Project track car ’87 325i sedan (re)build

[craz azn]

Hey everyone! I used to post here more frequently back in the day… fell out of touch from forums altogether when I sold my original e30, but I’m making an effort to come back to the platform I grew up around and help support with some content! That said, while this thread is purely for my new(ish) project e30, if you wish to follow along with all the current car shenanigans, I’m also on IG @craz_azn

Since I’d sold my original e30 back in 2011, I’ve had a few different cars sharing my attention over time, namely a few 2002s, e34s, e46s, and of course, two other e30s. So I haven’t been out of the game completely. However, it’s crazy to assess how e30 ownership, interests, and values have shifted over time. The car I’m showcasing in this thread actually belonged to a good friend of mine that I met through HPDEs back in the mid 2000s, a project car that had unfortunately been put on the back burner due to money, changing interests, just life in general. Along the way, it got modified, parted out, rebuilt again, and parted for a second time… I plan to do the car some justice, at least bringing it back to a running state, although it’s primary use at this time hasn’t really been determined yet. I’m just using the car as a distraction for myself, and I’m using this thread as a way to document my progress, as sometimes these come in handy for memory refreshers!

The shell as I picked it up, Fall 2022:



I had to bring some front struts and wheels along with me to make it roll, as the car had been substantially parted out since the last I’d seen it, years ago.





Gave it a quick wash to see what was there, and what wasn’t… better list would be to start with what was lol!

325i 4 dr shell, early model (VFL)

• crazy jungle gym inside, gutted doors, all lexan except front window, practically no wiring, sunroof and gas door filled in
• No front suspension at all
• Rear 5 bolt arms, e36 based (z3 I think?) Adjustable eccentrics, solid rear subframe mounts, little 60mm dia H&R race springs
• Green sway bars, front and rear (brand?)
• Alu M3 front control arms
• Custom carbon dash, a few random Stack gauges
• Fiberglass trunk skin
• ATL well cell (not connected)
• No bumpers, lights, hood, mirrors, seats, or anything driveline related

So basically, a rolling shell. Perfect. Luckily, I have a lot of parts from over the years, and I probably have 75% of the stuff enough to make this thing a runner. Maybe not the best parts, but it’s sooooo much easier to fine tune a project when it’s together and running, versus the constant cycle of changing/upgrading before enjoyment… and sudden realization that years went by before the car saw the light of day out of the garage!

More posts to come shortly! (I hope I’m doing the picture upload thing correctly!)

edit: please post if the pics are too small or poor quality!

[Northern]

Green sways could be ST?

https://store.vacmotorsports.com/sus...-m3-p1385.aspx

I remember you, but I think more from maxbimmer, which I haven't been to in ages. lol

Pics work for me (3 of them). Quality works, but they are small.

[craz azn]

Hey dude, thanks! Yes they sure look like those sway bars! I’ve actually never had upgraded bars on any of my e30s, so I’m sort of intrigued to see how this car feels. Although, I worry that might be masked by my decision to continue with completing the e36 5 bolt suspension, as I’ve never gone this route before. I’ve always been of the opinion e36 front end parts don’t provide the exact same feel as original e30 parts do (mostly due to geometry, not the weight).

Haha, ahh maxbimmer. It’s a ghost town nowadays unfortunately. Last I heard they were trying to sell it, but I don’t imagine there’s a ton of value in a place that doesn’t see much traffic anymore.

Thanks for the tip on the pics. Will try the larger setting for my next post!

[Panici]

Thanks for posting!
Interested to see how this will come together.

[craz azn]

So between Fall and Xmas of 2022... Not much happened on the car. I only devoted one afternoon to it to find stuff kicking around that I could stick onto it, to slowly piece it together, but also to get rid of some of the parts pile; easier to store parts on a car than on a shelf! Grills, mirrors, a hood, headlight buckets, little plastic trims here and there... threw them all onto the car.



When the opportunity presented itself while switching wheels on my other cars, I'd try them on here for fun, just to see how the wheel fitment was, and what I was working with. This is when I realized the rear end was e36-based... because my E34s Style 20 M Systems would barely fit (tire basically sitting on the fender arch, and its only an 8" rim), meanwhile the wheels from my E90 which are a full inch and half wider fit no problem (9.5" et35 Apex, and could still use a spacer!)






And last thing I did before the snow flew... I chucked in an LSD from my parts pile just to get it 'gone' and stored away. Everything popped in fine, but I'll need to source some threaded rod or something, as the two upper diff mounting holes go through the floor and are tied into the cage (nice design!)

[Northern]

Pic size is great, ARC8s and M Systems are both spectacular. They're the kind of things that make me want to go 5-lug.

[Joeyz31]

Oh nice! Can’t wait to see progress on this. As the owner of one myself, I love seeing more e30 sedan track cars!

both those wheel options look awesome with the fitment/ride height.

[craz azn]

Thanks guys! Glad I finally got the picture thing figured out!

So over the start of winter, a few developments happened (which sort of kicked this project off to a solid start). I got an offer from a buddy who asked if I needed an M60 engine. I looked into the swap hurdles associated with this motor, and eventually what turned me off from it was finding a 5spd trans from a late model 530i (not interested in a 6spd due to weight), and secondly was dealing with the brake setup. As some may know, the left bank cyl head sits right where the opening is in the firewall for the brake booster, necessitating a brake setup that ends up being inboard (ie. a manual setup with masters under the dash) or something very modified using the booster setup of an E34. I was close to cutting up my spare pedal set, thinking to perhaps copy some sort of system as this manual Tilton pedal set I borrowed from a friend to take some measurements/ideas from...



However, being that this E30 isn't one of my primary cars (yet) I felt I needed to stick with a simpler solution just to get this car going. I decided getting choppy and custom wasn't in the cards for me and this car right now... so I went searching for an M20 as a more plug-n-play solution. I did end up finding one rather quickly on kijiji (our local 'craigslist') but unfortunately I had a hard time pulling the trigger on it, being that I didn't want to spend ample money on gaskets/timing belt/maintenance on a used, unknown condition motor.

The other development was wheels. At around the same time as this motor debacle was going on, I got a message from another friend of mine, offering me old wheels from a racecar he'd recently sold. Kosei K1s in 15x8, et22... two sets! For a price I couldn't refuse! Perfect. Having tried the different sets of 17s on the car, I decided that 15s would make for great track wheels and affordable tires choices down the road. I figured even though they are low offset wheels, relative to the planned suspension, I could get away with running a slightly stretched tire size (205s) and the smaller diameter would also help a bit in terms of gearing.

I started to devise a rough plan to shoot for, keeping in mind parts I had already on hand, and look towards cost-effective solutions for the rest.

- Complete e36 5 bolt setup, buy coilovers
- 15s for track use (which made it mandatory to use stock size brakes, aka cheap), possibly 17s further down the road (?)
- The car came with a plastic rear bumper cover... maybe find a front to match and call it a day for the looks department.
- Ditch the fuel cell, and go back to a stock tank setup, as its cheaper for me to get the car running that way (and just keep it full as a bandaid to get around the fuel starvation issues that plague stock tank cars as a temporary measure).
- Most importantly, the decision to go with the M20 engine for simplicity, but look into utilizing one of the core M20s I've been hoarding over the years with a cracked head. Rebuild time! :)

So with a lot of the bigger decisions out of the way, I started to crack on with ordering parts, slowly but surely.

The very first thing I ordered was a pair of SRS Control Arm bushings to help correct the E36 front suspension items. I was introduced to this company via some of my drift buddies, and it's great to have varied solutions like this, as these weren't around back in the early/mid 2000s when everyone was jumping into the '5 lug' craze. These are suppose to move the front wheels more towards the front of the car to correct the wheel placement when using E36 front spindles, at the expense of an extreme caster gain. Second issue that has yet to be determined is by moving the arm outwards that drastically, it necessitates having the rear of the arm come down to clear the frame rail, which IMO affects anti-dive in a negative way. Whether or not it is a noticeable or detrimental characteristic once the car is driving remains to be seen.



I ordered a few odds and ends... brand new front control arms, complete tie rods (still mulling over if I want to leave the stock rack, or switch to a newer unit), and front sway bar links (also e36). Also sourced some E36 front spindles and calipers from another friend who'd upgraded his car to M3 parts ages ago.

The last thing I ordered suspension-wise was a set of ISC coilovers from Bimmerworld. I got a set of these last year for my E34, and was super impressed with the performance... sure it's no Moton Motorsport 3 way adjustable setup... but for the price, it performs very well. The only change I'd made was to put my own spring rates (softer) onto the E34, and I would imagine I may end up doing the same thing on this E30, although that is due to it being a much lighter chassis than the suspension was originally spec'd for (aka not street car weight). This setup is an off the shelf setup for a 318ti. Spring rates of 560lb front, and 670lb rear







Being that this is meant for an e36, the top camber plates for the front are also incorrect for my application. What I hope to do (I haven't looked into yet as of this writing) is to redrill the upper top plate to the E30 bolt pattern, but also move the entire plate forwards as much as possible to alleviate the caster gain from the offset of the CABs.



Oh, and the most important part of any Bimmerworld order :p

[craz azn]

On the powerplant side of things, I'd now committed to sticking an M20 back in this thing, which would allow me to keep everything somewhat basic, straightforward, and recycle a lot of odds and ends I have kicking around. I've had this donor M20 sitting around for a few years from a car I'd parted, and eventually sold off to a Chumpcar team. The reason I call it a donor is because I assumed the head was cracked, as it was pouring coolant out the exhaust the last I'd seen it run. Because of it, I never looked twice at it, but only kept it around as parts because I knew that its original build consisted of a 2.7 bottom end, and a fairly hot cam. Sadly, in a moment of poor decisions, I sold the genuine Supersprint headers off of it a few years ago, thinking I may never end up getting around to reusing this motor... I made the decision in December to go ahead with the M20 plan for this E30 by purchasing a set of ebay headers (which I surprisingly had a tough time finding... these things used to be abundant back in the day!) more on these in a later post...



Over the Holidays, I took the time to take the motor down off the shelf, and dig into it. Unfortunately, I was greeted with the unpleasant sight of cylinders full of water. All the coolant passages were full of gunk... it was rather disgusting. On the plus side, everything internally was in good shape. Main and rod bearings weren't significantly worn, cam lobes and rockers still looked great... even the oil that was drained from the engine wasn't too bad! Good news at least, especially considering this engine had covered approximately 50k km in its prior life.





The good items I was able to salvage from this engine were the crank (2.7), rods (also 2.7), pistons and rings (84.5mm... JE I think?), Cam (turns out it is a Dbilas 304*), rockers, valves, valve springs (unknown combo, but definitely not stock M20b25), and ancillaries. I ended up throwing out the block, head, thermostat housing, and intake manifold, because they were all beyond repair.

My friend who'd offered me the M60 earlier also had an early E34 525i kicking around... this is where I grabbed my new donor cylinder head from. Pulling a head in January in -10* weather is not fun, especially when the exhaust is still connected lol... Luckily, I left there successful!



Throughout the month, I spent a ton of time taking stuff apart, cleaning, recleaning, and assessing what I had. A lot of these I brought into my work to clean, as doing it at home is next to impossible during wintertime.




It was somewhere around here where I started to get a bit overzealous with this engine... starting with porting. I've never ported a head before, and I know its pretty easy to screw this up, especially without prior knowledge... that said, I figure I couldn't make it worse than the original cyl head (Part of the reason it had cracked and started pushing coolant was from being ported too much!!!). I ended up settling on porting only around the bowl and valve opening, while leaving the entrance to the ports stock... and just matching the intake manifold to suite. For the exhaust, I just rounded out the exit of the ports to better match the opening of the headers.









Once everything was cleaned, triple checked, quick valve lapping, and finally reassemble. Exciting!



I'd sent the new donor block to the machine shop in late January to have it bored to fit the oversized pistons, as well as a very light skim on the deck just to make sure it was fine. It took about 3 weeks for that work to be completed. In the meantime, I'd busied myself on smaller tasks. Cleaned, inspected, and reassembled the oil pump. Everything looks good! No major marks or anything inside.



I made a few delete plates... one for the oil pan, to get rid of the level sensor:



And also one for the throttle body to eliminate the heater circuit, and also the breather... tentative plan is to rig up a catch can of some sort. The throttle body got a bit out of hand, as I still had the tools out from porting the cylinder head, so I ended up rounding out the mouth of the casting so it didn't have such an abrupt step. Probably won't make any difference but it was fun to do.

[craz azn]

Continuing the motor saga... Once the block was returned from machining, everything was cleaned and double checked that all measurements were as requested. Luckily, all good! I gave the block a quick brush paint job, more appealing than the flaky rust... the block is from an early 84 car, so it kinda looked the part lol. Now... much better!



Drop the crank in... turns great. Thankfully everything is still standard size, so it all went together without issue.



The torque on the front crank bolt... holy cow!





Piston assembly... with fancy coated rod bearings for extra insurance!



Ring gap checks... marginal, but it will be fine!



Final install for everything... I'll let the pictures do the talking.













I had an issue with the gasket set: the intake manifold gaskets were intruding the ports significantly at the tops... almost like as if I had intake gaskets from a 731 head. Weird! Anyways... a bit of dremel action later, and all was okay.









At about this point is where I had the first chance to test fit the ebay headers... and I was surprised to see the outlet of the collectors were not parallel to each other. I think I may have to do some cutting to refit this, but I'll wait until its all installed in the car. At least if anything, they look good on the motor from a few feet away lol





Got all the fuel rail, injectors, cap and rotor on... but these plug wires gave me the fits to get back into the case after cleaning! D'oh!

[Panici]

Now that is some nice motor restoration work!
Looking super clean.

[craz azn]

^ Thanks dude! Glad to have a powerplant for this thing. It's certainly a good motivator!


In between the motor build... I decided what to do for the visuals on this car. I figured something close to stock would probably be the most cost effective for now, but being that this thing isn't original by any means, I have no reservations on holding back. I have a set of plastic bumper covers kicking around, albeit knowing the rear bumper would need shortening... I actually tried to retrofit plastics onto my very first E30 back in 2004 (an early '85 car, and half succeeded but never fully finishing the project); I would do the rear differently, now knowing what I know. Being that this car is an '87, the natural desire in my mind was to put it back to how it was supposed to have been: a period correct spec (euro spec metal bumpers) and the possibility of an M Technic 1 kit. Between staring at different body combinations over the years, I decided to try something I have never seen before... A custom home-brew of plastic bumpers, and M Tech 1! Challenge accepted! Those of you familiar with M Tech 1 parts know that this bodykit originally mounts on top of the metal bumper, but hiding underneath the rubber trim. I plan to mimic this by cutting off the bottom portion of the plastic bumper below the bumper trim, and mount the M Tech parts (somehow) so it ends up being very close to original position. I looked around at the options, and settled on purchasing a replica kit from Europe made in fiberglass, so it could be something I was not scared to work with and capable to pull through. After a 3 month wait, it finally turned up in the mail!



Some might be wondering how an entire bodykit fits into a box this small. Well, knowing that I was planning to cut this kit up anyways, I asked the supplier to cut it into pieces to fit into a smaller box to save on shipping. Very happy with that decision, and how everything was packaged. Awesome job!





I opted not to get the matching rear spoiler of this kit, because I don't particularly like the style of it. I ended up ordering an M Tech 2 rear wing, as that is one of my favorite add-on pieces for any E30... something about the shape and design of it... It's ingenious! From the front 3/4 view, it matches the angular body shapes of the rear quarter, but then once you get to the side view, I like that it changes character and sticks out towards the rear.







My front E36 brake discs also showed up in the mail, and I wasted no time bringing those into work so I could slot them during my breaks. I tried this for the first time last year, with successful results for my E34, so I figured I would do the same again here.





And done!



Last thing... I scored a set of 17x8s via kijiji for $175!!! Not what I'd planned, especially as I have multiple sets of 5x120 wheels (that may end up being used on this car from time to time), and also those 15" Kosei's I'd committed to that I mentioned early on in this thread... but I couldn't pass these up!



Pretty stoked on how they turned up after a bit of cleaning! Much like a Hyper Silver... Crazy that they were discolored so badly from never being washed (see wheel in behind!)



Next post will be pretty much caught up to present day... with the chassis finally seeing some progression.

[CubbyChowder]

This is all very awesome. That engine rehab is super clean and should make for some fun power. Really curious to see how your bumper master plan turns out!

[craz azn]

^ Thanks dude!! Huge fan of your work. I remember some of your old threads from your very first shop build. Those were badass. I still recall the lamps made with the upside down mixing bowls lol... ingenious!

[craz azn]

Beginning of March rolled around, and I was super amped to get cracking on the chassis. I dug the car out a bit, and was pleasantly surprised that the snow aided my pursuits in dragging the car out of the pile where the car was buried. I managed to yank it out by dragging it with my X5, and eventually pushed it the rest of the way in. Thank goodness for that monster bumper bar on this thing that was fabricated from the roll cage builder. Pfewwww!



And success!





I let the car acclimatize for a day before starting to work on it. I finally could now assess it more closely, and have a first look underneath this thing on the hoist, after having it for nearly half a year! I gave the engine bay a quick wipe down and started to make a list on what to address. There were a lot of brackets crudely cut off, so I set about cleaning those up first, and shooting them with a spray can so it wouldn't be such an eyesore (or a hand destroyer... some of those were sharp!). The ABS unit brackets I smoothed out, as well as what was left from the early coolant tank holder.





And I also fixed a small piece of the frame rail that was cut and bent down for whatever reason. Bent back, tack welded, smoothed and painted. Check!



Better!



Now that I'd gotten to a point of a more presentable bay, I could throw the engine and trans in. Very exciting to see the progress at this point. I put it in with used/random mounts for now, will get fresh ones installed soon when they show up in the mail.







The major surprise to me when I finally got underneath this car was that the fuel pump and filter setup was still present! I guess the car was running like this at on point with the fuel cell, and I just assumed it hadn't because everything was disconnected in the trunk. A few months ago, I'd purchased a mint 88+ gas tank via kijiji... but it turns out it wasn't necessary. Oh well... add it to the parts pile lol. Either way, I'm very excited that I can save a bit of time and run the car with this fuel system temporarily and see how it does, and I can turn my attention to other things.

Lots of little knickknacks to sort through. The throttle cable was missing the jam nut, so I found a random brass nut at work, jammed a metric tap into it, and got my solution for free! Nice! (the little nut behind it was the sample I borrowed from a friend to see how it all went together)



One big issue though was the wiring. I started to lay out the stock engine harness for the car, when I figured hey wait... lets see what the rest of the car looks like first. I didn't like what I saw lol.



Well, that's a lie. I do like these stack gauges... I will plan to reuse these, and possibly the dashboard too.



Even though I tried to label everything, this wiring was just a mess. Even with my novice wiring skills, I knew this was just asking for trouble... as I don't want to be 'that guy' who's car burnt down, and it would be even more insult to injury that it wasn't my own work! I opted to rip it all out, and plan to start over... More updates in the next post!!