My new project 87 325e

[CarRacer]

I picked up my first E30 this weekend, it's a 1987 325e roller. Chassis has 114k miles on it, no front bumper and what I think is a Reiger aftermarket rear bumper. Underbody seems free of rust, battery box is intact in the trunk which is uncommon for a Minnesota car. It's been sitting for a while but it's in good condition. Plan is to motor swap it with a drive train out of our old Chump/Lemons endurance racer and turn this E30 into a fun summer car.

[anokES]

not sure about that rear bumper, but good luck!

[anabolice30]

Jesus OP, resize your pictures. Nice houndstooth though

[CarRacer]

Finished up the motor mounts a couple weeks ago. Happy with how the motor is sitting but I may have to shim up the driver side as the pan is a little closer to the rack than I prefer. It'll knock the motor off level but that's not super critical. Next hurdle is the trans mount and I'm not quite sure how I'll make that yet. The BMW mount is quite a ways rearward of the T5 rubber mount. I may use the mount on the tail shaft but am not sure how I will retain a rubber mount yet.

[CarRacer]

Completed the transmission mount. There were some weird angles on the crossmember but I used a piece of angle iron bolted with suspension bushings from Oriellys on the cross member and then welded square tubing to that. That allowed me to offset the angle and get the square tubing perpendicular to the ground. The transmission side was also angle iron bolted to a boss on the tail shaft. It's not ideal but it gets the job done and should provide the needed flex to keep the steering wheel from shaking like crazy.

[CarRacer]

Started mocking up the engine bay to see where things will fit and what needs to change. The downpipe is too close to the firewall near the transmission, it doesn't quite touch the heat shield on the insulation but it's too close. It also runs too close to the floor where it ends. I cobbled the downpipe together at 2am with scrap tubing for the racecar, so I've been meaning to make a new downpipe for a while. The intake also needs to be adjusted but the pipe that's on there has been cut apart multiple times so I will also need to start fresh there. I plan on running the air filter behind the headlights but want to hook up the oil cooler to check how it fits with everything.





I took some time to prep the interior for cutting the new shifter hole location on the tunnel. I removed the center console and removed the carpet in the approximate location for the T5 shifter. I also traced the shifter mount under the car to give myself a template for cutting. Luckily I'm running a short shifter, it will be close but it should clear the dash when shifting into third.

[SoundByte]

Cool rims. What are they?

Also, your pictures are massive as fuck. You should resize them to 1024x768 or something, because they're thousands of pixels wide at this point...

[CarRacer]

No idea what the rims are, sorry.

I'm not going to resize the pictures either. It's native resolution from my phone, I've posted them multiple places and this is the only forum that doesn't fit them to the users screen.

[CarRacer]

Shifter is in. Doesn't hit the dash in the 1,3,5 gears, so that's a relief. Just need to figure out a shift boot, shift knob, and figure out what to do with the patch panel over the stock shifter location.



Stripped the Chevette of the parts I want to use on the BMW. I'm doubtful I'll run the surge tank as I don't want to deal with the routing for it and the low pressure pump is on its way out. I'll run the rest of the -6 lines from the tank to the rail though. Brakes are Corrado rotors with a Wilwood Dynalite calipers, they should come in handy to slow things down after I get into the boost.

[newman8r]

Looks like a nice fun build! What kind of rear spoiler is that? Nice wheels too!

I have a 325e front valance if you need one!

[CarRacer]

I'm not sure what kind of spoiler it is. I was also told the wood trim piece around the stock shifter location is not stock either, anyone know anything about that?