Lachs Silver 1988 325 Sedan

[e30austin]

Looks great, sir. The Ronals are such a nice wheel.

[2mAn]

Car looks great!... I really need fresh paint on mine

[TFJR]

New high-res pics

This past Saturday I woke up early and took the E30 for a nice drive. These photos were taken near Golden Gardens park in Seattle, WA. That same morning I also picked up a nice rebuilt driveshaft from Gregolas with greasable joints.

























Imgur does a great job of greatly reducing image quality :(

[2mAn]

Very cool. I look forward to having a bigger baby6 in my E30 ... I feel a little more torque goes a long way in a daily driven E30

[TFJR]

how do you like the new setup?

I'm really happy with it. It feels about ~10-15% more powerful than my old '88 325iS which is exactly what my goal was! For all that I invested, I could've gone the route of a 24v swap pretty easily but I am personally a big fan of a very well sorted M20.
Also - having an extra 1500rpm of usable rev range has been great. I swapped the cluster as well + installed that 370mm MT2 steering wheel. The driving experience has transformed and I'm really excited about the future of the car. It has reignited the passion I have for these cars. That is good as I almost bought an '09 LCI E91 Touring to use as a DD and to park this thing most the time.

I feel like its a car thats meant to be driven & that is exactly what I intend to do with it :D

[2mAn]

how do you like the new setup?

[TFJR]

Cylinder head is installed & the car is running quite well! Many thanks to my friend/mechanic Roman (Bareminimumbandit). The car had a bad misfire thanks to some junk injectors I purchased off the forum. Luckily I got another set of 19# injectors from a friend, Greg Perez (Gregolas) here locally. Just some fine tuning details at this point but the car absolutely rips. Engine bay has been heavily de-cosmolined, but still a work in progress.

Before:




After:


Some other things still coming are:

• New OE Kick Panel/Knee bolster + all hardware
• New coolant expansion tank
• CAtuned Silicon Coolant Hoses
• Coolant level sensor
• New distributor cap & rotor
• Distributor dust cover
• Condor 70a Trans Mounts
• OE M20 motor mounts
• Rebuilt driveshaft. U-Joints aren't in good shape on my current one
• Engine wiring harness - car still has the issue where it will cut off on WOT high up in the rev range
• Lots of other little trim pieces, clips, door switch etc etc.

Got my Ronals mounted last night + an alignment. Feels great! I love the look & it's so nice to drive an E30 with good tires.

Hartge's are for sale.

[Metallated]

Congrats on the new parts Toby! I'm looking forward to seeing the ronals on the car!

[TFJR]

Some Progress...

The cylinder head will finally go on this week. I got some more goodies to further feed my anxiety :D

• I ordered this really nice E30 x PNW coffee mug from the BMW CCA. They only made 200 of them & I'm really glad I got mine!

• Decided to switch up my wheel setup to the ever popular 15" Ronal LS. I ordered a set brand new from performancealloys.com in the UK. I dealt with a gentlemen named Richard who I'd recommend to anybody. They take about 2 weeks to arrive in the US via DHL.

• I ordered new Yokohama S. Drives: 205/55/R15 through TireRack.

• The Hartge's are now for sale. PM me if you're interested.

• Purchased a 370mm M-Tech II steering wheel off the forum. It has yet to arrive from Europe.

• #MONEYSHOT - I dropped off the car with my buddy who will be leading the install of the cylinder head last week! Here are all the supporting items grouped together

• Ireland Engineering Strut Brace, OE E30 M3 Rear Springs & OE E30 M3 RSB + Bushings going in.

I took some engine bay pics I'll share in my next post. The "before" is very ugly...

[2mAn]

you should do a before and after dyno!

[TFJR]

Really enjoying this thread. The car has come such a long way!

I hope the engine work is going well. Looking forward to updates.

Thanks so much! You inspired me to purchase 4, circular 15" mesh things from the UK ;)
Hoping it will be complete by early November.

I may have missed this but why go w/ ARP hardware? Is the plan to add forced induction down the road?


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Fantastic question. My friend who will be leading the install and coaching me (as I assist & learn) demanded ARP hardware. He has heaps of experience with M20's and really does not care for the factory BMW head bolts. I do not plan on going FI with the car in the future. He thinks of it as cheap insurance for all the rest of the work & investment that is taking place.

With that said, I have some new, OE BMW head bolts I'll sell to anyone for cheap. Ordered through Bimmerheads :)

[AC_Schnitzel]

I may have missed this but why go w/ ARP hardware? Is the plan to add forced induction down the road?


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[connorb850]

Really enjoying this thread. The car has come such a long way!

I hope the engine work is going well. Looking forward to updates.

[TFJR]

Really tremendous work on this, Toby. You've got quite the clean undercarriage there and it's only looking better with the suspension refresh.

What paint did you use on the subframe/calipers?

Thanks for the kind words! It's all a labor of love.

For paint, it was Duplicolor black caliper paint on the brakes. For the subframe + other parts it was VHT rollbar chassis paint. It applied/took the paint pretty nicely without crazy long prep time.

[alkkamai]

Really tremendous work on this, Toby. You've got quite the clean undercarriage there and it's only looking better with the suspension refresh.

What paint did you use on the subframe/calipers?