R3v,
I'd like to share the (ongoing) story of my E30 as it's currently undergoing a rebuild due to an engine fire a couple of weeks ago.
Some background: I just turned 20 and bought this Alpine White 1986 325es from my neighbor—the original owner—in November 2021. I had passed it everyday on my way too and from school and I always wanted it! The car was bone stock and in very rough shape as he wasn't a mechanically savvy person, so it was leaking from everywhere (and had been for some time). I was out of town when the purchase was made so I did extensive research, ordered tons and tons of parts, and spent 120+ hours over 10 days refreshing everything I could: I resealed most of the engine, replaced all mounts and bushings, upgraded to Bilstein B8s and H&R lowering springs to replace the old blown suspension and a gold tag E46 steering rack to replace the old leaky steering rack, and facelifted the car to late model plastic bumpers as the diving boards were in poor shape. The interior was in excellent condition because the car had always been parked in a carport facing away from the sun, meaning a crack-free dash! It was a factory sport interior and the PO had always had seat covers (which looked raggedy), but the leather sport seats underneath looked brand new! It's star feature is an old Alpine car phone that I think was installed in the early 90s! (Doesn't currently work but I have a plan for that ;) ) After christening it the Crusty30 (for hopefully obvious reasons), I shook it down by driving it around the neighborhood...just kidding, I road-tripped it 370 miles up north to Berkeley! All went well and besides a few non-critical electrical quirks I didn't get around to touching, the car worked fantastically well and I ended up driving to and from Berkeley a few more times in the following months.
Cut to the weekend before the 4th of July this year: I had been daily driving the car to and from work (about 30 miles round trip) for a few weeks and loving it! I had just CLEANED cleaned it inside and out so it was looking fantastic and had just upgraded the sealed beam headlights to ellipsoids, which was a huge upgrade. Man, I love this car! I wanted a little more pep from the tired M20 but don't have the infrastructure for an engine swap, so I was looking around for 2.5L parts to 1.1/1.3 Motronic swap the car (thanks to the fantastic thread my kenika65!).
[This is how the car cleaned up, basically at it's prime (a few days before I installed the ellipsoids)]
On the weekend of the 4th, I was on my way to watch an oval race at Irwindale Speedway as you do, and when I pulled up to a light a few blocks from my house, I heard a pop followed by smoke and passersby yelling at me to get out of the car. I shut the car off and jumped out, saw flames underneath, and my heart sank as I watched helplessly as my pride and joy burned. Very luckily, there were a ton of witnesses so 911 had already been called by the time I got out and there was a fire station literally one block away from the intersection so they were there within minutes. My hood release cable melted so they had to chop my hood off to put the fire out.
Most everything plastic and rubber in the engine bay was torched but luckily none of the belts snapped or anything, so I was confident the motor was alright. I towed it home and began stripping it down, removing all the burnt stuff to get a better sense of what happened. The firemen had said something about a fuel leak and since the pop I heard sounded like it came from the trans tunnel, I assumed one of the soft lines down there popped and fuel got on the exhaust. They also recognized my car and were sad to see it under those circumstances, although they had fun with it (did I mention the car has a car phone?!).
[My hood being cut off (left) and the firefighter taking a pic with my car phone (middle) saying "hey guys, this is how he called 911!", the aftermath (right)]
To my confusion, when I got under the car, all the fuel lines were intact (and in decent shape all things considered) because the fire was concentrated on the passenger side. Still confused, I decided to scrub down the engine bay to see where the deepest scorches were (remember how I mentioned the car was crusty? Yeah, a few days and half a dozen kitchen sponges later, the bay was clean). Come to find out, the A/C line that runs from the compressor up the passenger strut tower popped and it was refrigerant that had been burning! No idea how this happened, the A/C had never blown cold so I never had it on.
Some of you may have seen the thread I posted after it happened looking for parts and thanks to many fruitful junkyard runs and a bunch of you guys, I have all the parts I need to rebuild and upgrade my M20B27 (and entire engine bay lol). I'll be posting updates as they happen to keep the story of this amazing car alive.
Long live the Crispy30!
Thanks for reading!
Hugo
I'd like to share the (ongoing) story of my E30 as it's currently undergoing a rebuild due to an engine fire a couple of weeks ago.
Some background: I just turned 20 and bought this Alpine White 1986 325es from my neighbor—the original owner—in November 2021. I had passed it everyday on my way too and from school and I always wanted it! The car was bone stock and in very rough shape as he wasn't a mechanically savvy person, so it was leaking from everywhere (and had been for some time). I was out of town when the purchase was made so I did extensive research, ordered tons and tons of parts, and spent 120+ hours over 10 days refreshing everything I could: I resealed most of the engine, replaced all mounts and bushings, upgraded to Bilstein B8s and H&R lowering springs to replace the old blown suspension and a gold tag E46 steering rack to replace the old leaky steering rack, and facelifted the car to late model plastic bumpers as the diving boards were in poor shape. The interior was in excellent condition because the car had always been parked in a carport facing away from the sun, meaning a crack-free dash! It was a factory sport interior and the PO had always had seat covers (which looked raggedy), but the leather sport seats underneath looked brand new! It's star feature is an old Alpine car phone that I think was installed in the early 90s! (Doesn't currently work but I have a plan for that ;) ) After christening it the Crusty30 (for hopefully obvious reasons), I shook it down by driving it around the neighborhood...just kidding, I road-tripped it 370 miles up north to Berkeley! All went well and besides a few non-critical electrical quirks I didn't get around to touching, the car worked fantastically well and I ended up driving to and from Berkeley a few more times in the following months.
Cut to the weekend before the 4th of July this year: I had been daily driving the car to and from work (about 30 miles round trip) for a few weeks and loving it! I had just CLEANED cleaned it inside and out so it was looking fantastic and had just upgraded the sealed beam headlights to ellipsoids, which was a huge upgrade. Man, I love this car! I wanted a little more pep from the tired M20 but don't have the infrastructure for an engine swap, so I was looking around for 2.5L parts to 1.1/1.3 Motronic swap the car (thanks to the fantastic thread my kenika65!).
[This is how the car cleaned up, basically at it's prime (a few days before I installed the ellipsoids)]
On the weekend of the 4th, I was on my way to watch an oval race at Irwindale Speedway as you do, and when I pulled up to a light a few blocks from my house, I heard a pop followed by smoke and passersby yelling at me to get out of the car. I shut the car off and jumped out, saw flames underneath, and my heart sank as I watched helplessly as my pride and joy burned. Very luckily, there were a ton of witnesses so 911 had already been called by the time I got out and there was a fire station literally one block away from the intersection so they were there within minutes. My hood release cable melted so they had to chop my hood off to put the fire out.
Most everything plastic and rubber in the engine bay was torched but luckily none of the belts snapped or anything, so I was confident the motor was alright. I towed it home and began stripping it down, removing all the burnt stuff to get a better sense of what happened. The firemen had said something about a fuel leak and since the pop I heard sounded like it came from the trans tunnel, I assumed one of the soft lines down there popped and fuel got on the exhaust. They also recognized my car and were sad to see it under those circumstances, although they had fun with it (did I mention the car has a car phone?!).
[My hood being cut off (left) and the firefighter taking a pic with my car phone (middle) saying "hey guys, this is how he called 911!", the aftermath (right)]
To my confusion, when I got under the car, all the fuel lines were intact (and in decent shape all things considered) because the fire was concentrated on the passenger side. Still confused, I decided to scrub down the engine bay to see where the deepest scorches were (remember how I mentioned the car was crusty? Yeah, a few days and half a dozen kitchen sponges later, the bay was clean). Come to find out, the A/C line that runs from the compressor up the passenger strut tower popped and it was refrigerant that had been burning! No idea how this happened, the A/C had never blown cold so I never had it on.
Some of you may have seen the thread I posted after it happened looking for parts and thanks to many fruitful junkyard runs and a bunch of you guys, I have all the parts I need to rebuild and upgrade my M20B27 (and entire engine bay lol). I'll be posting updates as they happen to keep the story of this amazing car alive.
Long live the Crispy30!
Thanks for reading!
Hugo
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