Dale,
Thanks for your interest in my 325is with 100k on it!

I would be glad to give you my maintenance. history, but I must warn you, it is pretty dull. I follow the following, after having bought the car 1 year ago with just about 50k on it (sold because it was out of BMW warranty I think). The car did not come with a complete service history, but a pre-purchase inspection by Dinan in Mountain View CA yielded no major problems, as a mater of fact, they thought the car was in beautiful condition. As a precautionary measure I did the following:

Oil change: RedLine 10W40
Coolant Flush
Automatic Tranny Fluid:RedLine ATF
Break Fluid: DOT 3 (will replace with ATE Super Blue next chance I get)

I must admit, I am not one of the nicest people on cars. I drive 'em hard, put them away wet and hit the redline at almost every stoplight! I do however believe in maintenance which is suitable for how you drive the car for a particular peroid. Case and point, I am not one who changes there oil every 3k. Why? well, to be frank, I put 50k miles on my car in a year, that would be an oil change a month. I usually follow the service lights, which are calculated based on how hard the car is driven, and when I do maintenance, I use only the highest quality components. This, for me, is cheaper in the long run when compared to doing oil changes every 3k.
I did fluid changes at the following:
50k Oil/Coolant/ATF/Break
58k Oil
64k Oil
70k Oil
73k (track school) Oil/ATF/Break
79k Oil/Coolant
85k Oil
91k Oil
100k Oil

Hardware wise, I have always had some sort of K&N filter in the car since I got it. The overwhelming problem so far has been break pads/rotors, which I seem to go through. I have been, up until tomorrow, using stock BMW parts. They seem to warp a lot, and the pads are pretty week. 4 Sets up front, 2 in the rear. This does not include a set of cross drilled rotors and metal master pads I use for autoxing and track school. When I go to driver schools or high performance events, I remove the foglights and run ducts to the back of the rotor. The track pads/rotors are in great shape.

Now the bad stuff:
51k Driver's side seat life lever (the one you use to gain access to the rear seats) snapped off. Still have the part, I keep forgetting to put the thing in. Thanks for reminding me!

69k Lucky number, bad miles. Automagic transmission failure. Seems a solenoid decided to go south. I learned all about how bad BMW diagnostics are considering the techs at my shop couldn't tell which solonoid it was, the DIS wouldn't tell them (I go to an independent shop that used to be a BMW dealer, Stanford European, more on them later).

71k I seem to have had a bad month here. Now my flex disc went dead on me. Ok, no probem. Mechanic who was about to retire cut the transmission speed sender wire. Whoops. We spent hours trying to figure out the problem. Finally, we spliced it back together. No problems since.

The good:
95k: Humm, let's go faster.. Installed:

Dinan Chip (getting rid of it for a Jim C I think) Dinan Cold Air Intake
Dinan High Flow Throttle Body
Dinan Stainless Steel Exhaust
Dinan Strut Tower Brace
Dinan Automatic Transmission Chip

Overall, I love the car even more then I did in the first place. No problems, install was easy, and I now have my cool Dinan badge!

Future:
I wrote everything above last night. This morning, I had my local service station install the Dinan Stage 2 suspension. Springs, shocks (Bilstein) 27mm Front sway bar and a 21mm sway bar in the rear (I am going to have Dinan install the rear sway bar, it requires tig welding). So far, I love the thing. Body roll is now simply not there compared to the stock suspension. Corners are just flat and very precise, hitting the apex is much simpler now and I think the car is more comfortable. I would have gone with H&Rs with Koni or Bilstein, but I felt the Dinan package was aiming to do exactly what I wanted, which was a very streetable car with very enhanced handling. I think it is much more track worthy, a perfect combination of comfort and performance. I opted not to do camber plates, as I do a lot of highway driving, so tire wear would be a problem.

All in all, I love the car to death. The only two regrets I have are the slush box and not having had the money for an M3 in the first place... well, until I supercharge my 325 slush box... that should take "Point and Shoot" to a whole new level!

Greg Koenig
San Francisco, CA
BMW CCA GGC
'94 Dinan3

> Hi,
> Well you're an E36 high milage guy, care to write up your maint.
> history for the unofficial E36 homepage?
>
> thanks
> Dale
> '95 M3 25k, just getting broken in
> '88 325is 132k, looking, running great
> '80 528i 130k, looking good, some minor problems
>
> The Unofficial E36 Homepage www.unofficialbmw.com/e36.html