The black car

[Julien]

I have a tendency to name all my cars, my daily driver is Lizzie, my (ex) s54 wagon Mindy, M5 Stella, V70r Tinkerbell and so on. However this project is different than before. Maybe it's the pandemic, maybe it's the.. no, wait, yeah it's the pandemic. I needed some distraction, something fun, something stupid, something easy. e30s are easy, e30s are fun, e30s are NOT easy to buy anymore :-( Having spent the majority of my shelter in place orders on craigslist, I've noticed how hard cars are to buy lately. Everyone wants a project and everyone seems to have cash.


Not to say I have not been part of the problem. I can't say I've abstained from project cars during the pandemic.

The V70r was the first (although I bought it right before everything went crazy)

it was also the star of my youtube channel, then I sold it (and it just sold again!)

That was followed by a 135i (ugh I miss that car!!) that I traded for an M5


Which was sold to a friend, who then gave me a Volvo (this thing got turbo swapped, pegs, T5 manual from a mustang etc etc!)


Which got traded for a wrecked M3


That entire drivetrain got swapped into my wagon


Then I ended up with this thing



TLDR: I had some cars during the pandemic but they all felt like work and some really stressed me out. I wanted something I could buy and play around with for fun. Enter the black car!


As spotted on craigslist. There was a chance in a hundred that there weren't already 15 dude bros on it (this ad probably read "hot locals looking for..." to most drift/stance bros(sisters?)).

But somehow I was the first. Manual, reasonable original paint, lowered and sort of terrible everything else:

[Julien]

I ended up paying full asking price but the seller was kind enough to tow it to my garage space for me. First step was to wash the car:



and then she went on the lift to inspect what I had just bought! An immediate annoyance was that the rear hub had been pwnd (poped?) at some point and wouldn't fit hub centric wheels. This was fixed in the crudest way possible. Car in gear and a file (not the smoke billowing from the blown HG)

https://i.imgur.com/Q8Ojtq0.mp4

This ended up working nicely, proud spot on hub is no more.

The interior was pretty awful




And then it sort of hit me. Man this thing needs A LOT :-/ That said, I have this great friend, his name is Dmitriy that showed up with a wagon full of parts, including euro bumpers!! He said "tidy up the interior and make it a nice place to be" and so I did. That very night he found me a parts car on fb marketplace. Listed as an 1987 325e.. but... BIG TAILS! which means 1988 super eta!!



It had a clean interior! Running (?) motor and a million other pieces I needed! It got delivered after paying asking price and we towed it in.

https://i.imgur.com/YRDglbs.mp4

We pulled the interior out of it


And got it running using... redneck inspiration

https://i.imgur.com/x7b6aER.mp4

How exciting a super eta, automatic with a welded diff! LOOOL.


Anyways. It was nice to see that the donor motor seemed to run reasonably well. In the meantime, I installed euro bumpers and tires that fit the wheels properly.



A few days later it finally happened:

Out with the very very blown HG 325e motor. My hunch was that it had a cracked head. I changed the oil it in and it went to milkshake within a few minutes of idling.

At this point I had a reasonably well running e30 that passed smog with flying colors! I scored a vintage blaupaunkt deck for it and some sport seats




But it was SLOW.

I had two paths to go down at this point. Either do 325i/super eta stroker motor combo or go motor swap (again). Having many enablers in the bay area with e30 parts, cough Jimmy, I started amassing the parts needed to do a head swap. I was all set to get the head swap going until I took a look at the cam that I had bought off craigslist:


Not that a new cam was expensive, but it just killed that project for me. Having owned another super eta stroker, I knew it was meh at best. So I rage sold all my 325i stuff and bought....

(to be continued)

[McGyver]

Holy shit that cam is FUUUUUUUUUCKED. Can't wait to see where this goes!!

[Julien]

I bought GOD'S MOTOR (an M30B35!)



I had never done an m30 swap before and have heard form many people how lovely they are to drive. Having bought an unknown, but claimed good, conditon motor I thought it was best to pull the head off. It came with a head gasket kit and my buddy Pete (spot next to me in the shop) had a decked head ready to go... and an IE motorsport 280/284 camshaft!



and back together




Super eta motor back out (lol it was in there for a month)


and...



M30 IN!!


Philippe welding the DP to my exhaust at like midnight






AND I DROVE HER HOME (START TO FINISH SATURDAY TO MONDAY)

(oh yeah I also got ronals, as the borbets went ti dmitiry and I was borrowing his IX weaves for a bit)

That was sort of dumb, but here she is at 1AM after a 30 minute drive home (no temp gauge, no heat..)

[E30auddie]

Very nice! It all around is a MUCH better starting point than the project car I just bought about a month ago lol. I'm in the process of completely stripping everything out of it as the previous owner let the windshield get busted, and the sunroof got stuck slightly open. Needless to say the interior is REKT. About the only thing potentially salvageable is the center console and the air ducts for the rear haha. Also has no drivetrain at all except axle shafts.

[Julien]

With the M30 running it was time to start tackling some of the minor and major annoyances of the car. The first and foremost being the incredibly loud 3.73 rear differential in the car. I had access to a 3.46 medium case LSD from an e34 and a spare e30 case. With the help of Pete we swapped the insides of one diff into another. I don't have the pictures of the special tools he used but this is what I have:




Man what a difference a quiet 3.46 is vs a noisey 3.73. Car is right in its torque band and feels incredible. Next up was brakes. They've been awful since day one and took many attempts at getting just right. I started off with replacing the right front caliper, as it was seized. That helped a bit but still the flow when bleeding the car was not optimal on that caliper, so the brake caliper lines were replaced. Again some progress but still not great. I then replaced the master cylinder with one from the parts car and that helped a good bit for pedal feel but still that driver front brake line had poor flow. So i pulled the trigger and replaced the ABS pump.



By replacing this and actuating all the ABS valves/pump I finally got good brakes!!!

Somewhere in there I also replaced the dual fuel pumps with a walboro single fuel pump


1995 M3 steering rack going in



Car got some take off (lemons) Falken Azeins Tires and PFC brake pads too. At this point I left several people drive her and everyone commented how fun of a car it was!!

(note the front euro valence I bought off ebay and the sweet euro fog light blanks I got off ECS)
((dmitriy's car be like hai gurl hai))

Drove her home to Oakland a couple times, installed some free-ish depo headlights. Broke down once when My fuel pump coupler broke! This is precsiely when I learned there is such as thing a submersible fuel line!!


In my mind, all that was left were cosmetics at this point. HAHA, so I thought :)

I was browsing facebook marketplace when I saw a part I've never ever seen for sale in my 20 years of e30ing. I contacted the seller to see if it was still available but he told me there was another interested party and I would have to bid them out. FUUUUU. I needed moral, spiritual guidance on this one. So I call Dmitriy to ask his opinion on buying this dumb part. He lets the cat out of the bag and tells me he's the other interested party! He's kind enough to message the seller and let them know we are one and the same interested party and I get "dibs" on the part. A few days go by and I finally get to pull this off the donor car.










What is it you ask?



















e30 m3 5 lug bruv.



I was so excited to own this rare e30 piece that I was actually giddy installing them onto the car. I had never even seen e30 m3 aluminum control arms before! Only problem was I didn't own any 5x120 wheels. Luckily the seller of the 5 lug (which was on a 318i m42 car with ITBs then a s50 early model) put me in contact with someone in Sacramento who had some e30 m3 wheels! We organized a trade for wheels/a clean dash and some other goodies.

Here she is, note anything weird?


(front wheels are m3 rear are IX with spacers. #18luglyf)

A few days later I did the rear subframe with an adjustable kit from IE motorsports and some SS brake lines:




caster is off, weird. Going to put offset bushings in soon. But here she is in 20 lug goodness.

To continue my rampage, it was dash time.

ughhhhh

New pieces:

(can you spy the cool hvac panel with temps written on the dial? I wonder how rare those are)



and..

Feels so nice and tidy!

And that brings us to today. The car is fixed but I'm broken from raging too hard. I've eaten more mixed nuts than any reasonable person could ever fathom but it was worth it.


Did I mention I blame all this on driving 808ETA's e30 a month prior?




Until Next time

[Javier h]

What happened to the E36 M3? Any annoying issues with it? How does the M30 feel?

[CaliforniaGrown]

I love what you've done man. This car is finally getting the love it deserves. I cant wait to see whats next.

[kronus]

it good car

soon even gooder

[2mAn]

it good car

soon even gooder

You just think its good because its not white

#racist

[zwill23]

Fuck yeah, I always know to buckle up when I see a Julien thread. What a fast turn around, no wonder you're exhausted

[McGyver]

Well it's been an hour since my last post. Knowing how you cycle through cars, have you already sold it, or is that your next post?

[e30austin]

wow, nice project. you made (seemingly) quick work of that one.

[2mAn]

Pretty sure its sold already

[e30austin]

oh, and can you provide a link to the fog light delete panels, please?