"Bimmy"

[BlueJ85]

That's the car's name. It will stick forever. Gray market Euro.

This project is kind of a restore, but more directed at an auto-cross car. It will have no stereo or speakers and we will try to remove whatever else we can without seriously decreasing daily driveability.


Picked these up in MN a few days ago for quite a low price. I still have trouble believing what good shape these bottlecaps are in.






And tonight we decided to get to work on it.


We're off!!!


Step 1: Remove rear console...Jason easily conquered this step.



Step 2: Remove glove box. I easily conquered this step as well.



I'm sick of the step thing. Just pictures and descriptions from now on.

Vent blower cover removal:



And it's out.



Glove box completely out.



ECU hangin out.



Jason with a tire iron, removing the steering wheel. Haha, I find it funny that a tire iron was the only thing we had big enough to remove it, but it worked!




AAAAAANNNND...

After much struggling with a phantom bolt...

and skipping several steps of course...

DASH IS OUT!!!

(notice how it's cracked to hell)





Just for fun, our lighting setup: (took a while to get this figured out too for some reason)




(clamp halogen light in the sunroof ^^^)

Cool shots of dashless Bimmy from the top:






Before blacked out chrome trim:



After:



Only did one side, and didn't do all of it 'cause it was getting late and we were getting cold.



The steelies must have been on the car for about 3 years--lug bolts were ON there. Neither Jason nor I could get them loose, and unfortunately we didn't have a breaker bar. But here's a teaser of what Bimmy will look like soon!




Also a verbal update, if anybody cares...

If you don't remember reading the introduction thread, which is highly possible with the traffic around here, this car is a gray market 323i which has, as it seems, actually never been titled in the US. It was a one-owner car that was imported by a woman who was in the military. Apparently when you're in the military you can get around some titling laws? (or you could back in those days) According to the carfax, the last place it was titled was in Delaware. So that's the background before you read the following:

I sent the necessary papers to Delaware (to get a replacement title) last Friday with a detailed note about the situation. Got a call back from them saying that they could not locate anything at all with that VIN #.

So today I WENT to the WI DMV and asked what I could do about this situation. The lady was very knowledgable and gave me the Madison phone # to call, which I did, and to my own surprise, I got through to a lady who seemed to specialize in this sort of weirdness. She is going to fax some information to somebody and I am to call her back on Tuesday. She's on the case, and *knock on wood* something could really come out of this! E.g. a title, or legal ownership and registration of some sort!

Alright, well that's all for now...more to come soon.

[Nicademus]

Cool car. Can we get more pics of it? How much did you pay?

[BlueJ85]

I want to add too that, among many things, we are planning on leaving the center console off. We may fabricate some sort of shift boot (actually will probably get a short shifter and then come up with some sort of boot for that) and a parking brake boot, but we want this to be like a clean racer. Other plans at the moment include racing seats, of course full suspension, an engine restore or maybe even a swap down the road. It very well may have a cracked head gasket because while running it smells like burning antifreeze. We will be doing a valve adjustment and replacing all belts and hoses, as expected. Once that's done and depending on what happens with the engine situation, we will be getting an exhaust. Nothing blaringly loud but something to slightly boost performance and give it a mean sound. Of course we will get devoted autocross wheels and tires. May be replacing the euro bumpers with something lighter and more...I don't know...different, lower, whatever. Will probably be removing the back seat. Spare tire will go.

The list goes on and on but that gives you an idea of what we're going for here.

[BlueJ85]

Cool car. Can we get more pics of it? How much did you pay?

Yeah sorry, I guess I forgot I didn't put any pics of the car itself on here.

We don't have that many yet, which is stupid because we've had several opportunities...but here's pretty much the only one I have:



I'll get some more tomorrow since I really have nothing going on.

Also this is a joint venture--buddy and I paid a total of $422 with tax for this car. Funny story...it was posted at $1000 on CL. Every time I called to inquire about it the dealer dropped the price without me even making any verbal offers. First it was $900, then it was $700, and finally when they found out it had no title available they dropped it to $400. Couldn't say no.

[aschroeder92]

If you don't mind me asking, what did you use to paint the chrome window trim shadowline? Did you have to take it off the car?

[BlueJ85]

Haha...believe it or not, we used electrical tape. Sounds white trashy but it actually works very well, looks great and lasts for a very long time. You can't even tell that's what it is without either knowing or getting really, really close and inspecting it.

[Julien]

cool pick up... in all honesty I'd try to keep it somewhat stock-ish. Many people try to get their cars like yours (sport seats, euro bumpers, etc etc)..

If I where you I'd toss on some billy sports, H&R springs, 15x7 factory bbs (or ronal ls) and a limited slip diff+ all the normal wear times... which, in the end, will make a really really fun little autocross/daily thrash car.
-leaving the center console out won't really help anything... nor will putting on another exhaust for "performance gains" what could help is swapping out the L-Jetronic with motornic 1,3... Just did that this past week on a 84 323i... big big improvement.

Julien

edit: car has def. been federalized... rear bumper has sidemarkers. Good luck with the title issues

[BlueJ85]

cool pick up... in all honesty I'd try to keep it somewhat stock-ish. Many people try to get their cars like yours (sport seats, euro bumpers, etc etc)..

If I where you I'd toss on some billy sports, H&R springs, 15x7 factory bbs (or ronal ls) and a limited slip diff+ all the normal wear times... which, in the end, will make a really really fun little autocross/daily thrash car.
-leaving the center console out won't really help anything... nor will putting on another exhaust for "performance gains" what could help is swapping out the L-Jetronic with motornic 1,3... Just did that this past week on a 84 323i... big big improvement.

Julien

edit: car has def. been federalized... rear bumper has sidemarkers. Good luck with the title issues

Thanks man,

First of all, what all is involved in the motronic swap? I will search it I guess but is it just a plug and play type of deal?

Also, we are definitely planning on a suspension setup something like that.

The exhaust would be done in order to get a slightly mean rumble and a cleaner look. Right now it looks similar to somebody getting a fix-it ticket and whipping something together.

Also the center console thing--I know that doesn't weigh much, that's not the idea. We just want to leave it out so the car is slightly more race car-ish, and because it's different. I think it looks good like that. We may keep the center console in case we ever want it back on, but that's the look we're going for for now.

[rThor432]

First of all, what all is involved in the motronic swap? I will search it I guess but is it just a plug and play type of deal?

You've just got to transfer all of the engine harness and associated components from a 325i motor. Not too bad.

When I was working out the title transfer on my car ('85 323i) the insurance company told me the VIN wasnt real. They thought the car was stolen. After I told them it was from Europeland they kind of understood the VIN deal. They didnt have 323i in the computer, so they asked if it was closer to a 318i or 325 for insurance purposes. 318i, duh..

Good luck with it.

[shmutzigE30]

looks like a fun project and a good price you paid. keep up the work

[BlueJ85]

...................and after all that work I heard back from the DMV today--


because the car was sold as parts only with no title available, for some STUPID reason it will never be able to be titled again.

I'm trying to think if there is a way we could undo/redo the bill of sale or just have the person who sold it to us "donate" it to us instead...???

More than kind of disappointed though. You may be finding a part-out thread by me soon :(

[daniel]

thats how i got my steering wheel off.

[e30Squid]

That sucks! I hope you get things figured out with the Title/Registration, especially since you already started to work on the car.

If you decide to part the car, or go the route of race seats, I would be interested in purchasing your stock seats.

Good Luck!

[BlueJ85]

We might not be completely parting it out.

I'll let you know about the seats. FYI, the driver's seat has a cover on it because it is a little ripped, but sitting in it you can't tell there's a thing wrong. The passenger's seat is mint.

I forgot about the possibility of having a dedicated track car. My only question is--do you need a registered vehicle to participate in autocross and drag racing events???

If so, we're fucked and we have to part this thing out.

I've been trying to think of other ways to get a title but I don't really want to become a felon, so the only options are either keep trying to find out about getting a legal title, part it out, or (if we can) making it a complete track car. I know you all would be disappointed if we had to turn this "euro beauty" into a track car, but if we can't title it, I don't see why we shouldn't!

[BlueJ85]

Update!

Had a little extra time tonight so I decided to get something done.

First I went to Farm & Fleet and bought one of these guys on clearance:



Works GREAT in the garage...but duh, I didn't realize that carbon monoxide was a factor! Started to get a little out of it and had to open the garage door a tad to air it out. Dumb story. Continuing...

Took the back speakers, back seat and rear seatbelts out. One step at a time, kind of:











Bada bing, bada boom. Pretty easy actually.