Hey, I'm Kevin, I bought an 85 318i coupe 5 speed and I'm slowly getting everything fixed. My friend and I went halves on it planning to fix and sell it, but then my daily driver broke down (03 matrix) so now this is my new DD.
This is what it looked like when the tow truck dropped it off, and before I lovingly washed it then let it sit for a month and get dusty again.
We paid $400 for it non running, but it looked very promising. It had a cracked radiator right at the intake barb. We glued that and test drove it and the thermostat didn't open so it got hot (about 3/4 on the gauge) and blew the barb off completely. Glue held fine though! Brittle plastic and all that... Bought a new radiator and thermostat and it was back up and running, except it was idling at 1300 rpm. I drove it for a week while waiting for parts etc and it ran just fine, just high idle.
I couldn't smog it at the high idle so I replaced all the small vacuum lines and taped up the intake boot, but that didn't fix it. They wouldn't smog it with it taped up either.
Then we checked the timing, it was 16° at the higher idle so we loosened the distributor and twisted it until idle dropped to around 800 rpm and 10° timing. We're timing it through the top hole and the flywheel has 10 with a line under it stamped in, so the timing gun set at 0 offset and timed it to that mark at idle and it idles well enough, installed a new intake boot and it passed smog just fine.
Now I'm starting to fix other stuff, here's a list.
Bought a set of sport seats, from a member in San Jose, to replace the nasty comfort seats. The hinges and sliders needed to be repaired, greased, and I chose the best four gas shocks to install. I swapped parts off my comfort seats which worked decent but they're ugly. The car's previous owner was maybe a little bit of a tweaker, found some meth baggies, and the repairs are classically bad. I was wondering about seat fitment too, look at the rear seat, the middle seat belt is reversed on the sports vs the comfort. I had to swap the middle one so the seat belt latch would clip in to the seat. How was it originally?
Just bought new M3 front control arm bushings because the ones in it are clapped out, will install next Friday.
More pics and work log to come, gonna update more when I get home.
This is what it looked like when the tow truck dropped it off, and before I lovingly washed it then let it sit for a month and get dusty again.
We paid $400 for it non running, but it looked very promising. It had a cracked radiator right at the intake barb. We glued that and test drove it and the thermostat didn't open so it got hot (about 3/4 on the gauge) and blew the barb off completely. Glue held fine though! Brittle plastic and all that... Bought a new radiator and thermostat and it was back up and running, except it was idling at 1300 rpm. I drove it for a week while waiting for parts etc and it ran just fine, just high idle.
I couldn't smog it at the high idle so I replaced all the small vacuum lines and taped up the intake boot, but that didn't fix it. They wouldn't smog it with it taped up either.
Then we checked the timing, it was 16° at the higher idle so we loosened the distributor and twisted it until idle dropped to around 800 rpm and 10° timing. We're timing it through the top hole and the flywheel has 10 with a line under it stamped in, so the timing gun set at 0 offset and timed it to that mark at idle and it idles well enough, installed a new intake boot and it passed smog just fine.
Now I'm starting to fix other stuff, here's a list.
Bought a set of sport seats, from a member in San Jose, to replace the nasty comfort seats. The hinges and sliders needed to be repaired, greased, and I chose the best four gas shocks to install. I swapped parts off my comfort seats which worked decent but they're ugly. The car's previous owner was maybe a little bit of a tweaker, found some meth baggies, and the repairs are classically bad. I was wondering about seat fitment too, look at the rear seat, the middle seat belt is reversed on the sports vs the comfort. I had to swap the middle one so the seat belt latch would clip in to the seat. How was it originally?
Just bought new M3 front control arm bushings because the ones in it are clapped out, will install next Friday.
More pics and work log to come, gonna update more when I get home.
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