Hey guys, after poking around these E30 sites for a while I finally managed to pick one up for myself. It's a 1990 318is with what was a suspected blown head gasket - it turns out it is much worse than that as you will see in the pictures later on. Other than that it is in reasonable condition, straight body, reasonable paint, I'm still yet to find any rust which is nice.
My plans are just to get it working and reliable in the near future and slowly build it up into a fast street/occasional track car. On to the pics!
The M badge has already been removed. Seriously every second BMW around here has one on it!
It came with a boot full of spare parts.
I started pulling out the interior to give it a good clean as it is a bit grubby, I hired a wet vac to help out.
I have no idea what these screws are for, they do absolutely nothing!
I got the interior all out, carpet was removed to clean it easier. No rust anywhere which is a nice change to all the floor pans that I see you Americans have!
I had a little helper to clean the seats.
Fixed some of the cracks with some plastic backings until I can get around to finding some new parts.
Here is my tiny work space, it's not much but with the car in the driveway there is enough space in the garage to work on stuff. I just can't work on the car when it rains!
I started pulling the engine apart to check how bad it is, it looks like I am going to have to place a big order from pelican parts to replace all the perished items.
Drained the coolant to find this milkshake shit. Not a promising start...
With the head off I was confronted with this! Some of the insides have surface rust on them. The car had been sitting for six months after blowing the head gasket and I guess the whole engine was full of coolant and water. 5 minutes of discussions later and it was decided to pull the engine and do a proper rebuild - not really what I was hoping to do but at least I will end up with a fresh engine!
Bought an engine stand so that I can work on it.
So that is where I am up to so far, this build will probably take a while as I slowly get the money together to fix the engine. But I will get there in the end!
My plans are just to get it working and reliable in the near future and slowly build it up into a fast street/occasional track car. On to the pics!
The M badge has already been removed. Seriously every second BMW around here has one on it!
It came with a boot full of spare parts.
I started pulling out the interior to give it a good clean as it is a bit grubby, I hired a wet vac to help out.
I have no idea what these screws are for, they do absolutely nothing!
I got the interior all out, carpet was removed to clean it easier. No rust anywhere which is a nice change to all the floor pans that I see you Americans have!
I had a little helper to clean the seats.
Fixed some of the cracks with some plastic backings until I can get around to finding some new parts.
Here is my tiny work space, it's not much but with the car in the driveway there is enough space in the garage to work on stuff. I just can't work on the car when it rains!
I started pulling the engine apart to check how bad it is, it looks like I am going to have to place a big order from pelican parts to replace all the perished items.
Drained the coolant to find this milkshake shit. Not a promising start...
With the head off I was confronted with this! Some of the insides have surface rust on them. The car had been sitting for six months after blowing the head gasket and I guess the whole engine was full of coolant and water. 5 minutes of discussions later and it was decided to pull the engine and do a proper rebuild - not really what I was hoping to do but at least I will end up with a fresh engine!
Bought an engine stand so that I can work on it.
So that is where I am up to so far, this build will probably take a while as I slowly get the money together to fix the engine. But I will get there in the end!
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