I haven't really been too active on here since 2017 or so. Moved away from my home state, sold my house (and garage) and eventually sold my long-termed owned, many times swapped, e30 HPDE car. Pretty depressing. I've definitely been lurking on here, watching the market go crazy, laughing at the e30 craze on BAT while secretly regretting selling each and every e30, e34 and e39 m5 that I'd ever owned. I'm feeling a bit domesticated these days, I have a 5th gen 4runner, LIMITED and an L322 Rangie and to be honest I've been itching for a project.
So one day I'm riding MTB at my local spot, come across this dude that's going the same speed as I am. We ride a couple trails, session a few of the good sections, and I find out that he lives on the street as the home I'm currently under contract on. He's talking about the neighborhood, then mentions that he's got a car out in front of his house that's going to get towed if he doesn't sell it- it's an old BMW that he bought as a project, but doesn't know anything about it. Has an engine swapped from a newer 3 series, suspension is "collapsed", overheats after 10 minutes, and its REALLY ugly.
I bought it, and it is UGLY.
Basics:
- 1991 318i
- VANOS M50
- LSD, unknown ratio but it feels taller than a 3.73
- H&R Race with cheapo shocks
- Chalkboard paint over spraypainted primer. Absolute garbage
Plans:
So one day I'm riding MTB at my local spot, come across this dude that's going the same speed as I am. We ride a couple trails, session a few of the good sections, and I find out that he lives on the street as the home I'm currently under contract on. He's talking about the neighborhood, then mentions that he's got a car out in front of his house that's going to get towed if he doesn't sell it- it's an old BMW that he bought as a project, but doesn't know anything about it. Has an engine swapped from a newer 3 series, suspension is "collapsed", overheats after 10 minutes, and its REALLY ugly.
I bought it, and it is UGLY.
Basics:
- 1991 318i
- VANOS M50
- LSD, unknown ratio but it feels taller than a 3.73
- H&R Race with cheapo shocks
- Chalkboard paint over spraypainted primer. Absolute garbage
Plans:
- Cosmetics
- Paint - I'm going to pay someone to paint this thing. Not sure of how I'm going to do it yet, but there is a shop back in the ATL area that I know does good work. Current plan is to take the car down to a friend's house in that area, strip it and drop it off. Going to be a long turn-around time but it should work out ok with my house purchase and all that. I think I can pay $3-4k and end up with something that looks really nice.
- Interior - I'm working on picking up a recently totaled, super clean late model sedan that was posted on here. The car is destroyed, but interior is super nice, and I'm planning to rob that along with any usable trim / fiddly bits because mostly everything on the 24V car is trash.
- Drivetrain
- It actually runs pretty great all things considered. When i picked up the car the owner though it had a blown HG because it would overheat after 10 min of driving, but it ended up being the infamous 24V swap + M42 rad combo being difficult to bleed. Filled it both ways through the upper rad hose and it no longer overheats. I'll probably just clean things up and run this M50/ZF combo for a while
- Suspension
- When I bought the car, it wasn't drivable because the tires rubbed like crazy. Owner had just bought these Sparco wheels for it and put 205/55/15's on it. He was thinking the suspension had "collapsed" while the car was sitting and that was to blame, but after some further investigation, I found out that it had some 25mm spacers that were fused to the rotors, which obviously wouldn't work well with that tire size. Chiseled those things off and everything works fine.
- I'm really missing going to the track, so I think I'm going to go that direction with this thing. There are a lot of really nice parts coming off of my old car that I think I'll end up buying. True coilover MCS 2-way remotes are the big ticket item, and total overkill for a $600 weekend car, but we'll see how that goes. Also considering picking up my old NASIEG 5lug kit with e46 M brakes. Not thrilled with the 17" wheel fitment options though, and not sure if I want to be locked into that all over again
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