Joe's 325i Sport from the UK

[TriggerFish]

Cheers all for the kind words/welcomes :)

You are much more patient than I! Welcome.

Ha, I'm not this patient through choice, trust me!

I did consider scrapping/reshelling it, but I figured that if I parted it out, I'd get back maybe 50% of what I paid, and I'd still be down and be left with nothing. This way, sure, I'm spending more, but I'll have an asset still at the end of the road, and I'll have a car I know is sound and not all rusty.

If I got another one there'd be a risk of buying more rust again anyway.

[boomer]

Nice work so far. What's the primary cause of rust in the UK? Is it the constant rain or road
salt when it snows?

[TriggerFish]

Cheers :)

A combination of both I'd guess.

We don't get masses of snow here, or if it does snow, it's not that deep/doesn't stay for long, but we do get frost/ice, so there's quite a lot of salt about in the winter to stop the ice. And it rains a fair amount for most of the year, so combine the two and it's not good news for steal!

[federal]

Just awesome!

[animal]

nice work! good luck taking care of all the rust!

[TriggerFish]

It's finally home! :D



Took a lot of shuffling to get it into that space without PAS and with the world's slowest steering rack though.





Lots of work ahead still though. At least it's warm... -_-





Nice stable mate too (not sure what model, but covered in carbon fibre everywhere)

[MPLFoster]

nice

[TriggerFish]

Well, pretty much bang on 18 months later I find myself at on r3v Googling something and at a loose end for a few minutes before heading to the pub, so what better to do than to update this? Finally!

So, last time I updated this, the car had just come back from the body shop, and was about to start being reassembled. Since then, I had taken it for an MOT (inspection), which it failed on bad welding. Back to the bodyshop... After that was fixed, and the MOT passed, I refitted the interior and everything ready to enjoy my E30 for the first time since buying it over a ago.

And once it was rebuilt, all was fine and dandy for a couple of weeks. I think I used two or three tanks of fuel... At that point, the engine died one foggy October evening on the way back from blood donation on a busy main road through Oxford. Luckily I managed to limp it to a friend's house a short distance away to wait for the recovery guy. Not sure what happened, but the coolant historically was dropping, the oil was staying the same level, but it was emitting a lot of blue smoke. I was planning to stroke it anyway, so wasn't too fussed.



Within the last couple of weeks, I've finished the rebuild of the engine, and a load of other resto work and had it ready for another MOT. It was at this point I discovered that my recently rebuilt 2.8 M20 had destroyed its head in impressive style!



Yeah...

So the wait is on for a new head to arrive off eBay, and then I can build that up and get it on the road again. So far, I've managed under 1,000miles in two years of ownership.

The end is nearly in sight!

Anyway, everyone loves some pictures, so let's try and cram 18 months worth of updates into a few posts... I'll leave out most of trials and tribulations, so this shouldn't take too long...

[TriggerFish]

So, on with the back-dated updates...

I'd been hoarding parts for a while, and managed to come across a pristine dashboard that wasn't miles away (a short drive to London later, and it was mine). I don't know what these are like in the US, but they're fairly rare in the UK, so this was quite a good find.



Before getting it back on the road, I was planning to change the fuel filter, which naturally lead me under the car. At this point, the car had just returned from the body shop, so to find this sort of problem didn't do my mood much good!







Skip forward a bit after fighting some awful old alarm/immobiliser problems and what's this? More rust?



And what's this on the other side of the rust?





So yeah, this pretty much sets the tone for the quality of the work done.

Alongside finding this rust, I was also getting it running again. I opted to remove the old alarms, and just leave the wiring as BMW intended.



Once removed, it fired into life. Given one of these was defeatable by connecting two wires together, I really question the value of it!

I cleaned up and painted a load of engine bits, fitted the lights and the windows, and once the driver's seat and seat belt were fitted, I cable tied the speedo to the dash. This is all the UK MOT needs... But heaven forbid you remove a catalyic converter!





So once the MOT was passed, I started rewrapping all of the wiring loom, which then lead me to notice this on the passenger's inner sill...





Yeah. That's right. They'd added a new repair panel, but only welded it to the floor, not to the sill of the car. Great structural integrity there! So out came the welder. I hate welding, but it wasn't worth the drive back to the body shop at this point.



Once that was done, I started adding some sound proofing ready for the carpet/seats to go back in.

[TriggerFish]

I didn't take any more pictures for a while, as it all flew together very quickly, but here's the finished car at a BMW show at Santa Pod drag strip (I didn't run it).












I also fitted a JBL MS-8 to add some sound quality and aux-in to the period correct tape deck.





A deeply impressive bit of kit - I'd recommend it in a heart beat. (Expensive though!)

So, after driving it around for a short time, it then blew up, as mentioned.

Out came the engine, and the parts hoarding begins again...









And this, just because it cropped up on photobucket. A friend picked this up from Poland. It came complete with lots of iron-cross stickers too. Fascism is alive and well! :( It's a 1989 model FIAT 124, and it's hands down the worst car I've ever driven! He's sold it on again now and it's back in Germany.



My thoughts at this point were, while the engine was out, which meant I had to drop the exhaust and prop shaft, it was the best time to address the MOT advisory items like the brake pipes and the fuel lines. I dropped everything from underneath the car, cleaned up and rust, undersealed it, and replaced all the fuel/brake lines/pipes, refreshed all the bushes, replaced the petrol tank, changed the guibo, clutch, and prop CSB as well as refurbing the subframe/RTAs etc.

Anyway, we'll get to that soon. With the engine built up...



And the bitch tube tackled... (laying the engine sideways really helped!)



it was time to start stripping stuff down and replacing it all.



















And then onto fitting the new engine



This was done in June, so we're nearly up to date!

While tidying up, I found a load of invoices. Totalled up, they come to £1,440! (And that's no-where near everything!) I don't know what that is in $, but since we shot ourselves in the foot like a nation of retards and left the EU, I doubt it's less than it used to be!





At the same time, I found the old service book - something I'd overlooked before - which included a map of Europe circa 89/90, when the car was new.



I never new a separated Germany (the Wall fell before I was born), but this map includes the German Democratic Republic! And Yugoslavia! History is alive!





The map of Berlin even has a split down the middle.

Rewind a week from today, and it made it outside under its own steam for the first time since October 2015!





And then, boom! Engine failure. I don't know exactly what happened, but the eccentric left the rocker, got collected by the cam lobe and smashed its way through the head, introducing the water jacket to the rocker area.







And with the sump off we have the suspected culprit (aside from my stupidity!)

[TriggerFish]

And so, with that rather nasty update, I'm now up to date. As it stands, the new head in the post, the sump has been cleaned and any debris removed, and I'll start refitting it tomorrow after having cleaned the mayo and any debris out of the block.

I'll try and keep this up to date as I go, and sorry for the mass picture dump!

[scabzzzz]

Really nice thread and great attention to detail mate. Love the car.


Btw, we did get those here, but not many. Its just an MTECH option at the dealer here if memory serves me correctly. Good luck on the build! Keep posting!

[jpod999]

Your resolve is tremendous, I'm sure 95% of owners would have sold it on without disclosing to the new owner that it was so rusty.

I have watched much British television and noticed that lots of shops are in quonset huts. Are they built specifically for that reason? I'm only asking because you don't see many here in the Bay Area.

[bostonvert]

This is very high spec for Europe, I see similar ones with probably the same amount of rust going for 10k here

When restoring my e28 I found rust in exactly the same places, soo much and I kept finding more and more! We do need Cali weather here year round..

Great build and determination

[TriggerFish]

Your resolve is tremendous, I'm sure 95% of owners would have sold it on without disclosing to the new owner that it was so rusty.

I have watched much British television and noticed that lots of shops are in quonset huts. Are they built specifically for that reason? I'm only asking because you don't see many here in the Bay Area.

I was tempted to sell, but figured I'd lose most of the purchase price, so I might as well spend the same as I stood to lose getting it welded up/resprayed and have something I could enjoy at the end of it all. Then things escalated!

The quonset huts (not called that in the UK either - I only know that term thanks to Family Guy ("the kiosk and the quonset hut? Decoys Lois! DECOYS!!")) - are more a result of circumstance, I think. Some might be built for that, but this one is on an old farm, and used to be a mushroom growing shed/greenhouse. The owner stopped the farming operations and turned the site into a small business park, and rents out these old greenhouses for general storage - I just happen to use it as a workshop too.

I think largely it's just they're cheap, leftover buildings and it's more profitable to rent them out than knock them down. For what I want, it's ideal, and cheap too. £50 a month with water and power. Apart from on old farms you don't really see them much in the UK either.

This is very high spec for Europe, I see similar ones with probably the same amount of rust going for 10k here

When restoring my e28 I found rust in exactly the same places, soo much and I kept finding more and more! We do need Cali weather here year round..

Great build and determination

It really is interesting the prices between the UK and mainland Europe. I've got this insured for £12,000 (but could possibly have got more, but I didn't want to be greedy!). If a rusty one in Belgium is €10,000 then :O I'd be happy with California weather for a couple of weeks a year! It hit 35c (dunno the fahrenheit!) for a day or two here last week, and now it's back to the high teen/low twenties. Summer lasted for two days!

Really nice thread and great attention to detail mate. Love the car.


Btw, we did get those here, but not many. Its just an MTECH option at the dealer here if memory serves me correctly. Good luck on the build! Keep posting!

Cheers - there's not much love this end for it right here! I'm sure once it's finished and I can take it down a nice country road I'll change my mind :)