FIRST E30!! '91 325i

[bmWes]

HEY GUYS,
Super excited about this car and I still can't believe that its sitting in my driveway at the moment. Here's the story so far:
I am a college student and I have been looking at e30's for the past 2 years and was just waiting for the right one.
Found the craigslist ad the night before at 11pm, as it was posted a couple hours earlier. I texted a buddy and we decided to leave early the next morning (5:30AM). After almost 6 hours of driving we finally arrived to where the beauty was sitting and met the owners who were super cool people and took it for a drive. Drove great compared to other e30's I have checked out in the past and I was in love. I live in SoCal but we checked for rust anyways, couldn't find any. Beautiful paint (original), body was nice and straight, no accidents. Frame was straight (no dents or dings) ac was updated and blew cold, compression was near perfect (140 we checked each cylinder), no major leaks, fluids were all full, they basically took great care of the car and kept it all stock except for an aftermarket radio. Interior was clean, drivers seat was pretty worn with a few tears, but all other seats had no rips or tears. Dash is cracked but who's surprised. All the lights work except for the front right headlight sometimes kicks the bucket randomly. Tach doesn't go past 2k, shifter is a little jiggly. Driver's side door doesn't lock. The battery died when right after I made my offer so she brought the price down $300. But other than those things it was a really mechanically sound car which is what I was looking for. I know it's not a perfect car but its mine and that's what matters ;D I didn't get a chance to take a picture of the engine compartment because by the time I got her home it was 11:30PM and I had to drive back to college. But here are the very first pictures I took of it.

https://pix.sfly.com/jEOMKP

This weekend I am planning on:
going home to flush brake fluid (cant afford new hoses at the moment but want to upgrade to stainless steel brake cables)

Check brake pads and rotors

flush coolant

replace coolant sensor

replace thermostat

call Costco for battery warranty but if I cant get that to work then my buddy can get one for cost.

spark plugs (cant really afford spark plug wires right now either)

air filter change

replace bulbs

engine oil was changed less than 500 miles ago

clean engine compartment and undercarriage

replace radiator hose

check to see whats up with the tach

Check the drivers side door lock

So not too much to do this weekend just some refreshing but my wallet is still recovering from the initial purchase haha.
I'm not the most experienced "mechanic" but I did have a 66 mustang coupe that I owned and fixed up while in high school, and I research car stuff for fun so I hope I can get by. But I am appreciative of any help from the community as well :D
I will post my progress and plans as I slowly turn this car exactly into how I envisioned it over the years! Stay tuned and peace!

[jgilber0]

Service the timing belt first

Congratulations and welcome aboard! Nice looking car!

The number one things to check and replace are the timing belt and timing belt tensioner pulley. Service interval is 4 years or 60,000 miles. Cost is under $150 if you do it yourself. It’s not that hard and there are a lot of good writeups on it.

These cars have interference engines. If the timing belt snaps, the valves will strike the pistons, destroying the head, and if at higher RPMs, sometimes the entire engine.

If the timing belt is older than four years, has more than 60,000 miles on it, or you don’t know when it was last replaced, make this a first priority.

Many a nice 325i has succumbed to this problem.

[ak-]

That first line of your intro brought back some hard nostalgic feels.

Congrats on your purchase

[Mpolito3355]

Congratulations and welcome aboard! Nice looking car!

The number one things to check and replace are the timing belt and timing belt tensioner pulley.Service interval is 4 years or 60,000 miles. Cost is under $150 if you do i t yourself. It’s not that hard and there are a lot of good writeups on it.
.

CONGRATS !!! beautiful car :) but jgilber0 is right the first thing should be the timing belt , unless you have receipts of when it was done last and it was less then 60k/4 years....... and even if the PO tells/told you he had it done unless you can confirm i would replace it just for your piece of mind .........

Good luck with it

[jeenyus]

I honestly would change the TB, coolant, thermostat & oil all in one swoop.

Especially if you're changing your coolant and thermostat, there is no reason to not just get in there and replace the TB as well.

[bmWes]

Congratulations and welcome aboard! Nice looking car!

The number one things to check and replace are the timing belt and timing belt tensioner pulley. Service interval is 4 years or 60,000 miles. Cost is under $150 if you do it yourself. It’s not that hard and there are a lot of good writeups on it.

These cars have interference engines. If the timing belt snaps, the valves will strike the pistons, destroying the head, and if at higher RPMs, sometimes the entire engine.

If the timing belt is older than four years, has more than 60,000 miles on it, or you don’t know when it was last replaced, make this a first priority.

Many a nice 325i has succumbed to this problem.

Yeah sorry I forgot to mention that.
Owner got the car 2 years ago at bimmerfest. Right before bimmerfest the previous, previous owner replaced the timing belt. The owner showed me the maintenance record for when she got the car two years ago and right before she sold it to me and she had only driven it 14k miles (because her work was only 2 miles away from her house).
However there is no paperwork that shows that the timing belt was actually replaced so I will do that and also replace the tensioner (probably water pump as well?) for peace of mind this weekend. Thanks for the reminder! :)

PS. @jeenyus I will also do engine oil cause its not expensive and I might as well. Thinking of going with rotella t5 synthetic 5w-40 (or maybe Castrol GTX 10w-50 cause I heard that's what BMW uses but it might be too thick cause its hot around where I live). I don't want to spark an engine oil debate but its always welcome ;)

[jeenyus]

Yeah sorry I forgot to mention that.
Owner got the car 2 years ago at bimmerfest. Right before bimmerfest the previous, previous owner replaced the timing belt. The owner showed me the maintenance record for when she got the car two years ago and right before she sold it to me and she had only driven it 14k miles (because her work was only 2 miles away from her house).
However there is no paperwork that shows that the timing belt was actually replaced so I will do that and also replace the tensioner (probably water pump as well?) for peace of mind this weekend. Thanks for the reminder! :)

PS. @jeenyus I will also do engine oil cause its not expensive and I might as well. Thinking of going with rotella t5 synthetic 5w-40 (or maybe Castrol GTX 10w-50 cause I heard that's what BMW uses but it might be too thick cause its hot around where I live). I don't want to spark an engine oil debate but its always welcome ;)

Take it from me, 5w-40 is too light for the BMW. Go with the Rotella T6 15W-40. It will be much happier.

[bmWes]

Take it from me, 5w-40 is too light for the BMW. Go with the Rotella T6 15W-40. It will be much happier.

Is that what you got in your 325ix?

[MrBurgundy]

20w 50 is what you want

15w40 is good enough, but it gets hot out here, so I recommend 20w50

[jeenyus]

Is that what you got in your 325ix?

Yea, that's what I currently am using in my ix. i used to use the Rotella 5w-40 and that's too light for this application. It wasn't till a friend pointed out how loud it was that i made the switch. It's been much better since with the 15w-40.

The "proper" weight is 20w-40 though. I wouldn't use anything less than 10w, which i'll probably go to in the winter time.

[TriniBoy]

Congrats.
Welcome to the rabbit hole...

[bmWes]

Yea, that's what I currently am using in my ix. i used to use the Rotella 5w-40 and that's too light for this application. It wasn't till a friend pointed out how loud it was that i made the switch. It's been much better since with the 15w-40.

The "proper" weight is 20w-40 though. I wouldn't use anything less than 10w, which i'll probably go to in the winter time.

Tanks for the advice man it doesn't get too cold around in the LBC. thankfully. I was checking out your ix, it looks dope. Jut doing cosmetics right now?

[bmWes]

And thanks everyone for the support stay tuned for plenty to come!

[jeenyus]

Tanks for the advice man it doesn't get too cold around in the LBC. thankfully. I was checking out your ix, it looks dope. Jut doing cosmetics right now?

more or less. My phone broke recently so i haven't had time to update anything with pictures. Been chasing down some more vacuum issues, but did end up finishing my trunk, and will be patching my rust spots probably in the morning to let them sit over the weekend.

waiting for a poly mount to show up for my transfer case and then a check valve for my brakes. Some real exciting stuff. haha

[bmWes]

NOTE: I'm sure many of you already know how to do most of these things and a lot of it you can google yourself, that isn't really the point of me posting it. I am just posting this for personal reference, to relay some of the problems I have had, and if anyone needs the help, its here for them. I know these jobs are simple but I want to keep a log of my build progress here. Thanks!

Hey guys! Quick update:
So I was back home this weekend for two days and I got a little bit of work done so if you need any tips on the following items you can find them here.
Spark plugs
air filter
coolant
parking brake

I bought some Bosch spark plugs from autozone that said they were pre gapped and fit my car but turns out they were pre gapped to .040 so I had to gap all of the spark plugs. If you haven't changed spark plugs before make sure that you take a good look at your old ones to see what kind of wear they have. different colors in different places can mean different things. This was a 20 minute job.

air filter
In order to change the air filter, you have to take out the whole housing. To do this you have to unscrew three bolts that attach it to a frame member in the front left of the car between the shock tower and the coolant reservoir. Then you gotta remove the intake hose that leads to the engine and wiggle it out. its should all come out fairly easily. Now unhook the four pins that seal the compartment and switch the air filters

if anyone knows where the excess coolant blowoff valve is could you let me know? I think it is the nut that connects the coolant level sensor to the reservoir but I couldn't find it on google. And my owners manual is stuck in my glove box lol. So I don't know if there is a leak that I need to be worried about or if it is just expelling excess coolant. I will keep checking levels over the next few days without driving the car to see if it still leaks. It doesn't matter too much what coolant you put into it but just make sure that it is for Euro cars. And if it is not pre mixed that you mix it with at least 50/50 DISTILLED WATER.

Parking brake:
to adjust the parking brake you need to first jack the car up in the rear. Make sure you have two blocks in front of the front wheels to stop the car from rolling. Put it up on jack stands and make sure both wheels are off of the ground. You do not need to take the wheels off unless your pads are glazed and you are trying to sand them. Then you put the car in neutral and pump the brake peddle 3 or 4 times. engage the parking brake until you hear it click five times. then lift the boot and you will see two adjusting nuts. Have a buddy spin the rear wheels for you as you slowly tighten the adjusting nuts. Make sure that if you are adjusting one, say 1/2 of a turn, then you adjust the other one 1/2 of a turn as well until your rear wheels stop turning. When done, spray some WD-40 on the adjusting nuts and close up the boot and youre done!

So that was all I was able to do in two days after a week of not seeing it but now I have some other things to do after driving it around and looking at it for a while.

The coolant leak, I'm still not sure whether the blowoff valve is that nut that holds the level sensor but after this week I will know if it is, or if there is a bigger leak somewhere else on the car. I was planning on getting a new coolant level sensor anyways so there's that.

Secondly, Timing belt. The timing belt on it looks almost brand new (there is bright yellow printed writing on it and there is no dust, no oil, none of the rubber is faded or cracking) so I wasn't TOO worried about it, but I am probably going to do it this coming weekend or sometime before I daily drive it at least.

My glove box is closed shut and wont open my friend accidentally closed it because he didn't know the mechanism was broken no big deal, the owners manual was the only thing of any importance in there. If anyone has any idea how to get it out besides drilling out the screws then let me know haha.

I also want to adjust headlights, fix tach, and replace thermostat