Touring Car

[Eric]

Last week I picked up my Touring Car from the Baltimore harbor.

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This guy has been sitting with my friend for a while in Germany, so it was really neat to see it it in the flesh for the first time. This car shows 63k km on the odometer and it looks like every second of every km was at maximum attack!!!

So what's wrong with it?


THe headliner is falling like most tourings
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The cloth seats are tip top
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The exterior paint is about 17 different shades of red/pink.
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Motor mounts are in excellent shape. I'd guess they are original
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Even with all it's quirks, I'm excited to own a touring again, and I think it's excited to have a good owner finally!
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First order of business was washing off the sea/salt. There was also a considerable amount of dirt/dried mud in the wheel wells.
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next on the list is a tune up and some basic maintenence.

[Smoove1]

Congrats Eric. I look forward to seeing your progress.

[M-technik-3]

It was cheaper for you to do a road trip too and fro of just an excuse to get out? Long Drive.

[parkerbink]

Congratulations!

[jpod999]

Plans?

[808e30325i]

Welcome to the touring club!

[Eric]

Plans?

Big picture? Make it my DD!


A bit of an update.

After getting the car home, a drive around the block showed that the idle is horrible, just about everything isn't working and the car overheats in under 1/2 a mile in 2nd gear.

First thing to tinker with was the horrible idle. I figured this thing had a mess under the intake like the M42 so a rotting vacuum line was where I was going to look first.
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I was right. Off to Schmiedmann to order some hoses. I also removed some weird fuel effeciency of LPG device, you can see it between the PS res and the brake res. One problem that I noticed is the coolant hoses that connect to the throttle body were completely dry. I hate spilling coolant, but to pull a hose and not get coolant all over yourself is concerning. Next, I pulled the upper hose... dry as well. shit.

So I jacked the car up. way up to get a rise out of the facebook kiddies
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found this caging. neat.
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Drained the coolant and there was mabe 20oz that dumped out. not so good. I remember the car in germany needed a new battery because it would need to be jump started all the time. When I picked it up in baltimore, it needed to be jumped. My immediate worry is that someone jumped it and let it run to "charge the battery" and let it idle for a long time with nearly zero coolant.

I filled the system with coolant and the car still overheated quickly and I could feel zero movement in the hoses. In fact the hoses weren't even hot. Either have a huge air bubble in the block somewhere or the thermostat is bad.

I pulled the thermostat to see if it worked.
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It did
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But I'd already ordered one local (same as the M42) so I put the new one in.

Added more coolant.

Same problem as before. hot motor, needle rising past 1/2. cold hoses. I bled that bitch for hours too, burping it more than a 2 month old after chugging a bottle.

Hadn't placed the schmiedmann order yet, so I kept adding to that.

A few days later I got a box from denmark and got busy
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The old water pump was in good shape. no shaft play, no grinding/crunching noise, fit in there fine. LIke the thermostat, I was replacing a perfectly working part. I'm starting to think I just have a really big air pocket somewhere in the block.
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More coolant added. More bleeding

Still hot, so next up is the dingy old radiator. Before throwing parts at it, I decided to see if it was clogged.
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It wasn't, but it now had a leak at the expansion tank. So a M42 radiator was bought locally (cheaper than online too!)
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The M42 radiator is much larger than the small M40 radiator. Which reminds me, I need to order the little cups for the rubber radiator feet to sit in.
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More coolant. More bleeding.

Now I'm actually getting some flow. I've bleed the car with it flat, lifted a little, lifted a lot. bleed the heater core, then the block, then the hoses, then the radiator then the expansion tank, etc. I'm still not confident it's bleed 100% but I can now drive it without the needle creeping past 1/2. I also accidently ordered a Spal sucker fan a while ago for the M3 and it's been sitting in a box for a few years now. I popped it on and will wire it up with a 80/88°c temp switch.
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Also in the Schmiedmann box was a pair of rear hatch struts and basic tune up parts.
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It's a good think I ordered the tune up stuff too, the cap/rotor and plug wires were in pretty rough shape.
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I still need to do the o2 sensor, but it runs much better now.

I drove the car back in September to the local BMW CCA chapter meet which also happened to be the first time I drove the thing over a mile. I'm so glad I didn't take the risk of driving it from Baltimore to Ohio straight from the port. That would have been a costly mistake!

In my test drive it sounded like Beelzebub himself was punching the floor of the car over every bump. On impressive bumps the car would jiggle to the left or right a few feet. I'm sure if other drivers were watching the car and not texting, they would have seen the rear wheels leaving the ground due to expansion joints. The suspension needs some serious attention. Also the seats are torn to shit and the fabric isn't soft but itchy and annoying. The motor has valve tick and sounds like what you would expect an early 2000's mercury capri leaving the dollar tree store to sound like. You can hear the motor physically knocking around in the engine bay over the valve tick... I knew the motor mounts were bad, but this drive confirmed they were really really bad.

Luckily they are the same part as the M42, so sourcing them was cheap and easy.
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fitting motor mounts is never fun though, there is always that one fucking stud that doesn't want to line up.
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After a test drive, I promptly lost the key to the car. Since there are only 2 drivers in our family and we have 5 cars, I wasn't in panic mode looking for it, and while looking for it, I found it's brother which lead a hard life.
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Finally, how do you get this thing back in it's home?
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[Eric]

While I was looking for the key, a E36 M3 5 lug kit popped up semi-local and I had a relatively free weekend. Over coordinating the meeting I made the silly mistake of asking what other E30 parts he had.

That turned into this:
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On top of the suspension, I bought a dissassembled M50. Buying a torn down motor is probably not the best idea, but I'm thinking now I'll use it for parts on whatever swap I end up doing.
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loading the short block was a bitch with two people but removing from the truck bed alone was terrifying. I was imagining the boards breaking and that block hurling towards my leg, snapping it spectacularly.
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My favorite bit of the purchase was the houndstooth interior for a few reasons.
1. It solves the problem of the shitty/itchy/ripped seats in the car now
2. I bought 3 which means I can build a game console driving rig with the spare
3. I grabbed 2 rear benches. 1 will be used to re-cover the current fold down benches and the other will hopefully be enough fabric to recover the seat cushion centers on my Recaro SPG's. I sourced some Houndstooth E30 M3 fabric from Isle of Man a while ago and finally had my sport seats and rear bench re-skinned. Having the SPG's match will be sweet.
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Now I just need to find Houndstooth sedan door cards. If you know of any, let me know!

[Eric]

One thing I've pondered a lot about lately is doing a stereo system. I started a pretty nice one in my E28 M5, but never completed it. the 4" front speakers were a stopping point on that one, I just couldn't find anything good in such a small diameter.

I used to work in a stereo shop a few decades ago sweeping the floors, sales, and the occasional deck install if our main guy was slammed. I'm not a big music geek, but I do love car audio and I'm a bit surprised I've taken such a long break from it. Racetracks are addictive I guess.

My first thought was a sub in the spare wheel well.
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A spare tire sub would solve another problem I have with the touring... the lack of a trunk mat. Putting the sub down there would mean I'd need to build a false floor which would take the place of the mat anyways, perfect! I haven't decided on what sub to use yet. I have an old Image Dynamics IDMAX pictured above, but it has a ripped surround and I'd guess sending it in for repair would cost as much as a different sub costs new. the IDMAX is also pretty tall and while it can work in a small space, it likes bigger enclosures.

I also have these Alumapro Alchemy subs that are new in the box that I've been holding onto for years, but I can only fit one in the spare, and I kind of want to use these together.
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Haven't decided on what amps to use, new class D amps are tiny, so I might pick up a pair of little 4 channel class D amps and a sub amp. Why so many channels? I want to play with an active system. So no crossovers with my components, instead I'd use a DSP (Digital Sound Processor) which would send just the right signal to the amp who in turn sends just the right freq to the speaker. Front speakers would have 2 channels for the woofers and 2 channels for the tweeters. Same in the rear, and a sub amp. I've seen a few 3.1 amps (3 channels, one has more power for a sub) which I might use in the rear and not run the rear active.

I was undecided on what head unit to run as well. Like everyone else on R3v, I think the current head units are horrid to look at, but they do things I like, like play music off my phone. I'm not sure where my CD collection currently is, and I have no desire to rebuild a CD Logic case full of Limp Bizket. But then through casual conversation, a Sony CDX-C90 became availible for silly cheap and I had to have it. This was the deck I drooled over and could never afford back in the day. It was the Ron Jeremy of head units back in the turn of the century. Only the Macintosh and maybe the high end Denon units outclassed it.
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Speaking of Denon, I had one a DCT A100 in my M5 and it was lovely. when I bought the A100 it came with this level meter. I never had a place to fit it in the M5, and don't really have a good place for it in the wagon, but if I end up stuffing the DSP and amps in a side panel, I might incorporate the Denon level meter in some way.
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I still haven't decided on a DSP either although I'm leaning towards a miniDSP 6x8. If anybody has experience with any DSP, I'd love to hear it!

Also undecided is what speakers to use. 15 years ago Morel's were my favorite for my ears, but times change and I've had a lot of F16's take off in close range since then. I might be deaf enough to love klipsch now.

[Eric]

Final update for the night...

This Thanksgiving has been melodramatic for our household this year. My wife is working 12 hour night shifts every day but the actual holiday (she slept all day) and both my boys have had a stomach bug since tuesday. All they want to do all day is sleep on the couch like their furture teenager selfs.

A few days of trying to keep the house quiet so my wife could sleep and the boys didn't feel great, I was getting pretty stir crazy. So today I decided to give the touring a deep clean.

The single stage Brilliantrot is super faded and dirty. Even with a wash there was plenty of contamination embedded in the paint. 1st step was to pressure wash as much contamination as possible, this itself took nearly an hour! After the wash was to clay bar the car. I've never seen clay have to work so hard before. The paint almost felt like 2000 grit sand paper, but after a pass of the clay bar the paint felt much smoother.

Here is what the car looked like after the pressure wash and clay bar.
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Not sure if the plastic mirror's can be saved, but I'll give it a try.
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Next up is correcting the pinkness. The only compound I found in my cabinet is an unopened bottle of Meguars Ultimate (I'm not a meg fanboi by any means, but I seem to have a bunch of their products!) so I popped it open and gave it a solid college try.

Not bad!

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Check out the difference in the light reflection.
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vs.
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Quite a difference, can't wait to see what the whole car looks like in red.
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I finished out the hood before my son came down and said I was making too much noise (his room is above the garage), the I cleaned the pad and will have to re-attack in the morning.
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[wworm]

Im always pretty impressed with what a little wipe down detail can do. Hope the fam gets back in good health along with that touring!

[D.Martijn]

Great updates on that red touring! Loving the paint transformation, nice work.

ps, the "weird fuel effeciency LPG device" you were talking about in one of your previous posts is some kind of cold start device (Kaltstarregler/Kaltlaufregler in German)
I've read somewhere it's used to get the car faster to operation temperature and thus having less emissions on start up.
My 325ix Touring also has one fitted, I also thought about removing as I'm not sure if it even works..

[mike.bmw]

Great batch of updates! I look forward to seeing this touring progress. Subscribed!

Hopefully the red paint will stay red. I had an old Audi in the 90s that would turn from red to pink over the course of a few weeks after detailing.

[vasilis m3]

I love S/W E30's!

Nice work mate! ;)

[Echo30V]

Great job. Keep on keepin on. That Touring was certainly ridden hard and put away wet, glad to see you breathing life back into it.