Early coupe build, since it’s been a while

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It’s been ages since I posted a car in here, so I figured I’d share this one I’ve been working on

1985 325e
zinno red
one owner
91k miles

after negotiating a fair price, the daughter of the original owner drove the car 2 hrs to my house, followed by her husband, and we exchanged money/car/keys/title etc. they headed home and I drove around the neighborhood for a bit, enjoying the completely stock, unmolested goodness that is an early e30


even tho I’m not a huge fan of red cars, I’m a sucker for original single stage paint, and knew this would clean up nicely.


a bit of the stuff I’ve done so far

• · Freshly built 200 Head
• · Decked .020
• · 274 Degree Bimmerhead Cam
• · Shrick dual Valve Springs
• · Port and Polish
• · Long Tube Ireland Engineering Headers
• · fresh eta Injectors with 3bar FPR
• · Mark D Chip Tune 91 octane.
• · 7k Tach.
• · 3 angle valve job
• · Bimmerheads HD rockers
• · Manual transmission
• · 3.46 LSD
• · New Fuel Tank
• · New Center support bearing.
• · Thermostat, Hoses replaced.

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I’m a bit rusty at posting pics. Bear with me

I’ll get to the cool stuff in a bit

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These were the pics I received from the seller. Once I saw the dashboard I was sold.

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Day one in the shop - I got right to work on a euro bumper swap

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I’ll add more later

[82eye]

nice car.

[calypso rot]

Looking good, lovely condition

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Once the euro swap was finished, we got started on wet sanding and buffing the surprisingly intact original single stage paint.
I took great care to preserve as much of it as possible and only applied new paint on the front valance and rear apron.

the rear was handled properly, with welds and minimal filler. I sprayed a few layers of high build primer, block sanded and then sealed before painting with PPG Deltron Concept single stage Zinnoberot

I lucked into a set of pristine euro bumpers and an NOS euro front lip, which really made the difference

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The paint was wet sanded with 2000 and then 3000, followed by buffing with a pumice based diminishing abrasive compound which really brought the finish to life

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Sorry for the wonky juxtaposition of posts. I haven’t posted here since you had to paste HTML image links in order to show pics

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I cleaned up the underside with a bit of dry ice blasting but was careful not to remove the factory paint marks and undercoating

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The ETA engines are great in their own right, but as we know, leave something to be desired in the sun department.

Since the engine has such low miles, rebuilding it and sourcing SETA pistons didn’t really appeal to me. Neither did slapping on an 885 head and sacrificing compression with the larger combustion chambers. I wondered if anyone had successfully built up a “200” head to spin 7k rpm, gain some HP, and not lose any torque in the process.

some late night deep dives on google brought me back to R3V where I found mention of Shant (Bimmerheads) having built almost the same engine. I couldn’t find any follow up, so I called Bimmerheads and Shant was incredibly kind, letting me pick his brain for a bit, on more than one occasion.

I settled on their 274 degree cam, HD Rockers, and some Shrick dual valve springs. I took the head to Aluminum Head Rebuilders in Milwaukie Oregon, and had Charlie work his magic. (The port and polish work is gorgeous)

I reached out to Mark D’Sylva for a tune, and proposed my idea. A few weeks later he’d sent me an experimental tune for my setup, without asking for any money. What a guy!


I had a set of IE long tube headers that weren’t used for a previous build, and a Strömung cat back from the group buy not that long ago.

a friend came to the shop and fabbed up a stainless center section for me, with twin resonators.

I goofed on the initial set of injectors and used a set of stock “i” green tops that I had rebuilt, without knowing the importance of impedance.
After scratching my head for a few days, trying to chase down any reason why it would feel so weak at idle, and knowing it should feel stronger, I started digging around for info about injectors in an eta

bingo.

I took the stock eta injectors to be rebuilt, and had them flow tested on a 3bar FPR, stock being 2.5

test came back showing 20# on 3bar.


within an hour of picking them up I had the injectors installed and the engine fired up

it took a minute for the DME to “learn” how to manage the engine, but it smoothed out and immediately felt stronger.

With the 3.46 LSD (e23) the car feels incredibly strong and eager to run.

Mark D’s tune is spot-on, pulling hard right up to 7k

https://youtube.com/shorts/dRER1I_6Qcw?feature=share