A Brilliant 318i Slicktop Touring

[spiDmang]

I discovered E30's back in 2009/2010ish when I stumbled across an 1990 BMW M3 sitting in a Mall Parking lot. At first glance, I was immediately intrigued by its boxed fenders, nostalgic 80's M badge and vibrant brilliantrot paint (come to find out, it was John Zubrick's E30 M3 in it's earlier stages). I went about my day, but I couldnt get that old BMW off of my mind. So I proceeded to search the web to find out everything about these cars.

Fast forward 11 years, 57 E30's, and a hobby shop under my (and my partners) care, and this is where my 1991 BMW 318i Slicktop Touring comes into play.

August 2020. The world is in full swing of COVID-19 protocol and prevention. It's about 12pm and I am sitting in my home office with a turkey sandwich and browsing R3v Classifieds. I come across a 1991 318i Touring Design Edition in Laguna Green. The owner lives in the Netherlands but is shipping these cars stateside. I was initially interested in this Design Edition Car because...why not?! I notice that there wasnt much traffic on his classified page, so I proceed to send him a private message. Come to find out, the Design Edition was already sold and sent stateside, but he sent me another car that might interest me.....Enter the 1991 Brilliantrot 318i Touring.

Key Features of the car:
SLICKTOP!!!!
Manual Everything (Windows, Steering)
Completely Peasant Spec (No AC, No Radio or associated wiring, no speakers....literally none).

The interior was in piss poor shape, the engine supposedly ran great (we will get back to this later), and it was cheap. I wired the man the money on a Wednesday, and the car was on a boat that Friday.

[spiDmang]

Fast Forward 2 weeks to the first week of September, and the Touring lands in San Francisco for pick up. So my buddy Gregolas and I fly down in the early AM, take a cab to the port and proceed to finalize check out paperwork for the car. Mind you, this is the same time that there were massive Fires happening all over California and Oregon.

Upon completion, we receive the keys and attempt to start the car....Battery is dead. We call the Lot Attendant over, and he has a jump box to get the car going. We get the car finally started and it screams to life! BUT, the idle quickly surges to 6k RPM on the little M40 and stays there. We shut the car off and proceed to adjust the throttle body. We get it to a point where we feel that the car is idling properly and start our maiden voyage.



I look down at the fuel gauge and the car is literally on fumes. Since the battery was questionable, we head to an auto parts store that was right next door to a gas station. I swap the battery out and go to start the car...The car won't catch! Figuring it was just low on fuel, we limp it over to the gas station, fill her up and proceed to start the car again....NOTHING. After a few more minutes messing with the car, we finally get it started...You can already see where this is heading...





At this point, the trip seems to be getting better and going smoothly! 350 miles out of San Francisco, we cruising thru Mt. Shasta. Beautiful scenery and vast sweeping corners are on every bend. Abruptly, the car shuts off and I have to take the nearest exit, which is in Dunsmuir, CA. Coming to a stop, the car is starting to smoke everywhere! We pop the hood, and smoke just bellows out. I scramble and look underneath the car, and the Catalytic Converter is literally glowing red.


Long story short, we had to leave the car in Dunsmuir, CA, take a taxi to Medford, Oregon (stupid expensive trip...) so that we could pick up the ONLY Uhaul Box Truck available in a 150mile radius...Remember those forest fires? Everyone locally were evacuating the area, so nothing was available!. From Medford, we had to drive west 60 miles to Selma, OR to pick up the only vehicle trailer available. From Selma, OR, we drove back to Dunsmuir, CA which was 2.5hrs south. After many hours, ridiculous money spent, and curse words to the E30 Gods, we retrieved the car and was back on the road...

[spiDmang]

The remainder of the trip was very uneventful, which was a good thing! Everything went smoothly and it was nice driving a rig that had ice cold AC with recirculation (because of all of the smoke), and a operational radio LOL. From this point on, we made it back to Bellevue, WA by late Sunday evening with zero hiccups. With the car on the trailer, we decided to try and see if the car would start again so we could pull it off on it's own power....Low and behold, the Touring fired off without a hitch.... -__-

My guess at the time was an overworked fuel pump and a clogged catalyic converter/fuel filter. At this point, I didn't really care because Gregolas had a spare S52 swap sitting in the shop waiting for a new home....More on that later!

[spiDmang]

So there was a little tid bit that i forgot to add in the beginning of this story! Prior to buying the Slicktop Touring, Greg and I purchased a wrecked 1989 325i Touring from one of our good E30 buddies. The car was unfortunately rear ended, and sat at his house for a number of years. We always told him that we would love to buy it and try it resurrect it in good ol' AlphaTeam Fashion. Once we got the car, we had a body shop give us an estimate for the repairs...It exceeded $7k, so we opted out. From that point on, I knew I wanted to find a touring to fit all of the great parts from the wrecked example.

The car had the following:
Very clean and well sorted Sport Cloth interior w/ rear head rests
16x7 & 16x9.5 Avez wheels
Bilstein Sports and Bav Auto Touring Specific Springs
3.91 Limited Slip Differential
OEM Premium Speaker harness and rear speaker pods.

While the interior was apart, I decided to yank the headliner and send it off to NW Crafted to be professionally redone. They ended up patching up some fiberglass work and applying the new headliner perfectly! I couldn't be happier! I would argue that this was the best money spent on the car so far...I always do all of my own work on my vehicles, but this was one item I wanted to be perfect.

[2mAn]

[cory58]

Welcome to the Touring club! More info!

[e30austin]

ooh, ooh, i like this story

[PieterVN]

Good luck on this project! Always found it very funny that the Touring is so special in the US. I once had a 320i and loved it but I was just not the time for more than one E30 at that moment...
Definitely would buy one again.

[808ETA]

Sub'd

[spiDmang]

Yee haw!

Thanks everyone!

This is a fully dressed M54 w/ trans = 475lbs!! This fits perfectly with my LTW inspired Touring!!!

10/24/2020



With the M40 being super unreliable, I didn't hesitate to yank that old, cranky bastard out. Within the day, I was able to yank the drivetrain, fit my Arc Asylum rear sump subframe, and install my brand new Porsche 944 Brake booster.

11/2/2020

After a week of waiting for parts, I installed the following:

E46 ZHP Steering rack w/ new tie rods
New Control Arms and E30 M3 offset bushings
Condor Steering Coupler Delrin Guibo
16" Spal Pusher Fan and wiring harness



Don't worry, that missing bolt made it onto the subframe lol.



Motor sitting nicely!



Now for the fun part!!

The M54B30 made 245whp on the dyno, utilizing MAF!! He thinks we could make more power out of it if it had proper headers and a better exhaust OR by running MAP. With MAF being more reliable from a daily driver stand point, I'll gladly run it on MAF.

Current Setup:
M54b30 utilizing MegaSquirt 3
Shrick Cams
M50 Manifold with Drive by Cable (NOT wire)
Port and polished head to match the M50 manifold
Mishimoto Silicone Intake elbow
Getrag 260 w/ Garagistic DSSR and Z3 shifter
Spec Kevlar Clutch
Brand new Drivelines NW driveshaft
3.91 LSD (this is too much for daily driving, but it makes the car very fun lol).

[spiDmang]

11/19/2020

Got the engine fully dialed and operational. You might be wondering how the metal valve cover on an M54? Source a Cali M56. Definitely a worthy upgrade so you dont have to worry about any plastic VC's cracking.





On all of my personal 24V conversions, I always drive my open headered car to the muffler shop...lol. I don't encourage these shenanigans, but it's always a fun time.

[spiDmang]

And all of the exhaust work.

I was able to source an E36 Downpipe section locally that would turn out to be my saving grace. It made the whole exhaust serviceable just like OEM, and converged into a single pipe. And with the Arc Asylum subframe, it cleared by miles. My only hiccup is that one of the downpipes touch the CAB. On my list is adding Garagistic Treehouse CAB's so it clears and I get rid of the very minor NVH that occurs upon start up and idle.









Yeah....it's loud....

[spiDmang]

And one more photo dump to catch us up on the car.

11/21/2020

A Fellow member and friend swung by the shop to say hello and buy some parts in his ULTRA clean Mtech II Coupe.


11/28/2020

With the car running solid, my wife and I decided to take it to pick up Christmas Trees. We had (3) Trees of various sizes on the rack!



the E30 back home and cleaned up.



12/11/2020

My buddy Adam Nonis (known for his E30 Vert/ Volvo Amazon Build), set me up with a pretty unique Big Brake Kit.

I won't disclose details on the following brakes (not my place since Adam put me onto this conversion), but with that being said, he was able to mill new adapters and get me set up with the following!

*The color is Porsche Acid Green. I know...the color is loud as hell, but I don't care. I love it :)





My plan is to have these on the Touring by the beginning of Spring 2021 with potentially a new wheel/suspension set up. The Billy sports and Bav Auto springs are just too soft. The rear passenger side is gets really bad wheel hop upon WOT, and my assumption is that the passenger rear shock is totally blown. While I am in there, I plan on refreshing the rear end with all new bushings, camber correction, and a rebuilt 3.46 LSD.

[spiDmang]

Parts update! Just ordered a few rear subframe bits:

-80a Poly Subframe bushings
-OEM trailing arm bushings
-Stainless steel brake lines
-Stud kit for the differential
-Swapping out the 3.91 LSD for an 3.46 LSD Unit
-Weld in Camber correction

[iansane]

That looks good. I can't wait to see the green and red...

You already have a new home for that 391?