Panici's '87 325is E30 - Boosted In Bronze

[Panici]

Did a few small things today. Next weekend the car is probably going away for the winter.

• Installed new antenna grommet.
• Knocked out the rust (I had been avoiding), in the lower driver's side of the trunk, behind the rear wheel.
  • I'll get this fixed at the same time as the passenger rocker panel.
  • Leaving that side of the carpet out, to prevent trapping water there and doing more damage.
• Cleaned some of the grime behind my fuel door.
  • Put a "91 octane only" label on my filler cap. Just in case someone else is filling it up.
• Fixed the small coolant leak I had.
  • There was a small hole in the upper rad hose.
  • Cleaned up the one from my parts car and swapped it on!
• Friend made another USA parts run. He picked up:
  • Driver's side LCA
  • E90 drop hats
  • Thinner spring pads for front and rear
  • Lightweight battery
  • Rear swaybar endlinks and bushings

[url=https://flic.kr/p/21XUg53]

[url=https://flic.kr/p/21XUeGd]

[Panici]

Updates:
Rolled over 100k Miles (160k KM) last night.

• Put my 15mm spacers on front and rear.
  • Used some 45mm lugs from 42 draft designs
    • 3mm makes a difference.
    • These were TOO LONG, the lugs I needed were 42mm, which they don't carry.
    • Fronts fit with some clearancing of the brake dust shields.
    • Rears needed to be ground down shorter to not interfere with the ebrake parts.
  • Rear looks good, might look perfect with 20mm spacers.
  • Front has a little too much poke for my taste. 10mm spacers would look better.
  • I'll wait until I get the drop hats and thinner spring pads on in the springtime, to pass final judgement.
• 153 to 173 ECU conversion
  • Upgrade to Motronic 1.3
  • Came with a Dinan 91 octane chip!
    • Raised rev limit, and pulls noticeably harder on WOT.
  • Idle is improved.
  • I also noticed torque converter lockup for the autotragic is slightly different.
  • I believe the 173 ECU also monitors the oil pressure sensor and throws a check panel light for oil if the sensor is unplugged.
  • I now also have the "stomp check" for ECU codes.

Noticed my VDO water temp gauge was sitting a little higher then normal at idle. (of course, stock gauge didn't show anything amiss)
Sure enough, I got home and saw a little smoke coming out of the hood.

After a quick inspection, it looks like one of the rad hoses may be leaking at the water pump. I'll have to investigate further later today.

[Luke Girard]

Thanks! :)

I've seen that car before. Initially I liked the look, now I'm not sure.
I'll wait until I get the iS airdam painted and installed, and then see if I want to delete/relocate the signals.

I want to do that look on a plastic bumper. When I get another e30 it's happening.

[Panici]

Dude I love it! It looks so clean

You should relocate your turn signals behind the grill and do this with the front bumper. It think it looks fantastic!

Thanks! :)

I've seen that car before. Initially I liked the look, now I'm not sure.
I'll wait until I get the iS airdam painted and installed, and then see if I want to delete/relocate the signals.

[Luke Girard]

Dude I love it! It looks so clean

You should relocate your turn signals behind the grill and do this with the front bumper. It think it looks fantastic!

[Panici]

Nice man! Much better than the first car!!! Its looking great

Thanks!


Update:

I've been really busy with school, so nothing new with the E30.

I did however get some parts today when my friend made a USA run.

• 173 ECU (an upgrade from my 153)
  • Picked it up for $40!
  • Should help with the rough idle.
  • As a bonus, it's chipped! (Dinan, but better then nothing!)
• Set of 42 Draft designs extended lugs for my 15mm spacers
• Redline SAE 75w-140 diff oil
• New antenna grommet
• VDO Oil temperature gauge and sender

And just for fun:

[2mAn]

Nice man! Much better than the first car!!! Its looking great

[Panici]

It was really nice outside today, so I decided to work on the car for a while.

• Used Simple Green Max on the engine bay, trying to clean it up a little. It did help on the (few) areas not coated in cosmolene.
• Scraped the battery tray, part of the strut towers, and part of the fenders with an old credit card to take off the cosmolene.
  • It worked, but I'm going to need to find a better method to tackle the rest of the bay.
• Replaced a fuel hose (attached to the back of the fuel rail)
  • The old one was in pretty rough shape!
  • Used a fuel line from my parts car.
• Cut out and modified part of a spare rear bumper strip for the front plate location.
  • The cuts aren't straight, and the cut ends are sticking out a little, but it looks better then it did before!
  • I have another one and a half rear bumper strips, plus the ones on my parts car, for my next (and subsequent) attempt(s).
• Washed the whole car, with special attention paid to the wheels.
  • I managed to get some of the OLD brake dust off of the wheels, but I think I need a stronger degreaser and a powerball to get it all off.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/DSNhaW]

[Panici]

Got some solid work done on the E30 today.

• Installed original alternator, with new brushes on voltage regulator. Cost me $28. Finally car is no longer battery powered!
• Cleaned oil out of:
  • ICV
  • Throttle body
  • Part of intake manifold
  • AFM and boot
• New air filter
• Removed spare wheel (-35.2lbs)
  • It's never even been mounted!
• Removed trunk tar
  • I expected this to be a PITA, but it just pealed up with a screwdriver! (-52lbs)
• Took tools and stuff out of trunk

I can definitely feel a difference. I think cleaning the oil out of the intake has helped throttle response, and I sure can feel a difference when starting from a stop. Car idles a bit better as well.











EDIT:
Did a little photoshop just for fun.

BEFORE:



AFTER:

[Panici]

Put in my VDO Water temp gauge today. It's not the cleanest install, but when I add my oil pressure & temperature gauges, I'll be redoing the wiring.

I ran the sender wire along with the factory harness, and under the intake manifold, with the factory coolant sensor wiring.


I also pulled out most of the aftermarket radio wiring, and the original radio fader.

[Panici]

Put on a used set of 15mm spacers in the rear.
Wheels should have been this offset from the factory. Looks OEM.





BEFORE



AFTER



.





.

Was checking my oil, and decided to clean the cosmoline off of the decals on the driver's side strut tower with the oily rag I had in my hand.
Already looks better.
I think this is the start of a long and painful process, removing all of this stuff from the engine bay (And all the undercoating from under the car)

[Panici]

My alternator is on the fritz. http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=335144

Swapped on the one from my parts car, but that one is also dead. So I've been driving on battery power (with great success I might add) for the past week. I've got a booster pack and two car batteries to swap between.

Took the alternator to a car electrical place today. Looking at the voltage regulator, I suspect it just needs new brushes.

My friend went stateside again and grabbed some more packages for me. Got my VDO Water temp gauge, along with a used partial set of 15mm spacers (missing 4 lug bolts), pass side LCA, blower motor resistor, and a couple cans of Eastwood Rust Encapsulator.


Also made a voltmeter out of an old defroster switch. (essential when running on only battery power!) I was a little too rough with it and split the plastic. When I come across another defroster switch, I'll be more careful and fix it.

[Panici]

Ordered a VDO Vision Black water temperature gauge kit.
It includes M12x1.5 and M14x1.5 adapters, hopefully I can make use of the extra ports on the T-stat that the early cooling system has.

I don't trust the factory gauge, and even if I can eventually get it working properly, I will still be happier with a more accurate gauge.


I also messed around with the 600-605nm 6mm LEDs and the VDO Oil Pressure gauge that I ordered a while back. Just in case you were wondering, the LEDs are a perfect match for BMW orange!

It looks like an array of 6 LEDs is plenty to light up a VDO gauge (as long as I angle them properly), so I ordered some empty 194/T10 bases. When they come in I'll make something up on some perfboard and have these gauges looking factory at night!

[Panici]

Yesterday, a friend and I ran about half a can of Seafoam thorough a brake booster line.
It started pouring rain while we were waiting the 10 minutes for it to work, so I don't actually know if it smoked at all when we started it up.

It did misfire pretty heavily on the first WOT run after I started it back up. Threw a "two blink" code with the CEL (I have Motronic 1.1) which is O2 sensor.

After the code cleared, the light hasn't come back, and the car isn't running any worse then before If anything it pulls a little better up top.


Today, I changed the fuel filter. The old one was in BACKWARDS! (arrow pointing towards fuel pump) That certainly wasn't helping anything.
The car now takes roughly half the cranking time to start. I assume the fuel filter has a check valve to stop the lines from loosing pressure. Obviously this doesn't work when the filter is in backwards!

Also dumped about 1/4 can of Seafoam into the gas tank, and bought 10 Liters of Castrol GTX 20w-50 (It was 40% off!)


I don't know if it's my imagination, but the car seems to be running a little better with everything I do!


Tonight (while waiting to pick up my girlfriend) I pulled out the ugly Sony headunit that the previous owner put in.
As I suspected, whoever installed this back in the day, didn't know how to bypass the fader, and ran new wires instead.

Harness is spliced, but it's salvageable.

Threw on my radio delete panel, for now.








Also, just for fun.

[ThatOneEuroE30]

Ah, but I never removed the passenger side strut assembly.
It was the driver's side I replaced, and that balljoint is fine!

Hmm never mind then. Probably just old and worn and not used to low like you said.