My $600 84 325e project thread.

[truekid]

I've been a long time bimmer fan. Owned an e36 M3, e36, 740, and now two e30's. I have been searching on e30s for a while and with the little money I had, I wanted to pick up a project. Since I love bimmers, I wanted to really get my hands dirty and actually try fixing things on my own. My mechanical ability is probably a 3/10. I came accross this one on bf.c. The original owner told the pervious owner that it had a engine swap, and he used the car as a daily. The engine is supposidly supposed to have around 80k on it. It has a recipt from Bavarian motor sports, so im hoping this is true. Any ways lets get on with it.

This is how i bought it, it was running


No belts
Needed Timing belt
No interior
No ac compressor
Shifter linkage was trash ( couldnt even tell which gear i was in)
dash cracked.

So i bought it from the guy for about 600.

Now, I parked it, for about three months. Finally started working on it....
here it goes.







Ahh, some goodies came in the mail
shift linkage rebuild kit.
belts
timing belt and tensioner with spring and rod
water pump



rebuilding the shifter.


I rebuilt the shifter, then I did the timing belt and waterpum (had a hard time with the damn gasket. Its ridiculously flimsy.)

Finally changed out the coolent, along with redline MTF, and RP for the diff.

After much debate I needed a parts car. Search began.

Came across this.


230k miles, ok interior, clean body. Jim at Stauffers auto repair Here in MD. Good guy. Only problem it had a really bad Tranny. just reverse gear worked.
I got it for 300. Ill begin to part it out once im done. Ok keep it for a swap.( m50 :twisted:)

First time meeting.


Since i was waiting for some other parts ( CPS sensor). I began to take apart my parts car. I started with the interior. The carpet was fugly. Here is a before pic.






during


after, i might dye the clorax stain.



after the carpet cleaning was done, it was set to dry. Then i looked aorund for things to do on the car, hmmm. The passenger window was not working. It would work good going down but died going up. I took it apart. and I found that my spindle motor assemble had to go. So i looked at my parts e30 and it had the railing motor assemble. Time to bust out the ruler. I retrofitted that assembly into my door because my car was older and it had different mounting points.




thats about it for now. Thanks for looking. I am having a hard time starting the car so im working on that now. Thanks to the people in this forum.

All in all, this was meant to be a learning process.

[evoDRichie]

ughh looks like thats gonna be a long trip... digen the white letter tires,
good luck

[Eric Giles]

I think you have a pretty good base to work with there-I've seen a lot worse for $600. The $300 parts car looks pretty decent too, and from the pics somewhat better than the black car. Not sure I would part it out just yet...

[N2MYE30]

Well that sure is a project. GL. Keep updating.

[lonestar22]

white letters ftw

[truekid]

Yea i know they look pretty bad ass. But i want me some type A's. thats later. lmao. too much to work on now.

[Kershaw]

off to a good start man. it seems you're motivated. you'll need that when you try to install the dash. haha.

there is a md meet every friday, at the 495/95 interchange in college park. at the starbucks there. you're more than welcome to come when you have it up and running.

[bp9129]

Shouldn't be too bad... And it's definitely worth it for that clean black coupe shell you got there.

looking forward to seeing some updates on this one. keep hustling man!

[Tree18is]

E bimmers RULE!

[cablehaze15]

they look cute together...

[truekid]

off to a good start man. it seems you're motivated. you'll need that when you try to install the dash. haha.

there is a md meet every friday, at the 495/95 interchange in college park. at the starbucks there. you're more than welcome to come when you have it up and running.

Definatly will!!!

Will be updating soon. I have finally resolved the starting issue I had. I did the timing belt and I couldnt get it to start after words. So I posted here and awsome members helped me. It took two weeks to get it started. In the end it was the damn distrubutor rotor housing, it was cracked so it thru my timing off. Now its running.

Just did
TB
New Water pump
New Dist cap and rotor
New Plugs

My passenger side had some rust, sanded it all down and and cleaned the paint, primered it and painted it with rust protecting paint.

also friend gave me his unused edead liquid sound deading (he bought the tub) , so I did my trunk and the floor panels.

Today I will try and clean up the wires inside, take off all the stuff in the engine and degrease bay. I wanna use a high temp paint for the valve cover and Intake Mani, but people say it always peals away so I mite just save and get it powder coated.

[truekid]

Finally got two days off. I haven’t really been able to work on the car much because I work 13 hours a day, and 6 days a week. But I also requested a week off and I will have it starting tom. My car should be on the road then. So here it goes. This isn’t new, but I thought to include it.

In the last two days, I have done a few things.
First up were my leaky sunroof and the chrome tip around the roof. I took a look at my sunroof, it was over sprayed in grease, and the grease had dirt and other thing in it. The sunroof didn’t work right at all. It would only work sometimes, it would get stuck and it never lined up correctly. The motor was fine itself but the lines and their housing were rusted. Pics.
The leaky seal…..

The breaking plastic housings for the top panel,


Sunroof assembly

Corroded lines

As you can see the grease everywhere, it was horrible.

I have had my eye on the manual sunroof assembly in the parts car and so it was time to take that out and inspect it, it was in near mint condition literally.


Then it was time for the sunroof interior panel. Hmm mint panel….

Love the rust:



Looked in the parts car again, and again the parts car doesn’t fail me, near perfect sunroof despite the hole, but I will be replacing the cloth anyways. No rust and in mint condition as well.

[truekid]

It got dark on the first night and I moved on inside, sucks with no garage or storage space


After I got done cleaning the basement and I looked for things to do, inside
Time to work on the interior,

Guess what they are for, Wow they worked like a charm. I used 3M 90.


Then I took all the carpets off the misc stuff around the basement:


As you can see I have major bubbles. All gone.

Then it was my rear deck. And it was faded :


I tried to repair my driver seat, the frame was cracked in half. I tried some home depot brackets:


I might just buy another seat, it works for now and holds the time.
I gave some attention to the speedometer and I decided to check everything so I took it all. Mine was shot completely . The main board was rusted and the si board had battery acid on it.
So I took my parts car speedometer and used that.
My board:

Parts board:


I swapped out the speedometer because the parts car read 230k and Mine read the actually mileage of the car at 173k. So I used that.

[truekid]

The next day it was time to do something about the engine bay. Greasy, dirty, leaves webs, and even feathers and old tools left behind.





TO THIS!!!!!


I caught this bastard. I am sorry for killing it this way, but I can’t stand rats or mice. I am a rodent phobic. The neighbors behind me leave their trash out, and uncovered and now these things are running around everywhere. So far I have caught 16, big ones. I also told the neighbors to please work with me and get their population down, if they enter the house it’s going to be terrifying.

Anyway back to topic:



There will be a better shot of the engine bay. It’s a lot cleaner, but it was really dark out.
So far I have had about $1300 in it including both cars and parts.
I have done…
Timing belt,
Distributor cap and rotor
New plugs
New water pump
New belts
New tensioner
Tranny fluid with Redline
Diff fluid with RP
Rebuilt shifter
P/S fluid ( atf)
New guibo
Cleaned ICV
I’m waiting on my suede fabric for the headliner and a lot of other things.
Do you guys recommend covering the headliner, cracked with a carpet?

Also the PO told me the engine was swapped with another M20 with 80 k on it. He gave me a paper of a receipt of the motor from Bavarian auto recycling in ca. Do you think they would be able to confirm the motor mileage if I talked to them. The motor runs flawlessly. No problem at all. Oil cleans no hesitation. I just wanted to know.

[SeriousBusiness]

Good work so far man keep it up. Nice job on that mouse too LOL.

The only thing I'm concerned about is your method of suspending your car above the ground. Those ramps in the rear would make me terribly uncomfortable with stands in the front. I have seen those stands topple before and it doesn't really take much, so please be careful.

BTW, if the engine runs as good as you say and doesn't have any probs, I wouldn't even worry about verifying the mileage. Its only a number, afterall. My 140k M20 is on its last legs and that is not really considered high mileage for a 22yr old car. I'd just be happy you have a strong engine! If you want some REAL numbers then do a compression test and leakdown test on it. Will tell you pretty much exactly what shape the engine is in.