anyone know if theres a good writeup on how to take the e36 rack out of the car, im goin to the junkyard and i know they have several so i was wondering the steps to take it out, i could figure it out on my own obviously but that might take longer then desired, also i recently purchased new tie rod assemblies for my car with the stock rack, will these work with the e36 rack? or do i have to get ones for the e36? thanks.
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1991 318is --- currently not road worthy
1991 318i ---- 308K - retired
Originally posted by RickSloan
so if you didnt get it like that did you glue fuzzy oil to the entire thing? -
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No write up, but just some comments about my experience trying to do this as a complete part-pulling n00b, which may/may not be of any help:
First, I was not as smart as you when I set out to do this. I didn’t think to try to lookup how to remove the E36 rack, and on top of that, I ended up somehow misplacing a few tools, which just happened to be the ones I ended up needing.
I was lucky enough to find a car that someone had already pulled the engine from and hacked up the subframe (this part might not have been so good), so I was able to see what I was doing and access the parts easier.
However, from what I could tell from the cars that were more intact, it looked like removing an E36 rack is basically the same as an E30 one: unbolt the tie rods, unbolt the rack from the subframe, unbolt the steering knuckle, and pull out. I don’t know if the engine would need to be lifted, but since you have to for an E30, I would suspect it would be necessary for an E36 also. There seemed like there is less room to work with in an E36, and it looked like getting to the steering knuckle might have been a hassle with all the engine components there, but I didn’t look really close at that end.
I found that pretty much everything that was capable of getting stuck did, and every single bolt and nut was a pain in the ass to try to remove. I would think since cars in a yard usually are sitting around open to the elements for who knows how long, this would most likely always be the case.
I was lucky to find a car with the engine removed like I said, but since someone had hacked up the subframe and suspension components, everything was just sort of hanging around, but still bolted together. This made it very hard to get enough torque to remove things, since everything moved around when I tried to remove just one part, so if you find a car with everything still more intact, hopefully this aspect will be easier. I ended up struggling with removing only a few nuts and bolts for probably over an hour, and finally got one of the yard guys to help me remove one last one with an impact gun. If you have one of these, I suspect it would make everything much easier.
Good luck and be careful; I was wary about getting underneath cars that are being held up with a bunch of old wheels, plus it was windy the day I went, so that was another reason it was good I found a car with the rack sort of hanging out of the car already.
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