Styleprojekt's 89 Lachssilber Coupe Build Thread

[Styleprojekt]

Well its been quite a while since i posted and since this project has already gone beyond what I had originally planned it to be, i guess this will turn into one these cliche "build" or project threads...that will probably never end, never be fully complete.

A little recap of the last months & months...

I wanted to reseal the M20 engine since it was leaking some oil here and there. After a nice little noob move of getting the head cleaned and forgetting to lube everything back up...the head seized, timing belt lost some teeth and well...this turned into a M50 swap project.

This was a couple months ago:

[Styleprojekt]

Alright so then I said meh, while im at it, lets start shaving the engine bay a little:




Began cleaning up the M50 a little:


More dumb purple accents



Oh and surprise, I didnt sell my A4 as planned...




This is how it sat at Wuste this year




(I got rid of the airride since then)


Anyways, you guys dont care for Audis, you want BMW content.
Trial run of what some bedliner engine bay would look like:


Picked up some goodies here and there which will find their way onto the car eventually





And then I decided its time to just paint the whole freaking car while im at it, so the teardown began:


All the rust got fixed, panels straightened out, dents removed etc



Antenna shaved, not sure yet what im gonna do about radio reception ill figure that out later...i love improv


Here the finished "shaved" bay for now:



And last but not least, she is painted:


Ill get some legit pics of the finished paint job when the car has been cut and buffed, the bumper and valence painted etc

[Styleprojekt]

Last little update since im dumping pics like mad, looking at maybe buying this white 89 325is coupe...dont know why, but just cause:


(im not the dude giving the thumbs up)

[N2MYE30]

That paint looks really nice. But I really like your garage space!

[Styleprojekt]

After the paintjob the reassembly started which turned out to be insanely painful process since pieces had gone lost and were damaged...The issue was that I left for Europe and came back 3 months later. The car was just sitting at my friends shop and boxes were constantly being moved all over the place. The reason for my trip was my Grandfather fell sick and I made the decision to give up steady and well paid job to go spend the potentially the last 3 months ever with him. Since we moved to the US when I was 13, I have only been able to see him a couple weeks a year for the past 14 years. It turned out to be the best decision I ever made because he passed away shortly after I got back to the US.


When I returned I couldn't find jack shit in the few boxes that were scattered throughout the shop, home, storage and where the hell else...another major issue was that we moved right when we returned from Europe so I had lost track of where many parts ended up.

First I had to get the car home and prepare it to be stored for a couple months while we moved into the new home:






While the car was stored away I continued working here an there on the M50...I started losing serious faith in the engine because here we had the same story, couldn't find parts, kept having to order parts one after another when I noticed they were missing...just a royal pain the ass. Again, my fault, should have never bought an engine torn apart and packed up in different boxes haha I don't know what I was thinking.

Here is the shitty G260 which I bought at the time I bought my E30 to do the manual swap. Despite the guy on R3v telling me its rattle free, it has horrible rattle but I couldn't do anything about it because between when I bought and actually used it close to 2 years passed.


After mating to engine



Once we were all moved into the house, I started dropping the engine in:






And shes in.

[Styleprojekt]

I continued working on the engine bay and getting everything hooked up, tucking/extending the accessories harness and making it look all nice (ran it through the fender)




Had the valve cover and Oil Filter housing cover powdercoated in wrinkle red



lights etc work


Here is my good friend Matt helping me pin the Harness connector



Whole front end re-assembled



So once everything was hooked up, the car started after a couple of attempts...but it ran like shit. The car would randomly die, randomly run fine, randomly misfire and idle like crap...right away I thought fueling. Well, I had good fuel pressure, constant power at the Fuel pump, no problems...so not fuel? Checked every damn sensor, wire connection, bought a different harness...could not figure it out for the life of me. I started to believe the engine may be bad. So back to the shop the card went:






First order of business, compression test, turns out two cylinders had shitty compression but not necessarily bad enough to cause such crap driving conditions


At this point even my mechanic friend could not figure it out either (granted he was only working on it here and there between his regular work).


I will post the rest of the 2013 year tomorrow.
Cheers for now

[e30austin]

This gives me some inspiration to finish my lachs at some point eventually.

[dirtbag30]

Anyways, you guys dont care for Audis, you want BMW content

usually not into audis, but yours is killing it.

and your e30's progress is great too.

[Styleprojekt]

Alright gentlemen so at this point we are looking at spring 2013, and I am just fed up with the M50 issues I am having. I have replaced everything on the engine and still get random idle issues, no start issues etc.

I was craving a little bit of E30 driving so I picked up a very clean 89 325ic.
The car ran like a dream, didn't have the common M20 ticking and I couldn't be happier with the car...except for that it was automatic.
Here it is the day that I bought it:


I had some spare suspension laying around (Bilstein Sports + H&R Springs) and threw those on just to have a little better handling.
I sold the XXR wheels shortly after and bought some RS type looking wheels to replace them. They suited the look of the vehicle better IMO.





here are more pictures of the car, just an amazingly clean vehicle.







I drove the Vert for most of 2013 until winter hit, and even daily drove the vehicle all through winter despite Utah Winters. (I think this picture was taking in November)



The Coupe was just stored for the year and I didn't bother touching it anymore. Until the beginning of 2014 when I finally had enough of the M50 bullshit and pulled the motor back out and threw in a M20 I got from a E30 that I parted out. And to my surprise...the freaking car wouldn't start, stay running and was unreliable just like the M50 was ! WTH!

So I grabbed the fuel pump out of the parts car and installed it in my coupe and tadaaaa...the car runs perfect. :hitler: I wasted over a year messing around and couldn't figure out an intermittent fuel pump problem. Oh well, could be worse :letitout:




Since the Coupe now ran, I sold the vert and started driving the Coupe. The coupe had countless problems though that I had to sort out and the random
M20 I picked up needed some maintenance.

I sold the wheels with the vert so the Coupe was back on bottle caps for the time being:




Spring of 2014, car is being daily driven. I bought again some random wheels someone locally was selling, they are 16x9 and don't look too terrible
To celebrate my Coupe being able to move reliably under its own power, I purchase some parts for it: Coils and some oil pan armor




I am skipping a ton of things at this point but one major improvement IMO was red tails:




I have a couple more details to add before we are all caught up...stay tuned

[Yogawrench]

L b


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[e30austin]

You had me until I saw the black rear valance :(

[Styleprojekt]

Couple of pictures that were taken the day, hanging out with a good friend of mine.

[jeenyus]

One hell of a journey. Car is great as expected.

[spiDmang]

Very clean car! And a cool/fun story behind it!

[Styleprojekt]

Here is the video related to the pictures posted above. For some reason I am having a hard time embedding the video in here:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqPM4pkwUuE