Bringing my dad's car back to its former glory and beyond

[TriniBoy]

Inspirational.
Well done.

[dadsbmw]

Thanks! I was actually Space Man Spiff for Halloween last year. I've been Calvin many years previously but needed to step up my game. Perhaps I'll shoot for Stupendous Man this year.

[Spiff325iS]

Fantastic work, man. You've done a solid job maintaining and upgrading your father's E30.

[dadsbmw]

couple more pictures to give an idea of the ride height and because I like em! Sits a bit higher than before...

Sorry theyre all super similar, but I feel like each little change of angle provides a new version of the e30 beauty... I'm sure others can relate.

[blazinxpk]

hey whats up. car is looking good. i hope those seat covers worked out.

[iwantspeed]

sorry for your loss. the new wheels look great on the car nice work so far

[dadsbmw]

Been doing a little more work...

Finally got around to painting the passenger side rocker panel. Now I just need to do the rear and paint the lower pinch weld areas black.

Prepped and ready for paint



Aaand painted... ooo la la!



Before



After



I also stripped the paint off the rear pop-outs I bought a bit ago, and just need to polish them a bit before installing.



Next, I recently made a decision on what to do shock wise and installed new shocks and shock mounts all around. Being that this car is a DD and will not see any track time and only slightly spirited driving, I opted for KYB's. For shock mounts I went with Sachs front mounts from Blunttech (which arrived super quickly, which I was quite surprised/impressed by) and Meyle reinforced HD mounts from UUC Motorworks (which charged $17 shipping for a 3"x3" box and took the longest to arrive by far...lame).

The shocks and front strut mounts arrived on a Thursday, so I decided to install it all sans the rear mounts since they'll be easy to install later. Who doesn't love the sight of new parts!



Rear shocks are a breeze, as I'm sure everyone on here already knows. Turns out my rear strut mounts and strut towers are actually in very good condition, despite some intermittent clunking a bit back which made me fear the worst.



Installed!



I've removed the front suspension a couple times in the past several months, so I figured I'd get it done pretty quickly... however things slowed to a crawl when I got to the front strut insert nut. Ended up having to buy very large adjustable pliers, a propane torch, and a heavy duty 5" vise. Money I didn't necessarily want to spend, but at least it was on useful tools!



Finally got that bastardo out! Yeya!



Old front strut mounts vs new Sachs mounts... little bit of compression going on there.



So my dad and I had spoken a number of times about getting him a better and slightly lower suspension, but as far as I knew it was still all original. Apparently he did at least get the shocks replaced at some point, as there were Sachs shocks on the rear and what I think are B6 Bilsteins in front.



Removed the spring perch rubber, put in the new front strut inserts, reinstalled the e90 drop hats, threw the new Sachs strut mounts on top, and buttoned everything back up. I have yet to take any good "after" pictures yet as I'm still waiting for everything to settle a bit more. After the initial install of my H&R OE Sport springs it seriously took months for everything to completely settle, so I'm giving it a bit more time. I can say that it does sit slightly higher all around at this point. Heres the only real picture I've taken...


So that was last weekend. The rear mounts came on Tuesday so I put them in today... took 24 minutes from start to finish.

New mounts



Installed with the upper reinforcement


Anyways, thanks for looking. This update was a bit boring picture wise, but I'll have some better installed pics in the coming weeks.

[Grackle]

Awesome thread. Car looks great!

[dadsbmw]

is front lip is a consideration, but I like not having to worry about approach and departure angles and where curbs are. I think if I did go is lip id just keep it black anyways. Thanks for all the compliments everyone!

[Czur1991]

What tire size are you running on those 16s?

Car looks sweet and I like how OE the front valance came out with the rattle can.

[nickflic3]

Love the work so far, keep it up!

Color matched is lip would do wonders for your color scheme if you keep the rockers body color

[dadsbmw]

205/50 I believe

[84bimmer]

Great progress so far! 215/45's?

[pilotskillse30]

Great work and even greater Story.

[dadsbmw]

Good call, I agree. However I've gotta find a grey that matches the interior well...