Zen and the Art of e30 Maintenance

[///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

[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

[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

[Sagaris]

Check your PM

[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.

[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.

[poopin04]

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

[airkhin]

wow. amazing.

[Simon S]

Thought I would bump one of the greatest threads of all the internet..
What did the prebent brakelines cost you?
And, did you order them from the dealer?

Aw thanks..
Don't remember.. $35-ish? [from dealer]. The main front-to-rear brake line doesn't come pre-bent. (the fuel lines do). I removed the perished/original line as gingerly as I could, then spent ~2 hours with a line bender matching the non-bent replacement.

And thanks to others for kind words..

Link to bay shot where it was a little more together than the 'candy' shot..(raw photo/size)

[Eurospec]

Looks amazing without the gawd awful cosmoline. How difficult was it to remove that stuff.

Bravo dude! Absolutely love the attention to detail with everything you've tackled on the car which seems to be just about everything.

[peytonracer4]

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

this location looks really really familiar to me. hmm...

[lolcantturn]

Bump for one of the best threads on this forum.

[shaferbm]

Seriously inspiring

[eur04lif3]

Bored on this Saturday evening, and decided to read this thread all over again.

Bump, for a very inspirational thread.

[phillye30fanboy]