My 91 325i track car

[kts]

Work in the past week:

Cleaned the driver's side carpet and went at installing the VAC floor/side mounts and the Sparco seat.

Carpet is far from perfect but SO much better than the coffee stained crime scene it was originally. You can also see the crappy multicolored socket set I used for pulling stuff at the junkyard. It was in the trunk so I grabbed it for these installs. $15 from Costco a few months back and they have held up well to a lot of abuse.



Crappy photo since I couldn't find my compact camera w macro mode. Both bolts are from VAC. The one on the right is for their anti-sub harnesses and it is the wrong thread pitch. Pretty lame that they include bolts with the wrong thread pitch. I picked up properly threaded class 10.9 bolts from Fastenal along with bolts for mounting the harnesses on the sides.

Sparco seat test fit 1 of 3214324233


Finally got the Sparco all lined up where I wanted it and bolted in but I had to remove it this morning to reinstall the stock seat for now. Taking it to a local meet to have a local R3V member help me look at the wiring in the car. I figured actually being able to get into the rear of the car may help a bit, thus the stock seat going back in. I marked off on the floor mounts where to bolt the side mounts so the Sparco and mounts should go back in easily.

Getting the car back on the road meant I needed to close up the blower motor area. I took some aggression out on the shackle that holds the blower motor down a while back and grabbed a shackle from the junkyard, one that I had also mangled getting the junkyard blower motor out.

Anger management issues?


The junkyard one works for now but it's loose. I'm still waiting for the new one I ordered to arrive from Germany. This will teach me to chill out and come back to something later. I was trying to reinstall the shackle wrong when I got pissed. Doing it right = easy. Oh well.

Having a working blower motor is so nice. Now I just need a new resistor set so the "1" setting actually works.


I also painted the faded wiper cowls. I did a crappy job of painting them but from a foot or more away they don't look too bad.

Before:


After:


Reinstalled the wipers as-is without having swapped the linkage. Both wipers moved when I was tightening down the passenger side one which is the weak one. It never did that before. Hopefully what is left of the splines will keep the passenger side going a bit longer. I've heard of people putting copper or other metal in there to "shim" it. I plan to do this but I just don't have anything on hand for now.

Helping a friend move tomorrow and then either hopefully installing a stereo so I can have some tunes. Once the stereo is in I can put the rear interior back in the car and then the Sparcos.

[kts]

looks great! i would have loved to buy this car, but you beat me to the punch by about a month ;)

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.

[leegf]

looks great! i would have loved to buy this car, but you beat me to the punch by about a month ;)

[kts]

gotcha, damn no bitches in the rear lol. but yeah, id like to see it with the seat! i think thatd look clean

Photo of a Kirk bar with the rear seat installed in one of the Vorshlag $201X Challenge team member's cars:


(near the bottom of this thread: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/show...light=vorshlag)

Looks pretty good and looks like it will fit in without even having to mangle the rear seat.

Looking at the Vorshlag $201X car which also has a Kirk bar installed it looks like they hammered the wheel arch flat where the backstays mount vs hammering/shaping the backstay spreader plate + backing plate. Wow that would have been a much smarter thing to do. Doh!

Angles are a little hard to see but you can see hammering done of the wheel arches in these. Big files so I'm just linking to them instead:

http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects/E30-V8/DSC0064/886177642_2xeRB-O.jpg

http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects/E30-V8/DSC0339/895650205_ULRQ8-O.jpg

http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Projects/E30-V8/DSC0062/886177138_3zzJu-O.jpg

Oh well.

[dnick]

gotcha, damn no bitches in the rear lol. but yeah, id like to see it with the seat! i think thatd look clean

[kts]

Correct, with a roll bar installed the rear sears are not usable for hauling people around. You can still use them to transport stuff in the back seat but getting stuff in/out of there is a lot more limited.

Most people would leave the rear seats out to save some weight but I like the look of the rear interior still in the car even if is not usable anymore so I'm planning to stuff it all back in there. I've seen it done so I know it is doable.

[dnick]

oh yeah thats not far at all! and dang you did get a good deal. I def think I will go with the kirk bar soon. Stupid question... i assume the rear seats arent usable what so ever?

[kts]

I'm over by Arundel Mills so not too far way from you.

I picked the roll bar up from a R3V member in NJ who was selling it. We ended up meeting just north of Philly so it was a nice little day trip. $325 picked up.

It's a Kirk bar which are usually like $600 or so after options and freight so I felt it was a pretty good deal.

The Kirk bar fitment is excellent, it went right in and was a very easy install other than having to hammer the ever living crap out of the back stay spreader plates and the backing plates to contour to the wheel arches. (Still the hammering was pretty easy.) If you are looking for a roll bar I highly recommend it.

[dnick]

lookin good man!!! where are ya in md? im in howard county.
the roll bar.. whered ya get it and how much? (if you dont mind me asking)

But, love your thread and keep up the work!

[kts]

Rushed home Friday afternoon to go pick up a new head unit for the car. I went with a JVC KD-R520 since it was cheap, had front aux + USB inputs and it comes with the JVC removal tools which I need to remove the JVC unit that came with my E36 that I don't like and want to replace. (Probably just with another KD-R520.)

It's not fancy but it was cheap and it will do what I want. Hopefully I'll get to installing it and the rest of the stereo soon.



Then I headed home and my friend Mark came over to drink some beers and maybe work on my car. Grabbed pizza from a place across the street from me, drank a lot of beer and then had some ADD on the car working on misc things. I got the blower motor back in the car and running, yay! I think my blower resistor is going since on the 1 setting you feel nothing come out of the vents and the motor barely turns. 2, 3, and 4 it's beastly. It might have been like this before I removed it and cleaned it when the old motor was out. Will probably order a new one.

Then we looked at my roll cage and decided to put it in the car to check for fitment. Well that was easy. So we got to pulling the rear seat out and the side panels and then the seat belts and then well we have it in place, let's drill some holes and install it!

What my interior looked like at 6pm on Friday:


What it looked like later that night


My friend Mark pretending the rollbar is a set of monkey bars


I didn't realize how late it go by the time we finished everything, it was 2am. (We spent a lot of time drinking beer and pointing at things.) I'm sure my neighbors had to have loved me pounding the shit out of the backing plates to shape them to the wheel arches at 1am. Whoops!

I also discovered 3 different vintages of stereo wiring running the length of my car when the rear interior was removed. It's going to be fun sorting this stereo out.

I wanted to finish up by installing the seats the next morning but ended up sleeping until almost noon and then had to throw the winter wheels on my Subaru and head out to a halloween party. Something to get to this week so I can drive the car to the College Park meet this Friday.

[kts]

- I hate torx bolts.

The 4 T55 torx bolts holding the bumper to the bumper shocks I tried on cars at the junkyard all came off with ease. Not so much for my car. :( Even with some heat they didn't want to come out. I ended up with this:



Lisle will warranty it but I need to ship it back to them. $2-3 to mail it back and waiting for $5 for a new one from Amazon w free shipping? Guess I'll just order a new one.

Looks like I'm going to have to see if I can remove the bumper from the bumper "carrier" if I remove the black trim. The one at the yard still had the bumper shocks + carrier installed but the bumper was removed. Or I think I can undo the bumper shocks from the car and remove everything. Will need to drop the exhaust for that though.

- Old spare was rotting out as you can kinda see with this crappy photo:



Also don't know how I missed it but it's also down to the cords on the inside. Got camber?



New spare has a bend in the wheel but it holds air and the tire is good enough for emergency use



On to more important stuff:

- Picked these up last night. They feel like I am holding air. Pretty much a waste of $ since they aren't going to do much more than the stock steel units but they look pretty. (Euro aluminum engine mount brackets if you are wondering what they are.)



- Roll bar is begging to go in



- Harnesses arrived from OG Racing. 6 point G-Forces. Yay!



- The correct passenger seat floor mount finally arrived from VAC. Double yay!

If I'm not too hung over on Sunday from Halloween plans hopefully I can get to installing some of this stuff.

[kts]

Picked up a Kirk roll bar yesterday. Woo hoo! Time to order some harnesses.

Today it has all gone downhill:

- Tried to put the "new" blower motor in and the stupid tension clip that holds the motor in place did not want to stay in place while I put the motor back in and in a fit of rage I bent and broke the crap out of it. Whoops. It did make me feel a little better at least. Time to hit the yard or worst case a new one from the dealer is $6.

- Tried to use the T-55 torx socket I have to remove the bolts holding the rear bumper in so I can fix a leak by the sunroof drain on the passenger side. Bolts are rusted and stuck. One of them started to strip even. I hate torx bolts. Need to figure out how to get these stupid things out. Used a jack handle (~4 feet long) as a cheater bar and it wouldn't move. Maybe I can try to heat it up without melting the bumper. I also need to see if I can find new rear bumper shocks for cheap, they look rusted as hell on my car.

- Found a hole in the trunk where the jack goes. Time for some seal sealer.

- Still investigating but it looks like the side moldings on my car are some weird rubber thing that may be glued onto the car and hard to remove. I will not be happy if this is the case.

- Cleaned up the new spare my friend dropped off. That went well unlike everything else with the car today.

Basically this is me today:

[kts]

Hey, that's my old car!

Thanks for the pics. I love those wheels! I'm having a hard time resisting the urge to pick up a set of the Type As. They don't make any sense on a track car but maybe for driving around town?

- In other news, lucked out at the junkyard yet again. Easy to get the antenna out of the 92 325ic at the yard and I also picked up a defroster button out of the 528e that was there since mine gets stuck and doesn't seem to work anymore. $13 for the antenna. I just need to pick up a new grommet since the one on the car was seriously messed up.

- I also was in a BMW tool heaven since while I was there a 7 series, 5 series, and E36 were all dropped off in the yard and they were all filled with mostly pristine tool kits. I quickly added them all to my collect. :) I know, I'm an addict. I went to pull the DME out of the E36 but when I pulled back the cover THOUSANDS of little tiny ants started pouring out from behind the cover. It was something out of a horror film. I called it a day.

- Also picked up a toolkit strap from a 7 series (same length as the one in the E30 but in black) to see if it would make my E34 toolkit droop less. Worked great!

Before, super droopy:


Now: where it should be.


Ok, not more talking/posts about tools/toolkits/etc from me from now on. I have a problem I know...


- I replaced the coolant temp sender the other day and now my temp gauge on the dash sits just a bit over the 1/4 way mark and doesn't move. Before it would settle around the 1/2 way mark and it would often dance all over the place. The old one looked well used and discolored. I'm guessing it was not replaced by the previous owner. I have a new sensor for the DME as well but I need to move the fuel rail to get it out. I will probably do that soon so the DME isn't getting wrong water temp info.

- T-55 socket showed up this morning so I can remove the rear bumper finally and replace the gasket that goes around the sunroof drain on the driver's side, the gasket is bad and is letting water in to where the jack sits.

- Waiting for VAC to send me the correct passenger side floor mounts so I can get to mounting my seats. Probably should hold off on this for a few days as...

- I'm picking up a roll bar this weekend for the car. Yay! 6 point harnesses to follow.

[ck_taft325is]

Hey, that's my old car!

Here's a few more for inspiration:












Ask Rennsport about my camber wear though ;)

[kts]

Got a bit more work done after the Ravens won last night. And a friend of mine who has an E30 stopped on by to drop off a spare bottle cap + tire for me since he had an extra and my current spare is rotted out. I looked at his trunk and noticed he had a light in there. I don't have a light. Then I saw I had it all in there but no light. I'm missing the bulb. (And I forgot to look for one when I was at the junkyard this morning, doh!)


My friend mentioned I should try cleaning out the splines for my wiper blades with a pick so I gave it a shot.

In process


Driver's side looks and feels pretty good


Passenger's side, not so much. (And this is where the wiper keeps dying on me.)


Also yanked the cowls by the wipers so I can throw a new coat of paint on them. They need it.



At the junkyard I found a 92 vert with a good condition blower motor for me and a 528e with premium rear speakers for me. $28 for it all.


I would have liked beige speaker covers but this works well enough.