yesterday was an amazing f'ing bmw day!!!!

[flyboyx]

will do!

[cbake82]

The car turned out really nice Brian. I can't wait to see what my old ix looks like when you're done with her. Please take lots of pics, and do a build thread on here for me.

[Matt341]

Great work love it!

[flyboyx]

Upper, or lower.

Gotta specify. E30 guys up here in the U.P. are few, and FAAAARRR inbetween. I swear there's probably less than 10 E30's in the entire U.P.
And only one S12... Mine :D
And two good colleges.....

Also, make ABSOLUTELY sure he gets a beater for winter, or seriously treats that thing. Michigan (Upper or lower) will eat that into nothingness post haste.

lower peninsula actually. he is planning to study something aviation related at western michigan in kalamazoo.

yes, we are concerned about the rust. i sprayed oil inside the doors and cavity inside the quarter panels. when we take it to michigan, my dad has an oil spray rig that he uses to coat the underside of his cars every couple of years or so. i wish he would go to college here in texas so we wouldn't have to worry about this.

a few years ago, he moved down here to live for a while. i bought him an ix that we restored. it was pretty much rust free. when he decided to go back up north, i didn't want that car in the salt because of its rarity. i guess if this one gets rusty, we will just redo another one.

Cool father/son project! You must have lots of e30s at your local jy. Its slim pickins close to me. :(

our junk yards are amazing here. we went yesterday. we scored a full set of bilsteins, a minty white hood, a momo steering hub, and a crack free minty dash. this is the same conversation we were having. my thoughts are that in many places cars rust and rusty cars have been scrapped long ago.

[McGyver]

I'm impressed! I plan to do something like this with my kid whenever i get around to one. Basically buy a straight e30 that needs work when they're 15, then trade chores for parts and teach them how to wrench. I'm hoping that after spending so much time/effort building it, the kid will be less inclined to go hoon and wreck the car.

[ANDRÜ]

I like

[george graves]

Love it!

[N2MYE30]

Cool father/son project! You must have lots of e30s at your local jy. Its slim pickins close to me. :(

[TurboJake]

in a day or so, we are going to drive it up to michigan so he will have it to drive for college.

Upper, or lower.

Gotta specify. E30 guys up here in the U.P. are few, and FAAAARRR inbetween. I swear there's probably less than 10 E30's in the entire U.P.
And only one S12... Mine :D
And two good colleges.....

Also, make ABSOLUTELY sure he gets a beater for winter, or seriously treats that thing. Michigan (Upper or lower) will eat that into nothingness post haste.

[JonTheHero22]

Wow it looks great. I hope one day I'll be able to build one up with my future son, I wonder if there will be any good e30's left when that time comes

[flyboyx]

i have not updated this thread in forever. we finished the car up today so this is just a posting of follow up pix of the final product. we have spent the last week working on it.

we have hundreds of hours invested in this project. the entire interior came from the junk yard. i had a couple of extra front seats so i switched the driver's side bolster with one from a passenger seat. the wheels and tires came from my buddy andy who is also a member here. he gave us a great deal on them. my son bought a set of h&r sports from a forum member. the steering wheel is a nardi personal that came from the jy for 18.00. it still needs to be sanded down and refinished but at least it works.

if any of you are from houston, you know that we had some really big rains this week. as a result the carpet was soaked. we started investigating and found the seals around the hood release cable, the air box, and the heater core lines were all shot. as a result, we ended up taking apart the dash and even the hvac box to fix everything. the good news is that after all that trouble, we put in one of my junk yard find crack free dashes. the interior is pretty awesome-especially for the amount of money we have invested in this car.

we also added factory u.s. elips. i also have my own junk yard that contains about 5 or so e30's. whenever, i do a project like this, i always lean pretty heavily on that parts supply. i bet we made between 70-100 trips just to find some stupid little part that constantly we were in need of.

here are some pix:
















here is the smile on my son's face as we take the car out on its maiden test drive!



in a day or so, we are going to drive it up to michigan so he will have it to drive for college.

[henryki]

Any updates?

[flyboyx]

thank you raul. she's coming along..... turns out the kubota is an integral part of my bmw shenanigans. it would have been impossible to move the car around without it. the loader was great for positioning the engines in and out of my truck and such.

[e30m3s54turbo]

I like the progress on the car.

[flyboyx]

just thought i would post an update. i know this is already bordering on a build thread but albeit a boring one. so far, we have around 1300.00 into the car.

pulling the car up to my sloped driveway to start work on it.


the old seized engine/auto


manual labor-i gave the boy the shit job


engine and trans cleaned up well






paint





i fricking love crinkle paint


earlier in the thread, i mentioned that the junk yard engine was in really good shape.







new timing belt


assembled engine




we spent about 3+ days working on this car. we are quite a bit further along than this last photo indicates. we were able to get everything hooked up under the hood. obviously the transmission was installed on the back of the engine before we set it in the car. however, i don't have the right rear output seal for some reason. as a result, we didn't put in the driveshaft, heat shield, or the exhaust.



my son will be back down for a visit next month. we plan to have the car finished up at this time. i expect to add one more entry of what i hope will be the finished product at that time.