My E30 Rehabilitation! ft. Boost Noises

[MoreMayhem]

Off topic, but I like your driveway. How often do you have to run the lawnmower over it?

[kid8]

Coming along nicely, man. I couldn't even keep up with you on the drive!!

[FireFight]

rehab builds are my favorite, seeing someone bring a car back to life is always fun to watch, I pulled a black 325is from a trailor park years back, didnt run due to a bad ECU, but after getting it running and cleaned up i ended up trading for a reallly clean e36 and sold that for a good grip.

keep up the good work

[zwill23]

Updates 5/23/2016:

Had an awesome weekend, ended up joining the BMW CCA for a "Bimmers and Bombers" drive. I was really winding out the E30 trying to keep up with everyone and it didn't flinch a beat. Awesome feeling to know my hard work is paying off. I did notice an electrical burning smell after keeping the RPMs pegged on a long straight away in 5th gear, which I believe was the alternator getting hot. The smell was very similar to an electric motor starting to burn up. Might need a new one in the future, but it seems to holding up fine for now.

To say I was overly prepared was an understatement, practically brought my entire garage with me



Here are some pics from the drive, my buddy and I were the only E30s there:

Parted the seas with God's chariot:









Although a beautiful E30 M3 showed up later on:



I also picked up a Yakima roof rack, fairing, and bike rack this weekend. Had no idea how expensive the racks were, $600+ new for everything? Seems excessive, but I got everything for $350 so I feel pretty good about it.

Test fit the BMX on the rack, can't wait to get out and ride a bit

[zwill23]

Updates 5/16/2016:

Traded my grey cloth rear seat this weekend for a tan leather seat in dirty, but mint condition. Friend wanted to have his seats recovered so it ended up working out great.

How I picked it up:



The seat cleaned up really nice with some elbow grease and leather cleaner:



Final product:



I still need to find some tan leather rear side panels, and kick panels for the driver's and passenger side foot-wells but the my interior is really coming along! Eventually I'll dye my carpet and rear deck, and replace the dash, but that will be on the back burner while I continue sorting the rest of the car.

Also, I managed to install my new master cylinder and brake booster. I am very happy to say my car is officially road worthy.

New master and booster installed:



Random engine bay pic (please excuse the mess of wires):



While the car was still "under construction" and mostly living on jackstands, I had this awful flex pipe setup to temporarily reconnect the exhaust where the cat had been snipped out.



I knew this wasn't going to fly for inspection, but fortunately a full stock exhaust showed up on Craigslist that came from none other than Das Beast. Happy to support his build!



Dual tips look soooo much better than the awful single tip that used to inhabit the rear valence:



Officially inspected!



"Hello officer, I believe my registration is a bit out."



Finally made it to work :) Fun fact, I park next to a Nascar that has been wasting away for the past 6 years. It would be a real shame if someone got a hold of that engine... ;D

[zwill23]

I love the noise of the viscous fan after you replace it and find out its actually working now! 8)

Sounds like a WW2 bomber! :P

Hah! I noticed that as well, I test drove the car without my hood and I was surprised how loud it was

[cypriotgeeza]

I love the noise of the viscous fan after you replace it and find out its actually working now! 8)

Sounds like a WW2 bomber! :P

[zwill23]

Nice work so far, keep it up man.

Thanks dude!

[kid8]

Nice work so far, keep it up man.

[zwill23]

Updates 5/13/2016

So my car was having overheating issues, particularly at red lights and long stops. This lead me to believe that my fan clutch was dead, so I performed the magazine trick and sure enough I was able to stop my fan clutch almost immediately with the engine at operating temperature. I ordered up a new fan clutch and mishimoto radiator for good measure to hopefully stop my overheating issues for good...

This past weekend I had a chance to install the new fan clutch, radiator, and perform a coolant flush.



32mm bicycle wrench makes removing the old clutch a cinch, quick tap of a hammer and I was on my way.



After I removed the old fan clutch I noticed all my auxiliary belts were loose? I mean very loose, I could pull them off with my hand. This got me paranoid so I decided to check my timing belt while I was at it and I tore off my timing belt cover.

Fortunately, everything was in check and tensioned properly.



After readjusting my auxiliary belts the rest of the installation went very smoothly, and I am happy to say my car is FINALLY holding at operating temperature. I let the car idle for 30min and the temp didn't waiver once. :)



On to the bad news... after rebuilding my brakes I had a friend help me bleed the system. I'm not sure how this happened, but the first few times my friend dropped the pedal to the floor after I opened the bleeder valve, I heard a nasty "pop" from the master cylinder / booster area. It seems my buddy unintentionally killed my master? How can this be? Maybe he pressed against the floor too hard, maybe the pin inside the booster became misaligned and somehow popped my master... I don't know what happened. I do know that afterwards my brake pedal intermittently would drop to the floor when I took the car out. I swapped in another master cylinder that I had pulled from a junkyard and of course it was a dud... totally junk.

I've ordered a new master and a new booster. My brake system has been a constant source of frustration so I just bit the bullet and purchased all new components.

Why do I have such frustrating hobbies?!

[zwill23]

Updates 4/25/2016:

So I had a bit of a scare a couple of weeks ago. I've been taking the car out for some "shake down" tests and for the most part it's been running great, but I had my front right brake caliper lock up on me at 70mph on the freeway causing the car to pull right. I quickly pulled over, but there was still quite a bit of smoke coming from my wheel well and the rotor was red hot. For a brief moment I imagined all my work going up in flame on the side of the road, but fortunately after letting it cool down I was able to limp it home. I've added a fire extinguisher to my breakdown kit!

Since then I've rebuilt the front brakes... and oh man were they bad.

Before:





After:



I cleaned the piston up too, just forgot to snap a pic.

Also, this has been my most recent source of frustration:



When I first got the new head on the car, I was having issues with valve cover studs on the exhaust side snapping when I tightened the valve cover down. This is off the top of my head, but I believe the Bentley specifies 10ft-lbs. Well at about 5ft-lbs the studs were snapping. Since this only occurred with studs on the exhaust side, I'm thinking they must have weakened over time due to heat cycling. I temporarily hand tightened all the valve cover nuts until I could get a new set of studs, so there was a small oil leak from the valve cover.

Well I finally ordered up some new valve cover studs, and according to real OEM this would be a 6x35mm valve cover stud #07129908103

http://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/show...diagId=11_1910

Except, that wasn't the case. I installed the new studs at the same height as the old studs and didn't think to compare the stud length between the two. Turns out the old studs were all 6x40mm!

Because the thread seating wasn't sufficient with the new 6x35mm valve cover studs, I got to the last stud tightening to 10ft-lbs and it stripped the threads clean out of the cylinder head.



There must be a discrepancy between the valve cover stud length between years. I believe my new cylinder head was from 87 but my car is a 90, so that must have been part of the issue. Anyway, if anyone ever runs into this issue as well, this is the part number for an OEM 6x40mm stud: #07129908104

Some better news, my Mishimoto radiator came in! Courtesy of White325is :D



Should be installed with my new clutch fan soon!

[coldweatherblue]

Strong work!

Another E30 saved from the scrapyard.

[zwill23]

@TheWipprSnappr Thanks!

@Pootis My car didn't have much of an interior when I picked it up. I bought the seats from an E30 convertible that got wrapped around a tree, but the interior was in mint condition. Purchased both seats and door cards for $340!

@cypriotgeeza I appreciate it! Might not seem like it yet, but a ton of work has gone into it so far... more updates soon! :)

[cypriotgeeza]

I love threads like this!

It's so satisfying bringing a car back from the brink of death and making it your own!

Nothing like it!

I look forward to more updates! :up:

[Pootis]

Damn I want those seats. Did it come with those or did you have them laying around?