UK E30 316 build (1986)

[Kedge]

Hello from the UK, despite being a member on here for 10yrs I've not been on here for many years, but was reminded of this place earlier today whilst browsing Instagram so thought I'd pop alaong and have a look around, loving the variety and positivity towards verything on here!

Thought I'd start a thread for my E30, I'll start with a few pics of what it was when I bought it. Then over time I'll update with all the nitty gritty shots of work in progress.

So I bought this way back in June 2009, a 4 owner 1986 316 on 76k miles. As basic as it gets, only options ticket were the foglights and metallic paint (Polaris Silver). I chose this car as it have very little rust that I could find on the viewing, and it was non-sunroof, much preferred due to the rust dramas the sunroofs suffer in the UK.

[Woo]

Very low miles, and looks like a solid car overall. And yes, the sunroofs are a huge pain. I wish mine didn't have one. There are so many variations of the E30 that we didn't get here in the states. I wish I could try them all out.

[stonea]

That just screams "Euro". Looking forward to future updates

[Kedge]

Very low miles, and looks like a solid car overall. And yes, the sunroofs are a huge pain. I wish mine didn't have one. There are so many variations of the E30 that we didn't get here in the states. I wish I could try them all out.

You guys did seem to lose out pretty badly with model choices, and some of the trim features, especially those diving board bumpers!

That just screams "Euro". Looking forward to future updates

Cheers, I'll keep them coming!

[Kedge]

The day after delivery out came the interior and the rust hunt began, thankfully the was very little, the only rust that was found in the whole build that needed welding was the following;

That small spot by the tranmission tunnel;


A small section in the sill just above where the rear beam support bolts ups;


Mounting bracket for the fuel filler neck;


Battery tray;


All other rust found was just surface rust;







Then Waxoyl'd;


Floors stripped of the sound deadening after seeing few horrors under this stuff on other cars, thankfully there were no issues but the peace of mind was worth it;




Waxoyling continued (got through a gallon of the stuff!!);

[Woo]

Nice job. I don't think that will be rusting again.

[Kedge]

Nice job. I don't think that will be rusting again.

That's the idea :D. It won't see a salty winters road again either.

[Kedge]

The engine bay was also stripped back and cleaned up.




Now onto putting everything back together underneath, however this is where things start to change for the car, it certainly wasn't a simple case of refitting what was removed. For a start, being a 316, there were no rear disc brakes, no vented fronts, rear anti rolls bar and the front struts are thinner. This had to change!

Powdercoated goodies;



Rear end bolted back up;


Front struts rebuilt;


Front crossmember built up, this has an E36 steering rack fitted, custom PAS pipes and Eibach ARB;


Went for a slight brake upgrade to;



Chassis specs;
Bilstein B8 shocks.
Eibach 35mm springs mounted on the thinnest OEM spring pads available.
E90 front spring top hats.
Eibach adjustable ARBs.
Polyurethane trailing arm and ARB bushes.
Polyurethane E30 M3 control arm bush.
All other bushes and bearings replaced with OEM standard.
Rogue Engineer rear top mounts.
3.64 LSD.
280mm vented front discs.
4 piston WMS calipers.
290mm venter rear discs.
2 piston WMS calipers.
Earls braided brake lines.
Renault Clio brake servo.
E36 steering rack, customer PAS pipes and steering linkage using a combination of E30 & E34 UJs.

[Kedge]

It probably goes without saying, but I'm sure it's pretty obvious that the 1.8 M10 isn't going back in with a chassis spec like that.

I'd got an M20B25, but really wasn't happy with the way it was running so it was stripped with a view to rebuild as an M20B28.

Head was stripped, tested, skimmed and rebuilt with a Schrick 272 cam, new rockers and eccentric adjusters, valves recut and reseated.



The bottom end was fitted with M20B20 rods, early M20B25 higher compression pistons which has the skirts trimmed to clear the crank and the valve reliefs machine deeper, then all were balanced. The M52B28 crank was fitted with the required spacer and all shells were replaced.
The top of the block was also skimmed, idea of the build was to get the compression as high as possible, it's just over 11.1.





Vernier pulley was required;


Still running standard refurbished injectors, AFM and M1.3 management at the moment, I do have a Miller MAF kit to try as well but that can wait until I finally get it on a rolling road for mapping.
All ancillaries were soda blasted, the inlet manifold and rocker cover powdercoated. The throttle body has been bored out, a BTB3 exhaust manifold fitted and I'm also running an E36 rad to do away with an expansion bottle to tidy up the engine bay. Also running a lightened flywheel, so this motor revs very quickly and fulls so much stronger than an M20B25, can't wait to get it mapped in the spring to see what it's really capable of.

[Woo]

Beautiful work. You gave the chassis the engine it deserved.

[Kedge]

So with the engine in, underside completed and the floors now repainted it was time to get the interior back together. Originally the car had a blue interior, with standard "comfort" cloth seats, this was all moved on, the plan had been to go with a houndstooth cloth interior from a 325i Sport, but it's near impossible to find a good one for sale. I had a few pass through my hands, including a genuine Recaro interior and a spare set of good condition panels to fit, but it always looked old and faded no matter what you did. Then I came across a recently retrimmed Recaro interior and I jumped on that.


A very good condition carpet sourced and fitted, along with a rear parcel shelf I retrimed and repaired the horrible speaker holes that had been cut into it. I also find a really rare non-sunroof black headlining;





The car was then sent off to be repainted, every panel had a dent or scratch in it so that seemed the only sensible thing to do. I chose to fully dechrome it as well (other than the BMW kidneys), the chrome side window trims were replaced with secondhand OEM dechrome, which was then given a quick blow over to freshen it up. Couldn't believe that I was able to find some rear pop-out windows with the bronze tint glass and factory dechrome, this is an incredibly rare combination. All other exterior trim was replaced with new and some factory dechrome metal bumpers were bought from a breaker, these were then blasted and powdercoated white before being painted in Polaris Silver. I'd bought some smoked Startec lights years ago, at the time I thought I'd got carried away on ebay and overpayed, looking at current prices they were a bargain, I also still had my genuine Smoked Hellas I'd bought from Germany, so these were also fitted.

[bostonvert]

Very cool build, love how it looked in the beginning.

Us e30 guys are way spoiled but I love the bare bones 316/318's

[SSE30]

Woah. Lovely resto.

Polaris is a great color. Similar to Arktissilber.

[Kedge]

So it's fair to say, I've still not found that motivation for the E30 this year I was looking for. It's been taxed for a few months now and has probably only done about 20 miles, still got some pics taken though.






I have however got around to bolting on some BBS RS I'd bought last year and built up. The wheels were fully refurbished, but not built when I bought them. Barrels in OEM beige, baskets OEM silver and new lips an bare ally. 15x7.5 front and 15x8 rear, tyres 205/55 front, and 225/50 rear, proper retro style.

However it didn't go as simply as expected. Due to the WMS brakes I've had to use 10mm spacers to clear the callipers, 8mm just about did it but I decided to play it safe and add the 2mm spacer I was already using with the Hartges.

Naturally I've used proper spacers;

[alistairolsen]

Looks lovely!