'll stick around for the E39 M5 manual gearbox swap

[cwspellowe]

I'm not currently ruling anything out but a manual swap isn't likely. I'm enjoying the factory drive and if i'm getting into drifting again next year it'll be a sub £500 beater of an E36 that I get back in. This is waaaay too nice to drift.

One thing about the E38's though, there's not much of a market for them. The guy selling this admitted if he was in London it'd be worth over double what I paid for it, but being up here limits your audience and it has to be someone that really really wants a specific model/spec to come and view it. I know myself I wanted a black or green one with a V8 but the only ones around here were either rough as hell or out of budget. There was one for sale over Fife way that was a nice deep red colour but it had a failed tranny, he was wanting more for a non runner than I paid for this one in better nick. The silver though... it's growing on me. We'll see. Would be hard to sell on but i'm not even considering that yet.

Don't know if i'll be doing the "show season" thing either, very much just building this to feel good about the car I drive for once. Too many niggles for it to be anywhere near show condition but if you squint your eyes a bit and you're really far away, it's not bad haha.

Picked up some 3" exhaust tips the other day too from a really crappy looking autoparts store. No idea how long the shiny bits will last but it looks cool for now and they were cheap. Managed a half decent job of trimming the bumper too to get rid of the scratches from last time I cut it. Oops.

From these naked 2.25" straight pipes



To these 3" shiny "chrome" tips. Cheap and cheerful, looks much better imo.





And so ends today's update

[jimmybacon]

Very nice e38!

I recognise your e36s from trips to Driftland, didn't realise you were from Glasgow, will keep an eye out for you, Ive got a green e36 on style 32s.

[kevvy_dawg]

Am definitely interested in seeing more on this..

Dig them shiney tips and the noise that would follow

[cwspellowe]

Cheers gents! Jimmy I stay in Airdrie, saying Glasgow has always been easier though. The car rings a bell, I work all over Glasgow so i've probably seen you at some point.

I have plenty on the shopping list but it's been a busy Xmas. Need more lows, an Alpina lip, spacers, been looking at quality of life improvements for inside too. It's generally such a nice place to be though, I don't want to do anything to it that would be a pointless addition. Trying to make everything well thought out for once.

[cwspellowe]

Been a while since the car got any love so just a quick update



Ordered a set of plate surrounds as the front numberplate looks a bit too clean for me compared to the all silver/chrome front, and more spacers to get the wheels (more specifically the fronts) a bit closer to the arches, such a huge car that even a 9J at ET15 is still nowhere near them, so another 20mm of spacing should hopefully get them sitting ok at ET-5. Might then stick the 20mm spacers on the rears to get them at ET0.

Looking at the fitment on Tuned's 728 (here) it'll put my fronts just 5mm inset compared to his, and rears will be 2mm pokier. Love that 728 and it's one of the reasons I went for 18's on my E38, if I can get fitment even similar to that one i'll be over the moon.



Ordered a new set of amber front corners too, some 6000K angel eyes and a couple of SMD's to clean up the exterior lighting. Plan is to remove the warm white exterior lighting, so sidelights and number plate lights, just to sharpen it up a bit. Will give the headlights a good polish while i'm fitting the angel eyes.

Been a rubbish, cold, wet Winter, so it's nice to be getting on with things again! Only other idea i'm toying with at the minute is the Alpina lip. I get that they look great on E38's, but I kind of like the fact mine has the black lower trim all round, and I don't know if it'd look right having a black lip too? I'm not a fan of colour coded all round either, I think it makes the arse look too fat. Sigh.

Oh, and that bastarding grille fell off again. Bonnet is still ever so slightly out of shape so I don't think the clips are holding properly.

[cwspellowe]

So, spacers are on! Needed a little bit of an arch roll at the rear, nothing too hectic, just the lip turned in a bit. Managed to squeeze another inch out of the front arch too but that's as far as I can get the current BC's to go. To be honest though, roads around Scotland are generally terrible so i'm in no great rush to go lower.

Plate surround fitted, grille fixed, amber corners and 6000K angel eyes fitted. It was sunny when I went to strip the front end down, it was torrential rain and gale force winds by the time I finished. Good old Scotland.

So as it stands, fronts are now 18x9 ET-5 with 225/40/18 and rears are 18x10.5 ET0 with 255/35/18. Thought i'd throw that in there, I know there's not much info out there in terms of E38 fitment from when I was looking





Also, excuse the potato pics. A proper camera is on the shopping list haha

[Nuts]

Very nice indeed!!

[cwspellowe]

Thanks man, this is the point where I run out of ideas though. Everything just seems to work and I don't want to get into the habit of modifying for the sake of modifying. Only other thing i'm thinking of is an Alpina front lip but.. I dunno.

Might just start up a fund for proper wheels and not do anything for 6 months haha

[cwspellowe]

Nothing fancy to see, finally got a break in this miserable weather to take a couple of day time photos after the school run. Best way to travel in gale force winds, heated seats and a big loafy V8. Trip computer is currently sitting at 12mpg but who cares right?