Ty's Bronze Beater

[ChefSkinny]

I picked up this Bronze beater of an e30 in January, and have been too busy to start a build thread, until now! She's an 86' 325eww in Bronzit Beige with rust accents and 330,000km. I'm trying hard to take as many pics as I can. The Previous owner did a terrible job of maintaining the car it seems, and did a lot of "mods" that I'm going to have to fix but I've been out of the car game for a while, looking forward to wrenching. There will be a bunch of posts right away as I catch up.

First Day I brought her home (The camera is being very kind to her)





After this is basically PB Blasted the crap out of everything under the car and packed her up for the winter. She sat like this for almost 2 months because of the weather. Canada winter owns me.



My Plans so far for the car are to refresh the suspension and brakes and get out to some auto-x and a couple track days with it this summer and learn to drive fast. If all goes well a 24v swap may be in order somewhere down the line. I may even try my hand at some body work / rust patching.

I have no idea whats going on with the "skirt package on it", the brake ducts and just kind of pushed in there, and the "fog lights" are actually mirrors lol

[ChefSkinny]

Day 1
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I was excited to get to work on.... (still trying to decide on a good name for her, open to suggestions here?) the car. We had a spurt of decent weather this week so I unpacked the car a bit and got down to it.

I found a ton of stuff that I overlooked while viewing the car before I bought it, but for what I paid I can't complain. First thing is the seats. The fronts are power seats from a Volvo, they are nice looking Black Leather and have good support but they are too damn wide for the car, they touch the doors. Also they aren't wired so you can't even adjust them. The rears are black leather from a e36 328i, again great seats in good shape but they are just sitting in the car lol, no place to mount them, also too tall. So i'll be looking for a new set of seats all around.

I then went to remove the front suspension and pop the hood, so I pulled the hood latch right? The whole cable came with it! Ended up popping the hood with a screw driver and got down to work.

After a couple hours ended up with this




Fruits of the day, rusty ass stock suspension

[ChefSkinny]

Day 2
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Not much time to work on the car today, removed the front sway bar and managed to remove all the control arm nuts, got the passenger side control arm off. Those inside ball joint nuts came out without too much trouble, I ended up using an F clamp to crack them loose. Passenger side control arm came out no problem, but the drivers side was seized pretty good so thats it for today.

[ChefSkinny]

Day 3
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Today felt like Christmas!!

First my order from Blunttech showed up! Lemforder parts, Front strut bearings,Tie rods, e46 cabrio rsm, reinforcement plates, control arms, stainless brake lines, m3 offset CAB, brake sensors


Have to give a shout out to Steve, great customer service and he had everything to me super fast, I've already ordered a few more bits I've forgotten from him.


Then this came! Bilstein Sports, H&R Races, Hawk HPS


Also got a set of sway bars in the mail from a local dude, Vert front Bar and IX rear.



Back to doing some actual work. The control vs. the Torch and Pry bar, 10 minutes later... VICTORY



Feeling ambitious after this came out so quickly I spent a few minutes starting to strip these wheels using Aircraft stripper, this stuff scares me but it works




Still have a lot of work to go on them, still undecided on colour but i'm thinking silver right now.
Gave everything another healthy coating of PB Blaster and called it a night

[ChefSkinny]

Day 4
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Today I really had to scratch my head, what was the PO thinking! Check out this stereo wiring in the trunk. This is some wizardry, yes thats a wooden board.



Then i'm checking out the interior a bit more, thinking to myself, no brake warning lights, sweet.


But wait! whats that?

[kalib0y]

subbed

[ChefSkinny]

Day 5
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Gave the sway bars a quick sanding today, they were pretty rusty.



They are far from perfect but much better, and it's silver y0. BLING.

[ChefSkinny]

Day 6
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Received this the other day, Brembo Blanks


Was looking forward to this day all week, can't believe the weather we are having, was 20 celcius today and sunny, amazing for march.

Got busy on the rear end

Starting out, looking pretty rough



Few minutes later had this, both shocks didn't rebound at all! I didn't expect them to be this bad.



Next were the springs, both springs were broken at the bottom, made getting them off the trailing arms fun.





Spring Pads cleaned up for reinstallation



IX rear sway installed, swapped to the IX rear sway brackets, not much different, but they are 30%ish thicker it seems. my photo skills are really good



and a few minutes later, voila, sexy time



STANCE TIME Y0!



Then I jumped on the rear bumper a couple of times and it dropped an inch it seemed. Front is still on stands, I know it still needs to settle but I thought it would be lower. May have to take the pads out later.




I wanted to do the stainless lines today as well but chickened out having never done a brake line before and they are really rusted / rough looking. So I cracked all the nuts / bolts on the rear brake calipers / rotors for next time.
Ordered a set of caliper rebuild kits from Blunttech so that will be coming up soon, haven't done them before either but looks like I can figure it out. Also going to wait a bit closer till the car is ready to hit the road to install the rotors / pads, no point of them sitting and rusting.

What sizes of line wrenches do I need for all the brake lines on the car?

[jasonbk]

good to see another Torontonian in the forum, keep up with the good job.

[Zasz]

You're quick as fuck, loving where this is going.

[SirWolfian]

This is pretty good, I'm liking the quick change, that suspension looked like shit

[ChefSkinny]

Made me pee a little bit that you subbed Kaliboy, I love your car. I've wanted an e36 m3 for a long time, and you have an ls1.

Thanks for the love everyone.

Just waiting on tie rod boots, clamps, lock plates that I missed to get those in.

What colour should I paint the wheels?

[ChefSkinny]

Just a quick update, haven't got to do too much. The sun dictates how late I can work.

Well I went with silver for the wheels, they look freaking great (from 5-6 feet)

I could have taken 10x the time to repaint them and make them perfect, but i'll be switching to euro weaves or something down the line so just needed to get by. Used duplicolor wheel paint, I think with a lot of prep this stuff would hold up really well. Seemed to dry very hard very quickly.

Quick Mask job


First coat of silver


John Cena, so dreamyyy


Fronts finished


I'm hoping my buddy will be stopping by tomorrow with his spring compressor so I can take my stock front suspension apart and get the strut housings cleaned up. I ordered a set of AKG m3 style sway bar mounts for the front, so i'll have to put it all together, mark the location and take it all back apart to weld them onto the strut housings.

[MattAvino]

^ shoulda taken em apart

[ChefSkinny]

YES I FOOLED SOMEONE! THEY ARE FAUX 3 piece! IN YOUR FACE!!! The fronts are just 1 pc's, and the rears are 3 pc lol. If they were both 3pc I would have taken them apart,