I have been doing a build thread on Bimmerforums, but I was advised by F34R bring it over here.
From my other thread:
1977 320I Safari Beige
-Megasquirt ECU
-5 speed swap
-Recaro seats
I recently decided that I wanted a small car to toss around and try my hand at autox. My current daily is a 1995 525I Touring and my previous project (currently for sale) is a grey market 1986 635CSI which is plastidipped and on air ride suspension. Having owned several E30s already, I wanted something different. I had been looking for a clean 2002, and found a couple, but the prices were a little high for something I would likely be beating the piss out of. I finally stumbled across a recent listing for this E21 that had megasquirt installed and a 5 speed trans swap. I got a great deal on it and it includes a shell that will be delivered in a couple weeks. The car has some surface rust in spots all around the body and some bubbling under the windshield, but it is good enough for my purposes. Here is how it arrived:
I love spending money.
When I went to see the car, the owner got it to start up on a jump pack but it sounding like it was running on 2 or 3 cylinders. Once I got it back to my house I could not seem to get it running. I started with the basics and found that the spark was weak and inconsistent. After some cursory inspection of the megasquirt wiring, I found that there were some wires disconnected. I replaced the old weak battery, put in some new plugs and plug wires, and reconnected the wiring that I found disconnected. I did some temporary fixes on the various vacuum leaks that I found and the car started right up and idled great.
Next, I hooked up the included ancient Dell laptop and found that the Megasquirt was not getting a reasonable signal from the wideband O2 sensor. I found that the wideband controller was not connected to 12V power and so it wasn't getting a proper signal. After reconnecting the power to that, the controller gave only a low input voltage error code despite several attempts to rewire it. I happened to have a brand new LC-1 wideband on a shelf from an old project so I put the sensor in while retaining the current controller. Tunerstudio now shows a good signal from the wideband so that looks good now.
That pretty much brings the project up to date. I have had the car for exactly one week now and I'm making progress whenever it isn't below 25 degrees out. Next up, I'll be using trunk mount battery wiring from an E30 and then soldering all of the crimp connections in the megasquirt wiring. Hopefully I'll get a chance to stand in line at the DMV some time this week so I can get this thing out on the road for testing.
My plan for this car is to build a streetable car that I can use for autox this season. I will be building some coilovers using the ground control kit and some Koni shocks. I am not a big fan of drum brakes, so the rear brakes are something I'll be looking into very soon. I know there are some upgrades from the 323 and other BMWs but I am thinking of doing a custom Wilwood setup.
For anybody curious, here are some of my other cars (sold other than the touring):
From my other thread:
1977 320I Safari Beige
-Megasquirt ECU
-5 speed swap
-Recaro seats
I recently decided that I wanted a small car to toss around and try my hand at autox. My current daily is a 1995 525I Touring and my previous project (currently for sale) is a grey market 1986 635CSI which is plastidipped and on air ride suspension. Having owned several E30s already, I wanted something different. I had been looking for a clean 2002, and found a couple, but the prices were a little high for something I would likely be beating the piss out of. I finally stumbled across a recent listing for this E21 that had megasquirt installed and a 5 speed trans swap. I got a great deal on it and it includes a shell that will be delivered in a couple weeks. The car has some surface rust in spots all around the body and some bubbling under the windshield, but it is good enough for my purposes. Here is how it arrived:
I love spending money.
When I went to see the car, the owner got it to start up on a jump pack but it sounding like it was running on 2 or 3 cylinders. Once I got it back to my house I could not seem to get it running. I started with the basics and found that the spark was weak and inconsistent. After some cursory inspection of the megasquirt wiring, I found that there were some wires disconnected. I replaced the old weak battery, put in some new plugs and plug wires, and reconnected the wiring that I found disconnected. I did some temporary fixes on the various vacuum leaks that I found and the car started right up and idled great.
Next, I hooked up the included ancient Dell laptop and found that the Megasquirt was not getting a reasonable signal from the wideband O2 sensor. I found that the wideband controller was not connected to 12V power and so it wasn't getting a proper signal. After reconnecting the power to that, the controller gave only a low input voltage error code despite several attempts to rewire it. I happened to have a brand new LC-1 wideband on a shelf from an old project so I put the sensor in while retaining the current controller. Tunerstudio now shows a good signal from the wideband so that looks good now.
That pretty much brings the project up to date. I have had the car for exactly one week now and I'm making progress whenever it isn't below 25 degrees out. Next up, I'll be using trunk mount battery wiring from an E30 and then soldering all of the crimp connections in the megasquirt wiring. Hopefully I'll get a chance to stand in line at the DMV some time this week so I can get this thing out on the road for testing.
My plan for this car is to build a streetable car that I can use for autox this season. I will be building some coilovers using the ground control kit and some Koni shocks. I am not a big fan of drum brakes, so the rear brakes are something I'll be looking into very soon. I know there are some upgrades from the 323 and other BMWs but I am thinking of doing a custom Wilwood setup.
For anybody curious, here are some of my other cars (sold other than the touring):
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