From rags to riches - the junkyard dog. 325iS rebuild + k swap!

[grandeswag]

The story of this car starts before I owned it, as all do. My mom spotted it at a friends house and sent me photos - an Mtech1 325iS, more or less the holy grail (to me at least, with an M3 completely out of the question). Of course I told her to let them know if they were ever looking to sell it, to call me first. Had I known how much trouble that would get me into... If a long thread with lots of pictures aren't your thing, I've recently started a YouTube channel documenting the progress of this car: https://www.youtube.com/@DekadentGarage



A few years later I was informed they were looking to offload the car. I met with the owner and started my inspection, it didn't seem so bad at the time... It was his sons car throughout high school and college. Many trips up and back from NY to VT. He told me a few years ago it was 'pristine' and he had rebuilt the motor. We went for a spin, talked pricing and agreed at $2k. He probably would have taken less but this was at the height of the used car market and E30 prices were skyrocketing, so I jumped on it. I figured I could clean it up, put it on some fresh suspension and wheels and sell it for at least double. This would be the 3rd E30 to join the family but my first real project.





It was originally bronzit and they had repainted it Rustoleum Black themselves, simply beautiful. At least the front seats were nice. First on my agenda was a few quick fixes to get it a little more drivable - tachometer wasn't working and the radio was busted.




I fixed the burnt trace, replaced the odometer gears and installed a continental radio that I had laying around.

[82eye]

great beginnings .. nice job. looking forward to see what you do.

[grandeswag]

At the time I was living in Brooklyn and renting a garage space with a few other like-minded bmw nuts. Somehow, this car survived the journey down and I moved it into place where it would go under the knife for 6 months. I removed the hood and got to work replacing the timing belt and most of the cooling components. I also wanted to freshen up the look of the valve cover and intake manifold. Thermostat, waterpump, all hoses, various seals, etc etc. Also had to fix the wiring on every injector where the PO did some sketchy soldering.

[grandeswag]

great beginnings .. nice job. looking forward to see what you do.

I've got more than 500 pictures of this so buckle up!


Next up I rebuilt the shifter and got a good look at everything on the bottom of the car. This is where I started to realize this wasn't just going to be an easy flip. I knew it wasn't spotless underneath but the more and more I looked around the worse it got.

[grandeswag]

I started to remove just about everything. If you've ever worked on a car like this you know the pain of rusty parts. Something simple like removing a lug nut was an hour long process on this car. You can see my special trick to get the gland nut off the strut here. My hope was to restore as many parts as possible without buying replacements. But some things were just too far gone. The trailing arms and subframe were totally roasted.

[grandeswag]

Picked up a rear subframe and trailing arms. After burning out the bushings I had the parts sandblasted and powder coated. Calipers came out great. Also found a front clip for grafting purposes to repair the front end that was damaged in an accident. The PO had replaced bits of it with angle iron and it was all out of wack...

[grandeswag]

Before installing all my fresh parts, I got the car down to a bare shell more or less to do the rust repair. I found a welding machine on FB market for cheap and taught myself how to rip it. I'm no pro by any means but I'm glad to have been able to do these repairs myself. Would have cost a fortune otherwise. When I dropped the gas tank I realized that it should be replaced too, not to mention the fuel lines and brake lines front to back were rusted out. I was really getting in deep at this point.

[grandeswag]

Feast your eyes on the most gorgeous welds to ever grace the planet. Whatever, it works and you can't see them. It's pretty hard to weld to the thin panels of the car without blasting through. The floor was a great place to learn though because I had a few areas that needed to look good. I made all the patch panels using 18 gauge cold rolled steel. The various bends and shapes were just done with a vise, hammer and grinder. After welding, I coated all the seams with Eastwood seam sealer and then painted over with Eastwood rust encapsulator.

[grandeswag]

There was a LOT of rust repair done. In the interest of keeping this thread slightly more brief I won't show all of it, but I'm particularly proud of how this rear arch came out. I think these photos show the process pretty well. I bought a full rear arch panel from a place called raybuck auto and rough trimmed it to cover the area I needed. Next I clamped it to the body and cut both the car and the panel at the same time as to keep the same exact line to join them together. Then I welded it up and hit it with the grinder.

[grandeswag]

With all the rust sorted, I installed the new fuel tank, fuel lines and made the brake lines using copper and bubble flares. Lots of YouTube university to learn how to do this stuff. I took this opportunity to replace the 2 fuel pump system with a single high pressure pump. I know this is semi-controversial but it's worked well for me so far.

[Gaarath378]

sub'd - love me some rusty e30s

[grandeswag]

It was a really nice change of pace to actually be installing things back onto the car. All wheel bearings replaced, bushings (80A poly), parking brake system, axles, etc.
I also installed a z3 rack and solid steering coupler. Replaced the rotted fenders with a set from a florida car.

[grandeswag]

Got the interior all back together after finishing up the gas pedal mount. The actual bracket I got from Valca's Garage. I covered the floor with Kilmat after all the repairs.

[grandeswag]

I was putting off this core support repair for a while because I found it pretty intimidating. One Saturday I just bit the bullet and hacked the old one off. Pretty annoying to get all the spot welds and chisel everything away but I had it all finished in a few hours. It was pretty tricky to get everything lined up because I had no reference as the old one was bad. I opted to make the whole thing removable with a future engine swap in mind. The bolt holes on the core support side I made oversized so the whole thing can be tweaked a bit to get the body lines all perfect. I also hadn't realized at the time that the hood wasn't straight, so no matter what I tried I couldn't get everything aligned.

[2mAn]

Love this!... Keep going! Im sure were not caught up yet