89 325i Cirrusblau Metallic m30 Project - Round 2

[marshallnoise]

A local guy Josh was selling an 89 325i Cirrusblau Metallic rolling shell for a good price and I stopped over to this place to take a look at it. He had purchased it for a song and wanted the tow package off of it mainly. But he also wanted the sunroof (red), steering wheel and a couple of other nominal items. I had originally intended on picking it up for parts on my now defunct project Alta Vista (85 318i m30 project).

When I got there I was reasonably impressed with the completeness. But after looking at the front end which was missing the fenders, hood, radiator, lights, the whole nine...I decided to go with my original plan mentioned above. Mainly because I could tell the front left (right as looking at it) took a pretty serious hit to the super structure of the left fender.






No matter, we agreed on a price and a week later I hauled it away. I would decided my endgame through a pro/con list and conversations with a couple confidants.

After talking with Raul (e30m3s54turbo), he gave me the final push to change my mind and restore this 89 325i. It is nowhere near as complete as my 85, but in the end, lates are valued more than earlies. Plus, I dig the color. I think after a respray it will be glorious.

Here goes round 2 of e30 madness.

[trippmann]

i see no proof of m30-ness

[marshallnoise]

Thanks to JGood and his courage to restore his first car/e30, I have ventured down his road of replacing the strut support/inner fender assembly along with the core support. Turns out that while he has a lot more fab work and rust remediation, I have more panels I need to replace.

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=225093

My core support was bent out of shape, so was the inner fender support and lower left tray.






And here is what it is supposed to look like:




I hope to snag the whole left inner fender assembly and lower left tray off the 91 318is Slicktop that is in a local junk yard (the three pics above). I have already robbed a lot of parts off it for Alta Vista and it is pretty much ready to carve out the structure I need to fix this one up.

I went to work on the car today to see how much of a bitch it is to remove spot welds. Let me tell you, it is a lot of work. I tried using a punch and then the Harbor Freight spot weld remover, but wound up deforming the sheet metal too much for my tastes. I settled on drilling a small pilot hole (not even all the way through) so the spot weld remover could center itself as the cutting began.

Probably the worst part of the process is removing the seam sealer and then the regular welds in various spots. For that I had to use a pneumatic cutting wheel and a little persuasion from a chisel. But after 5 hours or so, I am finally free of the inner fender support. Not too much collateral damage.






In the last pic, you can see the lower tray which resembles a wing off the left frame/bumper mount. Whatever this car hit, it shoved that piece up. New, the part is available for $22 bucks, but I am going to try to get the piece off the 91 Slicktop in the yard I mentioned above. I still have to remove the core support and lower tray. I have a new core support coming from carparts.com via eBay for $110 shipped. I will post pics when it shows up. See if its a quality part or not.

In investigating what caused this damage, I crawled under the car and found a crushed fuel line and what appears to be a huge spot where a boulder once was...



Nothing a little pounding can't fix.

[marshallnoise]

i see no proof of m30-ness

Keep your pants on!

This is cribbed from the Alta Vista thread:

I found a 1990 735iL on craigslist that had been floating around for a few months not too far from where I live. Started at $800 and fell to $400 within 2 months time. 177K, auto, bad reverse gear (d clutch pack actually) and salvage title (hit in the rear). I offered $150 and they countered with $200. I accepted and drove it home to discover a nasty hole in the radiator too. No matter.

My goals for the 735iL was simply to pull the m30b35 with harness and rob any of the parts I might want and part the rest as quickly as I can. 4 cars was too much to have on my driveway. Fortunately, the wife was cool with it. My neighbors were cool with it. The City of Oceanside? Not so much. Small annoyance with an overzealous code enforcement officer was remedied and I had my motor and the car parted as much I as I could. I netted $800 bucks or so and had my m30, exhaust through cat and harness for free. Score.

Here is the motor pull. The El Camino Rental engine hoist wouldn't go high enough so my plans for removing the engine and tranny attached were foiled. Since the transmission was junk anyway, I just disconnected it in the bay and let it drop. Then dead lifted it out of the bay a weekend later. :D




The wife documenting the end of my solo engine pull/madness she has to put up with. Her madness is in the garage and why I have to do this work outside.


And the m30 on the stand. Big sucker.



Plans for the m30 are as follows:

• I had bad compression numbers when I was testing it in car. It ran well enough, but I think it has been overheated a time or two from the morons I bought the car from. Since the compression tests showed adjacent cylinders with low compression, I am hoping it is just a head gasket. I can tell it is a Victor Reins gasket anyway.
• Depending on how the head gasket looks after I pull the head, I may do a freshen up on the engine. I want the motor to be as stock as possible and as reliable as possible. Smogging and going to the REF is no joke here in Cali.
• Tear it apart, clean things up and powder coat all the "look good" stuff. Why not?
• I might chip it since all the cool kids are doing it.

Transmission:
For the transmission, I am going to try to use the Getrag 240 I have since the ol' m10 has the same bolt pattern as the m30. I know the flywheel will bolt up and the m30 starter works just fine. I will need an upgraded clutch and haven't settled on a budget minded solution for that yet. I have thought about trying to find a 228mm 2002 m10 flywheel and running an m20 clutch kit on it, but finding the flywheel is proving to be a bitch. That would be the best solution though if I am going to stick with the 240.

Rear End:
For the differential, I know the 4.10 open small case I have is...silly. But since I am putting off the m30 swap for a while, I will just keep my eyes peeled for a suitable alternative. 2.93 is too long, 4.10 is too short so I think a 3.46 is the right number. Needle, haystack. Shit.

[trippmann]

the proof shows! ive got a line on a version two m30b35 "1988 535i" engine, new clutch/lightened fly, and what not, with a getrag 260/5. motors been fully resealed, and all that fun stuff.

ill be posting up a build soon enough. im hoping to to position two with my m30 so i can keep the A/C. ill be following this thread!

edit: 3.25 is the perfect rear from what ive heard. ive got a stock 2.93 lsd that im going to stick with till i can find the other rear.

[marshallnoise]

the proof shows! ive got a line on a version two m30b35 "1988 535i" engine, new clutch/lightened fly, and what not, with a getrag 260/5. motors been fully resealed, and all that fun stuff.

ill be posting up a build soon enough. im hoping to to position two with my m30 so i can keep the A/C. ill be following this thread!

edit: 3.25 is the perfect rear from what ive heard. ive got a stock 2.93 lsd that im going to stick with till i can find the other rear.

That's a much better start than me! I plan on position 3 and I am looking into a custom radiator setup like in the Alpina B6.

Do start that thread!

[TheTacoMan]

Nice color. :p

[marshallnoise]

Nice color. :p

You would...

Such a nice car man.

[e30m3s54turbo]

I see you decided to restore it. I will be looking forward for up dates Paul.:up:

[marshallnoise]

I see you decided to restore it. I will be looking forward for up dates Paul.:up:

Ha! You better believe I am going to be tapping your knowledge down the line. You are partially responsible.

[marshallnoise]

So no major updates other than parts gathering.

Here is the replacement core support from usautoparts.net via eBay. It looks like a Chinese part. An actual BMW part would have smoother contours on the top "wings" so I have included pictures of each side. This part cost me $110 shipped. I presume it will bolt in just fine. Looks aren't overly important when it comes to items like this, at least for me.




I also picked up a brand new BMW passenger coupe door off craigslist. The one on the car has damage up front toward the fender that I just don't want to deal with. This was only $60. I felt good about the deal.




Picked up a set of manual pedals from the same 91 318is Slicktop that was in the yard. I have the springs, bolts and nuts for the booster and column mount.


I tried to cut out the drivers side wheelhouse out of the 91 318is but it was so hot last weekend, my cordless sawzall couldn't get the work done. I was very close. Would have cost me about $40 bucks from the yard. Then I would have had to remove the remnant to get to the part I need. I don't mind the work, but cutting out the driver's side of the whole engine bay back to the front of the door is a tough task. Now the car is gone for good too, says he folks at the yard.

I ran into some money (lucky me) and project Alta Vista is about to be sold (I hope) so I may just try to buy a brand new part if there are any left. Anywhere between $350 to $450 based on what I saw. Part number 41141979497 which is image 2 and part number 41111966553 image 6.


I found number 6 on eBay for $30 shipped. I countered with $27 and was accepted. Small victories.

That said, those are all the new parts I will need and need to get them painted. But the whole car needs paint. Does anyone have any idea what I should do? Paint is about a year away. If I bought the OEM color, how long would it keep if they only used enough to shoot these parts?

In other news, I am headed up to Bimmerfest thanks to Vivek and his generosity. pandaboo911 was selling a VERY nice condition m10 Getrag 240 but all the way up in Sunnyvale. I did the math and it would cost me way more than the transmission was worth. I threw a thread up in the Cali forum seeing if someone would be making the trip and Vivek stepped in. So he is going to carry the transmission down for me and I am going to pick it up next weekend.

While up there JoshWho_e21 had some late model bumpers for sale for a great price. I was reluctant to make the trip just to get them by themselves. He is located farther north than Pasadena where Bimmerfest is this year. But now that I am going up there for the transmission, it makes sense to go the couple miles farther north to snag the bumpers.

I'll post pics for S&Gs when I get back.

[marshallnoise]

Went to ECS Tuning and ordered the wheelhouse. $378 or so shipped, from Germany. Going to take 3-5 weeks. No big deal.

[marshallnoise]

Wheelhouse came, damaged. ECS is going to send out another one. Another 3-5 weeks.

I did sell project Alta Vista though. Back down to one e30 that is in shambles. Updates coming later.

[marshallnoise]

Turns out the m30 I got out of the 735iL not only has crummy compression numbers, it appears to be from the exhaust valves from cylinders 2 through 5. It also could be that there is too much carbon build up on the exhaust valves, but I won't know until the head is pulled.

I am definitely going to be sticking with an m30, but not sure about this one. I will pull the head and test the ring sealing first to see if the bottom end is working well enough.

[marshallnoise]

I have my second front left wheelhouse. This time it is undamaged and in good shape (not that the first one is in THAT bad of shape). So I will be selling one of them.

I will also be heading to the junk yard sometime and cutting out another core support to use instead of the aftermarket one I bought from usautoparts.com. While I am sure it could work, I just want OEM in the car.

I did some more measuring to see if my frame is straight and I am convinced it is just fine. The only deflection occurred between the wheelhouse, core support and the left wing thing (number 6 in the diagram above).

I am going to have to finish to removing the core support and the left wing thing in preparation for welding it all back together. I will replace the left wing thing first, then the wheelhouse taking measurements along the way. I have some diagrams that show the distance between the fender mounting points that should help me keep things square. I may source a strut tower brace to verify I did things correctly. Of course this is all theory at the current moment.

As far as cooling goes, I have pretty much decided on running a 15.5" x 22" x 3" Griffin Circle Track radiator in the core support like what the Alpina B6 had. The core support opening is 23" wide and has a variable height of 14" to 15.5" in various spots. I know I will have to do some cutting on the core support to get it to fit, but that is no problem.

This is a Chevy S10 core support with a different Griffin radiator but the idea should be similar.


And here is proof via Good & Tight that you can chop up a core support and still have the car look good when done.