1984 325e Turbo Resurrection

[atmh]

An update and some pics! Here's what the last week has presented. As stated the car landed in my garage a week ago, and I spend the past week figuring out why it wasn't running and doing some initial prep work to get it up and running.

Ordered (mostly not installed) New goodies:

• Silicone intake boot/kit
• Timing belt, tensioner, sintered cam and oil pump gear
• water pump
• muffler + heat shield
• Spark plugs + distributor (previously mentioned)
• Oil and oil filter

The sintered cam gear was on backorder most places. I ended up spending $100 to get it shipped from canada. Might take a few weeks, at that, so it could be a few weeks before I have the car putzing around.

Anyways, here's some pics from the past week:
The new home:


I wish I had a bigger garage...Oh well


Busted Hella H4 still works!


The distributor probably wasn't the reason the car wasn't running, but it also probably wasn't helping. The contacts are pretty worn.


That's all for now!

[atmh]

Today I put the car on jack stands and changed the oil. After changing the oil, I wanted to let it warm up to temp to see how it would run (still idling a bit rough).

So two things worth noting about that:

1: Fresh oil is running ~60+psi at idle,vs the 11 year old oil at ~20psi. In hindsight I wish I had changed the oil when prepped the car for shipping, or made sure my dad did it. Unfortunately that didn't happen and I expect the engine has an hour plus of run time on the old oil. My mistake for not making sure it was changed.
2: With the new oil the car is burning a LOT of oil. So either one or more seals went bad over 10 years of sitting OR the run time on the old oil damaged something. It's not uncommon for engines to burn more oil after an oil change: fresh oil is "slippery" compared to old oil, and that causes it to slip past the seals and get into areas it can be burned: Valve seals, piston rings, head gaskets, and turbo seals are all reasonable guesses. My money's on the turbo seal or head gasket. I know the valve guides/seals were changed in 2009, and I can't imagine they would go bad by just sitting for 10 years. Usually the atrophy from sitting is related to water damage and rust and stuff like that. Generally I don't think of cars sitting an extended period of time causing internal damage. Of course, I could be wrong.

A potentially simple way for me to check the turbo seals is to unhook the oil line to the turbo and see if that fixes it. The turbo hardly spins at idle (I've stopped it spinning with my finger at a idle before) so I might try that before going down the rabbit hole of replacing all the internal seals in the engine. My turbo has water cooling, so I'm not super worried about cutting off oil pressure for a minute or two to see if it stops burning so much oil.

With all that said, I'm not completely convinced that there isn't water in the exhaust, and exhaust in the coolant. Kinda looks to me like yes, coolant and exhaust are mixing, which 100% implies the head gasket is leaking.

Getting under the was a good reminder of just how much rust is down there. It's bad. I've got my work cut out for me, and even though I was thinking "piecemeal" a week ago based on how well the engine seems to be running, I think the reality is that I still need to think of this project as a complete tear down and rebuild. There's so much rust that if I pull the head off, I might as well pull the block and transmission, and then I might as well just strip the whole undercarriage and interior and make sure the chassis is good to go. That pretty much means priority #1 is getting my small garage space ready for a complete tear down. My original plan was to get a lift installed, but at this point I think I can actually wait on the lift and instead just pull the engine and transmission then set it up on a rotisserie. I'm like 90% certain a rotisserie will handle a mostly assembled car, or at least minimally disassembled (the engine being the primary big heavy thing to take out first).

Still might change the timing belt and take her for a drive around the neighborhood. Would be cool to feel the turbo kick in a little bit before tearing into the whole project.

Just one pic from today: a smokey tailpipe.

[atmh]

I didn't have much of an agenda for today, except to start the car up and see how the smokey tailpipe situation was in the daylight rather than in the dark. The car did basically the same thing as last time: No smoke when the engine is cold, then increasingly smokey as the car gets close to operating temp. As it gets close to operating temp the engine runs better - missing less, and it seems almost like there might be a cylinder or two that are misfiring when it's cold, and then when it gets warm they start firing, and then we get the smoke. I'm also not 100% sure that it's oil smoke - it doesn't look like the telltale blue smoke, more like a grey/black, which is more like an engine running really rich. In any case, it seems the smoke is probably from the engine warming up, not necessarily the fresh oil. Could be fuel related. Could be head gasket related. Oil could be a component, but I'm not sure it's the whole thing.

I don't really think it's worth my time to try and diagnose it, to be honest. The whole car is getting torn down, the head is coming off, and the turbo is getting replaced. I'm pretty confident it's not the bottom end or valve guide seals, which is about as good as I could hope for.

Pic from today: My first (new) go fast bits installed! The intake boot was cracked, so here's a nice new silicone one. Thanks to CATuned for including the clamps, as previously mentioned! Only trouble is my charge pipe is smaller than the stock mass flow meter diameter, so I got my first janky fix alongside the new go fast bits: the old intake boot cut and shoved in between the pipe and the silicone boot. Works great! I'm sure it will get me around the neighborhood, but yeah, I'm going to have to come up with a more permanent solution.

[McGyver]

Great updates and awesome garage space! I'm glad to hear you've got it running again, even if there are a bunch of things to work out.

[atmh]

Great updates and awesome garage space! I'm glad to hear you've got it running again, even if there are a bunch of things to work out.

Thanks!

The garage is smaller than a standard 2-car garage, I have a 14ft wide door instead of the standard 16. But I have a little 6ft wide storage room off the side of the garage which kinda makes it effectively a normal size 2-car. This project has forced me to get really organized and clean out a lot of old stuff and finish up old projects. I'll keep the e30 in running condition while I finish up the remaining projects and organize the space a little bit better - just needs a storage spot for all the parts as I take them off the car, plus enough space to get the rotisserie in there. So it might be a few months before I really tear into this project, but hey in the meantime I can post garage organization updates. :)

[atmh]

Did some exhaust work in prep for just putzing around the neighborhood/pulling the car in and out of the garage. I did some patching, sawing, and bolting on a new muffler. Forgot to take pics of some of that stuff, but here, take a look at the old/new heat shield:

Is a heat shield a high priority for this car? No. But it was a complete disaster:


Old vs new:


Always good to get a look at the rust situation when taking off stuff like this. Overall not the worst, but going to need some stripping and wire brushing and recoating, at least. Probably a little patching needed in this area, too.
I was shocked that all the nuts and studs came apart without breaking. Liberally applying anti-seize is a habit I formed with this car 17 years ago, and I'm thanking myself now as I start to dig into this project. I will continue the practice:

New heat shield in place. I'm kinda on the fence about replacing all the hardware along the way, as well. Only one of these nuts was rusted enough that it doesn't really fit in the right size socket anymore. Part of me wants to reuse/refresh as much of the old hardware as possible, part of me just wants to replace most of it as I work my way through the car.


Anti-seize on top of the nuts, too. Mostly just for the corrosion protection and heat tolerance.


Next post: Garage reorganization

[atmh]

Garage cleaning and reorganization is my biggest task for the e30, currently. The basics are this: I have a lot of old woodworking, furniture, and other assorted projects that I need to finish up before tearing down the e30 because I need a place to put all the e30 parts. In addition to that, I have a dirt bike and a Lotus Elise that also take up a bunch of space in the garage, and I want them accessible. Part of the reason I move the e30 into the garage now is so that I can figure out how best to setup the space before really digging into the project. That turned out to be a great idea! My initial thought was that I would pull the lotus all the way into the back corner of the garage, and park the bike behind it. Once I had all three vehicles in place, it just became clear that the better setup is to have the lotus parked as close to the door as possible so it won't get blocked in. That leaves a good deal of space in front of the car for more workbench/storage. It also became clear that dirtbikes are unexpectedly big. Like, they're basically the size of a couch. So the better place to keep the bike is in between the two cars, and for me to just roll the bike out of the garage when needed.

You can see previous pics for how the garage was setup. Here's a pic of the first step: I had some storage shelving near the door (opposite side from the toolbox/air compressor) which swapped places with the ladder storage hooks. Now the shelving is in the space in front of the lotus, and the ladders are on the wall next to the lotus. My garage is not very deep (19ft I think internal between the door and the back wall) but the lotus is very short (12ft, I believe). Also, the guy I bought the Lotus from loved these jacking car dollies, so I bought a couple to help shuffle the two cars as needed. I figure they will get me some precious added space. I wish they were a little narrower, but it's an improvement:


The big change to the layout was actually moving this workbench/industrial storage shelving unit that had (previously in front of the BMW). Its now situated so the lotus actually parks under the workbench. Dropping tools and stuff is a thing, so I added this 1/4" plywood sheeting to protect the lotus from falling objects. This photo has about half of the sheeting in place:


And finally: I moved my big glowing peacock wall art onto the newly created wall space over the lotus. I think this creates a really nice parking stall for the lotus, and opens up a lot of usable space around the e30, plus creates a previously non-existent workspace in front of the lotus. I turned off the big overhead lights for the next few photos because I think it actually showed off how the space is setup than with big shop lights washing away all the depth of the photos. Plus the peacock looks cooler when it's plugged in and a little dark :)


The overhead nets are just to address my paranoia of things falling from the rafters. Rafters are important storage, so I have no intention of finishing the ceiling.



Here's a shot of the "new" workspace in front of the lotus. It's about 6'x6'.
Toolbox also moved in front of the BMW. It will move into the new workspace once I get it a little more organized.


I would love to hear any tips/suggestions for organizing / optimizing garage space. In particular if you know of any really slick wall mounted storage for specific tools that are common for working on cars, I'm definitiely learning that the best setup spaces make really good use of the vertical space.

Anyways, I have all the stuff to do the timing belt, so hopefully I can get that done in the next week or so now that the major garage reorganization is complete (far from complete overall, but now it's just a very long list of little stuff, none of which is a major redesign of the space.)

[ZEKTI]

Fantastic that you're rebuilding it. IMO the personal connection to the car isn't replaceable and invaluable. It is also a great chassis to learn new things on, welding etc etc.

Wouldn't be too surprised if the valve stem seals are all dried out. Only thing that may help is some oil flush to ensure no rings are stuck and add a stop leak, which may help swell them back up. I had an old motor with those issues and caused decent amount of oil burning.

[McGyver]

It looks like the layout is coming along great!

I'd say that my only advise would be to go vertical as much as possible. Hang shelving/cabinets so things aren't in piles and everything is accessible. Also try to think about how often you'll need to access stuff and store seldom used items out of the way where it may be more difficult to access.

Could you make a plat form suspended from the ceiling that you can stack things on and then raise it out of the way?

[moatilliatta]

Garage is looking like a nice place to be.

With any space, it sure is easy to get filled up. I like purging and get rid of stuff that you can come to realization that you’ll never really use. Old fluid, junk hardware, whatever parts. I do have a great good used hardware bin.

Having an area to store tubs / bins is nice, I try and keep them all labeled. Those plastic drawer parts slide trays in organizers are nice to just take out and use them in the bench separately if you have to real estate. I’m lucky to have a big tool boxes to fit all my tools in.

Looks like you have an attic space to stuff also.

[atmh]

Finally got my garage setup to a point where I decided to do the timing belt on the e30. By the time I got the coolant drained, the radiator pulled, and the harmonic balancer removed, I realized that I don't really want to start putting on old parts that I'm upgrading or replacing. I spent a couple days figuring out some details, and came to the following conclusion: I'm not putting this thing back together "quickly". Once I got in there, I realized that so much of the cooling system gets disassembled for the timing belt that I might as well do the upgrades now - new radiator, updating to the late-model coolant reservoir, electric fan conversion, etc. I also have a euro front bumper that just arrived.

In short: once I got halfway into the timing belt I realized I don't really want to fuck around with all this old shit I'm going to tear out in a couple months, and I'd rather just take my time to get everything sorted as I put it back together. This is kinda leading to option three for my rebuild plan.

Let's review:
Option 1: tear the whole damn thing apart and fix all the chassis, then slowly, piece by piece, put the car back together doing all the upgrades along the way. This was my original plan when I though the car was in completely non-functional condition
Option 2: Since I realized it actually ran and drove, I thought hey, maybe I'll do it piecemeal. A section at a time. Maybe get the car plated and cruise around in it between subsystem upgrades. Once I realized the rust situation is potentially unsafe, this option seems not viable
Option 3: Something of a hybrid of 1&2. I think I should put a bunch of energy into getting the engine bay "sorted out" while the car is still mostly together/running. This is where the biggest changes are happening, and I have the most work to do getting things figured out. So packaging and wiring are the big to-dos. Chassis rust, despite being the biggest hurdle on it's own, is also the "deepest" to get to. It will be best to get down to a bare or mostly bare chassis to do the rust repair, and I'm wary of taking a car apart and then putting it back together differently. In a lot of ways, despite possibly being more work in the long run, I think it might make sense to get it together the way I want it before I really take on the chassis rust. This option has always been in the back of my mind as what might make the most sense, but honestly I'm scared that once I start doing the rust repair I'll realize it's beyond what I want or can do and all the other effort will be for naught. Obviously that's a big of an extreme view: I'm very capable AND if I get all the subsystems done on this chassis and decide the chassis is too far gone, I'm pretty sure I can just source a new shell without too much difficulty. It's not like investing all the time and money in sorting everything else out is in vain. It just leads to weird priorities, like I need to buy the A/C components now, even though I'm not going charge the A/C system and drive the car for possibly years.

So with that in mind, my focus right now is front-end packaging. Here's the plan:

• New radiator. TBD which one. I see a lot of people run some e36 something (M-coupe rad?) but I haven't done hardly any research on this. Would like to avoid M-badged items if I can due to cost, but more research needed.
• Re-install all the A/C stuff. I have done research here, going to convert to r134a if for no other reason than the fact that everything but the evaporator and A/C wiring has been removed. Pretty easy for me to just swap in R134a stuff.
• Install the OEM oil cooler -my car didn't have one, but this will be good with the turbo build (especially if I do oil piston squirters).
• Package it all behind a Type 1 valance. My car is an early model, so it has the type-1 front end. Many people switch away from this because they like a more aggressive front airdam. For a variety of reasons, I'd like to keep the "older" or "less aggressive" look. It's more classic BMW. Early e30's with all the chrome bits look more like a car designed in the 70's. It's, IMHO, a significantly different looking car than late model, plastic bumper cars. Love it or hate it, it's different, and even with a heavily modified car, I kinda like the idea of maintaining it's original appearance as much as possible. Personally, I'm just not that interested in body kits or facelift swaps. Does a plastic bumper e30 look better? I dunno, maybe. But for me it's somewhat poetic to keep the car "true to form" or "period correct". Is that bullshit from a guy who's slapping a big turbo on an M20 and planning on running e85? Maybe. I guess I'm a resto-mod guy. Aesthetically I want it to look like it was originally designed - mostly - but mechanically I'm much more open to modernization.
• With that said. I used to like the idea of keeping the divingboards but... no. The euro bumpers look so much better, especially going for the older / classic look rather than the updated/facelifted look. It's clear to me that BMW wanted my car to have the original chrome "euro" bumpers.
• Finally of course I need to fit an IC in there somewhere, as big as practical.
• Which leads me to... Fans! I've been kicking this around in my mind and I think there's really only one feasible solution for my goals: I need to do the electric fan swap for the main fan, and use a low-profile fan for both the aux and main fans. When I did my turbo a while back, I just removed the aux fan entirely (along with the A/C condenser) and never had any issues. Now I live in a warmer area and will be adding not just the condenser back, but also a big IC. All of which is going to make the airflow much worse for the radiator. I know there are options to do this with the clutched fan, but I think the better setup might be...
• Relocating the radiators! Specifically I'm adding let's say a 3" core thickness IC. Let's assume I can get low-profile aux fan that's ~1" slimmer than the OEM one, which means I need to move the radiator ~2" closer to the engine. My understanding is that this should be possible IF I use an electric fan. My clutched fan has hit my radiator (and the radiator hose behind it) so clearly there's pretty much no space to move the radiator with the clutched setup, but a low-pro electric fan and a low-pro aux fan should both gain some space for the IC, and provide enough airflow to prevent the IC and condenser from heatsoaking. I'm not super worried about the car overheating at idle, because it should have a lot more cooling capacity when all's said and done.

With all that said, since I realized I'm going to be digging into this pretty deep, I might turn my focus back to finishing up the aforementioned furniture / garage cleaning projects.

Here are some of the latest pics:
The coolant was looking truly awful. Lots of sediment, presumably rust and/or maybe aluminum corrosion. Not good. Definitely needed to be drained:


Polyurethane motor mounts - perhaps they don't age well. These will be replaced soon. Trans mounts look similar. Kind of a bummer because I don't think they have many miles on them, in the grand scheme of things. (less than 20k?)


Euro bumper time! Still waiting on all the hardware from ECS Tuning. Hardware was easy to source - they had everything needed in stock. Used RealOEM.com and a 323i diagram to figure out the necessary hardware (see below). I got the euro bumper from a guy on this board for $450ish. I thought that was a little "fair" given the fact that it needs to be re-chromed, but then checking some other sources I realized that people are selling all this trim for an arm and a leg. So getting the full assembly for that price is good! Probably won't be refinishing this bumper for a few years - that will happen with the final tear down. Much to do before then:

And the bumper diagram and part numbers:

[atmh]

Final shot: my US type 1 valance. I'll get everything fitted with this valance before moving to the Type 1 euro valance, reason being: If I can't get it to fit, I'll switch to the type 2 valance, which has a little more room for the oil cooler and such.

[atmh]

Now that my garage is setup - mostly - I've been starting to dig into the e30 deeper, and I've been in part-collecting mode. I'm a little worried that I'm putting the cart before the horse by not focusing exclusively on rust-repair, but I have so much more garage setup to do before I tear the whole car down and fix all the rust. In practice it seems like I'll be chipping away at the garage, chipping away at finishing other projects, and chipping away at the "bolt-on" upgrades for the next few months. Or put another way: Unfucking the engine bay. Perhaps by the time I'm done with that, I might also have my work area fully setup (I currently have zero welding equipment - that's a big thing that needs to change). I won't cover all the details of garage setup, but I'll comment on the things that I think are clever or fun.

Anyways, without further ado here's the latest and greatest!

Got the euro bumper installed. What a huge difference! Even better in person. I'm excited to do this build with a Type 1 valance (the smallest e30 valance) because I think the front end of the car is very well designed with the type 1 valance. More classic forward-leaning BMW with the shortest overhang of any e30 front end. Just something different from what people normally do by fitting the "sportier" airdams.

PS: Notice the hood on the wall? That was another recent garage project. Fun and easy to hang up an e30 hood. Gets it out of the way. Looks cool. New emblem just shipped today. Maybe I'll polish it to make it look more decorative.

And here's a reference pic of the diving board with the trim removed. Such a huge bumper with a huge gap behind it. I never realized how much the diving boards ruined the lines of the front end until I got the euro bumper on and could see it in person. So, so, so much better. I think my early Type 1 valance has a bigger effect than other valances and air dams that protrude more. The smaller bumper definitely compliments the small valance.


I did a lot of internet research about radiators, and despite all the marketing it seems like most (all?) of the e30/e36 radiators are basically the same size. The biggest difference is that they're thicker (and better designed) than my stock eta radiator. I looked into Mishimoto MMRAD-e36-92, CSF #3054, and CA Tuned e30 radiator. As near as I can tell they're all marketed for e30&e36, and pretty much all the same design/size with maybe some minor variation. Mishimoto has an X line radiator which is I believe is bigger (maybe only thicker?) but is also almost 2x the cost. I did find another one somewhere that I'm currently forgetting the name of that was $700... so no. Everyone seems to think that the stock cooling system actually performs really well, and any of these upgraded radiators should be plenty. It will be years before I get this fully build turbo setup to a track day, so for now no comment, and I'll just trust that this upgrade will be enough. To be clear about that: The radiator cross section is pretty much exactly the same as stock for any of the three I mentioned at the top. It is a better design (oval bar coolant channels rather than round tube) and has an all aluminum design, so presumably less prone to failure. So bigger capacity (thicker) and better design, but same cross section. Will it be enough? TBD... Here's a pic:


Here's a pic of the engine bay, checking fan clearance. The good news here is that I'm fairly certain I will actually get to keep the mechanical fan (yay! I prefer that, despite my earlier comments). You may also notice that this (and all of the options?) is a late-model radiator. Pretty sure the flow direction is opposite of the early cooling system. So yeah, I don't know why anyone would really want to convert to the late model cooling system (please, tell me if you know) except for the fact that it seems like it has more aftermarket support? But why? The only reason(s) I'm doing it are all engine-bay packaging, not performance, specifically: I want the coolant reservoir on the drivers side. The turbo is obviously taking up the space where the stock reservoir normally would be, so it had to move. I got a slick coolant reservoir from a guy maybe 15 years ago that relocated it without rebuilding the whole entire cooling system, and that worked great, but for engine bay packaging reasons I want to switch over to the late-model system. This should hopefully free up the space needed to get the A/C installed and the stock windshield washer fluid reservoir.



For the garage, I made this little battery tender station for the Elise. It's pretty slick and folds against the wall and keeps the cord off the body. The only real downside is that this setup really won't work well with a car cover. Oh well. I'll manage.


I have a few other bits on hand already, but my intention moving forward is mostly to only post when I'm installing or test-fitting on the car (or complete a garage upgrade). Speaking of which: Why did I install the euro bumper? It's probably coming right off in a few days or weeks. Because I was excited. That's why. :)

[atmh]

I've been spending a lot of time gathering parts. I realized I have way too many parallel projects on this car already, and I'm kinda burning through my budget without being able to do much actual work. With that said an '88 'vert showed up at the local junkyard and I've been going to town pulling any useful part. In the short run it does get extremely expensive just grab-bagging stuff, but when I look at the per-part price it's all mostly reasonable. Save for one or two items that I realized after the fact weren't a great deal, but I'm not losing sleep over that. Here's a list of what I've picked up recently:

List of "fun" goodies:

• Swapped out my previously posted radiator for an "e28" one - on CATuned website it says nothing about this being the correct radiator for early cars with late model cooling systems, but for the record: they make one, and they say it's for an e28/e24. Perfect fit for converting an early car to late-model cooling system
• MK60 ABS unit from an e46 M3. I bought this thinking it would be nice to mock it up. Also got kinda scared about how much these might appreciate in value over the next year or two since lots of people want them, not just BMW guys. These get fitted to all kinds of cars since it's "one of the best" standalone ABS units with DSC and TCS. I'll use Megasquirt for TCS, but the ABS and DSC will be a nice safety net for running all the boost. My e30 is a rare example of a non-ABS car, but not for much longer.
• custom made rear mini subs from this guy on Instagram "e30dreamin" - they seem very well made. Perfect thing for what I'm looking for. Too bad I won't actually hear them for years. I love picking up this kinda stuff when I find it, but for now it will be living on the shelf.
• Seattle Circuits fuel economy gauge correction board. This will take the signal from Megasquirt for the bigger injectors and convert it into the right pulsewidth for the stock electronics to read the correct fuel economy. Another piece of kit I won't really do much with for a while, but when you find this kinda cool stuff, don't wait. At least that's what I think. Never know how long this kind of thing will be available for.
• AC bracket for a sanden R134a compressor

5-lug swap stuff:

• Set of 4 Z3M brake calipers. Might not use the rear because...
• I got the caliper relocation bracket from "ETA Industries" to use the e46 rear calipers on Z4 hubs.
• e46 325i rear brakes: I picked up the calipers from a junkyard along with the rear rotors and parking brake parts. All of it was 100% brand new (looks like it was only on the car for maybe a month before the car had an unfortunate run-in with something.) The rotors might be too small for the caliper relocation bracket: The ETA Industries guy says the bracket is designed for 328i or 330i rotors. If I end up having to get different rotors it's no big deal. 330i's are hitting the junkyard every week. But also I'm not 100% convinced I want bigger rear rotors. I need to do a brake bias calculation once I get things further along and I would also like to keep the Z3M rear calipers, so I might end up making my own rear brake relocation bracket at some point. And yeah this plan is in lieu of Z3M rear trailing arms, since those are looking like $7,000 for a pair these days (for seven grand I'll design and build my own). The e46 325i rear brake rotors are huge and vented, so I really don't know why I would need bigger ones. They're 11.5" diameter / 292mm or thereabouts? I simply don't see much need for bigger rear rotors, when the front Z3M rotors are only slightly larger. Seems like it's already going to be pretty biased to the rear.
• Z3M front control arms (still pending the knuckles, just because it's low priority and I'm spending my cash elsewhere at the moment)
• e38 style-5 wheels. Just scored these today. I was at the junkard when a 7-series on a clean set of wheels rolled in. Scored these for like $200 for the set. These cars are hitting the junkyard regularly right now, and the wheels always seem to be in relatively decent condition.

Junkyard e30 stuff:

• convertible shock tower braces. These were a pain in the ass to pull, and questionable if it's worth it, but it's done.
• 88 325i block. Someone took the head before I could get to it, but after hedging on it for a while I decided to grab the block. I have an eta block now with the 885 head, but for reasons I want the option of running the full i motor package. At the very least I have options now for what to do with the bottom end, and having a second block allows me to work one outside of the car while the car is operable. Get it cleaned up and reworked so everything is hunky dory. Plus I heard some rumors that people think the i motor is less prone to detonation than the e/i hybrid, so getting my hands on the full short block seemed like a good idea.
• OEM oil cooler. I already bought one for $100, but it's hard to say no when it's right there and only $15 bucks. So I'll be posting some stuff for sale soon to move this (and other items) out of my garage.
• late model temp switch and pigtail for the aux fan - this will fit in my new swanky radiator and allow me to keep the OEM aux fan circuit (rather than having Megasquirt control the aux fan).
• Thermostat housing (late model)
• alternator with solid mounting holes (mine has rubber ones that have worn out and the alternator is not sitting straight anymore - I didn't know other ones had solid mounts, but clearly this is an improvement)
• metal coolant pipe across the front of the engine (unfortunately the timing belt cover this bolts to was busted, so I couldn't get that)
• Radiator shroud
• late model fuel rail with relatively new looking fuel pressure regulator
• late model injector wiring harness rail thingy.
• late model coolant reservoir mounting tabs.
• bunch of random miscellaneous heat shielding and ducts and stuff that were all in good condition but I don't have on my car, or they're falling apart on my car.

All in all I've done four junkyard runs now over the past 2-3 weeks. I've spent over $1,000 on used pick-and-pull junkyard stuff now, but when I check prices I know it would easily be double that if I was buying them individually online, so it's kinda painful in the short term, but I know I'm getting mostly great prices. It's really nice to just be able to pull almost everything I need, as well. Lots of little things you don't necessarily think about until you're right there and it's right in front of you.

Since people love pics, here are some pics!

Mostly misc late model e30 bits that I need to complete the coolant system conversion, plus some other odds and ends:


5-lug swap stuff, plus some other good items that seemed worthwhile to grab, or are in better condition than what's on my car.


e30 convertible shock tower brace. This is an OEM part that only is found on the converitbles as far as I know. Pain in the ass to cut this off.


Something old and something new. Something four lug and something more:


Love the fact that these look very much like the same wheels. Hard to tell from the pic but the 7-series rim is 16" vs 14" and 8" wide vs, what's the e30? 6.5 I think?
Didn't realize this but my e30 wheels are et30. Looks like the 7-series wheels are et23. I thought they were the same offset, but apparently not.

When I get the 5-lug swap completed I will clean up and sell the 4-lug wheels. It's going to be nice to start cleaning out some of the old parts.


In other related news, I have a welder 90% setup now, so now that I have some of the weld-on stuff I'll get some welding practice in, and then start by installing the late model coolant reservoir brackets (pictured with the e46 brakes). At the moment I'm planning to put the engine bay back together somewhat with the new cooling system and probably a new intercooler, and then 5-lug swap. After the 5-lug swap has been test fit and approved, I'll then tear the car down for the rust repair. Need to make sure these things fit, first, since the 5-lug swap and engine externals might dictate chassis changes, and I want to know that before the car is stripped bare and modified as needed.

[rudy]

What a parts collection! I'm excited to see it all come together.

I've gone down to the Chula Vista yards for parts twice, came back empty handed both times. Stuff is always so picked out there from my experience. I've had some better luck at the yard up here in Oceanside, just got a z3 rack yesterday and I've gotten some other stuff in the past. Still hard to get good stuff though. Can definitely agree about spending a bunch at the yard, just spent almost 400 in one run on prelude parts since I figured I'd never see a second gen again lol.