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.

[calvino]

Picking this back up after a little hiatus:

Aug 13, 2023:

Was installing a fire extinguisher bracket from garagistic and I DROPPED the MF EXTINGUISHER on the CAR

FAAAHHHHHH

Luckily there was no paint loss and I used a local guy California Dent Co who came to me and undid my idiot moment.



Threw out my first box of shitty old rubber parts I removed and replaced. Feels good to make progress.

[calvino]

Think I'm gonna ditch the date format as it feels too restrictive, posts will remain in rough chronological order.


Took apart the throttle body heater, was disgusting inside. Cover was pitted and I sheared one of the screws. Luckily coworker was able to come to the rescue and weld a nut to extract it.



Decided to tackle some hard starting issues. Rented the fuel pressure gauge from AutoZone and realized that 1. My fuel pressure was low and 2. I lose that fuel pressure almost immediately when I turn the car off.

New pierburg FPR


I determined that my starting difficulties were due to a completely dead factory lift pump. Did the Chevy Vega fuel pump mod. I used the Autobest F1496 vega pump and US Motorworks 12305 F150 fuel strainer sock and both worked perfectly for the low low price of $34 shipped.



I determined I was losing fuel pressure because the HPFP check valve was worn out. When I removed it, it was full of metallic dust, glad I replaced it with a new Bosch. Now it starts up on the first crank.

Replaced the fuel lines while I had access to the tank, but left the existing vapor lines. Trying to snake the new lines up without dropping the tank presented a fun challenge, but using twine on the old one to drag the new one up worked great.

[calvino]

Before: Crusty!!



After: Clean!!



As a reward for servicing the fuel system, the car rewarded me with having the alternator take a shit.

Pretty sure it was rectifier bridge. Took it to a local shop Ace Alternators & Starters in Whittier and they had my alternator restored in 2 hours. Not to mention they had the outside looking beautiful too. Highly recommend them.

[calvino]

Picked up my freshly repainted cowcatcher and is spoiler up from the body shop. I used the same shop that did the insurance work and they did $350 for both the spoiler and the valence which I thought was very fair.

Super fresh!!



By now I finally had collected up all of the correct factory mounting brackets and foglight hardware.

First time lighting up the correct factory fogs:



Got the spoiler mounted up:


Made my own reproduction part number sticker to fill the oblong shaped recess because I'm extra like that.



It is amazing what a difference the painted valence made. No longer looks like a shitbox now. Honestly blows my mind that the PO had the whole car painted but skipped this last 10%.

[calvino]

Some more shots from my garage:



Took the car to go get aligned since I winged the front alignment after the Z3 rack replacement. Car looked good up on the lift until the alignment tech notified me that there was fuel leaking out of my car from the hose that connects the filler neck to the tank. Good to know.

[calvino]

I was itching to know the actual health of the motor so I decided to do a compression test. I was pleasantly surprised. Not bad for 220000ish miles.





On a less uplifting note I was changing the trans fluid and then this was all that came out. Yikes. Curiously enough it seems to shift fine, no grinds and it goes into all the gears fine. Is transmission fluid optional?? JK

Refilled the trans with some fresh Redline MTL and crossed my fingers.

[calvino]

Back in high school I clayed then hand compounded and polished my first car for the first time and was amazed at the results. As I had decided that I would be taking the car to Radwood Socal this year I decided it was this car's turn.
Results were quite good for a hand polish.






Yours truly: