Hi guys - thought I'd get a thread going for my project, mostly wanted a place to track the progress. I've been pretty bad about taking pictures to this point, and those that I have taken are awful, my apologies. Hopefully this will push me to log stuff a little bit better.
Here's my Alpine '89 325i project to this point:
The car when I first bought it back in early March (seller's pic) pretty standard stuff here. It had 200k miles on it with almost no rust and very few dents/dings.
Aaaannndd what the car looks like now. Not a lot has changed except one small detail..
I went turbo pretty quick, before most other things that really should have been completed first.
Pertinent Setup:
Holset H1C 18cm
666Fab manifold adapter
Mishimoto intercooler
42lb injectors
Tial blow-off valve
Tial 38mm wastegate
ARP Headstuds/OEM headgasket
Spec stage 3 clutch
Megasquirt 2/e
LC1 wideband O2
3" straight through exhaust w/ Magnaflow muffler and resonator
2.5" charge piping
Homemade boost controller (grainger valve) running 15psi
Fairly complete parts list for those interested in putting a kit together:
The order the parts are in is mostly the order that I installed things. Each yellow line was a milestone of sorts, if I got that far and didn't break anything I'd move on to the next portion.
Head removed for inspection. The head and block were level so I didn't bother milling them down at all. The cylinder walls looked great so I didn't touch those, the pistons, rods or bearings. Fingers crossed.
I love this clutch, it grabs hard but you don't have to focus really hard on each shift to slip it just right. It's rougher than stock but very manageable for the amount of power it holds. I had a stage 2 on another car and it was just as awesome, I'll probably stick with Spec for life after the hell I put these things through.
Just the tip.
At this point I ran the car at Bandimere Speedway for shits. My best time was a a 13.4 at 108mph. I'm pretty happy with this time but think I could easily manage 12s with a little car work and a lot of driver work. My excuses are such:
-Stock suspension/open diff
-The track is well over a mile above sea level (5800') which really kills boost/performance.
-18cm H1C is waaaay too big for my application, my spool is awful.
The work has already begun to remedy the issues. This is my open 3.73 that was replaced with a S3.73 this weekend at my buddies Volvo shop. He was kind enough to help me and let me use his car lift and air tools. Total time to pull the diff from the donor car, pull the stock diff in mine and replace with the donor was about an hour. Having the right tools is the shit.
My interior is completely stock and I plan on keeping it that way. I still scavenged some goodies like premium sound and tweeters that will go on soon. I've also removed all of the AC components including the aux fan. I've never overheated even after railing on it at bandimere all night but just to be safe I'm putting an electric fan in to accommodate the extra power. These things will go on this week as they're sitting in my garage waiting to be put on.
Next up on the list of things to do is suspension. All the bushings are old and rotting and the thing could monster truck some serious shit. The motor/trans mounts and the tie rods have been replaced, but everything else needs to go. I haven't settled on suspension components yet but I'll probably bite the bullet and go for some coilovers. GE's group buy looks mighty nice. I've always loved the look of Hartge's but the wheels are going to have to wait until next spring probably. Right now I don't mind burning through $30 tires regularly with the kind of power it's making.
Then it's onto the shifter, I'll certainly go with blunt's ZHP kit. After that I'll finally tackle the cosmetic stuff. The paint is rough but not terrible. It has a ding in the front of the hood and the rear apron is bent in. Most likely a respray will happen in the same AWII.
That's it for now. Updates will probably be slow since I'm kind of tired of working on it after finishing the turbo/tuning and I just want to enjoy beating the shit out of it haha.
My friends 240DL next to the e30. Awesome.
Here's my Alpine '89 325i project to this point:
The car when I first bought it back in early March (seller's pic) pretty standard stuff here. It had 200k miles on it with almost no rust and very few dents/dings.
Aaaannndd what the car looks like now. Not a lot has changed except one small detail..
I went turbo pretty quick, before most other things that really should have been completed first.
Pertinent Setup:
Holset H1C 18cm
666Fab manifold adapter
Mishimoto intercooler
42lb injectors
Tial blow-off valve
Tial 38mm wastegate
ARP Headstuds/OEM headgasket
Spec stage 3 clutch
Megasquirt 2/e
LC1 wideband O2
3" straight through exhaust w/ Magnaflow muffler and resonator
2.5" charge piping
Homemade boost controller (grainger valve) running 15psi
Fairly complete parts list for those interested in putting a kit together:
The order the parts are in is mostly the order that I installed things. Each yellow line was a milestone of sorts, if I got that far and didn't break anything I'd move on to the next portion.
Head removed for inspection. The head and block were level so I didn't bother milling them down at all. The cylinder walls looked great so I didn't touch those, the pistons, rods or bearings. Fingers crossed.
I love this clutch, it grabs hard but you don't have to focus really hard on each shift to slip it just right. It's rougher than stock but very manageable for the amount of power it holds. I had a stage 2 on another car and it was just as awesome, I'll probably stick with Spec for life after the hell I put these things through.
Just the tip.
At this point I ran the car at Bandimere Speedway for shits. My best time was a a 13.4 at 108mph. I'm pretty happy with this time but think I could easily manage 12s with a little car work and a lot of driver work. My excuses are such:
-Stock suspension/open diff
-The track is well over a mile above sea level (5800') which really kills boost/performance.
-18cm H1C is waaaay too big for my application, my spool is awful.
The work has already begun to remedy the issues. This is my open 3.73 that was replaced with a S3.73 this weekend at my buddies Volvo shop. He was kind enough to help me and let me use his car lift and air tools. Total time to pull the diff from the donor car, pull the stock diff in mine and replace with the donor was about an hour. Having the right tools is the shit.
My interior is completely stock and I plan on keeping it that way. I still scavenged some goodies like premium sound and tweeters that will go on soon. I've also removed all of the AC components including the aux fan. I've never overheated even after railing on it at bandimere all night but just to be safe I'm putting an electric fan in to accommodate the extra power. These things will go on this week as they're sitting in my garage waiting to be put on.
Next up on the list of things to do is suspension. All the bushings are old and rotting and the thing could monster truck some serious shit. The motor/trans mounts and the tie rods have been replaced, but everything else needs to go. I haven't settled on suspension components yet but I'll probably bite the bullet and go for some coilovers. GE's group buy looks mighty nice. I've always loved the look of Hartge's but the wheels are going to have to wait until next spring probably. Right now I don't mind burning through $30 tires regularly with the kind of power it's making.
Then it's onto the shifter, I'll certainly go with blunt's ZHP kit. After that I'll finally tackle the cosmetic stuff. The paint is rough but not terrible. It has a ding in the front of the hood and the rear apron is bent in. Most likely a respray will happen in the same AWII.
That's it for now. Updates will probably be slow since I'm kind of tired of working on it after finishing the turbo/tuning and I just want to enjoy beating the shit out of it haha.
My friends 240DL next to the e30. Awesome.
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