The E 30 + 1 Build

[DIIRTY-30]

Oddly enough I was switching channels and yup...mecum auction.....I think it was a white 1995 850 auto hammer at $5500. With fee should be around $7500. Looks as if its mostly all there but who knows.

https://www.mecum.com/lots/LS0918-331274/1995-bmw-840ci/

Highlights
Only 1 of 789 840ci models made in 1995
Same owner for last 8 years
4.0L DOHC V-8 Code M60B40
5-speed transmission
Alpine White exterior Code 300
Light Silver Gray Nappa leather interior Code M5SH
Driver and passenger front air bags
Automatic climate control
Power steering
Power 4-wheel disc brakes
Power mirrors
Power locks
Power windows
Power front seats with memory
Electric tilt steering column
Automatic day and night rear view mirror

Sounds about right honestly, everyone leaps for v12s because it was the iconic 90s set up. The owner of the shop that I had install my transmission has 97 m62 alpine/grey with 30k miles on it. Said he wanted $35k for his if he sold it i believe. You can ask whatever you want but reality end of the day its all up to the buyer.

I believe when I ran my vin through the registry my color combo was something like 8 of 29 made for the M60/Auto & only 237 of 343 in the 10 year production span. Aside from alway loving the look of a finely painted DiamondSchwarz paint job, once I came across that info it made me appreciate the car that much more.

[ArtFoodBMW]

E30+1's are great cars and you're doing a fantastic job with yours.

[DIIRTY-30]

Began working on the 750IL calipers; they needed to be hot tanked, wire wheeled & hot tanked again. I had a toss up on colors for the calipers, finally decided then a few days after painting them the CL55 landed at the driveway. So focus got shifted towards parting and harvesting for the build that never came to be.



One evening, I was looking over the parts and noticed the massive similarities that the rear dual piston calipers had compared to my e31/e38's. After taking measurements, I've decided to try to take a leap to make those work on the stock set up. Purchased some e38 brake lines since they don't attach at an angle like the e31 does.





I went ahead and drilled out the W215 rotors to 5x120 to see what the fitment was going to be like.





Went ahead and stripped off as much of the crappy red paint from the calipers & then shaved the faces to remove the logos.









Then I began shifting focus onto drivability since after all, it is my daily driver at the moment. So new strut mounts, front bushings, and etc came. Pushing the caliper guinea pigging to the back.



The top washer bushing was completely destroyed so I figured this was a good time to test out these "stagg" shocks, and while they work... not comparable at all to the Bilsteins. Way better than blown out shocks, but I don't see the longevity in these. So I will be holding onto the Bilsteins for a re-valving one of these days.













After driving on them for a good 5k miles; they were way better than what previously was on there. Which seriously isn't saying a whole lot. So for the time being they will get me by till I decide exactly what route I would like to go. Ideally coils/air cups would be awesome, but that would require a custom set up since the e31 aftermarket scene is nearly non existent.


I came across someone parting an e31 after my homie Aaron told me about some parts he was gathering for his ride. Managed to get a pretty nice set of tails from him for the drivers side. Eventually sourced the passenger side, then gave them a good polish to bring them back to nearly new spec. Took about 3-4 passes but managed to clear the spiderwebbing off after some elbow grease. Now people will know when I'm reversing finally..
























I started collecting CSI parts, purchased Thomas Engl's mirrors. The rough casting took a good deal of finessing, but look the part.


















With massive amounts of grinding, sanding, and double checking for low spots... I started to get somewhere finally..







Got together some DiamondSchwartz & 2k clear then went to town..







Very happy with how the clear laid down, didn't even need to cut & buff it which made me semi-proud.













After painting the pieces, it vastly contrasts the how badly damaged and sunbeat my paint really is. So an eventual re-spray would be awesome but I can already know its going to be twice as time consuming as the e30 since I fear breaking NLA parts lol.


The 275s took a good beating, so I grabbed a pair of 285s that had pretty good life left for $80/pair and had those mounted on..





I'll continue to update this with some more pics I've yet to upload to my flickr. Just wanted to bring this up to speed.

[wworm]

those taillights and mirrors look amazing.

[DIIRTY-30]

Thanks man! The taillights were one of those details that really bugged me from the start, finding them and the impending doom of NLA everything. I had to snag them before they became even harder and harder to source. As for the mirrors, they look great, but for daily driving they're awful. You're left with such a small narrow window that it makes the dumbo mirrors attractive to me now. So I'll probably touch those up and re-install them unless its for a lil photoshoot.

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Since I had a few left over items from the CL part out; I utilized the speakers that were in pretty good shape compared to the OE '94 stuff. The drivers side was annihilated by a PO so that was removed a while back when doing the door handle fix. Heres a comparison to what was factory, the w215 pair fit into the original plastic housings luckily. Made a world of a difference but I still would really like to upgrade everything entirely once I get around to tearing into the interior upholstery.





After speaking to a few people about battery drain issues. I took it upon myself to do some preventative work by replacing the capacitors in the Gen Module that eventually go bad with age.



Specs I chose to run with are :

50v 470uF
50v 10% 100uF
25v 20% 47uF
63v 20% 1uF
63v 20% 10uF







So far knock on wood everything has been functioning very well and should last another 20 yrs hopefully. With the positioning of the unit since its a triple stack, I hope never to have to pull it out again.

Went ahead and stole the engine ground strap off the e30 since its been down.. As with everything on this car, not a lot has been given much lovin..





Started giving the front suspension a little attention; began with the control arm bushings since the ball joints were in good shape. New tie rods, center link, idle arm bushing, sway links, yadda yadda yadda you get the idea.. Need to upload the pics of the other items.










I saved the old sway links, eventually going to cut them up and make an adjustable mock up pair. Since the car is on h&r springs the pre-load is slightly off on them for the sway bar. Be cool to make a spherical pair but for the time being these will suffice.



The pop up headlights sometimes would be a 20/80 with only one popping up more so when the temp got above 95F outside. After inspecting the terminals, motors, wiring, I decided to take a stab at the relay itself. Finding a ton of cold joints, made total sense why I was having this intermittent issue, so a couple mins and reflowing the solder. Haven't had a single issue since and its refreshing not to have to get out of the car and screw drive it up or down. Considering a new relay sells upwards of $200+ this was the ideal route, and addressed the FTP one while I was in there too.







After helping my buddy Aaron out with his fuel pump issues and the similarities of our cars. I decided to do mine as well with the same unit he purchased. Went with a "Quantum" unit for $60 compared to the OEM, Pierburg, or VDO for $130+.

After pulling my unit, it appeared to have exposed ground wire, severed fuel strainer on both ends, and the original 25 yr old pump.











After measuring the old output nipple, I ordered a new hose which was 10mm - 10mm. That ended up being my first hiccup, the Quantum unit needed an 8mm - 10mm flex hose, so that came the next day since the company is based in Oxnard.



I got a good 4 or 5 miles out of it and with the second day of driving it I made it about 3 miles from my house running an errand. At mid throttle 40mph car completely cut out, luckily I coasted into a corner parking spot. Stubbornly I debated walking home to grab tools but at noon over 90 degrees. After figuring it wasn't the battery, and no noise from the fuel pump at all a flatbed was en route.



After figuring out these issues, I then was met with something that wasn't making much sense to me. I kept getting reverse polarity, which at first I thought was a clogged line. So I replaced the fuel filters which made no difference since they were replaced about 6-7k miles ago.



Some time later it dawned on me to crack open the relay and inspect the internals, and behold my week long issue.











I gave it a poor attempt at trying to take it apart to clean, but it was beyond repair and still kept giving me an issue. I tried to use the one off my e30 m60s harness with no luck at all. After looking it up I was happy to find that it wasn't some E31 specific bs relay and only ran $12 so a day later the new one arrived.



Popped the new OEM one in, refilled the fuse panel with spare fuses since I dug in my box of relays/fuses in hopes of finding one. First start up and I'm rollin again and hopefully won't have this problem ever again.







I need to go ahead and upload some more pics to Flickr that I'm either missing in detail above or where I've left off. I also went ahead and got different tips AGAIN, paired them with a Vibrant resonator to give the look of a muffler instead of the muffler delete.

Doing this I was looking to fill the area between the lower bumper and the CSI diffuser, which looked way better and completed the look of the entire rear. Which I'll upload in the next post.

[DIIRTY-30]

After revisiting this thread I cant believe how out of date I let it go. Given this quarantine fiasco I suppose this is the ideal time to bring not only this thread back but the e30 one as well. Typing this a second time after losing everything minutes ago, I will just go ahead and leave this area here & edit as I go throughout the day once all the photos have been uploaded.

In short the following has happened:


--6 speed install accomplished (From what I gather state side this is now the 5th known 840ci with a 420g)

--Rear calipers were upgraded to the 750IL / 850 CSI vented rotors

--Front calipers were sandblasted and rebuilt

--Resonators welded in place of mufflers w/4" tips ; currently about to remove the stock rear resonator and do straight 2.5 from cats back with the left over SS tubing I have

I'm sure there are a few things I'm missing off the top of my head & will add-on. For now those are the bullet points to be followed up with cause this needs photos right? Its r3v.