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From SD to UT, Franky Frank - Sam's '86 eS build thread.

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    From SD to UT, Franky Frank - Sam's '86 eS build thread.

    July 24th, 2014

    Hello and welcome to the build thread of my 1986 325es, Franky Frank.

    Disclaimer: There will be many photos and lots of context, this is for my own personal records as well. I’ve always wanted to do this, I will try to keep it entertaining. Enjoy.
    -Sam


    First I will start with a bit of back story and explanation for those that aren’t 100% up to queue with either my previous car, or cars and e30’s in general, because yes this will be linked to a few others I know who don’t obsess over this stuff like us R3v’ers do.


    Follow this link for that full back story on my previous E30 with many photos, videos, etc:




    In short:

    In July of 2011 I aquired a 1990 BMW 325is, soon to be named, “Marky Mark,” for the good vibrations the car gave me. The car was an amazing entry into the BMW and european world, teaching me much about car control and simple mechanics in working on the car.


    Two years, many autocrosses, a curb, thousands of photos, and many more thousands of dollars in maintenance passed and I found myself in Utah with a decision to be made, it was either going to eventually be time to throw more money into this car for maintenance/refurbishment, and/or upgrades like coilovers, etc, or to sell it for a good price and start spending money on a different car, starting over.


    Long story short, May of 2014 rolled around and at just short of three years of ownership, Marky Mark was sold for $4,100.











    You didn’t think I had no plans to replace him did you? You must be on dog food.

    Rewind all the way back to late 2013. A friend of mine, Josh, had a tired old 1986 325eS that he was trying to unload as he had just gotten into a 5-speed e46 wagon. I had previously shown the car to another R3vless friend, Derick, who was interested in getting into the e30 game. And boy is he in now, some of you may know who he is by now because of his beautiful convertible, Frosty.



    Derick and Frosty on flickr.



    Maybe it was a good thing he didn’t go for the ‘eS’. Yes, yes it is, because then I wouldn’t have this built thread, and I wouldn’t have a blue sport interior.

    Over the course of many months I would check in with Josh to make sure the car hadn’t sold yet, because I said would buy it once spring came around and after I sold Marky Mark. I managed to keep a grasp on the car over 7 months and from 1,000 miles away, and the plan was set: Sell Marky Mark by the end of May, get Josh $1500, get the car in for basic service in prep for the thousand mile journey to Utah, be stoked, fly home, and drive yet another e30 away from the only state it had since called home.



    The, then yet to be named, new guy waiting up at my South Dakota home, post purchase.


    These are photos I made my little brother take of the car for me to see after I bought it. Yes I had not seen the car in 9 months before buying it. Shouts to little brah Keith for the pics.



    Going from a modified 325is to a stock, less powerful, and shabby 325es was interesting. Almost everyone I talked with questioned why I would get rid of the car that has treated me so well, and was already in good condition, for something in not near as good of condition and especially an earlier model that has the big early model, “diving board,” bumpers.


    After arriving in South Dakota and getting aquainted:






    “I want a fresh start. I want something to do, and I want to be the one to do it. The last one already had it’s work done to it, it didn’t need anything else to be it’s own personified car. I want to make a car my own from scratch (stock),” proclaimed Sam as he raised his eyebrow and dropped his word on the testy friend.

    Diving boards need love too.



    So here we are half way through 2014, in Utah with a frowning 1986 BMW 325es.








    Cracked up spoiler from Marky Mark I had previously traded Josh for.










    I have been slowly compiling parts in preparation for an all out motivated few weeks of installation in my free time. Did I mention I got a job at a local BMW dealer here in Utah? That has certainly helped on the OEM parts buying side of things. I’m currently in sales with terrible hours, but will be moving back to detail hopefully by the end of July (downgrade, no? “Not if you’re not selling cars it’s not,” said Sam’s paycheck). With the position switch I will be pushing for earlier hours, getting off in the late afternoon or late evening, leaving many hours of daylight left. Now that I won’t have to smell great when getting to work, I will also be buying a bicycle as I live only a couple miles from the dealership, making the need to put my car back together for a ride to work unnecessary. What a life, did I mention I’m single and kid-less?



    So now for the build parts of the build thread.

    Thus far I have:

    Had my SoDak shop replace some of the basics, timing and accessory belts, water pump, crank seal, shotty throttle cable. I insisted doing the valve cover gasket myself, I wasn’t in the mood to pay $100 some dollars for a shop to do that. Cleaned up the engine bay in the process of doing that too. Was also going to do the fuel filter, still on the to do list, because have you seen where they put it on these models? [flips table]

    Passengers window motor was dead, I sourced a used one via R3v and fixed that. My poor friend Will toughed the whole 1000 trip with me to Utah in an air condition-less car with only my window down, and no radio…




    I tore out the already nonfunctional radio ambitiously, the face of the dash was similar to my previous e30, the wiring was not. Currently have a hole there, I believe all I’ll have to do is run new wire to the front speakers, one of those cases for those familiar with e30 radio installs.

    Stripped away any rust ridden spots on the rocker panels, minor hole in the bottom of the passengers fender, and a slightly bigger hole in the joint of the rocker near the front, under the drivers door. Cleaned it up and treated it with rust eater as best I could and repainted over it with truck bed liner. You may notice, I painted higher than the normal black rocker paint. I went up to the slight notch in the body line and even up into each door sill. There was some minor rust forming and creeping up into each sill, so I tread and covered it. This made a huge aesthetic difference.

    Replaced the rubber grommet for my antenna.

    Named it Franky Frank. Based upon another favorite actor and doppelganger of mine, Jason Statham. In, “Death Race,” he plays a racer named, “Frankenstein.” In “Transporter,” he plays a driver named, “Frank Martin.” I’m saving “Paul Walker,” for my future M3.



    Other things that are still broken or need attention:
    • A/C
    • Seats have the broken tab, unstable-backs-around-turns syndrome
    • Passengers seat pull lever doesn’t work, seat won’t pivot for back seat access
    • Fan commonly squeaked, then one day there was a thud within the dash, and a burning plastic smell, now on the highest fan setting it growls at me. Still need to diagnose this.
    • Cracks in the dash
    • Cracks in the coloring of all the seats, needing conditioning and re-dying. The only tear in any of the leather is on one of the side bolsters of the drivers seat. Very good considering the age of the car and the general condition of the car.
    • Essentially everything suspension and bushings. My stock CAB’s are almost non-existent and provide fun front end wobble upon turning sharply. It’s all stock anyway, must go.
    • Came with no front lip, I have the OEM replacement bought.
    • Two weeks after passing emissions, the pipe running into my muffler corroded enough to finally start giving way, which is now completely detached, but hanging on the hangers still. Gangster lean. I’ll maybe make an exhaust video for it, slow, loud crappy cars are humorous.
    • The hood had rust bubbles on the front of it, presumably from rock chips over time. I chipped all the paint away from those cancerous areas, treated them with rust eater, and for now have it covered with a hood brah. Planning on sourcing a different Alpine 1 colored hood for replacement.
    • Bits of rust here and there, still need a clay bar, cut/buff, and waxing too.




    Tear in drivers seat bolster.



    Dash cracks.


    No front lip.


    Exhaust sagging like an E36’s glove box.


    Hood rust.



    I have compiled many parts for future install, including:
    • Bilstein HD shocks with H&R race springs, shouts to my bud Tanner
    • New strut housings to replace my currently rusty breaded chicken looking ones, will also be nice to prepare this outside of the car, shouts to Corbin
    • Oem control arms
    • Oem sway end links and tie rod ends
    • M3 offset rubber CABs
    • Poly rear subframe and trailing arm bushings from Ireland Engineering
    • Weld on camber/toe adjusters, and rear shock mounts from Ireland Engineering
    • Working on getting a new rear subframe, again for breaded chicken and prep outside of the car reasons
    • Rear trailing arms for that subframe, shouts again to Corbin
    • Many miscellaneous parts for the dash and fixing of the seats.

    • Rx7 brakes, an impulsive buy, way ahead of necessity.


    As far as other suspension work I’m still looking into camber plates and sways.



    Parts stash in my kitchen, bachelor life.






    Parts, stashed.



    I do already have wheels, both the rolling on and steering with kind, but I must leave some surprises there, I’ve gotta keep you scrolling. Hint: you can either look at this thread a little closer, or dig into my previous posts to figure out the “rims” (wheels). The steering wheel you really have to be in my clique to know.

    I believe that’s the majority of it, aside from one final detail. I had always had a small fancy for diving board cars, because it was what I wasn’t used to seeing. This is the photo that sparked the full on idea of my dive into the big bumper early model. (Yes these are the smaller metal euro bumpers, but it’s an early model, chill) I found it on Tumblr with very little information on it and couldn’t find anything elsewhere on the internet. In a commenters caption it was stated that this was a “Pre-M3 E30 DTM car.” It makes enough sense, but I know nothing for certain, if any of you know what’s up, do comment. Photo:





    My set goal for install coming up is to have this pieced together by the end of August, as my homies here are planning on traveling down to San Diego for Big SoCal Euro August 30th, and I’d love to have it done with stage one of rebuilding/refreshing and ready by then.


    Let’s get to work.


    (Please excuse my childish ways, I used to listen to punk rock)
    Last edited by Heyrr; 07-26-2015, 10:34 PM.

    SamHurly on flickr

    #2
    August-September 2014 Update:

    Well let me start by saying, no that deadline was not met... Not even close. Lol.


    Franky Frank on the left and Corbin's 30 on the right. In front of a crazy sunset lightning storm. Photo by me!


    I started with the prep of my rear subframe, grinding out the tabs to that we could get the adjustable ones from Ireland Engineering welded on. Brother Corbin guided me through the prep and grinding brother Kevin welded the adjusters to the subframe for me.








    Not long after that I finally managed to get those God forsaken subframe bushings out. After not being able to fit it at any reasonable angle into a press and unsuccessfully using an air hammer, we struggled with multiple pullers big enough to wrap itself around the frame and push the bushing out, but in the end had our victory. I now understand more of the want for polyurethane.







    Some smaller projects were tackled too, one being my faulty blower motor which had been squealing until one night I heard a big thud within my dash and then smelt something burning. Upon investigating, I found it weird that there was insulation within my blower motor housing. Especially weird because there isn't supposed to be any. After digging my hand into it I promptly felt seeds and little turds scattered about. You can only imagine how stoked I was to have been breathing this. Sadly the motor and resistor I got from a fellow R3v member didn't work well with the car so I ended up putting my old stuff back in, which now works but makes a whirr noise on settings 3 and 4.






    Work stayed hectic in my new position and I had to keep with later hour shifts. Luckily but in the end truthfully not, I was given access to lifts at work to do my restoring. At first it seemed awesome, but I would only be able to work on the car after serviced closed at 6pm and before the rest of the building closed at 8pm. Although I tried to do some work on my car, starting with the front suspension overhaul, rust combined with limited time to work proved to take quite a bit longer than expected. Seized nuts on ball joint bolts in the control arms, 45 minutes to remove a wheel speed sensor, and did I mention my sway bar was snapped?








    A delicious look at the breaded chicken metal around the car.


    While trying to remove an end link, I applied force to the bolt that connect the link and the sway. As I applied said force I notice that the part of the sway on the passengers side moved along with my force, but the long center section of the sway still stayed motionless. And all this time I thought it was just tired control arm bushings that were making the front end feel like a boat. I grabbed the 90 degree corner of the sway bar that heads into the passengers side mount, and easily pulled it out. Rust had done some serious work within that mount and eventually the thinning sway bar snapped.






    About 5 nights of 1 hour work sessions passed and I finally had the front done (without sway because some idiot with the same name as me threw away the hardware for it). The stress filled week was over and it was finally time to relax a little with a vacation to Southern California for Big SoCal Euro, at this point happily without my car.



    Front rake, so muscular.



    Alex rollin' in his newly acquired e24 while down in San Diego for Big SoCal Euro.


    Once I returned I decided I wanted to get rid of the muscle car rake, in a quick fashion. The weekend hit and I figured why not just quick pull off the rear shocks and springs by undoing a couple bolts and dropping the trailing arms? I still had my subframe and new trailing arms and bushings to do but I figured I could have a little fun before I tackled the big job. I was wrong.

    I set off on the seemingly easy job and after getting the shock out with ease and thinking, "Finally an easy job, this should breeze by," I moved to getting the spring off of the trailing arm. I was told you can just drop the trailing arm and simply pull the spring out, though upon lowering my the spring did not want to budge, still seemingly under pressure. I got a spring compressor and started to slowly squeeze the spring together (as to shrink it, allowing for removal). As I compressed the middle coils of the spring, I noticed that the top and bottom were not moving from the two mounting knobs that hold them in place. Once the spring was about as compressed as can be and both top and bottom were still not phased, I figured I'd need to do a little shaking/prying to free it up.



    How great does everything look!


    I was right, hooray! I stuck a flat head screw driver under each rubber spring pad and pried around it, freeing and removing from the top knob first. Upon moving to the bottom of the spring, we hit sway bar deja vu. I started to pry up under the spring pad and as the spring started to move away from the stationary trailing arm, I noticed the knob was moving pretty freely along with the spring. For those of you who don't know, that knob is supposed to be stuck to the trailing arm, not the spring, so that the spring, while mounted on the arm, does not move.



    That crusty metal in the middle is not supposed to be there, though it's not supposed to be crusty and rusty either.


    All metal surfaces sponsored by Cheetos. (JK, don't sue me Cheetos)


    I immediately figuratively shit my pants. I also felt like putting my head through the fender. I now knew that I would have to do the trailing arms as well, and after about 30 minutes of trying to get my e-brake cables out and not having a large enough socket on hand to remove my half shafts. After another few minutes of despair out on the hot sun, I decided it would be easier to just rebuild the whole rear end outside of the car, and drop the whole subframe/diff/trailing arms/etc still together for replacement and not have to disassemble anything. A quick job turned bad unexpectedly broke my daily and now I'm racing to get a new rear end together.





    So this is still where we sit, aside from just plopping a spring in there and setting the car back down on it's wheels (and correctly in a parking spot, mind you the grade of the asphalt is off). I just sourced a nicer diff and half shafts and will be bolting those up to the subframe and trailing arms here soon, preparing for the old frames drop. I cannot wait to have my car back. Dailying a project isn't fun.
    Last edited by Heyrr; 07-26-2015, 10:42 PM. Reason: UPDATE - Word to Big Bird

    SamHurly on flickr

    Comment


      #3
      Reserved for future posts..

      SamHurly on flickr

      Comment


        #4
        Reserved for future posts...

        SamHurly on flickr

        Comment


          #5
          Reservado para futuros posts.

          SamHurly on flickr

          Comment


            #6
            Yo, this is reserved for future posts, dawg.

            SamHurly on flickr

            Comment


              #7
              Updated, cleaned up, and split between two threads, one for the back story on my previous e30, and this one for updates on my current car.

              SamHurly on flickr

              Comment


                #8
                Nice! Need a front lip? :o

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by newman8r View Post
                  Nice! Need a front lip? :o


                  Haha, I got 'er! Thanks though.

                  SamHurly on flickr

                  Comment


                    #10
                    damn, your interior looks just like mine. Nice and worn... how I like em ;)

                    Originally posted by SpasticDwarf;n6449866
                    Honestly I built it just to have a place to sit and listen to Hotline Bling on repeat.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by lambo View Post
                      damn, your interior looks just like mine. Nice and worn... how I like em ;)
                      Proof of one sort of love, usage. Hopefully showing some re-dying love here soon though haha.

                      SamHurly on flickr

                      Comment


                        #12
                        im sub'd because utah, also because potential

                        Turbo M42 Build Thread :Here
                        Ig:ryno_pzk
                        I like the tuna here.
                        Originally posted by lambo
                        Buttchug. The official poster child of r3v.

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Originally posted by Dj Buttchug View Post
                          im sub'd because utah, also because potential
                          Shouts to DJ Buttchug, haha thanks for the sub. "Potential," was my most used word while getting out of the old one and looking at this one.

                          SamHurly on flickr

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Nice car. Welcome to Utah. Going to school down there? You need to go drive the alpine loop up provo canyon its unreal. Join Utah BMW Enthusiasts on Facebook if you haven't already. I'm up in Layton if you need anything. Sub'd.
                            Turbo M50 4 Door Build thread here 4 Sale thread

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Nice car. your house looks like mine full of boxes filled with parts.


                              1989 325is l 1984 euro 320i l 1970 2002 Racecar
                              1991 318i 4dr slick top


                              Euro spec 320i/Alpina B6 3.5 project(the never ending saga)
                              Vintage race car revival (2002 content)
                              Mtech 2 turbo restoration
                              Brilliantrot slick top "build"

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