Here it is, the often-promised, long-delayed Zandvoort video. I should point out that this isn’t really a CAR Online thing, it’s something I do in my own spare time for kicks – and the video has been put together entirely by friends and family.
My long-suffering wife got thrown around in the car and stood in the cold to shoot it, Simon Ingram (deputy editor of Trail magazine down the corridor from us and singer in my band) spliced it all together and our lead guitarist Keith Moody (editor on some classic car rag or other) came up with the suitably gnarly soundtrack.
Essentially you’re watching a kind of best of compilation of my four visits to Zandvoort. On each occasion I’ve driven the car there from Peterborough (about 750 miles round trip) and taken part in the drift club morning session that runs on a lot of Saturdays through the winter. Great fun, great for learning car control. Enjoy.
To celebrate the return of my beloved M3, I took it straight to Oulton Park for a track day, therefore risking smashing it all up again. Thankfully I didn’t. I’ll post the write-up shortly.
Work is progressing nicely on the E36 with all the panels now fitted, along with my spare headlights and orange – I’d upgraded to clears – indicators. The oil cooler has taken a little longer to source, however, and it’s looking like £200 plus for that part alone. Ouch!
Once the oil cooler is replaced, I’ll be driving the M3 back to Cumbria – where I grew up – where a man in a shed that I know only as Vanny will paint the new bits Avus Blue. He’s previously done work on my family’s cars at a very low cost and high standard, so it’s worth the 400-mile round trip for the hundreds it will save me. And who cares if a track rat isn’t perfect?
Oh, and that Zandvoort video I promised is still almost finished. Due any time now, I’m told.
By Ben Barry
Uh-oh. I recently limped my car back to Kent from Zandvoort after a light interaction with a barrier at the Dutch circuit. I’ll do a full report soon, but it was a stressful trip. My baby daughter and wife followed in our family E46 and the weather was terrible: hail, snow, very heavy rain. We even got delayed by a day in Bruges on the way back when I felt uncomfortable making the family trawl through snow.
As for the accident? Well, I’d gone to Zandvoort for a drift day and had spent three hours sliding about in hail and rain when it all went wrong. I ended up following a car that was being very tentative. I should have simply backed off and let him get on with it, but instead I committed to a corner too slowly (slowly at Zandvoort is a relative term, mind), got it wrong and slid into the barrier at about 5mph. I smashed a headlight and indicator, damaged the kidney grille and moved the entire front bumper a couple of inches to the left.
The guys from Koopman Racing kindly performed a make-do repair (I didn’t mention I was from CAR until they’d helped me out and refused to accept payment). Unfortunately the shunt had damaged the oil cooler. We stayed on for a couple of days (couldn’t drag the family all that way just for a track day) and all seemed to be well, but I noticed a large pool of oil under the car when we got the P&O ferry back from Calais. The oil light flickered on when I set off, so I pulled over and called the AA.
I hitched a lift back in the E46 and dispatched the M3 to my mate Julian at Garage D in Watford. I’ll need a new oil cooler and grille section, and I want to replace the rotten front wing while we’re at it, but luckily I have spare headlights and indicators which should keep costs down. Julian also reckons the bumper might bodge back into place.
It’s going to be a costly weekend, but at least I’ve got a cool video that a friend is currently editing. The crash isn’t included sadly, but I’ll upload it as soon as I can.
By Ben Barry
We get a lot of nice cars to drive here at CAR, yet still I hold onto to my ageing, slightly battle-scarred E36 BMW M3. Seems there’s no substitute for being able to thrash your own car absolutely senseless. And this car does love to be thrashed.
I bought it back in 2001 with a healthy 157,000 miles on the clock and a full BMW service history. It’s now done 213,000 on the same engine and ’box, neither of which have been opened. That’s even more surprising given that, at just under 190k, I transformed it into a trackday warrior. More on that later.
My car is the early 3.0-litre model. A few years back I bought the later 3.2-litre version and ran the pair back-to-back for six months, the idea being that I’d sell the 3.0-litre when I ran out of cash. I never did (sell the 3.0-litre, that is).
Why? The 3.0-litre engine is smoother, only marginally less powerful (286bhp plays a claimed 321bhp, though dyno tests apparently rarely back up the later car’s claimed bhp), and much stronger – thanks partly to the early car’s single VANOS (variable valve timing system on the inlet cam only) as opposed to the later car’s troublesome double VANOS. The five-speed gearbox is also smoother than the later six, while the early cars are obviously cheaper too.
So I kept the 3.0-litre. But it wasn’t perfect. The suspension was quite soft – good for ride quality, bad for ultimate poise. In fact, I found the car very tricky on the limit, offering masses of grip before letting go a bit too suddenly. What’s more, the brakes were mushy, and the steering was awful.
I set out to gradually improve these flaws, then, with predictable inevitability, got carried away. My first visit was to Birds UK, based in Uxbridge. They swapped the standard suspension for KW Variant 3 coilovers, and also fitted Hartge anti-roll bars and a Hartge strut brace. Naturally, the ride is a lot firmer now, but it’s not quite the compromise you’d expect: it’s still got an acceptable amount of compliance, while body roll is largely eliminated and – when tweaked to my spec – the threshold of grip is lowered to make breakaway more progressive, controllable and, well, enjoyable. The adjustable bump and rebound settings mean I could dial in more compliance if I used the car on road more.
The next step was to ditch the brakes. I went for – again via Birds – a six-piston AP set-up that is nothing short of phenomenal – my favourite mod on the entire car. Pedal feel is reassuringly solid and these brakes withstand lap after lap of huge stops from the fastest straights. Brilliant. Unfortunately, they also necessitated a switch to the rather tasty 18in BBS RX alloys, which I wrapped in 225/45 ZR18 Uniroyal Rainsport rubber – a very durable tyre that really does cut through standing water while also offering good traction in the dry.
And that’s when I started to get carried away. The black leather interior was all very well, but it was too slippery for track work, and it was heavy too. I stripped it out and sold it for £600 on eBay back in 2006. I also stripped all the boot and all the trim from the rear seat area. Then in went a pair of lightweight fixed Recaro buckets, followed by a bolt-in rollcage from Rollcentre Racing. Rollcentre hadn’t done an E36 before, but they took my car in, measured it up and bent the tubing to suit. From there I went to Julian Smith – a good friend and an extremely resourceful mechanic who runs Garage D in Watford. I got a call at 5am one Saturday morning saying the cage was in – he’d worked through the night to get it ready for a trackday that I thought I’d missed. My wife was delighted.
Since then I’ve been slowly trying to perfect the package. Birds junked the standard limited slip diff (25 percent lock-up), and upgraded it with a 45 percent job instead – purely because I enjoy doing smoky skids. When the clutch gave up I replaced it with an uprated item from AP, while Garage D had an ingenious solution to the steering. During my time with the 3.2-litre car I’d noticed its steering felt more positive. This was largely thanks to its altered – as standard – front suspension geometry. Garage D somehow knew that swapping the 3.0-litre strut tops for 3.2-litre items (but installed so the right one went where the left one should be, and vice versa) would give much the same effect. It does, though the steering is still a weak link.
And that’s how things stand for now. Seven years on and I still love climbing in this car. It’s been to trackdays in Britain (Snetterton, Silverstone, Rockingham), Ireland (Mondello), Germany (the Nurburgring) and Holland (Zandvoort). Yes, it’s slightly ratty, but my M3’s got character and it’s full of memories too – in the rare moments I clear it out I find A-Z maps of Amsterdam, passes for the Nordschleife, parking fines from Bruges.
I have another trip planned to Zandvoort soon, so I’ll give you a full update when I’m back.
By Ben Barry
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