Socal 325is build aiming for M-Tech 1 glory

[2mAn]

Very cool project. Keep it up

[Mike36]

[calvino]

Jul 26, 2023:

Scored a deal on a 173 DME for $40 on fleabay. Did some research and technically the 1987 should probably have the green label 153 DME but I am not a purist and I wanted the later DME for better stomp test diagnostics. Put it in the car, roommates hopped in and we went for a test drive, correct redline restored! Wow! Now I can enjoy all 170 hp again



Managed to catch some fresh E30s at Sun Valley Yard so my buddy and I made the trek up and I snagged some parts I had been on the hunt for:

• Battery terminal cover
• rear glass with more intact defrost grid
• oil level sensor
• mirror glass
• front indicator lens

SPOOKY SKULL




My car had been tinted at one point but most of the tint had already been removed by the time I bought the car, save for some small strands on the door glass. I presume the PO razor bladed the rear tint off and destroyed the defrost grid so I figured a new rear window would solve this. I could not probe continuity from the left to the right side. I figured since my new to me rear window had only been tinted once I, would just remove the tint, reveal that fresh defrost grid and be good to go. Unfortunately I severely underestimated the difficulty of removing 20-30 year old tint. I called a couple of shops near me and even took it in to one and got the response that it was so old they could not sweat off the tint with ammonia and garbage bags. They also made no promises regarding the defrost grid and wanted like $250. So with nothing to lose I tried to remove the tint myself. The actual tint peeled off fairly easily but getting the glue off was a royal pain in the ass. I ended up having to use LA's totally awesome to soften it up and then razor bladed it off doing by best to not totally destroy the defrost grid. When it was all said and done there were definitely quite a few micro gaps in the grid that I marked below, and then painted back in with a Permatex kit. Repaired rear window does probe conductivity from left to right but given the amount of areas I had to touch up my expectations are pretty low.

[calvino]

Aug 11, 2023 - Sep 1, 2023:
Drove the E30 into work and it rewarded me by pissing its rust water coolant all over the parking lot.



I believe that after I drained the murky brown liquid in the cooling system the first time to replace the hoses and water pump I must have refilled it with distilled water temporarily to keep an eye on it to figure out whether it was just rust or headgasket leak milkshake. However, by this point I was confident it was just rust water. The cause ended up being I had a bad bleed on the system and the system leaked out of the expansion tank.
Still, I needed to fix the root cause, and flush all of the rust and shit out of the coolant system. I grabbed some Prestone radiator flush and few gallons of distilled water from Target and I figured I would just flush the system once or twice and be good to go. I drained the rust water which smelled like rotting salmon, added the Prestone and let it sit a week, didn't get much of a chance to drive the car.



Worried about leaving the cleaner in too long, I drained it. Water looked like the same rust water. The following week I flushed it again, added more Prestone and drove it from OC to Fontana and back. Drained again and still brown. At this point it seemed like I was on track to use a crazy amount of distilled water and the Prestone flush was doing nothing. I talked to one of my coworkers and he told me he flushed his family's Suburban with a garden hose and then finally flushed that tap water with distilled water. So I pulled the garden hose in, took out the thermostat and it took about 20 fill, idle and drain cycles for the block and radiator water to come out clear. Then I added Evaporust coolant flush and repeated my OC to Fontana cleaning loop. Unlike the Prestone, I could tell the Evaporust actually worked because the water turned black like the regular Evaporust water does when soaking hand tools. Did a few more clean garden hose flush cycles followed by a final distilled water flush and I was finally ready to put in that juicy blue bmw coolant.

This all of the jugs of just the coolant flush cleaner water. The black ones are from the evaporust.


Brewing the jungle juice


I replaced the coolant level sensor and put in new Rockauto el cheapo SKP expansion tank, since the original was showing signs of cracking, and I wanted to be able to actually see the coolant level. The threads on this one are pretty terrible and will skip if you over tighten the cap. If I had to do it over again I would just buy the OEM one

[calvino]

Aug 14, 2023:

Got around to replacing the side mirror glass. My driver's side one had this sun burn at the top and water spots that wouldn't go away. The passenger side had even worse sunburn.



The mirror glass i grabbed from the junkyard did not have the plastic backers since the adhesive was no good. I ordered a sheet of 3M 300LSE to adhere the new glass, which I had used to replace laptop bezels and I figured it would be up to the task.
First order of business was removing the old glue from the new to me mirrors. The best way I figured out to remove the old glue was to just use my thumbs and roll it onto itself which was a time consuming process.


Once the mirrors were free of old glue, I traced out the shape onto my 300LSE sheet.


After sticking the mirrors to their respective plastics I reinstalled them to the car. Huge improvement!

[calvino]

Sep 4, 2023:

Set out to figure out my new Cowcatcher. First I picked up a much straighter valence in Pasadena. It was red so I figured I would just rattle can it black.

But after painting it black and taking my old one off, I realized the grille strip is exposed and I didn't want my rattle canned paint to be exposed. So I ended up using it as a template for straightening my original one.



My old cowcatcher was mounted via bolts directly through the bumper. All of the factory brackets were toast. Put on my complete set of factory brackets I acquired via the blue cowcatcher to uncover how the factory bracket system works.



Then I test fit the blue cowcatcher.


Unfornately the side brackets were missing on the new cowcatcher. Luckily I had worked with a very similar fastener called Rotalocs at work, so I got some RB38 size ones from McMaster-Carr https://www.mcmaster.com/97590A791/ and used JB Weld plastic bonder to put them in. The stud is centered between the top set of leftover plastic mounting pegs. I ordered long Rotalocs to be on the safe side but I think you could get by the with the 20mm length ones. Since these don't have a step feature like the stock brackets you will have to use a spacer. I grabbed some nylon spacers from Home Depot, I want to say you need 10mm.



After the studs were bonded on I sent the blue cowcatcher and my IS wing out for paint at California Classics.

[calvino]

Sep 7, 2023:

Took a crack at replacing all of the seals since mine were all dry rotted and missing chunks. Ordered a set of door seals, trunk, and sunroof from eBay from bamboli-ltd. Shipping was incredibly quick, I want to say it was shipped from Istanbul, Turkey to Socal in like 2 days. Quality was so-so. The door seals fit for the most part. The corner joint for the door seals is clearly super glued instead of vulcanized hot splice like on the factory seals. It was kind of hard for me to tell if I had the entire perimeter fully seated and so I thought I cut them perfect only to realize that once I pushed a few spots all the way down, my door seals were 0.5" short and now have a gap at the bottom. Live and learn I guess. The door seals don't have the felt on the inside the like the factory ones.

New door seals:




I was able to install the door seals without lifting up the black plastic sill trims that are prone to breakage by wedging the seal in with a trim tool.

Old Trunk Seal:

The trunk seal make the trunk a bit harder to close for a week or two until the seal compression set. I don't think the seal actually seals 100% because I was able to get a tiny amount of water in the trunk when washing the car. I believe this is because the new seal kinks in the corners whereas the original does not, and the kinks create stiffer high spot when compressed by the trunk. The edge trim for the trunk seal does not grip as tight as the factory seal.

New trunk seal:


The sunroof seal was wider than the factory seal. I put it on, reinstalled the sunroof panel, and the sunroof would not close. I do not think that seal they included has worked successfully for anyone. I remove the sunroof panel, tossed the replacement seal in the trash and reinstalled my old dry rotted seal. Had to pony up the $100 for the OEM seal which was more than the entire kit of seals. Guess you get what you pay for.



In conclusion, while it may seem like the seal replacement was kind of a bust - I would rate the seals a 5/10 given only the door seals really fit correctly - it still made a huge improvement from my old torn door seals. I no longer can hear a whistling on the highway and a breeze coming from the door jamb, so that alone is worth it.