Meet Lorelei (1989 325i)

[Court M3]

Sub'd good to see a car being taken care of

[Dagamus(NM)]

Keep it up, metamorphosis ain't easy.

[DIIRTY-30]

Digging the progress so far! Keep up the good work

[car_gal_jenni]

Sub'd good to see a car being taken care of

Keep it up, metamorphosis ain't easy.

Digging the progress so far! Keep up the good work

Thanks guys! It's been a long process so far, but I'm taking care of a lot of the gremlins this car was concealing. She'll be spotless by the time I get her back on the road!

[car_gal_jenni]

So! It's been a little while since I've updated this, so I figured I'd give y'all something worthwhile to look at. Boy, have we been busy....!

First off, my front subframe has been welded with reinforcements, sandblasted, and powdercoated. It looks awesome!


Then, we pre-assembled all the goodies prior to getting the motor in the car. Powdercoated and reinforced subframe, z3m power steering rack, 22mm IE sway bar with polyurethane bushings and reinforced mounts, and adjustable sway bar end links.


Speaking of the motor.... I was originally planning on using the 2.5 block with the 885 head, as I had received it. I had the head sent off to be rebuilt, and they WAY overcharged everything, so I abandoned the head. I had another plan already in place at this point. A good friend of mine was pulling his motor out in prep for an S52 swap he's undertaking with his e30, so I snagged his motor. It's the 2.7 block, with a good MLS head gasket, ARP head studs, and the 885 head. Perfect for where I'm heading with my build, eventually!!

We spent the majority of this weekend building out the motor with all the appropriate accessories and brackets and all that bulls-hit. Learned way more about the differences between early model and late model brackets, water pumps, and the like....

But alas!! We got the resurfaced stock flywheel, sachs fx kevlar clutch, and pressure plate mounted to the car. And then we cleaned the transmission....


Before:


After: not perfect, but much much better than before.


With the motor and trans mated together, we got busy getting everything mounted up!





And finally!! Mission success!! Motor, trans, and subframe with goodies are finally in the car!! Gahh it feels amazing to be done with that part of the project!


We still have a LOT to do, but we're definitely making progress. We've gotten a bunch of little stuff done too, like deleting the stock oil cooler, deleting cruise control, and working on mounting up all my audio stuff. Speakers, deck, two amps, and two subs. I had the setup in my orange e30, and LOVED how it sounded. I'm excited to get to hear it in this one!!

[stonea]

Soooo..... Turbo?

[car_gal_jenni]

I've gotta get her running right first. Turbo will come, eventually.

[car_gal_jenni]

here's today's progress:

new lollipops with poly bushings. got the old front rotors taken off, cleaned up the strut tubes a bit, and got the new front rotors, calipers, pads, & wear sensors mounted up.





now i've just gotta do the rear suspension & brakes, and get the correct steel-braided brake lines so i can get that piece all done. the correct outer tie rods will be showing up tomorrow as well. i expect suspension & brakes to be 100% done tomorrow evening

[tmacbmw74]

Great job so far glad to see you have nice build going. Can't wait to see the final results

[car_gal_jenni]

And the progress continues!! This long Memorial Day weekend proved to be VERY fruitful for the car. We got all new black silicone hoses mounted up, and somehow managed to make sh itty ebay headers actually fit and seal. What an adventure that was.



We also got the headliner dyed black, which looks a million times better IMO.




We also did the parcel shelf, and got all my audio stuff wired in and working. Looks and sounds amazing.



We also managed to get my new Ireland Engineering short shifter kit, with the dual-sheer selector rod and all new delrin bushings, installed Friday as well. It sure does feel crisp!! I can't wait to take it for a drive.



We also got my euro trim and headlights sorted out this weekend. All trim has been resprayed black, and the headlights have been refinished as best I can. OEM smily low beam, OEM french high beam.




I also got all new brakes (calipers, rotors, steel braided brake lines) front and rear, and new suspension (bilstein shocks, lowtec springs) front and rear. Not sure how the springs are going to do, so if I don't like them, I'll swap them out for H&R sport springs. Springs came with the shocks from a local e30 owner, so I wasn't going to pass them up.

And now, a brief (HA!) story of how we managed to get those headers in the car.
I got them Friday when I got home from work. My boyfriend and I decided to do a test fit and see how they lined up. With all the mixed reviews on ebay headers, I was curious. Well, the test fit didn't go so well. Shocker, yeah I know. I submitted for a refund, and started shopping for the IE long tubes. I hadn't quite pulled the trigger yet, since we wanted to tinker with them in the morning. Glad I waited; we managed to get them to fit! But first, while there were still no headers, we wanted to crank the car to make sure we had the starter connected properly. We initially didn't, so it was a test to make sure we fixed it. I really urged my boyfriend that I didn't feel comfortable with trying to start the car yet, but... he's as stubborn as I am. Well, the fix worked and the car cranked over and started. The excess fuel from cranking over got spat out the open exhaust ports onto the strut tower, and the heat from the motor running caught the fuel and cosmolene on fire. Yup, engine bay fire. Not a good way to start the day on Sunday. But alas! We got it put out quickly, thanks to a hose on the front of the house, and the car is completely unscathed, unlike my nerves which were immediately fried. I also discovered that there's something extremely sharp on the back side of the hose spigot knob, as my newly sliced open finger could attest to. I always say you're not working on a car properly until you're bleeding... Fancy that, right after the fire got put out and we calmed back down, the headers lined up perfectly.

And for those that are curious, yes I took a video of just the open headers.

http://vid1215.photobucket.com/album..._171512355.mp4

All in all, a successful weekend! Now I just need to bleed the brakes & clutch, & get this bish to an exhaust shop (this weekend) and get an alignment (next Thursday). And then she's all ready for the remainder of the show season this summer!!

[schmidty]

looking good!
What did you use to clean the transmission? Other than a power washer? Assuming you somehow covered the one end so it didn't get wet or does it matter?

[car_gal_jenni]

looking good!
What did you use to clean the transmission? Other than a power washer? Assuming you somehow covered the one end so it didn't get wet or does it matter?

I used brake clean, simple green, toothbrushes, steel wool, and elbow grease. With plenty of time. Haha. A pressure washer would have been so much easier.... but I didn't have one and I wasn't about to lug this bish to brown bear

[2mAn]

We also got the headliner dyed black, which looks a million times better IMO.

Looks good, Ive been thinking about doing this, but I dont want to deal with removing the headliner. Did you use a spray paint "dye" or something else?

[car_gal_jenni]

Looks good, Ive been thinking about doing this, but I dont want to deal with removing the headliner. Did you use a spray paint "dye" or something else?

We didn't remove the headliner. We pulled down the handles and dome lights, masked off all the windows, and sprayed the headliner in place in the car. I used Duplicolor Vinyl & Fabric dye in the spray can that you can get at O'Reilly's.

[car_gal_jenni]

Well, time for another update, to include the good, the bad, and the ugly.

The good:

She runs!! Boy, does it feel great! That z3m rack is incredibly responsive; I love it. Probably my favorite mod so far. I took her on a cruise through the mountains this past weekend to a German car show in a town called Leavenworth. She looked amazing, all shined up and parked in the sun. We had a blast wandering around looking at all the dolled up Germans. It definitely makes the past few months of headaches all worth it, to see her all shiny.



The bad:

We drove home Saturday evening to get a good night's sleep for another event we were going to Sunday morning. We got within 2 miles of the show venue, and the oil pressure light came on and the motor died suddenly. We got to the side of the road quick and popped the hood. It smelled hot, like burnt rubber. Think a burning belt. We tried to crank over the car, and got no response. Tow truck, to the rescue. She got towed the 50 miles back to my house, away from the show. When we inspected a bit closer, not having disassembled anything yet, we thought the timing belt snapped. Crap....

The ugly:

Well, the timing belt did not actually snap, so all of the valves are 100% ok. Phew. The intermediate shaft pulley and front main housing, however, are not ok. As we had come to expect, the tensioner was over tightened. My fault. That caused it to bend and had actually started pulling the tensioner out of its housing. The bent tensioner pushed the belt forward, causing it to hit on the front main housing. The belt being too tight also put too much strain on the intermediate shaft pulley, which caused it to collapse on itself and break. Fortunately, I have spares, thanks to a few donor motors I had in the garage. Let the replacing begin. Guess it's also good that this pulley broke; I learned that the early model intermediate shaft pulleys are weaker than the late model ones. So, I''ll be putting in a late model one that'll hold up. And then I'll be tensioning the belt correctly this time around. Lessons learned.