My E30 obsession started pretty humble-- About 1 year ago, I was in rough shape... I was out of work and my beloved, but beaten only vehicle, a 2000 Jeep Wrangler had seen better days and needed a successor.
So, with the help of family, I gathered together a enough cash to grab a beater off of craigslist and, joy of all joys, I found a rust-free 1987 325 for cheap. It was a 4-door, 2.7L automatic but it ran, it drove, and it was a friggin' E30. At the time I bought it, a blizzard was rolling into Buffalo and I decided not to bother to even wipe the snow off of it and see what I was getting. I got lucky. I did take it for a very short spin up the road and it was really tight, but I was told it had been sitting since being replaced by an E46 so I figured it would loosen up after some driving. Besides- there was a big storm about to shut down the thruway so I handed the kid the money and headed back home to Rochester. The light of day revealed just how lucky I was...
Once the snow melted, she had a little bit of shine to her..
Alas... all was not well. While I was loving the car, there was an elephant in the room that needed to be addressed.. The automatic transmission. It needed to go, and going it was. The torque converter was letting go and I had no intentions of replacing it. So I began looking around for a donor car so I could convert to the one true religion... Der Getrag.
Here's what I found:
An '86 eta that got into a fight with a Silverado. It had a rebuilt engine with about 15k on it from what I was told and it came with the blown engine that came out of it too. The damage was pretty bad on the body but the engine was fine. The only damage on it was a crack distributor cover.
I decided to take the car off of the front subframe and slap the whole thing under the good car.
And just when I thought everything was going great during the tear down, some old guy in a saturn decided to pull out in front of me and stop broadside in the middle of the road. Pissed doesn't quite say it...
The passenger side bumper shock housing was crumpled, the bumper was warped and the passenger headlights went crosseyed... and for all its front end maladies, the donor car still had a good headlight assembly and a slightly straighter bumper... bent the hood and the fender back out and I've been driving it that way since this happened because why replace body parts when you can ignore them and play with other things?
Yeah, I know. This was my first time ever welding so I fully recognize I am a grinder and not a welder but it's functional and nobody will ever see it so yeah...
So with a band-aid on the car, we finished the tear down of the donor car...
RIP ol' girl, and thank you.
Now putting it all into the good car... A little creative solution here and there, of course.
Good riddance :finger:
We finally wrapped things up, after tweaking out some electrical gremlins I took one of the sweetest drives ever. I was riding the high of completing this swap for weeks if not longer...
The car now has a total hackjob spraycan paintjob but I kind of like the ratty murdered out look... At least for now it works for me. I have bigger things on my mind for her.
So, with the help of family, I gathered together a enough cash to grab a beater off of craigslist and, joy of all joys, I found a rust-free 1987 325 for cheap. It was a 4-door, 2.7L automatic but it ran, it drove, and it was a friggin' E30. At the time I bought it, a blizzard was rolling into Buffalo and I decided not to bother to even wipe the snow off of it and see what I was getting. I got lucky. I did take it for a very short spin up the road and it was really tight, but I was told it had been sitting since being replaced by an E46 so I figured it would loosen up after some driving. Besides- there was a big storm about to shut down the thruway so I handed the kid the money and headed back home to Rochester. The light of day revealed just how lucky I was...
Once the snow melted, she had a little bit of shine to her..
Alas... all was not well. While I was loving the car, there was an elephant in the room that needed to be addressed.. The automatic transmission. It needed to go, and going it was. The torque converter was letting go and I had no intentions of replacing it. So I began looking around for a donor car so I could convert to the one true religion... Der Getrag.
Here's what I found:
An '86 eta that got into a fight with a Silverado. It had a rebuilt engine with about 15k on it from what I was told and it came with the blown engine that came out of it too. The damage was pretty bad on the body but the engine was fine. The only damage on it was a crack distributor cover.
I decided to take the car off of the front subframe and slap the whole thing under the good car.
And just when I thought everything was going great during the tear down, some old guy in a saturn decided to pull out in front of me and stop broadside in the middle of the road. Pissed doesn't quite say it...
The passenger side bumper shock housing was crumpled, the bumper was warped and the passenger headlights went crosseyed... and for all its front end maladies, the donor car still had a good headlight assembly and a slightly straighter bumper... bent the hood and the fender back out and I've been driving it that way since this happened because why replace body parts when you can ignore them and play with other things?
Yeah, I know. This was my first time ever welding so I fully recognize I am a grinder and not a welder but it's functional and nobody will ever see it so yeah...
So with a band-aid on the car, we finished the tear down of the donor car...
RIP ol' girl, and thank you.
Now putting it all into the good car... A little creative solution here and there, of course.
Good riddance :finger:
We finally wrapped things up, after tweaking out some electrical gremlins I took one of the sweetest drives ever. I was riding the high of completing this swap for weeks if not longer...
The car now has a total hackjob spraycan paintjob but I kind of like the ratty murdered out look... At least for now it works for me. I have bigger things on my mind for her.
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