'88 Cirrus M30B35 sedan

[lukeADE335i]

Thanks - it saved on stripping out the interior in order to weld it, so given it is a non-structural panel I thought it was worth a shot. Seems to be just as strong as before and all the seams are well sealed so it shouldn’t rust again.

[lukeADE335i]

Onwards with the next part of prepping for paint with the coupe - received an M-Tech 1 kit from Mr Bodykits today

The order was well packaged and the kit looks to be good quality. As advertised it is very similar ABS material to modern bumper bars.





The glass fogs are “Satuga” H3s - I have genuine Hellas in the shed, so will be interesting to see whether it is possible to fit them or the original blanking plates with the kit.



... and finally, there’s a large made in Taiwan on the rear wing, so I’d presume the Mr Bodykits are the same ones Garagistic is now selling.



Will be interesting to see how it fits up in a while.

[Northern]

I've been wondering if the garagistic/catuned are the same as well. The timing is awfully suspicious at least.

[lukeADE335i]

Hi all

Took the e30 on a road trip due to the e92 getting a puncture, and then having to order in tyres as no one had runflats in stock in my area. I really wish the e92 had a spare wheel well so that I could ditch the runflats, but all will be fixed on Wednesday when the new tyres come in.

The e30 performed extremely well, and the Recaros are more comfortable on a long trip than I had given them credit for! I snapped a couple of pics at Lake Bonney, on the Murray River. After the trip, I have to admit I miss the fun of using it as a daily drive.

[lukeADE335i]

Following driving the e30 for a couple of weeks, the internal seals in the clutch master cylinder failed - it would slowly lose pressure with the clutch pedal in any position other than fully out.

I managed to change out both the master and slave today and it is good as new. The clutch pedal had been getting low sitting in traffic in hot weather, so it’s likely the master has been on its way out for a while.

Changing them over is one of those ‘easy’ but tedious jobs on the e30 due various impossible to get at bolts. It does make me appreciate modern design - the Hyundai master cylinder I did in my wife’s car was extremely simple. Remove the pin from the pedal under the dash, remove the hard line in the engine bay and soft line to the remote reservoir (both have quick fit fittings) and then turn the master cylinder 90 degrees to release it from the firewall and pull it out. Installation reverse of removal, and you’re done in 10 minutes.

[lukeADE335i]

I headed out to the BMW drivers club SA annual picnic over the weekend at Birdwood Mill motor museum. Was a good day out, and the car scrubbed up pretty well. The 80s/90s section of the show n' shine was won by an immaculate manual e34 540i. Some interesting cars, including a South African e23 745i with M88 engine & I had to grab a pic of the green e21 323i as it's just like the one I had right before the e30 (15 years ago!), although probably a bit neater than mine was!

[mnmnmmm_]

Since I did my swap, I've had one niggling issue the last 4 years, which I decided to finally sort this weekend.

When the engine is hot, and the car sits in the sun on a hot day for a short period of time it often won't start; eg. drive to the shop, grab something quickly, come back to the car - no start. It seems like a heat soaked starter - as seems common on M50 engines. The car won't turn over at all.

Over the years I've tried various fixes - replaced the starter with a new one, checked / replaced and added additional earths, replaced the negative lead on the battery, replaced the unloader relays, all to no avail. On the interwebs there was a theory that in hot weather the starter gear and ring gear both expand slightly and this is the problem, including someone who claimed they'd filed the teeth of the ring gear and it sorted it. I thought this sounded a bit improbable, so got out the trusty e30 electrical trouble shooting manual and decided I'd keep pouring over it and testing things with a multi-meter until I found the cultprit once and for all.

The main symptom that pointed to a problem was that the auxiliaries like the heater fan and thermo fan weren't cutting out when the car turned over like they should pointing to the unloader relays. Since the unloader relays were replaced and that didn't solve the problem, the only thing that made sense was that there was a problem in the wiring loom between the ignition switch and the unloader relays.

To cut a long story short - I bit the bullet and decided to replace the whole black / yellow wire from the C200 connector in the steering column to the starter motor. Mine was a bit dodgy as I'd converted from auto to manual, in the process having to bypass the starter relay, so there were a lot of connections in that wire that a manual car doesn't have.

Voila - problem solved.

Seems if the black / yellow wire is a bit dodgy, it can't pass enough current for the unloader circuit to work properly. Now the auxiliaries cut out when the car turns over as they should and it starts every time :)

Anyway - obligatory pics.

I couldn't be bothered dicking around under the dash, so ran the wire out with the battery lead and then inside the plastic cover I've got on the firewall.

My interior could do with a big clean at the moment - been a bit too busy!

Steering column apart:



Running new wire (the auto parts store had no black / yellow wire, so yellow had to do!):



All buttoned back up:



So glad to have it fixed. Has been the only niggling issue with the car, which has been bullet proof other wise.

Hi Luke,
I know this is several years old post but I have the exact same problem. 1991 e30 325i and manual swapped.
I've replaced a lot of parts from electrical to fuel, ignition related.


I think mine actually does turn off the radio head unit when the car cranks. But it still has the "heat soak" problem.
Did you bypass all connectors and just ran a new wire straight from the starter to the ignition switch? Is this safe to do so?

I believe the black/yellow wire is the ground and the red that goes with it, is the actual 12v that powers the solenoid.


I'm also very curious to know why you came to the conclusion that the black/yellow wire was the problem. (and not the 12v red wire)
And what does heat has to do with this wiring?

Because I have the same problem but when I crank, the head unit shuts off for a second.
So mine problem might be the positive cable, which is more of a headache.


Thank you in advance.

[lukeADE335i]

When you were replacing components, did you replace the starter and unloader relays? The unloader relays can cause a lot of strange electrical issues - particularly to do with starting & accessories - so are worth replacing if they’re old & if the starter is old it’s probably worth replacing to be sure it’s not solenoid related.

The black / yellow wire is pretty easy to replace & cheap to see whether it fixes your problem - the C200 connector is in the steering column, and you can just de-pin the relevant wire from the connector, and crimp a new pin onto the new wire and put it into the connector. I then just ran the length of wire I needed, and crimped a new connector on the starter end. There’s not really any danger with replacing that wire - it’s an earth as you pointed out, and you’re just bypassing a couple of connectors with potentially poor contacts under the dash (or solder joints if you happened to cut and solder your wiring when you bypassed your starter relay like I initially did rather than just unplugging the loom for the relay and plugging the starter wiring into the correct connector under the dash). In factory manual cars, the wiring is effectively a straight shot from the steering column to the starter so you’re not really modifying the factory system. If you need to look at pictures of components, and wiring diagrams, look up the BMW e30 Electrical Troubleshooting Guide for your 325i online, they are very useful.

The unloader relay circuit seems to be effected by heat when it gets old and is not passing current well. Motronic Volvos have the same issue as their starter circuit is the same as the e30, and the consensus over on the Volvo forums was that most of the time it’s the earth from the ignition switch that’s the issue - some in the Volvo community resort to building a separate relay setup for the starter to solve the problem! With the red + wire for the starter is a heavy wire, so I just assumed it would be unlikely to be the problem & that turned out to be the case. If replacing the black yellow wire didn’t solve the problem, that would have been something I looked at next.

The issue has never returned since I replaced the wire. Good luck with fixing it, it can be a very frustrating problem to diagnose and fix given it’s an intermittent problem.