The Year in Project Cars Was Frustrating, Expensive, Fun, and Totally Worth It

Is project car ownership still fun, even when unexpected, difficult, and costly issues continue to manifest themselves? Yes! Especially when the projects are running and driving well, but also sometimes when they’re not, too. It may have seemed like jack stands made weekly appearances under my 1991 318is and 1998 M3 in 2025, but puzzling automotive issues have been solved, positive restoration progress has been made, and the 3s are better now than they were 12 months ago. The end of the year is a great time to look back and reflect on what went well and what lessons can be learned in order to motivate ourselves for the new year.

1998 M3—A Test Of Patience

2025 was an expensive year for my 260,000-mile, five-speed 1998 M3 sedan, with a healthy mix of DIY and oh-hell-no-I’m-letting-a-shop-do-that projects. Given its age and mileage, this should not be surprising, but somehow I have continued to convince myself that the current issue will be the last in the foreseeable future, despite repeated evidence proving otherwise. Sometimes reason doesn’t apply to the things we love, right?

Things started out on track with a full instrument cluster refurb by M Sport Parts, replacing a leaking original steering rack (and hoses) with a new Z3 unit, and overhauling the PCV system. The E36’s project-car budget went out the window in May when the rear main seal sprung a rather large leak while my 11-year-old daughter Avery and I were in Asheville for The Vintage. It’s only a $40 seal, but I took it to a shop to be replaced, so I paid for the convenience of not pulling a transmission while laying on my back on my garage floor.

After May and through the summer, I kept myself busy with small-but-rewarding projects, such as reinstalling the stock airbox, identifying and replacing an intermittent failure with the brake light switch, fixing a broken glove box, replacing non-existent accelerator pedal bushings, installing a new trunk seal, and discovering (and then replacing) a completely clogged cabin air filter. It’s amazing how a handful of little—and, thankfully, for my sanity, inexpensive—things can totally transform your attitude toward a project car.

Similar to Newton’s law, the Law of E36 Ownership states that when your attitude towards your E36 goes up, it must come back down. Late summer brought a clutch slave cylinder failure, a broken idler pulley tensioner, and an extremely noisy blower motor on its last legs (and brushes, and bearings). The clutch slave cylinder and idler pulleys were straight forward replacements, but the blower motor replacement was a six-hour slog of sliced fingers and attempting to will a large round plug out of a small square opening. I’ve swapped two complete E30 dashboards, and those were more enjoyable projects than an E36 blower motor replacement. However, the result was a near-silent HVAC system and as they say, “Silence is golden.”

Over the course of the entire year, I spent many thought cycles attempting to diagnose how I’d periodically find air in the upper radiator hose. Given that the entire cooling system—and I mean the entire system to include the water pump, thermostat, thermostat housing, radiator, expansion tank, expansion tank cap, bleed screw, every single hose and clamp, and so on—had been replaced three years ago, I was coming up short on solutions. As a professional pessimist, I continued to come back to “the head gasket you replaced two-and-a-half years ago has failed again.” This is the way.

Thankfully, it wasn’t the head gasket. It was a hilarious and coincidental series of failures of less-than-three-year-old OEM parts. A clamp on the expansion tank had failed (allowing air in when cold), the expansion tank itself had a hairline crack (causing a small hidden leak between the expansion tank and fan shroud), and the upper seal on the radiator cap would allow air into the system when cold (usually after a day or two). There was also a slightly loose coolant hose clamp under the intake manifold—that one’s on me. Typically, I hate just throwing new parts at a vehicle to attempt to fix it without actually knowing the cause of an issue, and given these intermittent, soft, and often hidden failures, it was a real test of patience and  problem solving.

During the fall, I noticed an oil leak from the valve cover, just over the exhaust manifold. If it’s leaking at least you know it has oil, right? Normally this wouldn’t be a terrible job, but when I replaced it two-and-a-half years prior during a head gasket job, and I used RTV around the majority of the perimeter—mistakes were made and I was paying for them now. Due to the time it took to remove the old RTV—and a snapped valve cover stud—this repair took longer than it normally would. On the plus side, I did discover that I was missing the ground strap on cylinder six, and replacing it helped resolve a running-rich issue. A silver lining, perhaps.

While it’s not always rainbows and sunshine with my E36 M3, it has afforded us many positive adventures with family and friends over the course of 2025. It got us to and from The Vintage, various soccer tournaments, family hiking trips, numerous Cars and Coffee mornings, and our annual Holiday Lights Tour. My daughter and I had a fun black-and-gold photo shoot which was later shared by BMW M. It even graced the cover of BMW Classic Car Club of America’s The Ultimate Classic magazine. And the driving experience is one of the best I’ve experienced. The positives of this M3 have vastly outnumbered the negatives, and for that I’m grateful.

1991 318is—Old Reliable

My 167,000-mile 1991 318is is the Yang to the E36’s Yin—and not just because they are Alpine White and Cosmos Black. Perhaps during nearly 10 years of ownership I’ve already worked out the majority of the E30’s Hofmeister kinks, or because it has 100,000 fewer miles, but my E30 is the reliable car of my Nineties 3 Series duo. However, some maintenance items are on five-year and 10-year schedules, so larger tasks performed at the beginning and middle of ownership have once again become due. I find myself saying, “Didn’t I just do this?,” only to look at my maintenance spreadsheet and see it was in fact a decade ago.

While my 2015 328i M Sport Wagon failed state inspection in February 2025 for perfectly good brakes, my 318is passed state inspection in March with inoperable reverse lights. I actually didn’t know until the inspector pointed it out—these inspections actually can be beneficial. Same inspection station, same inspector, by the way. Thankfully after a few minutes of debugging, I only needed to replace the reverse light switch.

Moving into summer months, I noticed that the E30’s hood insulation had begun to disintegrate and littered the beautiful M42 engine bay with chunks of foam. This wasn’t really causing any problems, aside from being an eye sore, but I decided to replace it. The 318is came from the factory with three glued-on insulation panels, whereas the six-cylinder variants all had a single-piece clip-on panel. This makes removal of the 318is hood insulation a suit-up, mask-on procedure as it gets quite messy. The results speak for themselves, though!  While I was under the hood, I gave a funny look at the cowl drain—or maybe I bumped it—and it promptly crumbled into a thousand pieces. Replacing that only took a minute.

If it wasn’t obvious from my ramblings about my E36 M3’s cooling system, I’m not a fan of BMW cooling systems in general. This 318is had a full-cooling-system-reset at the beginning of my ownership—radiator, thermostat, thermostat housing, water pump, and hoses—and five years ago I replaced the heater core and valve due to a leaking o-ring connection. At some point in early 2025, I began having very little heat at idle, but plenty of heat while driving. I said to myself, “I know what this is. This is a stuck-open thermostat.”

I replaced the thermostat and guess what? It wasn’t a stuck open thermostat. The old one was perfectly fine as I tested it in a pot of boiling water and it opened at exactly 88 degrees Celsius. That’s just awesome. Summer came and I no longer needed heat, so this issue was bumped down in priority. With winter’s recent arrival, having heat at idle is now back up on the priority list. Funny how that works.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be pulling the upper and lower intake manifolds, fuel rail, and airbox assembly in order to gain access to and replace the heater core thermostat and associated coolant hoses at the back of the head and engine block. I’ll also be taking the lower section of the dashboard apart to pull the heater valve and heater core that I installed in 2020. Hopefully I’ll find a smoking gun as to why I don’t have heat at idle, but as is my experience with diagnosing BMW cooling systems, everything will probably look fine and I’ll be left scratching my head.

Here we go again!

Similar to the E36 M3, this 318is has taken us on a number of family adventures in 2025. It was even featured by BMW Lifestyle. With the addition of the E36 M3 three years ago, I don’t drive this car enough, but that’s something I’m going to fix in 2026. Which car will I be taking to The Vintage 2026? I think I just decided.