Rontgen's 1990 325iS Build Thread

[MR E30 325is]

Good find on that dash!

Excellent build as well. Making some serious progress.

Will stay tuned.

[Staszek]

The dash situation had me concerned since there didn't appear to be a lot of good options. Plastic dash caps look like crap, a dash mat wouldn't cover many of the damaged sections of this dash, and a new OE dash at $1000+ is just out of the budget for this build. The used BMW part market near me is pretty dry (think sahara desert), so I didn't have much confidence that a used dash would magically appear on Craigslist one day.

I had found a couple used dashes for sale here and on eBay, but the price and location made them much less attractive. Plus, most sellers don't want to fool with shipping a dash (and I can't blame them). I did a search on car-part.com and found a junkyard about 2 hours away that showed to have a complete dash with no damage in the comments. Could I be so lucky as to have found a dash this quickly?

I'm pretty excited about this. I scored a crack-free dash out of a 88 325i this morning. We're gonna douse it in 303 Aerospace over the next few weeks and try to get the vinyl as supple as we can before installation. Hopefully we can go a few years before any cracks start to appear.

The best part? $125 + tax ($134 total) + no shipping expense or hassle = :) :)

Nice job on the dash, I was in the same situation. I finally broke down and bought a new OEM one. Crazy expensive and I don't even know if you can get them anymore!

Great find!

[Rontgen]

Lots of progress this weekend!

We started by mating the transmission to the engine Fri night, which didn't go particularly well at first. I had purchased a used 325i single mass flywheel and forgot to run a tap through the pressure plate bolt holes to clean them up. As it turns out, the threads on one hole were evidently mangled about halfway down. That bolt started to get tight and I should have known better and backed it off. But, like an idiot I decided to try and give it another 1/4-turn in hopes it would clean up and SNAP, the bolt sheared. [emoji35]

On the bright side, my son has now experienced an EZ-out as well as a Heli-coil to repair the damaged threads. Haha I happened to have a M8x1.25 Heli-Coil kit left over from some catastrophe long ago. I found a replacement M8x16 12.9 cap screw at Ace hardware and we were back on track by about noon on Saturday. We'd lost about a half day, which wasn't too bad I suppose

[Rontgen]

Rontgen's 1990 325iS Build Thread

Once we made it over the broken bolt hurdle, it was time to mate the trans to the engine. It seemed like no matter what we did with the clutch alignment tool, we just couldn't get the input shaft to go into the pilot bearing. After fighting it for an hour or two, we finally got the clutch disk at the right spot and were able to wiggle it and curse at it enough for it to finally slide home.

The rest of the weekend went substantially better. Lots of things to get accomplished and I think my son is now a believer in the old adage: "5% of the project takes 95% of the time"

Engine and trans are in, which was a piece of cake with the load leveler.

Driveshaft, heat shields, and stock exhaust are in. New Bosch O2 sensor installed

New Power Steering reservoir installed along with new feed and return hoses. I was able to bend and re-shape my original E30 pressure line for use with the E36 rack

Lots of wiring and trial-and-error to get it all laid correctly.

Installed upgraded alt-starter cable and engine ground from Bavarian Restoration.


At this point we have about a half-day of work left before she's ready to crank. I'm away on business this week so we may get a chance this coming weekend, depending on schedules. If not, the first weekend in Feb should be it!

Thanks for reading!

[Rontgen]

And a picture of where we are as of quitting time tonight:

[stonea]

Nice build! Makes me wan't to keep my M20 and rebuild it.

[Rontgen]

It's alive!!

Since the fuel lines were dry, it took several cranks to get fuel to the rail and build pressure, but once that happened it fired right up. First thing we noticed was a lot of noise from the passenger side, kinda sounded like a mix of valvetrain and exhaust leak. [emoji53]

More pressing was the fact that the car ran for a couple minutes and then began to sputter and die. Then, it would crank but wouldn't fire back up. Uh oh. I could smell gas, so I assumed it was flooded. I pulled the vacuum line off the fuel pressure regulator and gas POURED out of that line. Obviously the regulator diaphragm was leaking badly and this was the cause of my flooded engine. An hour or so later, we had a new replacement installed and cranked the car up again. Not surprisingly, it runs much better with a working regulator!

When we purchased the car, the catalytic converter had been replaced with straight pipe and the muffler section was trashed. We saved the OE front section (manifold to front of cat) just in case and trashed everything else. We bought a complete exhaust system from a parts car which appeared to be in good condition. Unfortunately, it looks like the parts car exhaust is leaking at the expansion joint between the manifold and the O2 sensor. Ugh. So, I'll either have the old front piece welded in at a muffler shop or just replace the whole thing. Still need to do some research...

By the end of the day, we got it cleaned up and put about 20 miles on it. Seems to run great!

Lots of little projects to follow. Thanks for reading!

https://vimeo.com/201598606

[sam_]

Looks great!

[Rontgen]

Thanks! I think I'm going to have this piece welded in and that should solve the exhaust leak for now.

[Dirty_30_IS]

I'd pull that valve cover asap and check valves if you haven't, just did mine and its much quieter now and sounded nearly identical to yours

[Rontgen]

Thanks - I checked the valve lash with the engine on the stand, but it would probably be worthwhile to check it again now that it's been up to operating temp a couple times. I'm out of town on business again this week, so hopefully I'll get the exhaust leak taken care of next week when I'm back home. That should make it easier to hear any other noises...

[Rontgen]

Not much new to report, but we did AFM maintenance today. We cleaned the resistor trace and adjusted the wiper arm to move the contacts out of their 27-y/o grooves. I forgot to take a before picture of the scope, but it was ugly. Voltage would drop dramatically as the flap opened and then again at max opening. There was also a dead spot where opening the flap would cause no corresponding change in voltage.

After cleaning it up and adjusting the wiper arm, it's a nice smooth voltage transition from closed to open.

We're heading out to drive it shortly and first oil change will be this afternoon!

[jeenyus]

great progress and what luck on that dash! makes me want to look for stuff on car part again.

[Northern]

This thread makes me want a nice clean 325i to drive and not do a bunch of dumb shit to...

[Rontgen]

I'd pull that valve cover asap and check valves if you haven't, just did mine and its much quieter now and sounded nearly identical to yours

Thanks again for the suggestion. I went through the valve adjustment procedure again, this time setting the clearance to 0.007" between the cam and rocker. I found this to be much easier vs. measuring clearance at the eccentric (which should be 0.25mm/0.10"). In doing some reading it seems like the E28 M30 guys swear by this method and I tend to agree. Valvetrain is now much quieter than before.

The car goes to the muffler shop tomorrow to have the exhaust leak fixed and we should be just about ready to start on the interior restoration. But for now, the E30 gets a rest and my M5 gets some long-overdue love. New Bilstein B8s, Intrax springs, and an Eibach rear bar.

Thanks everyone!