My first e30, finally. Latest Update: The Restoration Begins

[Ray Smoodiver]

This thread reads like a e30 noobie 101 course, it should be mandatory reading!

Well done mate, keep up the good work, you've got an E30 that's more sorted than half the cars on here I suspect.

[Click]

More long overdue updating.

CV boots were torn and I needed to replace them before rallycross got into full swing (this was done in May, boy am I slacker)

First thing is to remove any center caps on the rear wheels. Car should still be on the ground when doing the initial loosening of the axle nuts.



Then you use a specialty tool to get the axle lock plate out. Mine is a run of the mill flathead with a chisel tip ground on. A baby sledge is the perfect companion for the specialty tool.







Beat specialty tool into the three slots and then move the tool between the slots and continue beating.



And pull it out.



Loosen and remove axle nuts. Spray some PB blaster in the splines to help loosen things up while you work on the inner CV joints.



Clean up around the diff output flanges.





Remove allen bolts on output flanges. Extensions are handy.





Remove the rear section of the exhaust so the half shaft wont run unto the output flange when you push it out.

Remove rear shock so outer CV joint doesn't get wedged into it.



Mount axle pusher tool to hub and push out axle.



Proceed to run out of axle pusher travel.



Give also pusher some viagra (aka 11mm deep dish socket) and finish pushing axle out.



Place half shaft on a nice clean surface.



Admire shoddy grocery bag/gorilla tape fix.



Remove shoddy fix.



Bend inner clamp back and snip with dykes.



Remove clamp.



Snip outer clamp and remove.



Start cutting the boot with a razor knife.



And switch to some man shears before you slice off a finger or three.





And remove boot.



Use specialty tool to pop off inner CV joint plate.





Death



Remove inner cv boot as previously described.



Clean away grease from inner CV joint.





Remove circlip.



Using a punch, gently tap the inner section of the CV to remove.



Progress



And off.





Use specialty tool to remove the boot plate from inner CV joint.







Clean inner CV joint. I used brakleen.





Clean outer CV joint. It doesn't come off the half shaft so you just gotta do the best you can. Brakleen and compressed air work well. Brakleen and compressed air also work well in scattering grease everywhere in a 10 foot radius. You have been warned.



Slide outer CV boot onto the shaft.



Couple taps with a 27mm socket help get it on.








I used OE BMW boot kits from a dealer. GKN grease was supplied.



Pack outer CV joint. Any extra can go in the boot.



Supplied clamps and sealant. Don't know why two of the small clamps were included.



Spreading the sealant.



And on.



Put the large clamp on. Make sure to get it in the tightest slot before crimping.



These CV boot clamps are one time use Oetiker clamps. The final tightening is done by crimping this tab together.



The proper Oetiker clamp tool is made by Knipex in Germany. I bought an Oetiker clamp assortment awhile back which came with the tool. You could probably get away with a set of dykes or tile nippers.





Crimping away.



Technically you're not supposed to crimp them to the point where the sides are touching. I got a little carried away, but it'll be fine.



Repeat for small clamp.





Now to the inner side.

Contents of an inner OE BMW boot set.



Clean the spines.





Slide small clamp on.



Slide boot on. Again a few taps with a socket helps get it on.





Slide inner CV joint onto half shaft.



Few taps with the socket drive completely home.





Put new circlip on.



Grease it up.



Two of the allen bolts work great to make sure the new plates are all lined up.





Applying sealant.



This is the best method I could figure out to get the boot plate onto the CV joint. Sit the boot plate on the vise and tap on the top of the CV joint with a hammer to seat it.



Sealing cover plate and installing.







Crimp the clamps and you're good to go.

Make sure the stagger the clamps for optimum half shaft balance. Because racecar. :pimp:



And there you have one rebooted half shaft.



One last thing to do before install. Cleaning of the flange splines.

I used brakleen to get the grease and gunk out and a very small flathead screwdriver to trace the spines. This removed the trace amount of surface use that had formed in the splines.





To protect the splines some anti-sieze was applied. As an added bonus this will also act as lube and making installing them easier.





Using a punch on the outer CV joint made installation rather painless.





Can double check the depth by looking at the ABS ring.



Everything bolted back up.



Once the car is off the jack stands and on the ground the axle nuts can be tightened.



Fresh lock plate.



Used a hammer in conjuction with the socket to "set" the new lock plate.



Now I'm set for another 25 years. One can only hope that they'll be new boot kits to buy in 2039.

Until next time...

[TroyShark]

Awesome thread. Keep it up. I work in Reading

[matias9]

its a great thread, reading the good's and bad things , how do you do everything by your self , descriptive all the steps and tools used .
i have the same problem with the air duct , but when i detected was late , has gone and the fender interior broke .

[our guile]

Just read through the entire thread...

You've done amazing work on your car, brother

[Click]

Should probably update this.

So I went to visit my best buddy who's going to med school in Philly the one weekend. Packed up eturdy and drove down. Parked in the garage and went to get my duffle bag out of the trunk and bam, they key wouldn't turn. My lock was acting a bit weird for awhile before this and the lock cylinder finally gave out. Now 2/3 locks have failed on this car. Luckily I keep a 10mm hazet wrench in my glove box and I had a knife on me so I ended up removing the rear seat (which I had never done before so I spent some time googling to figure out how to do that, Bentley was locked in my trunk) cutting into the trunk to pull my bag out. I'll let the pictures tell the story.




What an awful gaping vagina of hell.



Once I got home I was tasked with the even trickier job of getting the trunk open with a latch broken in the locked position. The only way I was able to open it was with this homebrew special. It took a long time to unscrew the two catch bolts from the ski pass and it was awkward and the sheetmetal was cutting into me and just bullshit.



Spending all that time in the back seat gives you a different angle on the interior though, and damn the e30 has a sexy interior.



Saw this while doing an oil change.



Leaky powersteering hose/reservoir is on the ever long to do list.

Put new one in. Part # is 12-51-1-714-039 (12511714039) for those interested.



Picked up one of the fabled MarkD chips. This one is the 7K redline/93 octane flavor.



Got a nice set of rebuilt Gen III 19 pound injectors to go with it.



First orders first, remove valve cover and crimp fuel lines going to the fuel rail. Remove fuel lines and label them so they don't get mixed up.



Unbolt the fuel rail bolts and jiggle the whole assembly out.



Shit was nasty.



Remove old.



Install new. A little engine oil on the orings helps with assembly and sealing.



Reinstall fuel rail. Should have repainted it but I didn't have all day to wait for paint to dry.



Attacking the infamous 173 for chip install.



I used a of thin screwdriver to start the bend in the tabs and then used pliars to finish the bend straight up.



80s engine management in all its glory.



This is the chip on interest. I like how Bosch put their logo on the chip retaining clip.



Remove that clip ever so daintily.

.

And remove the chip even daintilier. I used a tiny flathead between the chip and the black plastic socket.



Install the chip, be extremely careful to line up all the pins in all the holes before you push, it does go in very snugly. Make sure to line up the little notch in the chip to the notch in the socket.





Put retaining clip back on followed by the cover and bending the tabs back in place. Reinstall the dme in the car and you're ready to go.



Then this is when the trouble started. I decided to adjust my valves since I had the cover off. This was like 8 months ago and I sucked at adjusting valves back then. I just adjusted them once with the right feeler gauge and thought that was good (After practicing on the m30 after this event I've started the practice of testing it with feeler gauges +/- 0.001" after the initial adjustment to establish a go/no go policy, using this technique the valves are near silent at idle, I seriously impressed people with their quietness). After doing all 12 I started it up and there were still a couple noisy ones. My solution was to listen to it while it ran and see if I could tell which one was making the noise.



This system worked well for a couple rockers, then I forget to remove the socket wrench from the crank nut before I started the engine. It only took a second of awful noises and fan blade pieces flying to realize what I had done.

Damage was fairly extensive. Fan blade destroyed, fan shroud destroyed, waterpump pulley/shaft pulled right off the impeller and out of the pump housing.



The impeller is quite pretty and is now a keepsake I keep on my desk to remind myself of my asshatedry. I'm not sure if the crack was from this event or a defect.



In any case a few boxes came from blunt a day or two later.



I replaced my rad with a Nissens unit and I replaced my fan clutch as well. The clutch had to be hacked to recover my pulley. Something was up with my cooling system as well which is why I replaced my rad. My coolant temp would vary from a bit below 1/2 to halfway between 1/2 and 3/4 depending on throttle and moving/sitting. After replacing these items my temp doesn't vary anymore.

I can attest 1st hand how good german steel is...



This sight yet again...



Buttoned everything back together and experiencing the joy that is bleeding the m20...



Took it for an Italian tune up. Pretty legit to see the throttle move while driving...



She passed with flying colors.



The thing that really sucked about blowing up the front of the motor was not being able to drive the car right away after swapping the injectors and chip in. I lost that "This is much faster/better etc" opportunity since I had to drive my parents slow rav4 for a few days so I was unable to make that direct before/after comparison. But anyways she runs like a raped ape in any case now.

Another thing came in the mail.



The garagistic gears worked for about 150 miles or so and then worked intermittently (maybe 5% of the time). Like the old saying goes, you get what you pay for. I'd rather pay $100 for something that works than $15 for something that doesn't. The garagistic guys sent me another set or two for free as replacements but they didn't work either so I'll say one thing, their customer service is A++.

The odometergears.com gears are clearly a few steps above. They didn't have any of the casting defects the garagistic gears have and overall finish was much nicer. Garagistic gears are on top in the below pic.



You can see that odometergears.com goes with spacer cast into the gear itself (cause of the shadow below it) instead of the separate yellow plastic straw/tube pieces that garagistic uses. You can also see that the odometergears.com gears mesh much better as well.



I have almost 10,000 miles on these gears and they haven't skipped a beat. I've also started tracking my fuel economy (see sig) and as of now I've averaged 22.3 mpg with the markD chip and injectors which I would say is pretty good considering all the beating and hooning she sees. A recent trip upstate which I would guesstimate to have been about 85-90% highway miles returned a fuel economy of 29 mpg, pretty damn good I think.

Shortly after the valve adjustment fiasco I replaced the disintegrating vacuum hose.





Also picked up one of these to try my hand at detailing and see if I could bring my paint back.



I tested the hood out, you can see the paint has seen better days.





I placed a piece of tape down and polished over it, can definitely see a difference.



The funny thing is after a few days, the area where the tape was covering now looks better than the area that was polished. I really should take a picture of that. But anyways I was working on my hood and everything was all groovy until I lifted and my disc shot 20 yards away.



So things I've learned about detailing.
1. I need a polishing compound that cuts much faster
2. Don't lift


I have a lot more updates to post yet.... Just need to find the time.

[Click]

Here's some pics from last june or may that somehow were lost among my 8 Tb of hard drives until recently.

Side-view mirrors were pretty beat and faded so they were cleaned up.

















Came out pretty nice. Used Duplicolor trim paint.





Shortly after I put the Arc-8s on I noticed I was having serious front fender liner wear where the brake ducts are.



I noiced that there is a ton of play in the brake ducting as well





So I picked up some small sheet metal screws and tightened everything up.





Only thing is that a little screw sticks up in the duct.



Now the tires only rub when making tight turns when parking. I can deal with that.

How she sat at the beginning of last summer. Nice 4x4 meat stance.



I have a huge update to post in the next few days. :D

[Click]

epic thread and epic pics/posts!!!
THREAD OF THE YEAR!!!
Seriously lets all pitch in some coin and help this man make a manual for the e30 that will put the Bentley (25 pics in whole book *take this bolt off that is adjacent to the last bolt behind that thing) to shame.
Love the thread man! Great work and very inspiring, feel like i'm wrenching at home while on the laptop!

Thanks a lot. Some of my posts are step by step but some aren't so I don't think I could make a book of it. I do have a huge post about replacing CV boots that is a walk through but I just need to find the time to write everything up.

Really nice stuff man.

Btw, your gauges weren't getting good ground beforehand because your adapter plate, where your senders plug in, is anodized blue. It's a common problem with those sandwich adapter plates. Get the bare ones next time around or for a friend ;)

Yeah I figured it was the anodization and thought about grinding some away but there is also a rubber seal between the adapter and the oil filter housing so even then I wasn't sure if it would make a good contact (and that gets oily as hell as well) so that's why I went with the separate ground wire.

Love everything about this! What camera/lens do did you take these pics with?

A mix of Canon Rebel XSi with kit lens or thrifty 50, and iPhone 4S.

[marv]

Love everything about this! What camera/lens do did you take these pics with?

[ak-]

Really nice stuff man.

Btw, your gauges weren't getting good ground beforehand because your adapter plate, where your senders plug in, is anodized blue. It's a common problem with those sandwich adapter plates. Get the bare ones next time around or for a friend ;)

[worangejuice]

epic thread and epic pics/posts!!!
THREAD OF THE YEAR!!!
Seriously lets all pitch in some coin and help this man make a manual for the e30 that will put the Bentley (25 pics in whole book *take this bolt off that is adjacent to the last bolt behind that thing) to shame.
Love the thread man! Great work and very inspiring, feel like i'm wrenching at home while on the laptop!

[Click]

Long Overdue Update

Got a new tool box and covered it up with the german/bmw stickers.




Picked up the holy grail of shifters, the UUC EVO3 w/ DSSR.



On to the install.



Take the shifter apart from the inside.



Don't forget to unplug the reverse light plug.



Remove exhaust. Note that golden West Virginian mud on it from RallyX.



If you've never removed your exhuast before I highly recommend getting replacement nuts. More than likely they are near welded on and will get mangled on the way out. I had a couple round on me.



How do you remove rounded nuts you may ask. Nut removers, thats how. They bite into whats left of the nut and work quite well. Mine is a metric Irwin/Hansen Set.





Next remove the under-cladding, trans support and driveshaft. You'll be left with this view. Note the trashed CAB.



Pop off the clips holding the selector shaft and remove that. Then undo the infamous bitch clip. If I recall correctly I used a tiny (idk maybe 1/4") craftsman flathead screwdriver, the real long one, it think its about 18" long and pried up the side of the clip. Also remove the rear carrier piece.

Admire gauges from underneath car.



Once you get the carrier out you need to make some modifications for all the screws to fit for the UUC insert.







Then screw that bish in with the supplied screws and loctite.





Make sure its level.



Reinstall the carrier using a new bitch clip and rear bushing.



Grease EVO3's balls (actually only one) and install it with the spring/spring plate.



Push everything down and circlip it in.



Shifter carrier is good to go. Now since I'm using the DSSR you have to have the late style selector rod joint. My car was equipped with the early style joint which is longer the the later model.

Early.



Late.



I have that 260/6 from an e34 for my upcoming m30 swap which happens to have the late style joint that I cannibalized.

Slightly expand the piece of spring steel that covers the selector joint pin and slide it back.



Tap the pin out with a drift pin punch. They look like this.



Clean up the rod joint, mine had nasties in it.






Put the new sponge washer in there (helps reduce play).





Swap rod joints on the e30. Install the DSSR. Installing it is really a bitch since the pins are such a perfect fit. I used all the the plastic washers for minimum play.



I replaced my guibo while I was in there. Old one was was looking pretty beat. I replaced it with a German Lemforeder unit. You also want to check the status of the center support bearing (CSB), I had a new one on hand but did not replace it since I was running out of time and the rubber and bearing was fine on the old one.





Reinstall the rubber boot. I put a new one in since the old one was beat.



You have to fit the connector through that tiny anus of a hole. I lubed it with some spit to push it through.



PUSH!



ALMOST THERE!



Then it popped through. Finish installing the rubber boot then plug in the connector, put the leather shift boot and knob and the shfiter is done! (And I forgot to take a pic of the finished product lol). I did top it off with a ZHP know however.



Now I'll save you some hassle. Nowhere in the UUC manual does it say to remove the vibration dampener from the driveshaft but you must! I drove with it on for a week or two and it rubs the DSSR in 2nd and other gears if you rest your hand on it.

Here is the damage it did.



So to remove the vibration dampener you need to hammer out the bolts holding it on. they are splined and come out easy with some hammering (with the nuts on so you don't damage the bolt threads)



Once you take the dampener off, hammer the splined bolts back into the driveshaft flange and reinstall the driveshaft. Make sure the arrows of the guibo point towards a flange. Bentley recommends using new lock nuts for the driveshaft nuts. I used new ones when I installed the shifter but didn't bother using new ones when I took the dampener off.



Button everything up and you're good to go. BTW the EVO3 and DSSR is a spectacular shifter. They were a bit pricey (although I bought mine around the 4th of july and got 17.76% off) but it's a joy to shift every single time.

Next thing I did was get a set of BMW Motorsport handles.



Remove them old jons. They're held on with two screws underneath.



You have to remove the little rubber bumpers from the old handles to the new. I used a pair of pliers and a screw driver to remove them.



I cleaned the surface of the motorsport handles with some acetone then apllied contact cement to both handle and rubber bumper and allowed it to set for a few minutes before joining them together.



Install the door handles and then you're done!



Some more parts came in.



Zimmerman cross drilled rear rotors. Ate parking brake shoes and hardware. Bosch plugs and O2 sensor. Bremi cap, rotor, and wires. Brake pad sensors. Assorted Lubromoly/liquimoly products and Elring sealants. Coolant cap. Lemforder control arms, CABs, and sway bar links. and some various suspension related hardware.

I have installed the brakes and cap/rotor/plugs but not any of the suspension stuff yet. Soon.

On to the brakes.

Set screw is hammered. PB Blaster it is. (Got new set screws to replace them).



Remove caliper while it soaks. Then remove screw.



Remove rotor.



I've misplaced the photo but my passenger side brake shoes were mostly worn away, unlike the driver side ones above.

Parking brake goodies.



Installed. The shoes have a large notch and a small notch. Make sure the large notch goes up top where the adjuster is, this mix up cause me atleast and hour of grief and confusion.



New pads and old vs new.



Brake Rotor + Caliper = On



I did a compression test on the m30 and it was pretty awful 125, 80, 60, 120, 118, 100. So I popped off the head and you can still see cross hatching in the bores so it must be bad rings?



IDK about the m30 but its not getting rebuilt and swapped in until I have my own place and garage. The m20 is quite strong however so no worries there.



One of the last things I did before winter hit was swap in a set of sports.









Nasty.







It need more but I ran out of cleaner. It still looks much better than before.

Old and new.



And hydrogen peroxide would be an ingredient in oxy magic .



And lastly a few shots from winter.

[Click]

Rally cross is stupid fun here are pics. Shout out to eric for the photography and good panning.











Also 3 wheel club!

[Nsquared97]

Those gauges look fantastic, nice work!

[irish44j]

I know but NO haha. 90% sure im going to take it to a rallycross in september and 4x4 stance is required. I almost got a set of gcs but those will have to wait after I get the m30 in and paint on.

4x4 stance is a plus, but plenty of stock or even *mildly* lowered cars can do ok if you drive carefully. Sitting taller lets you drive more aggressive.

hope to see you out there :)