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

[MPLFoster]

I don’t think the tails are bad at all. With the darker color cars the dark tails are ok. I’d still go OEM but that’s me. Your car, your rules.

Still so jealous of your touring. Very cool edition you have. Here in Germany the tourings still have quite a bit of intrinsic value and I’ve been hard pressed to find a clean example for less than 5k. One day....one day...

[Roadrunner]

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.

That's the plan! :) I found a rear licence plate bracket from an E46 at the scrap yard that should work perfectly.

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.

Absolutely! I'll check on the water pump and PM you.

April fools Day joke???

I'd be so bummed if this was an april fools day joke.

Haha, I didn't even think about that! Nope, not a joke. I'm dead serious about getting rid of the M40!

BTW have you considered trying out a set of OEM or all red taillights? I just dont like the look of the black taillights. MHT would likely look good, but something about those just ruins the look of the rear for me.

/yeah I agree on the tail light situation, but it is your car! And a beautiful one at that
So glad there's so many touring threads on here right now.

Agree, and add turn signals and fogs to that list too. The smoked look is really dated.

I don’t think the tails are bad at all. With the darker color cars the dark tails are ok. I’d still go OEM but that’s me. Your car, your rules.

I probably wouldn't have changed them if they were still OEM when I got the car, but the previous owner in Germany already had all of the lights smoked. They were professionally done and the car even came with a spare set of smoked tails. I think they look fine with the dark paint colour, so I've left them as is. They might be dated, but arguably so is having a purple wagon from the 90's to begin with. ;)

Still so jealous of your touring. Very cool edition you have. Here in Germany the tourings still have quite a bit of intrinsic value and I’ve been hard pressed to find a clean example for less than 5k. One day....one day...

Good luck with your search. :up: Sounds like you're in the ideal place to find a nice one!

[wworm]

Haha, I didn't even think about that! Nope, not a joke. I'm dead serious about getting rid of the M40!

They might be dated, but arguably so is having a purple wagon from the 90's to begin with. ;)

good to hear. How many valves are you thinking?

Also I was thinking the same thing. I kinda like how early 90s it is with the purple and smoked lights/goofy tails and the crazy interior. I think the early model bias got the best of me for a bit there haha.

[Powling]

I probably wouldn't have changed them if they were still OEM when I got the car, but the previous owner in Germany already had all of the lights smoked. They were professionally done and the car even came with a spare set of smoked tails. I think they look fine with the dark paint colour, so I've left them as is. They might be dated, but arguably so is having a purple wagon from the 90's to begin with.

I'll gladly swap all your tinted lights with my OEM non tinted light any day!

[Shock(/\)ave]

How many valves are you thinking?

Sixteen. ;D

[Roadrunner]

good to hear. How many valves are you thinking?

Sixteen. ;D

^^What he said.

Also I was thinking the same thing. I kinda like how early 90s it is with the purple and smoked lights/goofy tails and the crazy interior. I think the early model bias got the best of me for a bit there haha.

I agree! There sure isn't anything like it out there these days.

I'll gladly swap all your tinted lights with my OEM non tinted light any day!

I'll keep that in mind if I decide to swap them out! :)

FYI, here's what it would look like stock (different wheels though) vs. tinted:

[Roadrunner]

Back to the update! I brought the touring to one last meet & cruise before things wrapped up for the season. It was amazing to see so many E30s in one place (many more than could fit in this shot)!



The cruise was so much fun! I was happy that I could keep up with the other much faster cars in the touring, but I had to push it hard in order to do that. :/ The poor little M40B16 got a hell of a workout that day!



Met up with another E30 touring!



We had lots of other projects on the go at the time, including our E28 Euro 520i project which needed a ton of work.



Did some fall things with the touring. :)





Before I knew it, it was time to get the cars ready to hibernate. :(



And then another endless Canadian winter began. :puppy:



I got an amazing deal on a new exhaust for the touring on Black Friday! It's a Supersprint 318is performance exhaust that was designed for the flow of an M42, but would still work with the current M40. I helped Paul install a Supersprint exhaust on his E36 M3 over the winter, so now I'm even more excited that the touring is going to have such a nice exhaust soon as well!



Around that time, some buddies of ours who were scrapping a 318is asked me if I wanted the M42 from the car before they threw it away. Hmmm. I'd been thinking that an M42 could be a good motor for the touring before, since it would be a big upgrade from the M40B16 and a relatively easy swap, but was it really worth swapping in one that was this heavily used, even if I could get it for next to nothing? We went to check it out, and as expected, it wasn't exactly minty fresh.



Apparently the engine ran well, though the mileage was unknown and it was swapped in at some point from some unknown source for some reason. I did some research on how to find the VIN on an M42 to see if I could find more info on the engine, and came away with some priceless wisdom such as:

No one would steal an M42 and if they did they would just be punishing themselves.

Poor M42s... no one wants them, even for free. :(

Also around that time, I ended up with another car, a '92 E34 M5. That whole story will have to wait for another thread, but basically, I had the intention of pulling the drive train to swap into the touring when I got it, and I ultimately decided to keep the car to restore instead of parting it.



So, I was back to deciding what to do with the touring. Paul reminded me that there was a super low mileage M42B18 he'd seen for sale that he thought would be perfect and didn't seem to be going anywhere. If we got the M5 running, I was sure I could still figure out a way to swing the M42 swap.

Okay, so the one we saw before clearly wasn't the M42 for the car, but an M42 could still be the ideal motor for the car. It would breathe some much-needed life into the car while still preserving its character. Really, it's the engine BMW should have put in it to begin with. It's supposed to be a relatively easy drop-in swap, which means I'd have a hope of getting the touring back on the road quickly instead of turning the touring into a project car (already have enough of those! ).

There was also a good argument to be made for leaving the touring as-is so that I wouldn't create yet another project at all. Which I ignored of course.

I looked up the number for the guy selling the M42, and found that he had a small business selling car parts, though the reviews that came up for his shop were so horrible ("Don't let this man rip you off!!" etc.) they almost made me reconsider. I called anyway to ask for some details about the M42, including if he could verify the supposedly super low mileage. His answer was along the lines of, "Look at it and you will know." Well, only one way to find out for sure. We convinced a car buddy with access to a van to come check it out with us, and hopefully help us pick it up.

The gentleman selling the motor turned out to be a charming, friendly grandfatherly type who ran a super old-school business selling parts for German cars. He set up shop in 1978, and it doesn't look like he's changed a single thing since then, right down to the classical music playing on an ancient, slightly out of tune radio. It looked like an antique shop, except with rims and rare parts instead of other knick knacks in the shop window. Even the posters of (now) classic BMWs on the wall dated back to the late 70's, with sun fading to prove that they'd never moved. He's the kind of shopkeeper who uses his brain as his inventory system, with very few items listed for sale online - only he really knows what he has.

When it was time to go pick up the engine, located in a warehouse offsite, he put on his Mercedes Club of America coat and plaid scarf, and hopped into our buddy's van with us since it would be easier to go in one vehicle. Along the way, he chatted about cars he's worked on over the years and recommended rare parts for all of our cars that he happened to have in stock. The whole thing felt like something out of a movie (he even invited us out for coffee after!).



The engine, an M42B18TU, was pulled from a late 1994 E36 318is and stored in a warehouse in downtown Toronto, where it had been sitting for over 10 years. It has 42,000 original km (about 26,000 miles), less than half of the mileage on the touring! Underneath a bit of dust and dirt from sitting in the warehouse, it was in amazing shape! Practically new old stock. :p

My new engine was in the house!!

[robrez]

Biased, but I'm happy to see you're going M42.

[rturbo 930]

That will be a very appropriate motor for your touring while still being a bit of an upgrade. Good choice.

BTW a handful of the pics in your latest post don't seem to be working.

[Shock(/\)ave]

We took him up on his offer for coffee and had amazing mochas at a local coffee shop just down the street from him. What a great experience that was.

[Roadrunner]

Biased, but I'm happy to see you're going M42.

Thanks! I say you get a full pass on being biased. :P I checked out your COTM thread for M42 inspiration and it did not disappoint. Your car is absolutely stunning!

That will be a very appropriate motor for your touring while still being a bit of an upgrade. Good choice.

I think so too! It should make a pretty big difference (about 35 - 40% more HP and torque compared to the stock M40B16... it's not starting with much after all ;) ), and I really like the characteristics of the M42.

BTW a handful of the pics in your latest post don't seem to be working.

Thanks for pointing that out - should be fixed now! Now to dig up some more pictures...

We took him up on his offer for coffee and had amazing mochas at a local coffee shop just down the street from him. What a great experience that was.

Worth getting the engine just for that! :up:

[Roadrunner]

Now that my new engine was in the house, I needed a place to work on it. With no garage space available and a long winter ahead, I thought of the perfect space to work on it indoors. At first, Paul wasn't fully on board, but I finally convinced him that it would be a great idea to keep my engine in the kitchen. :mrgreen:

I still need to get a proper engine stand, but for now, it's sitting on an old woodworking machine stand.



I got to work giving the engine a good scrub.



I tried to clean up the kitchen to get a good picture of the M42 by pushing the boxes of car parts to the side. (Yeah... we actually choose boxes at Costco based on the ones that would be best for storing car parts. It's bad. Don't judge. ;) )



The engine seemed to be in great shape.



No leaks. All the plastics looked like new.



We pulled the water pump, and couldn't believe how clean it looked inside.



I worked on removing the cosmoline, as well as the rest of the dirt and oil on the engine, with lots of degreaser and a hand held steamer. The steamer helped soften the cosmoline enough to scrape off (plastic cutlery does the trick and doesn't scratch) and eventually started to strip it off.



You can see the cosmoline clinging on for dear life and gradually starting to peel off. It sure looked worse before it looked a bit better. :shock:



Scrubbing it with a scotch brite sponge and Simple Green seemed to help as well.



I got lots of practice cleaning up and refinishing a bunch of old valve covers we had around. This M30 valve cover couldn't have been much worse before...



...but cleaned up nicely! :) I experimented with polishing the valve covers using metal polish and a power ball mini polisher that attaches to a drill, but I wasn't really happy with the results. The metal tended to look blotchy and uneven from corrosion even after a lot of polishing. On the other hand, a little bit of paint really goes a long way. ;D



Taking off the valve cover was more difficult than I was expecting. After double and triple checking that I'd definitely removed all of the hardware, it was truly glued on and would not budge for the longest time. :/



Finally got to see inside the engine!



It smells like 20 year old oil. :P New gaskets will be going on soon.



Good thing our canary Tiny is here to help me out with the M42. :)



So now I just need to source a few items (motor harness, ECU, air box, air sensor, coils and plug wires) and get it ready to drop in the touring. :up: