The Ugly E30

[tspangle88]

Greetings, all. I have recently purchased an E30 project car after many years of reading about them and intending to do it. My background is that I'm a 42-year-old enthusiast who worked for Ford for many years and now works in marketing for a software company. I've had "toy" cars since the mid-90s, including a few 5-liter Mustangs, an FB RX-7, 4th-gen Camaro, 944 turbo, Contour SVT, Miata, and most recently, an E36 M3. I also had an E46 ZHP in there and various pickups. I have a nice pole barn in my back yard and have completed some fairly major projects out there. The RX-7 got an engine swap and a full Ground Control suspension setup, I rebuilt the engine on one of the Mustangs along with a 5-lug swap with rear discs, and done more maintenance-type work that I can remember. So I'm reasonably handy with a wrench and have amassed a decent collection of tools. I've been autocrossing for 10+ years, have done about 8 or so track days in various cars, and did one season of road racing in 1999.

So I started looking for an E30 when I had my M3 for sale. As luck would have it, I found a non-running 1985 325e on Craigslist not too far from home for $1000, claimed to be rust-free. If you live in Michigan, you know how rare that is. Checked it out, and it was as he said. Settled on $800 and dragged it home. Here it was the day I brought it home:



The non-running thing was a fuel pump issue, so the PO told me. The interior was complete but trashed and partially disassembled. Original drivers seat was gone, and there was a black leather sport seat in rough shape in it's place. Original passengers seat had huge holes in it. Carpet was badly stained and stinky. Rear seat bottom was removed but intact. So, a bit to do there.

The plan for this car is 70/30 street/track & autocross. I want to keep it as simple and cheap as I can. Plan for the engine is either a straight M20B25 swap or possibly a "327i" stroker if I can find all the parts. Rebuild will consist of honing the cylinder walls and replacing bearings, rings, and gaskets. Suspension will probably consist of H&R sports with Bilsteins, possibly some anti-roll bars, and new bushings all around. I'm not looking to reinvent the wheel, just have a fun, reliable car that I don't have to wrench on every time I touch it. It doesn't have to be the fastest thing around, my ego got over that whole thing a long time ago.

More to come....

[SpeicherBimmer]

Of all the cars I've owned/played with my E30 is my favorite...these things are addicting! Looks like a good canvas to start with...good luck!

[tspangle88]

I sold my M3 a couple of days after I got the E30. Out with the new, in with the old! :)


Once the family and I got it rolled into the barn, I started working on diagnosing the "no fuel" issue. Even though I'm planning on doing a swap, I still want to get it running first. I'll need a working fuel system no matter what engine is in there, after all, and I'd like to drive it a bit just to make sure all systems are in working order.

Here's a shot of that nice interior I was talking about:


So, first thing it needed was a battery. Once that was in and I verified that it had oil, I tried cranking it. Cranks over just fine, but no fire. Sprayed some ether in the intake and it does fire and sort-of run for a few seconds. OK, so there's spark. Checked the fuel pump fuse and lo and behold.....


Man, I'm not THAT lucky, am I? Replaced the fuse, tried again, and boom, another blown fuse. OK, more diagnosis needed. But I decided to start cleaning up the interior and found:



Hey, isn't there supposed to be a fuel sender there? Small wonder it won't start! So I got a new sender on eBay, installed it, and still no joy. Still blows the fuse. Now, I know there's another pump, and I need to check on that, but the whole fuel-system diagnosis thing got pushed aside because......

[tspangle88]

I found a parts car!

87 325is. Total rustbucket, but it was $500 and it has the M20B25, the 'is' front air dam, the M-sport wheel, a black leather interior in pretty good shape, the 3.73 LSD diff, a non-cracked rear bumper, the 325i gauge cluster, two sets of wheels (one decent set of basket-weaves, the other some aftermarket crap).



So my plan is to strip off every possible thing I can use or sell, then haul the rest to the metal recyclers.

Got it into the barn with the other one. That sign in the background says "RX-7 Parking Only" Guess I should update that! :)

[tspangle88]

I've started stripping the parts car. Got a few good bits:



The head was already off. Plan is to get some minor cleanup done, maybe a valve job and a light skim to make sure it's level, new springs and other hardware, and call it good.

A nearly-complete tool kit!



I harvested all the rear-end parts I could. Got the bumper (mine has a crack), the trunk lid, which incidentally has "91 318is" scrawled on the underside and doesn't match the color of the car, the taillights (don't need, but why not?) the power antenna, etc.


Easy stuff done, it's time to crawl under there and start unbolting stuff. Like that 3.73 LSD diff. Those 25-year-old bolts didn't want to move, but liberal use of PB Blaster and breaker bars finally got them. Those two on top of the diff are fun. But it's out. Needs a bath:


Last night I moved into the interior and got the dash out. Not a small job, it turns out. I may end up just living with the cracked one for now.

That's it for now, progress will be slow, as I have various other things demanding my time, but I will try and update this thread whenever I get anything done, and I have a parallel build thread on the GRM forums, as well. I welcome any suggestions, shots, name-calling, etc. If I'm doing it wrong, tell me!

Thanks.

[N2MYE30]

Cool project. Im in to see how this goes.

[Holland]

Finally a project with progress. I'm in to see how this goes.

[8380 Labs]

nice project, good luck!

[sayed ali]

Good luck, seems to be a long interested project :)

[MaksV]

Looks like you got all the parts you need to have a nice e30. well done.

[tspangle88]

Thanks, folks! Did a bit more stripping on the parts car, hopefully will have more pics in the next day or so.

[tspangle88]

As I mentioned previously, my parts car has a nice, crack-free dash, so I certainly wanted to nab that. I did, but man, there's a lot of connectors on that thing! Here it is:


So, as I said, I think I'll live with my original one for now. It only has one crack. I'll hang on to this one for the time being and see if I feel motivated enough to put it in down the line. If not, I may sell it, a crack-free E30 dash is worth something, right?

While removing the dash, I did grab this rather important little item:


My project car has a tan vinyl interior that's very rough. Driver's seat is all taken apart and ripped, passenger's seat is together but the vinyl is badly rotted and has huge holes in it. The rear decklid is dry-rotted. Surprisingly, the back seat is in decent shape. The carpet is badly stained:


... that was after I vacuumed it. At first I thought about trying to get replacement carpet, but it doesn't seem like there's a lot of those kits around, and the ones that are are expensive. So then I was going to pull it out, powerwash it, dye it, and put it back. But after pulling the dash on the parts car and seeing how much stuff needs to come out to remove the carpet. I think I'll just clean it as best I can and dye it in the car. I'll remove the seats and center console bits and mask off everything else.

The parts car has a black leather interior, so I'm going to convert my car over using the door cards, rear interior trim panels, decklid, and rear seat from it. I'm going to keep my carpet tan because I think it'll be easier and I don't want the old color showing through when I get some wear on it like it would if I tried to go black with it. Besides, black and tan look good together.

One potential issue I see is using the rear decklid. My project car has the seatbelts coming out perpendicular to the back seat with an anchor point on the C-pillar above:


Whereas the parts car has them coming out parallel to the rear seat with a little tower structure:


I'm assuming it's not too difficult to convert it over as long as I have all the parts from the parts car, and I think I do.

At this point I'm starting to amass a pretty good pile of E30 parts:


Whenever I take anything apart, all the fasteners and other small bits go into a labeled ziplock bag. I've driven myself nuts in the past trying to find small stuff. Never again:


That's it for now.

[E30stan]

interesting build, keep up the tidy work

[irish44j]

oh hai!

[tspangle88]

Did a little bit last night, but as it was 100 degrees outside, I didn't get too ambitious. My main priority at the moment is to finish stripping the parts car so I can get it the hell out of my barn.



Given that the fuel pump on the project car is a known issue, I decided to grab the one from the parts car:



As I think I mentioned earlier, the project car's windshield is badly cracked, so I was budgeting a couple hundred bucks to take it to a glass shop to get a new one. Then I read that removing E30 windshields is pretty easy, so I decided to give it a go. Turns out it's only slightly less complex than falling off a log. Pop up this clip:



Then pull out the center band of the molding (the cracked, nasty-looking thing in the pic), give the window a gentle but firm push from the inside on the corner, and it'll pop out. Heck, it's a one-man job! Project car sans windshield:



Woohoo! I love E30s! I'll pop the good windshield in tonight, need some soapy water to get it in there.



While poking around this area, I noticed some insulation under the cowl cover on the passengers side. I figured it was part of the car's insulation, then I noticed that the parts car didn't have it. Incidentally, it's nice to have two E30s to compare between to check things like this out. So I popped the cover off and found this:



Yeah, that's a mouse nest. The car was living in a barn when I bought it. Like literally a barn, with a dirt floor and horses and such, on a farm. So, no big surprise. Need to shop vac that out.



That's it for now, next step is to get everything out of the engine bay, grab the engine and trans, then I'm done stripping the parts car!