There were a number of small things I noted when I originally bought the 3: the windshield was cracked, the passenger's seat controls were missing the buttons, one fog lamp was cracked, and the front end had a dent in it. I fixed everything except the dent in the first few weeks of having the car, and since I now have I garage, I fixed the dent, too.
This involved taking the whole damn front-end of the car off. Bumpers, splash shields, intake, headlamps (and so forth) all had to be removed in order to take off the metal bit that wraps all the way across the car and which holds the chrome BMW kidney grilles in the center. After that, I laid the whole piece down on a towel and banged at it with a hammer for a while.
Here's the dent before I got to it:
And here it is afterward:
It's difficult to tell in the picture, but the dent is significantly smaller now—and when it's not being highlighted with a camera flash, it's much less noticable.
The next big thing on the list to replace is the throwout bearing, so odds are good (although not exactly 100%) that I'll pay someone else to do that. I need to entirely remove the transmission to do it...so yeah. Maybe I should get the Mercedes fully operational, first.
might as well do a light wt flywheel while you're in there.
I've considered it, and I'm not completely sure a lightweight flywheel is the direction I want to go. I do sortof like the drivability at the bottom end of the rev range.
But I'll look around a bit to see if I can shave a few pounds off for fairly cheaply.
I'll definitely be doing the clutch while I'm in there, though.
i drove a mk3 jetta vr6 (esentially the same car as the corrado) that had a lightened flywheel on it.
the main diff i noticed is it was significantly more rev happy. where the C seems to get tiered after 4k rpm that jetta just pulled all the way to red line.
all myths and truths aside, about loss of power going up hills and drivability, i say do it. heck you might even see better gas mileage in the city.
Hah I'm sure there's someone around here with a lightened-flywheel-equipped 325is. I'll go see how the E36 reacts.