My 91 325i track car

[Lof8]

Who makes that tire/wheel holder on your wall?
Whats in the big box?
Progress looks good!

[kts]

Yea I'm a dork. But it perfectly fits my little first aid kit that also has a set of jumper cables in it as well as some spare oil and brake fluid.


Finally got most of the side molding back on the car. The front driver's side fender piece I had was broken and no matter what I tried it wouldn't work and I couldn't find one at any of the local yards so I caved it an ordered a new piece. My friend works at a local dealership and hooked me up.



Who cares it's original and boring but I love it SOOOOOOOO much better than the white crap that was on my car.

Picked up the final piece I needed this morning and I can't wait to get home tonight and install. Also picked up 2 keys for my E36 since I only got 1 key for it when I bought it.


Somehow this thing (along with gasket + new bolts) also came in my box of goodies from the dealer.


Oh and this massive box was outside my garage when I got home last night. I wonder what could be inside?!?

[kts]

- New speakers showed up Friday. I tested them on a bookshelf system I have and they sounded pretty decent. Not bad for $25 for the pair.

Old vs new


They are a bit higher than I was thinking they would be. :( Side view:


I don't think the stock grilles will fit over them well. Doh! Not sure if I'll try to get some spacers to mount the speakers under the whole plastic speaker mount or if I'll just run them sans grill. (Probably just chuck the grills.)

For the fronts I'll probably have to use the grills that came with the speaker and not run kickpanels. The car doesn't have kickpanels right now so that works for me.

- Skid plate is finished install. I need some touch up paint for where I messed up the finish in a few spots. I had to ream out the holes just a tad to get the bolts through and the Dremel slipped a few times. Doh!


Feel much safer about the oil pan now.

- Adding some rice to the car. BECAUSE RACE CAR.


- This showed up last night (best packing job ever!)


Yes, adding more weight and plastic to the car. But at least now I have a nifty place to store a few things.

[kts]

Small updates:

- Found a battery cover at the junkyard for $6. Painted it and installed it. I know it's more weight but I haul a lot of stuff in the trunk to the track and I was worried about something hitting the battery or shorting the terminals.

Not sure why the previous owner had that block there, I removed it and it strapped down tight with it not there.




- Started running new speaker wire for the rear speakers. I really wish I had done this before I put the roll bar in. It's a pain for a fat ass like me to squeeze under/around it.




Also tested the rear premium speakers I got, one worked well the other, only the tweeter works. Guess I'll order new speakers to put in the premium speaker housing today.

- Installed the skid plate. That was a far bigger PITA than I thought it was going to be. The steering rack bolts did not want to budge for me and it was hard for me to find/feel the nuts up top. Got those out, used a small jack I have to help hold the skid plate in place and got to drilling. A few of the holes I need to ream out a bit more and my drill's battery was tapped out so I left it for the night. I dislocated my shoulder a year ago and while it's mostly healed I have issues holding stuff straight up for long periods of time so the drill and skid plate were getting to me. I'll finish it up tonight.

- Picked up new bumpers + a valance. I probably should have passed on these since they were in rougher shape than I thought they were but with some work and a bit of luck I can make them look better than what is on the car now.


- Inside of my current valance and some rust from the little plate below where the passenger side headlights are. Looks like it's time for some POR15 on the plate to stop the rust. Ugh.

[kts]

what kind of side trim are those?

fyi, as for the wipers. loctite does wonders

The old "trim" was just some kind of industrial chair rail you'd see used on like a hospital wall or something like that. It was just a hard rubber that was glued on the car.

Thanks for the loctite tip, if I get any more trouble from the wipers I'll have to give that a go.

[bmwstephen]

what kind of side trim are those?

fyi, as for the wipers. loctite does wonders

[kts]

I didn't like the lame little trunk light in the car. I noticed the 2nd hole that looked perfect for another light and figured I wonder if I would just tap into the already run wires and add another light in. Then I found iwantspeed's little howto here: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=172160 which confirmed that I could do it.

Off to the yard to pick up a spare light. I found some in some 5 series and E36s and noticed they were 10W vs the dinky 5W in the E30. So I grabbed 2 of the 10W ones and swapped one in and wired up the other. Broke out the soldering iron I bought a while back and quickly realized I should have bought a higher wattage one, this thing takes a while to heat up.

My first attempt at soldering anything ever. Ugly but it works.


Results:


Definitely brighter then it was before. Still I wish there was a light further into the trunk to see stuff in there better. Maybe one day I'll look into doing that.

Did all that before I went out of town for the holiday. Got back yesterday and wanted to tackle a few things on the car.

Installed the Sparco bar I had laying around


Fitment was a little off. I jacked up the the car from the cross member and the strut towers flexed a little but but it was still just a *tiny* bit off. I broke out the Dremel and reamed out the holes on the passenger side just a little bit and on it went.

Still most likely more for show but with how much the strut towers flex I wonder if it will help on track. It was cheap at least.

I had never looked to see how little clearance the oil pan has from the ground. HOLY crap it's right there!



I couldn't find a measuring tape in my garage to measure but that's probably only 3 inches off the ground and my car is only on the Spec E30 suspension setup (H&R Races + Bilstein sports)

I dig into the shelf where I have parts waiting to go on the car and dug out the skid plate I bought. I was going to install it but as I was opening up the box a friend stopped by and we had a few beers and I got kinda lazy after that. Oh well later this week it will be going on the car.


I also took photos of my poor rust valance and messed up bumper. I keep looking for an Alpine White II front bumper and valance but I have yet to find one at the yard or locally in good shape. I think over the winter I'll just pull mine, strip it down, POR15 it if I need to, and paint it with the Duplicolor stuff some people have said is pretty close to AWII. It won't be perfect but it's a track car and it will look a hell of a lot better than the rusty crap I have going on now.





Still need to find an un-bent/cracked front bumper as well, it was like this when I bought it.

[kts]

Riced out the front calipers

Before:


After:


While that was drying I tackled the side "trim" on the car.

This stuff worked pretty well for helping me remove this crap.


Put some on the "trim" on my car and let it soak for a few. Used a screw driver to push out the "trim" from behind (used the holes meant for the clips to hold the stock trim in) and it came off.



The 'trim'


Removal left some sticky contact cement behind. Soaked with more 3M remover and then using my finger rolled it all off of the paint.

When I was done I was left with this:


I need to use some more of the remover or some bug and tar stuff to get at the crud that is left from the edges of where this old "trim" was.

Also you can see the body of the car likes to bend quite a bit when the front is jacked up, as you can see the door sticking out quite a bit at the bottom, it doesn't do that when it's down on all 4 wheels. Both doors are also hard to open when the front is jacked up.

Next going to see if I can clean up the proper molding I have for the car with some acetone. I've heard people have used that to prep the molding for trim paint but somehow the acetone works wonders on the molding and makes it look like new. So we'll see how that goes. Hopefully will get to that tonight and then I can install it and have a much better looking car.

[kts]

I didn't like my rusty calipers so I decided to paint them. I'm trying not to be a ricer but I thought they deserved to look a bit better then they currently did. I went for silver since I thought a bit of contrast with the black wheels would look good. (Ok, maybe there is a little bit of a ricer in me...) The silver came out a lot more silvery when what I remembered they looked like on a friend's car when we used the same kit a few years ago. :( I think I'll live with it for a while and if I really grow to hate them I'll repaint them black.

Before


After


How it looks with the wheel back on


I realized after I took this photo I forgot to reinstall the anti-rattle clip. D'oh! I put it back on and the paint didn't scratch from the rattle clip reinstall which surprised me since the paint was very watery and not thick.

Didn't bother to cover the rotor thinking I'll quickly wear off any over spray and the pads since they are nearing the end of their useful life as well.

While I waited for those to dry I finished up the blower motor.

New resistor. Got it from my friend at the dealer. The price he charged me was less than what Pelican, etc would have been once shipping was added in. Yay!


Installed the new shackle to hold it all in as well


End result? blower works. The 1 setting is still pathetic. I guess the 1 setting is just that weak on the car and I didn't need to get a new resistor after all. Oh well.

I also learned that to remove the shackle if you slip a screw driver at the bottom of the little oval cut out in the center of it and push out it will easily remove compared to the total mayhem I caused removing it originally.

[kts]

Did you ever find out what car your door molding came from?

Heh, funny you ask that. I e-mailed the previous owner and someone previous to him installed them. It looks like they are some kind of commercial wall molding or something of the sort. Looking at them close they are slightly textured. Whoever installed them shaved down the sides a bit where they meet the door edges. It looks to be some kind of hard rubber, poly, or nylon.

The PO and I are thinking whoever did this used contact cement or something to glue these to the car. :evil: Doing some research I've heard good stuff about 3M Adhesive Remover to remove the cement. I couldn't find it locally so I'm going to order it online and see if that helps remove them. They PO wanted to remove them but didn't want to bother with the work that it will probably be to remove these. Joy.

Update:

Photo of the "trim"



Flash in the camera removed a lot of the detail so I over sharpened the crap out of it so you can see the texture of the material. You can also see where someone crudely trimmed it down. I guess I should have looked at this closer when I bought it. Oh well. I ordered some 3M adhesive remover online last night which should be here in a few days and hopefully will remove the adhesive behind it that is holding it on.

Oh and ya, the car is really dirty. :(

[325ix]

Did you ever find out what car your door molding came from?

[kts]

Kickball was cancelled due to rain the other day so had a bit of time to work on the car. I was bummed since it was the last game of the season and our theme was Winter Wonderland. Nothing like a bunch of drunk 20 and 30 year olds dressed up as santas drinking and trying to play kickball.

I poured on out for the cancelled game and got to work.


^ one of the old kind with caffeine in it. I forgot how nasty these are but I have a few of them still in my fridge from a party and I need to get rid of them. As you can see it's a little bigger than my koozie.

Cleaned the passenger side up with some Resolv. I wish I had a true carpet cleaner to really clean them up.

Before:

After:



Went overboard with the plastic epoxy on my cigarette lighter. Did the same on the broken plastic clips on the cheap ass Depo lights on my E36. (not pictured.


Set up the shoulder harnesses for both passenger and driver


Mocked up and loosely connected the whole floor/seat mounts for the car. I need to get the damn stereo wiring run so I can finally mount the seats in and be finished with this. Pictured are the floor mounts, side mounts, side belt mounts, anti-sub mount, anti-sub belts, and the side belts. Tape is marking the approximate locations of where the side mounts need to be for the seats to slide in and fit in well.


Picked up some undercoating spray to cover up the rollbar backing plates and nuts to keep the elements out from getting into the car. Also had to touch up a spot or two of the OEM undercoating that came off when putting the bar in. Was tempted to redo all of the wheel wells but remembered this is a track car and not a show car.

Wheel well before:


After


Floor pan before


Floor pan after


Floor pan looks like crap since I only had ~8 inches of space and the instructions say to give 12-16 inches. Guess I should have jacked the car up more. I cleaned it up a bit after I looked at this photo and how nasty it was. Also cleaned up the threads on all the bolts to make removal easier should I ever need to remove the roll bar.

Also found a small hole in the trunk by where the jack goes. Instead of properly fixing it (and the rust spot you see in the photo) I just put a crap load of seam sealer in there.


My friend @ the local BMW dealer also called me to let me know some stuff came in for me which I picked up the other day. Yay!

(new shackle for the blower motor, blower motor resistor, and an antenna grommet.)

Hopefully this week I'll get to wiring the stereo up so I can finally have some tunes/radio in the car and then I can finish the seat installs.

[leegf]

hah, no worries -- i certainly know what that's like.

yes, i did manage to get it out on the track at the tail end of this season. 1989 325i, stock m20, e30 m3 5-lug swap, IE stage 3 and bilsteins, and a few other goodies. spent most of the year just enjoying tooling around town and sorting out maintenance issues, although i did take it on a 2000 mile road trip, issue-free, which was the highlight of the summer. hope to get a lot more track miles on it next year.

and yes, i was fortunate enough to find it very early on in my search! i'm grateful for how that turned out.

[kts]

ah, sorry re-reading it, you made perfect sense, i've been staring at Excel files all freaking day and my mind has turned into mush. i picked up my car mid-December, so looks like you found yours pretty quick. also looks like you've been having fun with it out on the track. specs?

[leegf]

I have to admit I'm beyond happy I was able pick up this car before anyone else did. It had exactly what I wanted. A few years back a guy local to me had the nearly the same thing, nearly a Spec E30 car he was selling for a heck of a deal but at the time I didn't have the money. He sold it in a day and I have been kicking myself ever since for letting it slip though my hands, especially when I ended up having the money a few weeks later. Took me 3 years but finally I found exactly what I was looking for. Yay!

Sorry to nab it out from under you though. Hopefully you found/will find one just like it.

no worries, what i meant to say was that i had entered the market about a month (i think) after this car sold. i ended up picking up the car in my sig (the one on the right) in early january of this year. i'm quite pleased with it so it worked out alright ;)