First thing's first, the seized front brakes. Don't they look lovely?
You can see that I had installed a wheel stud kit at one point. I don't recommend this. The quality was questionable for such a critical component. Over the years the nuts rusted to the studs, effectively making them bolts again. This happened before I even parked the car to some of them. Anyways, don't bother. Just keep the bolts, I say.
The tires were brand new when I parked the car, and the front brake pads were brand new as well, I think. Kind of a shame. The plan for this car is to do the e36 M3 front brake/hub swap, and the Z3M rear brake/hub/trailing arm swap. So none of this assembly will be used for this build. One of the last things I remember about this car was that with 1 bar of boost and 6,000rpm redline the stock brakes are very inadequate. Since I know I'm not using these parts, I was very liberal with the hammer and the pry bar. I was trying to be careful enough not to break the brakes, since I still need them to work well enough to move the car in and out of my garage, but not worried at all about dents or breaking off bits of the pads. Unfortunately I have no pics of them after they cleaned up. I was under the gun and didn't take as many pics as I would have liked. Suffice it to say: Pry off the calipers, take off the rotors, clean them up with a sanding wheel, actuate the calipers by pressing the brakes and then using a beefy c-clamp to reset the piston (this part is important: I bent a not-beefy c-clamp on the first caliper). I was delightfully surprised that none of the brake lines popped. I had to push the brakes pretty hard to break the front calipers free. This part of the job went easier than I feared, and actually at the end of the day I don't think I really damaged anything. This was the only thing I needed to do before shipping the car, so by the end of day one the first goal was achieved: It stopped, rolled, and steered.
One final note on the brakes: anti-seize is a godsend. The wheels all came right off: None of them were stuck on. The caliper bolts came right out, the rotors and the retaining screw came right out. Besides the actual brake pads seizing onto the rotor, and the caliper piston seizing into the caliper, the rest of the assembly was very easy to work on. My advice: Always use anti-seize, the stuff is a miracle. Thank me later.
Unfortunately, the rust situation was worse than I was hoping for.
The driver's side wheel well sheet metal is almost completely detached along the full length of the seam. I'll need to basically pull the entire interior to fix this, since it gets pretty far up under the dash. This is the sort of thing where it's not safe to drive the car with this kind of damage, especially with a motor that makes north of 300hp (but your gonna have to wait a year or two before I have actual dyno results). The floor pan plug on the drivers side completely rusted to the point of detaching. The passenger's side is generally in better condition. New floor pans are pretty much top priority once it gets in my garage - well, after I pull the engine and send it to a shop for some professional treatment.
The rear jacking storage area is also pretty bad. This was already rusted through 10 years ago, and clearly it's only gotten worse. As you can see by the time I took this photo I had removed the antenna so I could cover the antenna hole with tape. Plus the power antenna was non-functional, so it's probably easier to ship the car with it removed.
This is a rust area I don't hear as much about on the e30: In the trunk, right behind the rear seat back. This is on the passenger's side. I'm not sure what that part is on the other side of the hole, but my guess is that it rubbed against the frame, then it got rusty, and rotted up from underneath. This is in the area of the rear axle, so I definitely need to pull the subframe and fix this before driving the car much. It would be a very bad idea for me to fix the motor without fixing the chassis: The chassis is all straight, as far as I can tell. It still seems pretty rigid, too: When the car is jacked up on one end, the doors all still work totally fine, everything is still lined up. But rigidity and strength are different things, and it would suck if I started putting major forces on this chassis and bending stuff. Much better for me to fix it now, before the turbo motor, big brakes, and big tires start stressing these parts...
Which leads me to the biggest problem area of all: the main structural rails behind the front suspension:
This giant hole is right under the driver's foot area. This is a main structure on the e30 chassis, and the rust here is really, really bad. When I discovered this I was really disheartened, and half thought that the car might not be worth it. I found this right around lunch time, and then my wife and I put our son down for a nap, and I had a bit of a heart-to-heart with her. I was like "I really don't know if this is worth it" and her response was right on point. She said to me "Nothing about this project is rational or practical. Don't think about it that way. Think about it like if this is the project you want to take on, if THIS is THE project car that will bring you the most joy. It's not about the money, or the time, or the practicality. It's just about whether or not this will be fun and bring you joy, or if it won't."
And she's 100% right. I'm not doing this project because it's a "rational" thing. I already have a nice DD and another nice sports car. I'm doing this project to this car because I had a dream about what the e30 could be with some "resto-mod" touches, and this specific car not because it's rationally the right chassis or even the right base model, but because it's the car I bought when I was 19. It was my first "real" car that I chose (although it wasn't my true first car. that would be a 1981 VW Rabbit Diesel that was given to me after my cousin was done with it).
Discovering this rust spot really changed the plan for the project though. It became very clear to me that I can't drive the car on the street until the chassis has a lot of rust repair done to it. I was hoping to fix the motor and then be able to cruise the car around while piece-by-piece doing all the mods I have planned, but this discovery changed that, and it's now pretty clear I'm not going to get the car where I want it without two tear downs. The first tear down is a partial one to fix all the big structural problem areas, plus swap in the big modifications and make sure everything is playing nice together: e36 M3 / Z3M brakes and 5-lug swap, 245 width (or bigger) tires, R134a A/C install, bigger intercooler, twin-scroll ball bearing turbo with twin 2.5" exhaust pipes, e46 M3 ABS/DSC, 3rd brake light install, rear head rest install, chassis reinforcements, power rear pop-out windows, under-seat subs - all or most of these things are going to require some changes to the chassis, and I don't think it makes much sense to try and do all those mods, AND get the chassis stripped and repainted in one go. I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of kinks to work out along the way, and the new plan is to get them all in place and working together before doing the final strip and repaint. This will also give me a chance to evaluate the chassis and suspension at a trackday (or a few) to see if there's a need for additional stiffening reinforcements, and just keep going through that process until the car is dialed in. Then, and only then, will it be ready for the "restoration" part of the project.
Hopefully in the meantime I can get some decent color matched rattle-can lapisblau paint, so I can keep it kinda looking like a put-together car.
TL;DR: The rust on the chassis was disheartening, but my lovely wife reminded me that it's an irrational project and I'm doing it because it brings me joy, not because it makes sense on paper. My closing thought for Day 1 of this trip is best paraphrased by Søren Kierkegaard: "Rebuild the e30 or don't rebuild the e30: Either way I'll regret it".
The project is a-go!
You can see that I had installed a wheel stud kit at one point. I don't recommend this. The quality was questionable for such a critical component. Over the years the nuts rusted to the studs, effectively making them bolts again. This happened before I even parked the car to some of them. Anyways, don't bother. Just keep the bolts, I say.
The tires were brand new when I parked the car, and the front brake pads were brand new as well, I think. Kind of a shame. The plan for this car is to do the e36 M3 front brake/hub swap, and the Z3M rear brake/hub/trailing arm swap. So none of this assembly will be used for this build. One of the last things I remember about this car was that with 1 bar of boost and 6,000rpm redline the stock brakes are very inadequate. Since I know I'm not using these parts, I was very liberal with the hammer and the pry bar. I was trying to be careful enough not to break the brakes, since I still need them to work well enough to move the car in and out of my garage, but not worried at all about dents or breaking off bits of the pads. Unfortunately I have no pics of them after they cleaned up. I was under the gun and didn't take as many pics as I would have liked. Suffice it to say: Pry off the calipers, take off the rotors, clean them up with a sanding wheel, actuate the calipers by pressing the brakes and then using a beefy c-clamp to reset the piston (this part is important: I bent a not-beefy c-clamp on the first caliper). I was delightfully surprised that none of the brake lines popped. I had to push the brakes pretty hard to break the front calipers free. This part of the job went easier than I feared, and actually at the end of the day I don't think I really damaged anything. This was the only thing I needed to do before shipping the car, so by the end of day one the first goal was achieved: It stopped, rolled, and steered.
One final note on the brakes: anti-seize is a godsend. The wheels all came right off: None of them were stuck on. The caliper bolts came right out, the rotors and the retaining screw came right out. Besides the actual brake pads seizing onto the rotor, and the caliper piston seizing into the caliper, the rest of the assembly was very easy to work on. My advice: Always use anti-seize, the stuff is a miracle. Thank me later.
Unfortunately, the rust situation was worse than I was hoping for.
The driver's side wheel well sheet metal is almost completely detached along the full length of the seam. I'll need to basically pull the entire interior to fix this, since it gets pretty far up under the dash. This is the sort of thing where it's not safe to drive the car with this kind of damage, especially with a motor that makes north of 300hp (but your gonna have to wait a year or two before I have actual dyno results). The floor pan plug on the drivers side completely rusted to the point of detaching. The passenger's side is generally in better condition. New floor pans are pretty much top priority once it gets in my garage - well, after I pull the engine and send it to a shop for some professional treatment.
The rear jacking storage area is also pretty bad. This was already rusted through 10 years ago, and clearly it's only gotten worse. As you can see by the time I took this photo I had removed the antenna so I could cover the antenna hole with tape. Plus the power antenna was non-functional, so it's probably easier to ship the car with it removed.
This is a rust area I don't hear as much about on the e30: In the trunk, right behind the rear seat back. This is on the passenger's side. I'm not sure what that part is on the other side of the hole, but my guess is that it rubbed against the frame, then it got rusty, and rotted up from underneath. This is in the area of the rear axle, so I definitely need to pull the subframe and fix this before driving the car much. It would be a very bad idea for me to fix the motor without fixing the chassis: The chassis is all straight, as far as I can tell. It still seems pretty rigid, too: When the car is jacked up on one end, the doors all still work totally fine, everything is still lined up. But rigidity and strength are different things, and it would suck if I started putting major forces on this chassis and bending stuff. Much better for me to fix it now, before the turbo motor, big brakes, and big tires start stressing these parts...
Which leads me to the biggest problem area of all: the main structural rails behind the front suspension:
This giant hole is right under the driver's foot area. This is a main structure on the e30 chassis, and the rust here is really, really bad. When I discovered this I was really disheartened, and half thought that the car might not be worth it. I found this right around lunch time, and then my wife and I put our son down for a nap, and I had a bit of a heart-to-heart with her. I was like "I really don't know if this is worth it" and her response was right on point. She said to me "Nothing about this project is rational or practical. Don't think about it that way. Think about it like if this is the project you want to take on, if THIS is THE project car that will bring you the most joy. It's not about the money, or the time, or the practicality. It's just about whether or not this will be fun and bring you joy, or if it won't."
And she's 100% right. I'm not doing this project because it's a "rational" thing. I already have a nice DD and another nice sports car. I'm doing this project to this car because I had a dream about what the e30 could be with some "resto-mod" touches, and this specific car not because it's rationally the right chassis or even the right base model, but because it's the car I bought when I was 19. It was my first "real" car that I chose (although it wasn't my true first car. that would be a 1981 VW Rabbit Diesel that was given to me after my cousin was done with it).
Discovering this rust spot really changed the plan for the project though. It became very clear to me that I can't drive the car on the street until the chassis has a lot of rust repair done to it. I was hoping to fix the motor and then be able to cruise the car around while piece-by-piece doing all the mods I have planned, but this discovery changed that, and it's now pretty clear I'm not going to get the car where I want it without two tear downs. The first tear down is a partial one to fix all the big structural problem areas, plus swap in the big modifications and make sure everything is playing nice together: e36 M3 / Z3M brakes and 5-lug swap, 245 width (or bigger) tires, R134a A/C install, bigger intercooler, twin-scroll ball bearing turbo with twin 2.5" exhaust pipes, e46 M3 ABS/DSC, 3rd brake light install, rear head rest install, chassis reinforcements, power rear pop-out windows, under-seat subs - all or most of these things are going to require some changes to the chassis, and I don't think it makes much sense to try and do all those mods, AND get the chassis stripped and repainted in one go. I'm pretty sure there will be a lot of kinks to work out along the way, and the new plan is to get them all in place and working together before doing the final strip and repaint. This will also give me a chance to evaluate the chassis and suspension at a trackday (or a few) to see if there's a need for additional stiffening reinforcements, and just keep going through that process until the car is dialed in. Then, and only then, will it be ready for the "restoration" part of the project.
Hopefully in the meantime I can get some decent color matched rattle-can lapisblau paint, so I can keep it kinda looking like a put-together car.
TL;DR: The rust on the chassis was disheartening, but my lovely wife reminded me that it's an irrational project and I'm doing it because it brings me joy, not because it makes sense on paper. My closing thought for Day 1 of this trip is best paraphrased by Søren Kierkegaard: "Rebuild the e30 or don't rebuild the e30: Either way I'll regret it".
The project is a-go!
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