The Latest & Greatest: 1994 (E30) 316i Daytona Violet Design Edition Touring

[djafactor]

Nice update. Car is looking great. For the rear license plate you can buy a rear bracket for a e46 and it will screw right in to the euro holes.

Would you be interested in selling one of the timing belts? I'm going to be doing a swap eventually but was thinking of doing some preventative maintenance for now. If you have an extra water pump i'll grab that too.

cheers

[Roadrunner]

Awesome thread. I actually just purchased a 3/94 build Design Edition 318i touring in MauritiusBlau. Leaving Hamburg next week and will be rolling in through the streets of Montreal in the spring. Hopefully we can have them together at the next Tedfest.

I was so excited to hear that your touring made it to Montreal. I can't wait to see it sometime this summer! :up: I hope you can make it to the Ontario E30s / Classic BMW GTA swap meet & greet on April 14th, and I'll definitely bring my touring to Tedfest this year (August 18th). :mrgreen:


Lots of catching up to do about the touring!



When I left off in this thread, I was getting ready to take it to the body shop for some paint work and paintless dent repair.



(Don't worry, I'm getting rid of the license plate zip ties!)



To prep the car for paintless dent repair, Paul (Shockwave) and I marked all of the dents we could find with painter's tape. I also removed the fender liners...



...and removed the door cards. I wanted to make absolutely sure that I remove them carefully and stored them so that they wouldn't get damaged!



To remove each door card, I unscrewed the lock indicator to remove it, slid the door handle surround off, and removed the window crank by prying off the cap and unscrewing the bolt...



...Removed the screws under the armrest...





...Pried off the trim plug from the top of the armrest and removed the screw underneath...



...Removed the armrest by pushing it forward to release the tab at the top part...



...and the tabs connecting it to the map pocket...



...Pulled up on the edges to unsnap the clips, then pulled the door panel up to remove it. No clips broken! Yessss



We took the car to Luxury Auto Body in Toronto. They did great work on my old touring after it was damaged in an ice storm, so I knew I could trust them to take good care of the touring. I highly recommend them if you're in the GTA and need paint or bodywork done!

Their paintless dent repair guy fixed all of the dents we identified and even some that we'd missed. There were probably 20 - 30 dents all over when I took it in, a few of which were major, which all disappeared. I was thrilled with the results. Plus their business name is just perfect! ;)



At the body shop, they fixed a couple of gouges that had cracked the paint and couldn't to be fixed with PDR alone, repaired a small rust spot at the bottom of one of the doors, and took care of some scrapes left on a fender from someone who hit the car in the back of a parking lot just days earlier (at least that happened *before* I brought the car in, but arghhh!!!).



They did an incredible job! The car was returned to me freshly detailed and looking better than ever. ;D



I had been planning to bring the touring to Tedfest (a huge classic BMW show in Canada), but since it was still in the shop at the time, I took Paul's 325iX.



He brought his Canadian Edition E36 M3.



So many beautiful cars at that show! I can't wait until the next one!



It was great to have the touring back all safe and sound at home. :)







I reinstalled the door cards once I got the touring back from the shop. The fender liners were too badly cracked to put back on the car, so I'll be installing a replacement set soon.



The driver's side mirror was cracked...



...so I replaced it with another set that the body shop had repainted for me. I removed the old mirror glass and swapped it into the new mirror housing. I was relieved that the glass didn't shatter in the process! :-P



I still wasn't having any luck locating a timing belt for the M42 in the touring after finding out that they're NLA. :(



The good news is that Paul found me a timing belt all the way from England for the M42 and got two of them for me!



The even better news is that I'm never going to need them!! :mrgreen:

You'll find out why in the next update. ;D

[djafactor]

Awesome thread. I actually just purchased a 3/94 build Design Edition 318i touring in MauritiusBlau. Leaving Hamburg next week and will be rolling in through the streets of Montreal in the spring. Hopefully we can have them together at the next Tedfest.


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[Roadrunner]

Best color ever

I love the colour too! It's one of my favourite things about the car.

In love with this car.. Such a cool story behind it all too.
Crazy to think it was in Halifax. Too bad I never got to take a peek while it was in town!

Aw, thanks! Glad you liked the story. If it makes you feel any better, I don't think it left the port at all while it was sitting in Halifax. I really wanted to pick it up in Halifax and drive it back to Ontario, but that wasn't a possibility because of all the paperwork that had to be done in Ontario first. :/ Nova Scotia is such a beautiful province, hope to make it back there sometime soon!

This car is just badass. Not sure how I missed this!

Mr. Wolfe

Thank you!

Nice thread and neat early model iX.

Thanks! We should really start a thread for the iX. We have some exciting plans for that car in the near future. :mrgreen:

[downforce22]

Nice thread and neat early model iX.

[Mr. Wolfe]

This car is just badass. Not sure how I missed this!

Mr. Wolfe

[Rossabal]

In love with this car.. Such a cool story behind it all too.
Crazy to think it was in Halifax. Too bad I never got to take a peek while it was in town!

[DIIRTY-30]

Best color ever

[Roadrunner]

Very nice, can't believe I missed this, just went through all 5 pages. Enjoy! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks, happy to be able to share it! :up:

Whats the other E30 in the reflection?

This one?





It's Shockwave's 1988 early model 325ix, originally from Japan. The car is in amazing condition with no rust, alpine white with a beautiful pacific blue houndstooth interior, auto :( but the sports auto is not bad. It was really cool to see how different it feels to drive an ix compared to my touring! I'm not sure what we'll end up doing with it - it would make a perfect winter car, but it would be a crime to drive it here in the winter with all of the salt on the roads.

[parkerbink]

Very nice, can't believe I missed this, just went through all 5 pages. Enjoy! Thanks for sharing!

[2mAn]

Whats the other E30 in the reflection?

[Roadrunner]

tl/dr.. congrats!

Thanks! :) I try to add enough pictures to keep the text in this thread completely optional, though you could've convinced me you read it to the bitter end if you caught my timing belt comment. ;)

If you haven't already noticed it the timing belt intervals on m40b18s is very short, something like 40-50k KMs. It is an interference motor, so keep it changed. IIRC these motors love to eat camshafts, so keep an eye out for that too. Even though it was underpowered, I liked my m40 powered 318iC!

Good to know! I'll have to watch out for the camshafts getting eaten! :shock:Mine is an M40B16, so it's a bit smaller and even less powerful if you can imagine, but it must be pretty similar to other M40s. It still has its charms and is fun to drive despite being underpowered.

At the moment, I'm just trying to find a source for the belts for this car that will ship to North America which is turning out to be a real challenge.

Great update! I love the color, looks great after you polished it.

Thank you! It's at the body shop right now for paintless dent repair and getting some of the paint fixed, so it's going to look even better soon!

I was wondering, the left seal on my touring hatch isn't seated properly, I tried pushing it in but it's not budging. Any idea how this seal can be reinstalled?

We removed the seal on the hatch of my touring by prying it out at one end and then pulling it out the rest of the way by hand. The new seal had a built in adhesive layer that sticks to the edge of the glass. I don't think there would be any way to get the old seal to seat properly other than to replace it with a new one, since it was completely dried out and hardened from age.

[D.Martijn]

Great update! I love the color, looks great after you polished it.
I was wondering, the left seal on my touring hatch isn't seated properly, I tried pushing it in but it's not budging. Any idea how this seal can be reinstalled?

[Julien]

tl/dr.. congrats!
If you haven't already noticed it the timing belt intervals on m40b18s is very short, something like 40-50k KMs. It is an interference motor, so keep it changed. IIRC these motors love to eat camshafts, so keep an eye out for that too. Even though it was underpowered, I liked my m40 powered 318iC!

[Roadrunner]

As someone has been pointing out to me repeatedly, this thread is long overdue for an update! ;) In my defense, I've been busy working on these:



And these:



... as well as a few of our friend's cars, so I've been busy doing lots of car stuff!

Now, where was I?

Well, when I left off in this thread, something had to be done about the paint on the touring's rear spoiler which was peeling and flaking off. We ordered a new one (glad I was able to get it before the part becomes NLA), but I'm still unable to find any info on how to remove the old one and how the rear spoiler is actually attached. I heard that it's difficult to do without breaking the glass, so I opted to refinish my existing spoiler and will keep the replacement one to install sometime in the future.

The rear spoiler sanded down:



...Painted:



...Done! :)



Can you spot what was missing from my engine bay?



Luckily we happened to have a spare elephant trunk lying around! :up:



I used 303 fabric guard - which seems to be exactly what I'd been looking for to protect the touring's fabric from UV damage - on the cloth seats and door cards.



I've also been covering the seats with blankets to try to protect them from the sun and wearing, but need a better solution for seat covers since the fabric still seems to wear very easily. :(



The touring's paint was in need of some serious attention. Under the lights, you can see the scratches and swirls that were in the paint before we worked on it:





The car already felt much better after I washed and clayed it - the paint must have picked up a lot of contaminants in its travels.

Taped up and ready to be polished:





Compounding and polishing my car...



...With some help from my lovely assistant, Shockwave:



A few coats of wax:



...And the finished result!



(Of course, it did not stop raining for days after we finished detailing it. )



I didn't take out all of the scratches and imperfections by any means as I didn't want to risk burning through the paint, but it's looking a lot shinier and the paint feels much smoother than before.

We ordered a new trunk seal for the hatch. It was a bit too big and had to be trimmed to fit, but fits perfectly now. The biggest pain was prying out the old one that was dried out and shrunken.



When I got the car, the passenger's side door trim was broken - part of it had ripped off. Before installing the new trim piece that we ordered, I treated the newly exposed spots of surface rust with rust converter / metal prep:



...Painted the drip rail with POR-15 (which will be hidden under the new trim piece):



...And replaced the missing clips:



New trim piece installed! :)





I still have to source a timing belt for the touring, which our parts guy told me is NLA from the dealer (guess that means I *have* to do an engine swap now, haha). The car was well maintained by the PO, but I can't tell from the German service records when the timing belt is due to be changed.

We're also taking the touring to get some minor paint work and paintless dent repair done next week. Can't wait to see it when it's done! :)