The Ugly E30

[327IBUILD]

327i

That's a great way to do this project, nice and clean. Great pics so far, i have been doing the same engine swap but I don't have my own garage. Good luck

[tspangle88]

Thanks. I made some more progress on the interior, need to get off my lazy ass and post the pics.

[e30m20TurbO7]

LAZY ASS POST SOME PICS
im like this build thread i see a future in that
one fast future i just recently got my stroker 2.7built and i love it
get on it i worked for almost a year to have my car running that i never saw running
i love your progress wish i had a parts car like you did

[tspangle88]

OK, OK! :D

While I had the interior out, I decided to do a little rustproofing. The car is very clean inside and out, but I had the stuff from doing my truck recently, and with everything out, I decided I might as well. I used Fluid Film. More info on it here. I got it from Amazon.

I sprayed it down inside the rear fenders around the wheel wells, as you can see:


The kit comes with a long, flexible hose, which I used to get down inside the rockers:


I also did the insides of the doors. Like I said, it can't hurt. When I did my truck I sprayed the whole underside with the stuff. I don't think I'm going to do that with this car, because I don't feel like dealing with that mess whenever I work on it.

Time to start cleaning up the interior bits from the parts car so I can install them. Here's the rear seat. Hard to tell in the pic, but it's pretty dirty:


You can see a couple bottles of Lexol leather cleaner and treatment in the corner of that shot. That's what I used, it seems to do a pretty good job for stuff I can get at an auto parts store, though I know there are better leather-care products out there.

Starting to put the rest of the interior back in. Black rear side panels and the pad under the rear sit are in:


Then the little bit of carpet in front of it and the rear seat itself:


Finally, the carpet:


Next thing will be the dash. And I really need to decide what I'm doing about seats. I have one good black sport seat. It's a passenger's side, but I hear that's easy enough to switch. So I either need another black sport seat, or decide if I want to do something like a Corbeau for the driver's side. Debating...

[evandael]

go factory on the seats. it just never looks right otherwise!


cool info about the rustproofer/sealer.. i'll look into that when i start my own rust repair/prevention.

[Nick_S]

Coming along nicely!! Looks great so far. Hope you can figure out your spark issue.

[tspangle88]

go factory on the seats. it just never looks right otherwise!

I just might, actually. I have a parallel build thread on the GRM forums, and a friend of mine posted this link there: http://www.m42club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9152

Lots of good info. What I really have is one good black sport seat, one tan vinyl sport seat with lots of rips, and 2-3 others in various states of wear and disassembly. I'm thinking that with the info in that thread, I can cobble together one more decent seat to go with the one I have.

[tspangle88]

Minor, fiddly interior work continues. Nothing earth-shattering here, but I think these little details are what makes the difference between a good build and a crappy one.

My seatbelt mounting rods were looking a bit rusty and generally scuffed-up and crappy:


So I scuffed them up with a Scotchbrite pad and hit them with some black Rustoleum:


The driver's side door panel from the parts car was looking a little tatty in the corner, the fiberboard backing was broken and a lot of the stitching holding the facing on had pulled out:


First thing I did was glue the fiberboard back together with some wood glue:


To re-attach the facing, I decided to use Gorilla Glue:


I've used to to fix carpet and other fabric-related things in the past with good luck. So I applied a bead like so:


Clamped it with a piece of scrap wood and some clamps:


I need to do the lower edge, too, but I only have so many clamps. Yes, I am a bit worried that I've just glued the wood to my panel, but hopefully it'll come off without leaving too much of itself behind.

[tspangle88]

Update: It runs! After replacing the crank position and speed sensors, it fired right up. Startled me, in fact! After running rough and stalling a few times, I was able to get it warmed up enough that it would idle fine. God knows how long it's been since it last ran, possibly years. It feels rough, like it has a miss, and there's one hell of an exhaust leak somewhere, but it runs!

Now to finish the interior so I can take it for a test drive.

[tspangle88]

Time for a long-overdue update. I have gotten a a few things done on the car, but I've also been distracted with fall yardwork, a few mods on my truck, and family stuff.

My next major job was the dash swap. As you may recall, my parts car had a nice, crack-free dash. My dash wasn't too bad, but I figured I might as well swap it out while I had the rest of the interior out. The biggest PITA of this job is the wiring. I tried to label everything carefully so that it would all go back together correctly:


New dash part of the way in. It took a fair bit of wiggling and swearing:


Finally in place. It helps to have the windshield out for this job:


Swapping out the VIN plates:


I still have a few things to clean up, need to tiewrap off some of the wiring and install the glove box, but I had other priorities.....

[tspangle88]

It finally moved under it's own power! After getting the dash in and throwing in a seat, I decided to take it for a spin. After letting it warm up for a couple of minutes, I slowly inched it out of my barn and toward my gate. My back yard is pretty good sized, so I had a bit of a scare when I got to the gate and the brake pedal went right to the floor. It did stop, however slowly. At that point I decided I didn't need to go out on the road, so I turned around and drove it a couple hundred feet back into the barn. Woohoo!

Things I discovered on my "test drive"
- My alternator is shot, the bearings are screaming like a banshee when there's any load on it.
- I have one hell of an exhaust leak. I knew this, it's on the midpipe.
- The clutch seems OK, but the shifter feels like it's stuck in cold molasses
- It's still not running well, I have to give it lots of gas and slip the clutch like crazy to get it moving, otherwise it'll die right out. Still feels like it's missing, too
- I had a ton of noise from the top end under load, I'm thinking probably the valves need adjusting.
- I looked in the master cylinder reservoir and it was bone dry. I'm sure there's some fluid somewhere in the system since it did stop, but it's very low.

Safe to say I have a lot of work to do.

[tspangle88]

Last night I decided to do a bit of maintenance work on the car. As I mentioned in my previous post, when I drove the car the alternator bearings were screaming so loud I couldn't hear myself think. I decided to check and see if the alternator is even working. Looks like it is:


Rooting around in my parts boxes, I found this that I took off the parts car:


No idea if it works, but I'll give it a try. If not, I've seen replacement alternator bearings for sale, I might give those a shot on my original, since it is still producing a charge.

On to the next thing, oil change! As far as I know, this car hasn't run in years, but it did still have oil in it. I ran it for about 10 minutes, then drained the old nasty stuff out. This is what it looked like:


Put on a cheap filter and refilled:


Say, isn't that ATF? Yes it is! This is a trick I picked up from my Miata days. Use one quart of oil and fill the rest of the crankcase with ATF. Run it for about 10 minutes, DON'T DRIVE IT! Then drain it and fill with fresh oil and a new filter. It's supposed to clean out all the gunk. Might be a bit risky, but I figure I'm playing with house money with this motor.

While I was running it, I hit it with some Seafoam:


For those who aren't familiar, it's supposed to clean out your intake tract and top end. I put some in a jar and used one of the vacuum hoses on the intake to suck it up. Do it till it almost stalls, then stop, rev it a few times, then repeat until the Seafoam is gone. It makes for a pretty impressive smoke show:


The smoke was a lot worse than that behind the car.

After that, it was time to drain my ATF. This is what it looked like after running in the car for 10-15 minutes or so:


So, it looks like a fair amount of gunk was removed. What I've probably accomplished is to turn my leaking rear main seal into a gusher, but I felt like this 220k mile engine that hadn't run in a long time needed a little cleanout, so what the heck?

I wonder what's the worse oil filter, the generic one I used for the ATF treatment or the Orange Can of Death (hat tip to BITOG) that was on the car when I got it?


Then I refilled it with Quaker State 10w30 and a Mobil 1 filter. Results? Well, it seems to be running much better and smoother now. The miss is gone, and I'm not hearing any noise from the valvetrain. Now I need to swap out the alternator and bleed the brakes, then I can take it for a proper test drive before the snow flies!

[downforce22]

cool build! amazing to see something sitting for years brought back to life

[BamaE30]

Enjoying your progress also.

[MattAvino]

Nice work so far.