Rescued E30

[SixerFixer]

Another update to this: bought myself an engine hoist to deal with pulling the bottom end to drop the crank, swap the pistons, hone the cylinder walls, and reassemble. Since the motor and trans will be apart, I picked up a new LUK clutch and pressure plate to replace the worn-out OEM unit.

I bought a set of Garagistic camber/toe adjustment tabs that I welded in. Next up is to sandblast the subframe and give it a coat of POR15.



I'll take some more photos once some actual progress is made :)

[SixerFixer]

So I had the subframe sandblasted before slotting out the subframe for the camber/toe plates and giving it a coat of POR15. I reassembled the subframe and trailing arms, replaced all the soft brake lines, and replaced a damaged rear hard brake line, right before reinstalling the subframe into the car. It was only after it was all reinstalled that I realized that my rear wheel bearings were bad and need to be replaced. I'll do that later. Until then, I put the car back on the ground and decided to pull the bottom end of the motor to be refreshed. When disconnecting the driveshaft and transmission, I found that all of the guibo bolts were finger tight, and 2 of the large bellhousing-to-block bolts were missing entirely. Considering how this car was when I got it, I'm not entirely surprised. Anyways, out she goes and onto a stand!




Holy crap was it covered in grease and oil. I removed a bunch of accessories and the oil pan, so I could flip the block upside down and assess the condition of the bearings. I pulled off one of the caps to find that the crank appears to be in great condition.



The bearings... not so much.



Current plan of attack is to hot tank all the parts I've removed from the motor so they're nice and clean, and pull all the bearing caps, remove the rods, and pull the crank so I can take it to get measured, cleaned up, and polished at the machine shop. I'm keeping my fingers crossed I can use standard sized main bearings, since my car has an early-style block that uses 'single tang' bearings. The block is covered in filth so it will need a cleanup before I paint it high-temp black. After that, I'll use a flexhone to hone the cylinder walls prior to reassembly. I ordered a new set of pistons from a forum member here, but the guy packaged them very poorly, so they got pretty banged up during shipping. I don't know if I will be able to use them all, so I'll have to figure something out.

On the plus side, my H&R springs arrived today, so I've got that going for me I guess.



I'm registering for a high-performance driver training event hosted by the Winnipeg Sports Car Club (WSCC) in early May, so I'm setting a mid-April deadline for myself to get this thing running and on the road. At the rate I'm making progress, I think that's a reasonable target.

[SixerFixer]

Well, I seem to have hit a little bit of a snag. I pulled the crank from the motor today, and was pleased to find that the journals were in great shape, despite the wear on the bearing shells. I'm positive that if I were to take it to a machine shop that everything would be in spec (which I was planning on doing anyway).

However, once I pulled the pistons, I was delighted to find the extent of the damage on piston #1, which looks like it was from detonation:



Now that the motor is on a stand, I could get a much closer, better look at the extent of the scoring to the cylinder walls, and evaluate the shape of the motor.

Cylinder #1:


Cylinder #5:




At this point, I don't think it's worth continuing on with this block, as it would cost me more to repair the damage to the cylinder walls than it would be to just find something else. I also feel as though I've invested too much into this M20 to turn back now, so I will start looking around locally for a replacement bottom end. The really crap thing about doing that though, is that finding one locally will be near impossible due to the rarity of older BMW parts locally.

My machinist friend thinks a good honing will get rid of most of the scoring on the walls, and will result in it running reliably at the cost of a bit of compression. Ideally, I would like to avoid going that route and instead use a good bottom end, but based on the scarcity of these engines locally, it might be the only option I have.

[SixerFixer]

My machinist friend will be taking the block on Wednesday to clean and hone it, and install a new set of rings onto the replacement set of pistons I have. He is confident that the block is still good, so I've got my trust in him with this bottom end build! After my last post, I removed the remainder of the engine accessories like the oil pump gears and water pump in preparation of taking it to the machine shop.

In the meantime, I had pretty much all of the engine covers and brackets hot tanked.



And now that the oil pan is off the car and clean, I measured up and drilled all the holes for the IE baffle, and installed it into my pan. Pretty painless installation for a high-quality product.



Sunday I will spend preparing the new pistons for install, by filing down and smoothing the shipping damage caused due to poor packing, so stay tuned for updates!

[Griff_]

Rescued E30

It's always shitty to find damage when pulling an engine apart, especially when on a time restraint. I wish you luck!

[dude8383]

Wow. An early model with euro bumpers is literally the best looking combo ever. Some serious elbow grease being put into this :up:

P.S. Lemme know if you're still looking for the cruise control stuff. I have the majority of the harness, stalk and ecu for it. Will shoot you a PM with pics

[SixerFixer]

Thanks for the kind wishes, Griff, and dude8383, I sent you a PM!

For the sake of making progress, I busted out the micrometer last night to take some measurements of the crank. With the condition of some of the main bearings (as seen in a previous pic), I had some concern that the crank would need to be machined and run oversized bearings. These are the results I found:

Journal #1: 2.3615"
Journal #2: 2.3615"
Journal #3: 2.3615"
Journal #4: 2.3615"
Journal #5: 2.3614"
Journal #6: 2.3615"
Journal #7: 2.3615"

My crank is 'red' stamped, so the tolerances for main journal diameter are 2.3614-2.3618". I'm not surprised about #5 being out slightly, due to the condition of the bearing (the one I took a pic of earlier), but the journal itself looks excellent. Regardless, everything is within spec, and I finally have something to be happy about with this engine. 8-)

I didn't get a chance to measure the rod journals (will do that tomorrow), but the bearings looked very good when I removed them, so I have no doubt that they are also within spec.

I'm going to start prepping the shipping-damaged pistons I bought off a forum member tomorrow by removing the high spots with an emery cloth. Once I get the block back, the pistons will get fresh Goetze rings.

Stay tuned! :)

[SixerFixer]

Another update: measured the rod journals, and everything is also within spec! Woo hoo! I placed an order at PelicanParts for KS main and rod bearings, new rod bolts, a couple of oil filters, and some other misc parts, so that should hopefully all be in sometime in the next little while!

Looks like the pistons I bought are going to 'need a bit of work,' so more of my bank account is floating away into this car. So long as it runs later, I will be happy!

[stonea]

You know how to garage right! Beautiful cars and amazing transformation on the e30!

[Southernboy]

Wow, you’re really doing an amazing job. Please keep up the good work and the posts.
Hopefully the “Car Gods” cut you some slack and you find a good block locally.

[Stanley Rockafella]

wow, an e30 in Winterpeg in this day and age is a VERY rare sight!

I recall purchasing my 88 e30 back in 03 and having it shipped from Edmonton. Even back then my car was a VERY rare sight on Saskatchewan roads

And yes, i feel your pain regarding finding local parts. When I had my 86 325es I also had to have parts shipped in from the US and brokerage fees were not cheap!

good luck on the build and your doing an awesome job!

[fenwick]

let me know if you wanna buy my block

[SixerFixer]

Thanks for the kind words guys! I dropped my block off at the machine shop, and hope to have good news later this week from the machinist regarding it's condition. He told me that he "expected worse," which is a good sign from the car gods! Thankfully car engines are very forgiving with their tolerances, so I hope to be able to run the factory-sized rings after all is said and done. There was a small dent on the surface of the block where the head gasket cylinder crush bead would sit, so the block will be decked by a couple thou to remove the damage.

I'll try to post another update tonight with some photos to show my progress. I've soda blasted a number of parts to remove corrosion, replaced the rear carrier bushing for the shifter assembly, swapped the pilot bearing in the crank, and started soaking bolts in solvent to clean them up. I'm hoping to replace the rear main seal and front crank seals today, along with disassembling and cleaning out the oil pump.


Fenwick: I'll keep you posted about what happens with this! Are you switching to an M50 swap?

[SixerFixer]

I spent part of my evening disassembling the oil pump to inspect for wear and evaluating as to whether or not I need a replacement. The gears appeared to have minimal wear, and just needed some light cleaning to make them look shiny and new again. The drive gear rotational shaft could use a light polish to remove some oil deposits that are fused to the end, but otherwise, everything inside looks good! The pickup screen had a bunch of little pieces in it, likely bits of RTV and pieces from the blown-out oil pan gasket, but that was very easy to clean out.

I also spent a bit of time degreasing the front oil sear carrier housing and rear main seal housing before replacing the front crank seal, oil pump drive gear seal, and rear main seal. It's not much, but it's progress! :D

[SixerFixer]

It was a pretty warm day today, so the snow has really started to melt. Spring is in the air, and that means I can roll the E30 out into the driveway to get work done! :D

Since the engine is out, I decided to take the opportunity to degrease the engine bay and clean it up a bit in preparation for the refreshed motor.

Before:


After:


I did notice that my brake booster looks awful, so I will pull it in the next couple days and repaint it black. It looks like all the metal under where the overflowed brake fluid dripped has rusted, along with part of the frame rail and subframe directly underneath. Careless mechanics, I tell you!



I also cleaned up the transmission and differential in preparation to reseal them both. The paint on the diff under the grease and grime was perfect. The rest of the surface... not so much. :S I'll repaint the housing after I replace the output shaft seals and o-rings, pinion seal, and rear cover gasket. The rear cover will also get hot tanked to clean it up! The transmission was a bit of pain in the ass to clean up, as the output shaft seal had failed and made a mess of the back half of the case. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to clean up the transmission casing a bit better than I already have? Soda blasting? Paint?




I hope to be picking up a number of parts needed for my build tomorrow, so stay tuned!