'88 Cirrus M30B35 sedan

[glnr13]

Solid

[lukeADE335i]

The e92 has developed an intermittent EGR sensor fault, so while waiting for a new EGR valve to ship from Schmiedmann (of course BMW would integrate the sensor into the valve!), I’ve been enjoying driving the e30 as a daily again for a few days!



Also am about to embark on some car R&R over the holiday break, so I’m going to tackle rust repairs in the engine bay on the project car - the initial job will be to repair some surface chassis and firewall rust around the battery tray area + cut out and replace the battery tray. Already have the panel from Valcas Garage. I’ll strip out the 4 cylinder L-Jet wiring and clean up the engine bay removing all unnecessary brackets etc. while I’m at it.



I’ve also been looking at the Alpina Register for some inspiration there and found a B6 in Bahama Beige. Quite like it, so may go for this kind of look (will save on a full respray of the car + I quite like the Renown car that’s the same colour too). My wife still hates the colour, so although the Bahama Beige has grown on me somewhat I may still end up with a colour change seeing as it’s currently already stripped.

[mjweimer]

Love Bahama beige. It's an uncommon color that seems to work well with the chrome accents of the early bumpers and window surrounds. Have never seen an E30 Alpina in that shade....just stunning.

[lukeADE335i]

No progress no the coupe project unfortunately, been sidetracked by house / garden renovation projects now that we’re heading into Autumn down here and the weather is a bit cooler.

I did take the sedan out for a drive today though. Lots of fun getting the e30 out as always. Beautiful Autumn day!

[lukeADE335i]

Obligatory swap birthday post! The sedan has now hit 10 years swapped & I’ve owned it for 14 years.

The M30 is still going strong as ever and the Getrag 240 is still hanging in there after a decade and showing few ill effects.

My temporary gearbox solution has ended up lasting a long time now!

[moatilliatta]

Really enjoy seeing the sedan still and catching some updates. I love seeing good cars stick around for years.

Is the trunk loaded up?

On the coupe, depends on what your going to do you could cut the battery tray out and move battery to the trunk.

[lukeADE335i]

Thanks - yes, the trunk is loaded up in the pic - it’s filled with coupe bits including a set of fixed rear windows.

I do intend to relocate the battery to the trunk, but in the sedan the coil is mounted on the battery tray, so I’ll most likely still replace the tray.

[E30Eric]

My 88 Cirrus E30. Just an M20 2.7 with Schrick 288° on megasquirt extra beta 3.0 and wasted spark triple GM MSD coils. I will put a twin turbo LS6 in before the end of the year. Shooting for a little over 1K rwhp. Going to have to tub the rears out... Designing a new drive shaft for the T56 now.. #prayforukraine

[lukeADE335i]

The clutch in my wife’s Hyundai decided to die, so she’s taken on driving the e92 for a bit and I’m back to dallying the e30 while we get her clutch replaced. The Hyundai clutch replacement is definitely not a job I can be bothered doing! We had both cars out and about today, so it felt weird driving around following my usual daily!



Seeing as I’ll be in my e30 for a while, I did a quick bit of car R&R today. My Recaros have always sat lower than I’d ultimately like. The lowered car + very low seating position makes getting in and out a chore and my wife really struggles to drive the e30 as she’s shorter than me and finds the seats way too low. She used to really like driving it until I fitted the Recaros. I put together some risers to lift the seats by 30mm to see if that would give me a seating position I was happy with. I made them using some Square washers, 30mm M10 bolt couplers and new high tensile bolts. This has resulted in a seating position I’m really happy with! Roughly a middling position with the height adjustable e30 sport seats. A pic is below, note that the car desperately needs a vaccuum! I haven’t painted them yet, but you can’t see them from inside the car when the seats are in their normal positions anyway.



Also happy to report that the Aardvark Racing straps I used to refurbish the Recaros are holding up well.

[lukeADE335i]

Finally a bit of coupe progress...

I’ve been hunting ever since I picked up the coupe for an interior for it as it’s a rolling shell - I have the door and side panels, but no seats and the carpet needs to be replaced. The prices for coupe interiors (especially with sport seats) down here have gone nuts, with good condition front and rear seats around $4k, with fully reupholstered interiors asking $7k if you can find them. I’ve been holding off on the bodywork until I can find something a bit more affordable for the interior because I don’t want the build to get too out of hand for cost. I’d been thinking if I could find a reasonably priced rear seat + Recaros, it would work, but then started looking at other alternatives. A late e82 interior popped up on eBay with under 50,000 miles on it, and I thought I’d roll the dice on it maybe somehow fitting & the price was a steal. The seats are very similar to my e92 with Dakota leather and blue stitching but they are a fully manual seat rather than electric - maybe I’ll paint the coupe space grey now so they’re twins :D

Anyway - seems the shipping crisis here is over, they arrived at my door in under 24 hours from 800km away.


The base cushion of the back seat is remarkably close to the e30 coupe seat base for both width and depth:


The backrest is too tall, but the width is good, so a quick bit of juggling of parts showed that if I remove the section of the seat base with the iso-mounts + trim the side trim pieces I should end up with a backrest at the right height for the e30 + the lines in the upholstery should end up even etc. Alternatively I could trim down the backrest and keep the isomounts, but either way the dimensions are close and it can be relatively easily be made to fit.


The front seats are slightly tall, but no bulkier than Recaro Classic C seats that were an option on e30s (and I knew they’d fit seeing as the e92 seats have already been used by other R3v members). Plenty of room with them, vision is good over the shoulder and the flip and slide access for the back will be much easier for the kids than the stock sport seats.



With black door trims and side panels + new black carpet it should end up looking good. I know they won’t be to everyone’s taste, but the interior will end up looking quite similar to a vert.

[Tzantushka]

Nice!
a modern twist on M3 or vert seats!

[lukeADE335i]

Being a public holiday today (Anzac Day), I paid respect to our veterans this morning, then decided to get into modding the rear seat for the coupe this afternoon. I pulled the back seat out of the sedan as a test bed to make it easy to access and move the seat in and out.

After sitting pieces in there and moving them around, I decided to trim 110mm from the backrest, leaving the base of the seat stock - as suspected, this lined up with the line in the upholstery, which meant there were steel reinforcing rods in the foam and leather seam there, which made measuring and cutting easier & I ended up with a strong seam on the new bottom edge of the backrest.

Measure twice cut once :D


The leather and foam come off the metal supporting plate easily, they have a plastic strip on the edge of the leather that fits into a groove in the backing plate so it can just pop out. Then I peeled back the leather and foam and carpet so that I could cut the metal backing plate. I could see from the spot welds in the plate that there was reinforcement just above where I was cutting, so the structure of the backing plate wasn’t compromised by removing the bottom section of it.


The foam and covers fitted back together easily, and for now I didn’t cut the leather - you can see how much has been removed from the seat below. I also cut the latches for the foldable seat off so that it could sit on the e30 seat mounts.


I’ve still got plenty of leather to play with for final fitment as I adjust things further. I just folded it over and velcro’d it to the back of the seat for now.


... and the front side.


.. and in the car. The leather still needs a bit more stretching at the bottom of the backrest to tighten it up, but it’s coming together well. I’m going to use the frame of an old e30 seat back I’ve got to make up the brackets and mount to the back of the seat to make sure it stays fully aligned. Fortunately the cutouts for the e82 seat back latches line up perfectly with the mounts on the e30, so I should be able to adapt the frame quite easily, and I’ll also adapt e30 front mounts for the seat base to the e82 seat.

[lukeADE335i]

I had a bit of time this afternoon to do some more work on the coupe. I put the seat project aside for now and decided to tackle the only bad bit of rust in the car - the battery tray.



The spot welds drilled out easily, and then on to cutting out the tray. I found a combination of chisel and tin snips worked best to get it out after the angle grinder got old fast in the confined space. Thankfully, the rust hadn’t eaten into the lower part of the joint, and the rust beneath the battery tray is just a bit of surface rust. The metal is still solid and the rust is sanding off easily. Tomorrow’s job will be prepping the new battery tray and I’ll glue it in with panel adhesive + rivets for redundancy. Once the seam sealer is on + paint no one will know the difference & it will be just as strong as before.

Spot welds out


Battery tray out.

[lukeADE335i]

... and fixed! Cleaned up the remaining rust on the firewall and followed this with some cold galv and then sealed with epoxy primer. The Vulcas garage repair panel worked well, and I bonded it in with panel adhesive. The panel adhesive is very strong stuff, and pretty nasty to work with, but has given a solid result.

[Tzantushka]

Good outcome.
Arguably, panel adhesive is a perfect solution for a non-structural panel like this.