My first e30, finally. Latest Update: The Restoration Begins

[dougie30]

nice wheels! MOUR LOW

[Click]

i wish i had the money to redo everything on my e30 like you hah all in good time. on the other hand i love your progress. good work man!

I keep an excel file keeping track of all the parts and stuff I buy and I've spent almost 5 thousand dollars since I got it last may, (4,719.96 to be exact), im not sure where it all went despite it being outlined in front of my face. The big stuff is easy 1700 or so for the wheels and tires, 350 or so for the winters incl mounting, Ive spent 600 bucks or so with blunt, have 490 bucks tied up in M30 stuff so far. All the small stuff adds up I guess. All I know is that there is still a lot of money to spend yet lol.

I love your sheepskin seat covers. Did the car come with those or did you find them online?

Came with the car, they're old bit still decent, I would guess they're at least a decade or so old. Cloth comforts are mint underneath.

nice!
looking forward to more updates

There will be more going on now that I graduated and have a real job with almost as much overtime as I want. Once i get all the parts I ordered from blunt Ill be putting the EVO3 and dssr in. Here's what's trickled in so far. Ignore the NOS Bosch coil and Ate master cyls, I just keep those around. Same with the fag boxes, they were too cool to toss when I put my wheel bearings in this past winter.

nice wheels! MOUR LOW

I know but NO haha. 90% sure im going to take it to a rallycross in september and 4x4 stance is required. I almost got a set of gcs but those will have to wait after I get the m30 in and paint on.

[bmwandhonda]

Very nice mate, looks like you are doing a lot of work to this thing. All the finer things that most people overlook :)

[Click]

Radio started not working right. When I used my cassette deck adapter, it started switching back and forth between sides. It hardly did it all when I first got the car and within the past few weeks all it does is switch back and forth between sides. And there are few more annoying things in the world than you trying to jam to good beats and your music keeps switching on and off. So I took it out.



And we have this guy to put in....



It sticks out a bit but I will mill it down with an end mill eventually.



Those tabs are going to have to go.



Old temperature sender for my old Audi gauges and the new temp sender for my new VDO gauges.



Then I broke the audi sender whilst putting it in....



So it had to come out.



And I put the new one in, I guess I'm going to have to rock the new style gauges for now until blunt gets me my new sender...

When I used these gauges on my previous car, a Jetta, the gauges would act up sometimes, I figured out that the senders were getting a poor ground just being screwed into the adapter so I put connectors under senders and "externally" ground it.



Had a little extra wire so I circled it through the motor mount.



Here's the old audi gauges I won't be using for the time being...



And we'll start working on a harness for the new gauges..









Done and ready to go into the car.



Before they can go into the car I had to take care of those tabs...





Dremel + Cutoff wheel did an excellent job





I routed the sender wires to the compressor then used the A/C line as a shield from the exhaust heat.





I should really cut the excess off those zip ties, don't know how I missed that. It almost looks factory where it goes in though...



I didn't get to take any photos of doing the wiring inside. It was like 10 at night and I was working by the light of a flashlight. I wanted to get it done.

Here's the final product though, for now atleast before I put the old gauges in. I need to get some blank panels to replace the speaker switch and car alarm light....



For those of you who are curious for the numbers...

Cold idle.


Warm idle (I do run 20W50 if you were wondering about the ~17 psi of pressure).



Warm cruising.



It doesn't warm up past a hair over 200 unless you.re on it pretty good. Pretty much stays there in either stop and go or highway. I did a 4th gear pull to 120 the other day and it got a little past halfway between 200 and the first tick mark. I would be interesting to see how the temps are when its raced. I noticed that the oil cooler is never really that hot, even after a extended drive. Feels like it might be 120 maybe. Nowhere near as hot as the oil itself. As far as the voltmeter is concerned, the voltage varies from 12.5-14V. Seems to me its higher in the mornings for whatever reason...

[irish44j]

I know but NO haha. 90% sure im going to take it to a rallycross in september and 4x4 stance is required. I almost got a set of gcs but those will have to wait after I get the m30 in and paint on.

4x4 stance is a plus, but plenty of stock or even *mildly* lowered cars can do ok if you drive carefully. Sitting taller lets you drive more aggressive.

hope to see you out there :)

[Nsquared97]

Those gauges look fantastic, nice work!

[Click]

Rally cross is stupid fun here are pics. Shout out to eric for the photography and good panning.











Also 3 wheel club!

[Click]

Long Overdue Update

Got a new tool box and covered it up with the german/bmw stickers.




Picked up the holy grail of shifters, the UUC EVO3 w/ DSSR.



On to the install.



Take the shifter apart from the inside.



Don't forget to unplug the reverse light plug.



Remove exhaust. Note that golden West Virginian mud on it from RallyX.



If you've never removed your exhuast before I highly recommend getting replacement nuts. More than likely they are near welded on and will get mangled on the way out. I had a couple round on me.



How do you remove rounded nuts you may ask. Nut removers, thats how. They bite into whats left of the nut and work quite well. Mine is a metric Irwin/Hansen Set.





Next remove the under-cladding, trans support and driveshaft. You'll be left with this view. Note the trashed CAB.



Pop off the clips holding the selector shaft and remove that. Then undo the infamous bitch clip. If I recall correctly I used a tiny (idk maybe 1/4") craftsman flathead screwdriver, the real long one, it think its about 18" long and pried up the side of the clip. Also remove the rear carrier piece.

Admire gauges from underneath car.



Once you get the carrier out you need to make some modifications for all the screws to fit for the UUC insert.







Then screw that bish in with the supplied screws and loctite.





Make sure its level.



Reinstall the carrier using a new bitch clip and rear bushing.



Grease EVO3's balls (actually only one) and install it with the spring/spring plate.



Push everything down and circlip it in.



Shifter carrier is good to go. Now since I'm using the DSSR you have to have the late style selector rod joint. My car was equipped with the early style joint which is longer the the later model.

Early.



Late.



I have that 260/6 from an e34 for my upcoming m30 swap which happens to have the late style joint that I cannibalized.

Slightly expand the piece of spring steel that covers the selector joint pin and slide it back.



Tap the pin out with a drift pin punch. They look like this.



Clean up the rod joint, mine had nasties in it.






Put the new sponge washer in there (helps reduce play).





Swap rod joints on the e30. Install the DSSR. Installing it is really a bitch since the pins are such a perfect fit. I used all the the plastic washers for minimum play.



I replaced my guibo while I was in there. Old one was was looking pretty beat. I replaced it with a German Lemforeder unit. You also want to check the status of the center support bearing (CSB), I had a new one on hand but did not replace it since I was running out of time and the rubber and bearing was fine on the old one.





Reinstall the rubber boot. I put a new one in since the old one was beat.



You have to fit the connector through that tiny anus of a hole. I lubed it with some spit to push it through.



PUSH!



ALMOST THERE!



Then it popped through. Finish installing the rubber boot then plug in the connector, put the leather shift boot and knob and the shfiter is done! (And I forgot to take a pic of the finished product lol). I did top it off with a ZHP know however.



Now I'll save you some hassle. Nowhere in the UUC manual does it say to remove the vibration dampener from the driveshaft but you must! I drove with it on for a week or two and it rubs the DSSR in 2nd and other gears if you rest your hand on it.

Here is the damage it did.



So to remove the vibration dampener you need to hammer out the bolts holding it on. they are splined and come out easy with some hammering (with the nuts on so you don't damage the bolt threads)



Once you take the dampener off, hammer the splined bolts back into the driveshaft flange and reinstall the driveshaft. Make sure the arrows of the guibo point towards a flange. Bentley recommends using new lock nuts for the driveshaft nuts. I used new ones when I installed the shifter but didn't bother using new ones when I took the dampener off.



Button everything up and you're good to go. BTW the EVO3 and DSSR is a spectacular shifter. They were a bit pricey (although I bought mine around the 4th of july and got 17.76% off) but it's a joy to shift every single time.

Next thing I did was get a set of BMW Motorsport handles.



Remove them old jons. They're held on with two screws underneath.



You have to remove the little rubber bumpers from the old handles to the new. I used a pair of pliers and a screw driver to remove them.



I cleaned the surface of the motorsport handles with some acetone then apllied contact cement to both handle and rubber bumper and allowed it to set for a few minutes before joining them together.



Install the door handles and then you're done!



Some more parts came in.



Zimmerman cross drilled rear rotors. Ate parking brake shoes and hardware. Bosch plugs and O2 sensor. Bremi cap, rotor, and wires. Brake pad sensors. Assorted Lubromoly/liquimoly products and Elring sealants. Coolant cap. Lemforder control arms, CABs, and sway bar links. and some various suspension related hardware.

I have installed the brakes and cap/rotor/plugs but not any of the suspension stuff yet. Soon.

On to the brakes.

Set screw is hammered. PB Blaster it is. (Got new set screws to replace them).



Remove caliper while it soaks. Then remove screw.



Remove rotor.



I've misplaced the photo but my passenger side brake shoes were mostly worn away, unlike the driver side ones above.

Parking brake goodies.



Installed. The shoes have a large notch and a small notch. Make sure the large notch goes up top where the adjuster is, this mix up cause me atleast and hour of grief and confusion.



New pads and old vs new.



Brake Rotor + Caliper = On



I did a compression test on the m30 and it was pretty awful 125, 80, 60, 120, 118, 100. So I popped off the head and you can still see cross hatching in the bores so it must be bad rings?



IDK about the m30 but its not getting rebuilt and swapped in until I have my own place and garage. The m20 is quite strong however so no worries there.



One of the last things I did before winter hit was swap in a set of sports.









Nasty.







It need more but I ran out of cleaner. It still looks much better than before.

Old and new.



And hydrogen peroxide would be an ingredient in oxy magic .



And lastly a few shots from winter.

[worangejuice]

epic thread and epic pics/posts!!!
THREAD OF THE YEAR!!!
Seriously lets all pitch in some coin and help this man make a manual for the e30 that will put the Bentley (25 pics in whole book *take this bolt off that is adjacent to the last bolt behind that thing) to shame.
Love the thread man! Great work and very inspiring, feel like i'm wrenching at home while on the laptop!

[ak-]

Really nice stuff man.

Btw, your gauges weren't getting good ground beforehand because your adapter plate, where your senders plug in, is anodized blue. It's a common problem with those sandwich adapter plates. Get the bare ones next time around or for a friend ;)

[marv]

Love everything about this! What camera/lens do did you take these pics with?

[Click]

epic thread and epic pics/posts!!!
THREAD OF THE YEAR!!!
Seriously lets all pitch in some coin and help this man make a manual for the e30 that will put the Bentley (25 pics in whole book *take this bolt off that is adjacent to the last bolt behind that thing) to shame.
Love the thread man! Great work and very inspiring, feel like i'm wrenching at home while on the laptop!

Thanks a lot. Some of my posts are step by step but some aren't so I don't think I could make a book of it. I do have a huge post about replacing CV boots that is a walk through but I just need to find the time to write everything up.

Really nice stuff man.

Btw, your gauges weren't getting good ground beforehand because your adapter plate, where your senders plug in, is anodized blue. It's a common problem with those sandwich adapter plates. Get the bare ones next time around or for a friend ;)

Yeah I figured it was the anodization and thought about grinding some away but there is also a rubber seal between the adapter and the oil filter housing so even then I wasn't sure if it would make a good contact (and that gets oily as hell as well) so that's why I went with the separate ground wire.

Love everything about this! What camera/lens do did you take these pics with?

A mix of Canon Rebel XSi with kit lens or thrifty 50, and iPhone 4S.

[Click]

Here's some pics from last june or may that somehow were lost among my 8 Tb of hard drives until recently.

Side-view mirrors were pretty beat and faded so they were cleaned up.

















Came out pretty nice. Used Duplicolor trim paint.





Shortly after I put the Arc-8s on I noticed I was having serious front fender liner wear where the brake ducts are.



I noiced that there is a ton of play in the brake ducting as well





So I picked up some small sheet metal screws and tightened everything up.





Only thing is that a little screw sticks up in the duct.



Now the tires only rub when making tight turns when parking. I can deal with that.

How she sat at the beginning of last summer. Nice 4x4 meat stance.



I have a huge update to post in the next few days. :D

[Click]

Should probably update this.

So I went to visit my best buddy who's going to med school in Philly the one weekend. Packed up eturdy and drove down. Parked in the garage and went to get my duffle bag out of the trunk and bam, they key wouldn't turn. My lock was acting a bit weird for awhile before this and the lock cylinder finally gave out. Now 2/3 locks have failed on this car. Luckily I keep a 10mm hazet wrench in my glove box and I had a knife on me so I ended up removing the rear seat (which I had never done before so I spent some time googling to figure out how to do that, Bentley was locked in my trunk) cutting into the trunk to pull my bag out. I'll let the pictures tell the story.




What an awful gaping vagina of hell.



Once I got home I was tasked with the even trickier job of getting the trunk open with a latch broken in the locked position. The only way I was able to open it was with this homebrew special. It took a long time to unscrew the two catch bolts from the ski pass and it was awkward and the sheetmetal was cutting into me and just bullshit.



Spending all that time in the back seat gives you a different angle on the interior though, and damn the e30 has a sexy interior.



Saw this while doing an oil change.



Leaky powersteering hose/reservoir is on the ever long to do list.

Put new one in. Part # is 12-51-1-714-039 (12511714039) for those interested.



Picked up one of the fabled MarkD chips. This one is the 7K redline/93 octane flavor.



Got a nice set of rebuilt Gen III 19 pound injectors to go with it.



First orders first, remove valve cover and crimp fuel lines going to the fuel rail. Remove fuel lines and label them so they don't get mixed up.



Unbolt the fuel rail bolts and jiggle the whole assembly out.



Shit was nasty.



Remove old.



Install new. A little engine oil on the orings helps with assembly and sealing.



Reinstall fuel rail. Should have repainted it but I didn't have all day to wait for paint to dry.



Attacking the infamous 173 for chip install.



I used a of thin screwdriver to start the bend in the tabs and then used pliars to finish the bend straight up.



80s engine management in all its glory.



This is the chip on interest. I like how Bosch put their logo on the chip retaining clip.



Remove that clip ever so daintily.

.

And remove the chip even daintilier. I used a tiny flathead between the chip and the black plastic socket.



Install the chip, be extremely careful to line up all the pins in all the holes before you push, it does go in very snugly. Make sure to line up the little notch in the chip to the notch in the socket.





Put retaining clip back on followed by the cover and bending the tabs back in place. Reinstall the dme in the car and you're ready to go.



Then this is when the trouble started. I decided to adjust my valves since I had the cover off. This was like 8 months ago and I sucked at adjusting valves back then. I just adjusted them once with the right feeler gauge and thought that was good (After practicing on the m30 after this event I've started the practice of testing it with feeler gauges +/- 0.001" after the initial adjustment to establish a go/no go policy, using this technique the valves are near silent at idle, I seriously impressed people with their quietness). After doing all 12 I started it up and there were still a couple noisy ones. My solution was to listen to it while it ran and see if I could tell which one was making the noise.



This system worked well for a couple rockers, then I forget to remove the socket wrench from the crank nut before I started the engine. It only took a second of awful noises and fan blade pieces flying to realize what I had done.

Damage was fairly extensive. Fan blade destroyed, fan shroud destroyed, waterpump pulley/shaft pulled right off the impeller and out of the pump housing.



The impeller is quite pretty and is now a keepsake I keep on my desk to remind myself of my asshatedry. I'm not sure if the crack was from this event or a defect.



In any case a few boxes came from blunt a day or two later.



I replaced my rad with a Nissens unit and I replaced my fan clutch as well. The clutch had to be hacked to recover my pulley. Something was up with my cooling system as well which is why I replaced my rad. My coolant temp would vary from a bit below 1/2 to halfway between 1/2 and 3/4 depending on throttle and moving/sitting. After replacing these items my temp doesn't vary anymore.

I can attest 1st hand how good german steel is...



This sight yet again...



Buttoned everything back together and experiencing the joy that is bleeding the m20...



Took it for an Italian tune up. Pretty legit to see the throttle move while driving...



She passed with flying colors.



The thing that really sucked about blowing up the front of the motor was not being able to drive the car right away after swapping the injectors and chip in. I lost that "This is much faster/better etc" opportunity since I had to drive my parents slow rav4 for a few days so I was unable to make that direct before/after comparison. But anyways she runs like a raped ape in any case now.

Another thing came in the mail.



The garagistic gears worked for about 150 miles or so and then worked intermittently (maybe 5% of the time). Like the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. I'd rather pay $100 for something that works than $15 for something that doesn't. The garagistic guys sent me another set or two for free as replacements but they didn't work either so I'll say one thing, their customer service is A++.

The odometergears.com gears are clearly a few steps above. They didn't have any of the casting defects the garagistic gears have and overall finish was much nicer. Garagistic gears are on top in the below pic.



You can see that odometergears.com goes with spacer cast into the gear itself (cause of the shadow below it) instead of the separate yellow plastic straw/tube pieces that garagistic uses. You can also see that the odometergears.com gears mesh much better as well.



I have almost 10,000 miles on these gears and they haven't skipped a beat. I've also started tracking my fuel economy (see sig) and as of now I've averaged 22.3 mpg with the markD chip and injectors which I would say is pretty good considering all the beating and hooning she sees. A recent trip upstate which I would guesstimate to have been about 85-90% highway miles returned a fuel economy of 29 mpg, pretty damn good I think.

Shortly after the valve adjustment fiasco I replaced the disintegrating vacuum hose.





Also picked up one of these to try my hand at detailing and see if I could bring my paint back.



I tested the hood out, you can see the paint has seen better days.





I placed a piece of tape down and polished over it, can definitely see a difference.



The funny thing is after a few days, the area where the tape was covering now looks better than the area that was polished. I really should take a picture of that. But anyways I was working on my hood and everything was all groovy until I lifted and my disc shot 20 yards away.



So things I've learned about detailing.
1. I need a polishing compound that cuts much faster
2. Don't lift


I have a lot more updates to post yet.... Just need to find the time.

[our guile]

Just read through the entire thread...

You've done amazing work on your car, brother