A friend of mine needed some work done on his e36 recently but was unfortunately a little hard up for cash and asked me if I would take an old car instead for my labor. Turns out the car was a pretty beat up rusty 79 320i (10/78 build date) that had definitely seen better days. But, it was (or used to be) a cool color in Reseda Green, and it was manual so I said what the heck, deal. It only has 107,00 miles on it, and has a brand new battery! So I drag the car a couple blocks home to my house and assess what the heck I have just done.
Issues:
Doesn't run
Paint is beyond gone
It has sat in a field unregistered and not driven for 7+ years
Rust hole in the cowl
Rust holes in the trunk floor
M10
It's an e21
Its ugly
But...........
I like it, and ill be keeping it and making it a daily so I don't get any more door dings on my e30. I like that its a rusted out, smells like a junkyard car, and could care less about the bad paint. The body is straight enough and it has a pretty cool patina going on and im going to play off of that for the build.
So plans for it include:
Get it running and driving
Clean it
Smog (little worried about this one) and register
Dump it on its nuts
Tuck bumpers
Ellipsoid retrofit
Stereo (although it has a cool original blaupunkt in there now that works!)
Make it uglier and more displeasing to the general public
Take it to school and drive the piss out of it
One day scrap it
So lets get started with pics. Sorry they suck.
Parked at my buddies house
Here it is after the night I towed it home. Covered in 7 years of dirt and spiders. With original wheels and original 70s styling.
Here is a shot of the hood after I vigorously scrubbed the thick layer of grime of the paint. Clean is on the left and dirty is center and right
Then with a little help from the neighbor and my girlfriends brother we pushed the car up the driveway and into the garage where we began to diagnose the no start
Here is a crappy interior shot. The car is surprisingly complete and clean. Carpets are mint and the seats are decent. The headliner is pretty much perfect as well.
Gauge cluster with working odometer at 107k
Center console area with everything there pretty much
So, after looking over the car and poking holes in it with a screwdriver I figured I should try to figure out the no start issue. Since it had been sitting I was a little worried I might have a big mess on my hands. Fortunately, after my brother shocked me not once, but twice trying the get the "Fasten Seat belt" light to light up while cranking over the car when I was disconnecting plugs, we determined we had good spark.
Then we moved onto fuel and since it seemed we weren't getting any it appeared to be our issue. We pull up the back seat to find this:
Pretty gross, but im guessing that ruptured fuel line may have been the reason the car was originally parked. And im + $1.18 on the whole car
We then checked for power at the in tank transfer pump and the external pump and were getting 12v but the pumps weren't turning on. So we pull them to find a rusted out tank and seized pumps. Predictable. Gotta drop the tank now. So, today I had a chance to drain the tanks, which turned into a nightmare when I underestimated the amount of disgusting varnished fuel in the tank. My catch can overflowed about 2 gallons of gas onto my garage floor and halted all progress for the night in favor of a 3 hour clean up job.
this picture does not do justice to how much damn gas was on the floor. This was after about 30 minutes of cleanup.
Here's a pic of the gas that came out. YUM
Not super silty, but still nasty.
Then we pushed the car out and cleaned the whole garage floor, and while it was outside I pulled off the wheel to find this:
Pretty sweet little nest/ black widow eggsack depository on the brake calipers, also fairly nice rotors that appear to be almost new. Yay free car.
And that leads me to the end of the night, when we got the car to turn over and run on a few squirts of carb cleaner.
Yay us. Sounds pretty healthy. Ill continue to update as I get work done.
Issues:
Doesn't run
Paint is beyond gone
It has sat in a field unregistered and not driven for 7+ years
Rust hole in the cowl
Rust holes in the trunk floor
M10
It's an e21
Its ugly
But...........
I like it, and ill be keeping it and making it a daily so I don't get any more door dings on my e30. I like that its a rusted out, smells like a junkyard car, and could care less about the bad paint. The body is straight enough and it has a pretty cool patina going on and im going to play off of that for the build.
So plans for it include:
Get it running and driving
Clean it
Smog (little worried about this one) and register
Dump it on its nuts
Tuck bumpers
Ellipsoid retrofit
Stereo (although it has a cool original blaupunkt in there now that works!)
Make it uglier and more displeasing to the general public
Take it to school and drive the piss out of it
One day scrap it
So lets get started with pics. Sorry they suck.
Parked at my buddies house
Here it is after the night I towed it home. Covered in 7 years of dirt and spiders. With original wheels and original 70s styling.
Here is a shot of the hood after I vigorously scrubbed the thick layer of grime of the paint. Clean is on the left and dirty is center and right
Then with a little help from the neighbor and my girlfriends brother we pushed the car up the driveway and into the garage where we began to diagnose the no start
Here is a crappy interior shot. The car is surprisingly complete and clean. Carpets are mint and the seats are decent. The headliner is pretty much perfect as well.
Gauge cluster with working odometer at 107k
Center console area with everything there pretty much
So, after looking over the car and poking holes in it with a screwdriver I figured I should try to figure out the no start issue. Since it had been sitting I was a little worried I might have a big mess on my hands. Fortunately, after my brother shocked me not once, but twice trying the get the "Fasten Seat belt" light to light up while cranking over the car when I was disconnecting plugs, we determined we had good spark.
Then we moved onto fuel and since it seemed we weren't getting any it appeared to be our issue. We pull up the back seat to find this:
Pretty gross, but im guessing that ruptured fuel line may have been the reason the car was originally parked. And im + $1.18 on the whole car
We then checked for power at the in tank transfer pump and the external pump and were getting 12v but the pumps weren't turning on. So we pull them to find a rusted out tank and seized pumps. Predictable. Gotta drop the tank now. So, today I had a chance to drain the tanks, which turned into a nightmare when I underestimated the amount of disgusting varnished fuel in the tank. My catch can overflowed about 2 gallons of gas onto my garage floor and halted all progress for the night in favor of a 3 hour clean up job.
this picture does not do justice to how much damn gas was on the floor. This was after about 30 minutes of cleanup.
Here's a pic of the gas that came out. YUM
Not super silty, but still nasty.
Then we pushed the car out and cleaned the whole garage floor, and while it was outside I pulled off the wheel to find this:
Pretty sweet little nest/ black widow eggsack depository on the brake calipers, also fairly nice rotors that appear to be almost new. Yay free car.
And that leads me to the end of the night, when we got the car to turn over and run on a few squirts of carb cleaner.
Yay us. Sounds pretty healthy. Ill continue to update as I get work done.
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