Zen and the Art of e30 Maintenance

[airkhin]

wow. amazing.

[poopin04]

I hate reading this thread. I go out and spend tons of money right after. Gotta step my game up!

[unevolved]

I just read through this whole thread over the past few days. Just have to say you've done an amazing job. Definitely inspiring me to do some detail work on my car.

Oh, and if you've got a high-res version of the picture titled "candy" a few pages back of your engine bay, I'd love to have one. I could use a new phone wallpaper.

[MattAvino]

Thought I would bump one of the greatest threads of all the internet. I hope everything is well.

Also, I meant to ask this a very long time ago: What did the prebent brakelines cost you? And, did you order them from the dealer? I could never find e30 prebent ones online.

[Sagaris]

Check your PM

[Simon S]

Mate it is great to here your life is getting back on track. Such an amazing car/build.
Best of luck with the job from Australia!
Cheers
Glenn

Thanks mate. So far - so good with the job.. just playing catch-up financially after being jobless..

YEAH SIMON!!!
Good stuff man. Always makes me happy seeing your thread updated. Pack that fudge bro!
Haha <3

aw.. I like cheering people up..
and ha. Mostly I've been packing toothbrushes, toothpaste, and diapers into shipping tote boxes..

hey dude, dont feel bad, I'm about $280k in education debt and will prob be repaying that till the day I die. Live toward your dreams, money means nothing

ug.. education debt. Now I don't feel so bad. Being ~$70K in student loans - and currently working blue collar isn't something I feel very cool about..

So basically, the mechanicals are solid and if you want a beater, it's yours.

Holy. F’ing. Shit. That’s like the coolest, most heart-warming offer I’ve ever received. Sorry for not responding sooner (2nd shift and just got home a bit ago). Yes! I am extremely interested. I’ll shoot you a pm here w/in next hour or so and see if/what can be worked out..

Cheers

[AndrewG]

Hey Simon, I've been following your thread for quite a while now and you do some amazing work. I wanted to say hi and meet up with you when you mentioned your work situation and admire your work up close, but I actually fell into a similarly shitty situation and kind of fell off the map for a while as well. Such is life I guess.

Anyways, I think I have a winter car for you if you like driving E30s in the winter. I stopped driving it a while back because my Megasquirt ECU blew up and because I had my nice and clean E30 and a diesel VW rabbit as my daily. It used to be pretty rust free, but I've owned it for over 11 years now and it has had little use the last 5 years and almost no use the last 3. The subframes are pretty rusty now, but it has subframe bushings, wheel bearings, control arms, and the normal replacement stuff with low miles on them. It's technically a stroker engine since the previous owner put an i cam in the ETA head and had a custom chip made (guess that's what they did back in the late 80s). Well, whoever did the work forgot to put the rocker shaft locator in and when I was down in FL for school in 2003, the extra heat made it slide and one of the rockers was slipping off a valve and I had to have it rebuilt. So basically, the mechanicals are solid and if you want a beater, it's yours. You can come take a look or I can send pics and things through PM, just make me an offer in your budget and I'd likely take it. I could help you fix it up and make it roadworthy again as well. (It has been in my dads driveway for over 2 years and I just don't want it spending another winter there)

Here's the car from when I was caught in a massive snowstorm in Indiana without an LSD(it was in my trunk, just had to be installed lol) on the way back from Florida one year:

Horrible ice storm trapped me here by andrewgood, on Flickr

[///M42 sport]

hey dude, dont feel bad, I'm about $280k in education debt and will prob be repaying that till the day I die. Live toward your dreams, money means nothing

[zxert]

YEAH SIMON!!!

Good stuff man. Always makes me happy seeing your thread updated. Pack that fudge bro!

Haha <3

[grt]

Mate it is great to here your life is getting back on track. Such an amazing car/build.
Best of luck with the job from Australia!
Cheers
Glenn

[Simon S]

Thanks again guys. Over the last few weeks, I’ve been going back over the project posts and fixing bad photo links. Only a few more to go as I type this.

New job is going well. Not a sexy job.. (split case/picker-packer at a nearby Walgreens distribution center) but pay is decent compared to the white-collar work I was looking for. Days go by fast as a split case worker mostly stays focused on quick packing. Exercise of the job is an added bonus. Body was pretty sore there for the first two weeks. On as a temp currently and hope they bring me on full. Was able to hit “numbers” by day six which seemed to impress some people.

Needing to use the Zen e30 for daily commute – which is nice. No complaints. The thing that is really getting me now is a race from now till snow time to scrape up enough money for a winter beater. Like I could just drive the e30 through a winter – but after putting all the love and care into this car, it’s not something I like to think about.

Part of me is thinking of spraying the undercarriage with waxoyl and/or white grease. The other part of me is scoping craigslist for something like an $800 Celica.. Seems like $1500 is the going rate for decent, worthwhile/winter car. Time will tell how that whole thing pans out.

any advice on removing the airbag sensor and wiring? was hard to figure out what you did based on those pics :o

Not sure what to say there. It was one of those deals where it was easy work – just time-consuming. One can use a small drill to remove center-portion of sensor/trigger fasteners on front wheel wells – then a standard torx driver for removal.
Early part of this post shows where things are taken apart under dash to remove SRS brain box (easy). Seriously, it's mostly a matter of looking at what you want to remove, then taking to time to remove it.

Was able to sneak off into the Wisconsin countryside for a nice drive a few weeks back. Always a good time..



Painters tape over the skirt seams since the skirts were separating from body (macco's fault. poor prep as usual. f'ing macco.) Something I'll fix next spring. And the tires on the bottlecaps had began to show signs of dry rot (9ish+ years old) - so I swapped on a set of wheels and snow tires that I got a good deal on about a year ago (Thank you again Pete).



Got pizza-cutters? lol..

[bmwstephen]

any advice on removing the airbag sensor and wiring? was hard to figure out what you did based on those pics :o

[///M42 sport]

Hey I'm on the other side of the lake haha. Muskegon mi

[Simon S]

Sounds good - shoot me a pm for details..

Thanks again for all the kind words guys.

I finally start a job tomorrow !

[Sagaris]

I will be working in Madison occasionally over the next couple months or so, perhaps we could hit up lunch sometime and you could show-off your awesome car!