SNAFU; high performance 318is build that lives up to the name, Turbo M42 ➞ Turbo M20

[silence]

Thanks for coming out to the Meet!

[varg]

My E30 has been out in the weather since I got my FD, so I wanted to get a cover for it to slow the roof rusting process. I got this cover on black friday sale and it's pretty nice. I know it's not a perfect solution, but it'll be a year or more before I have shelter for my FD and my E30.

[Northern]

I appreciate the Condor meet pics. Wish we had E30 events like that around here.

[varg]

Thanks. Yeah, I should have taken more pictures to post here. I didn't bring my real camera just my phone and I spent a lot of the meet talking to people so I really only checked out the cars that caught my attention and only photographed the ones that didn't have people next to them.

The Condor speed shop M3


S54 swapped convertible



A different M3 that was (almost) supercharged. Sorry, no exterior pictures because there were people around it, but it wasn't anything incredible, a black M3 with gaudy polished 3 piece wheels and stretched tires.


The SR20 swapped E30 sedan I mentioned in my other post. I may have pics under the hood somewhere from when I saw this car at cars and coffee years ago. The owner, Dale, his instagram is bigjamaican_e30


I didn't get a picture of the other powerful E30, which is turbo K24 swapped. Both of these 4cyl swapped cars are significantly more powerful than my E30. But they also don't have $200 unknown mileage M20s under the hood with cheap journal bearing turbos

[moatilliatta]

Pretty rad, thanks for sharing photos.

There used to be so many photos of events posted on the forums.

[varg]

I've hardly been driving my E30 lately but I took it to the annual Condor Speed Shop meet today. The SNAFU plate is gone, it fell off on a flooded road because of a broken mount and I recovered it to hang in my garage.



Black E30 lineup, there was one other there, an SR20 swapped car, that is not in this lineup. To the right is an old friend of mine, the E30 that used to belong to Digitalwave


Bonus pic, I hadn't seen Good & Tight's drag car in years, I think the last time I saw this car mine still had its original engine, close to a decade now for sure. It's a shame we lost our drag strip.


Thanks to the CSS folks silence for setting this meet up, I rarely get to see some of the people and cars that show up and appreciate the meet.

[varg]

I finally replaced the shattered rear bumper on the E30 with the garagistic replacement. I didn't take many pictures of the process but the garagistic bumper cover does not fit that great, it's a pain to get it to snap onto the quarter panel bumper guides. I had to slide it over them on the top slider then flex the bumper to get it to snap onto the bottom one. It was difficult to do without an assistant. The big trim piece on the bumper is a loose fit and sags when hot. My solution to this was to run a little bead of JB weld on the top edge of the part of the bumper the trim piece covers, and another bead on the inside edge of the trim piece, these two ridges of epoxy create a snap fit. It will be harder to remove, but it isn't sagging when parked outside on a hot day anymore and it isn't in danger of falling off. My garage is currently a total mess again as it is filled with parts from the wagon, which is without engine.



The fit is ok, definitely not good enough for a purist, but overall I think the car looks a lot better with the cheap aftermarket bumper than with the shattered OE bumper. If I find a good used OE bumper cover some day I may take this one off and replace it.



The remaining visible damage. Could be worse, there is only a small dent which isn't really visible unless you look at it from a shallow angle.

[moatilliatta]

Less chatter since the forums quieter. Still a handful of folks show up. Been on my bucket list for a decade..

https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/forum/regional-forums/gatherings-regional-discussion/southeast/386938-spring-2019-southeast-bmw-brodeo

https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/forum/regional-forums/gatherings-regional-discussion/southeast/9957967-fall-2020-brodeo

https://www.motorsportreg.com/events/southeast-fall-2016-bmw-brodeo-smoky-mtn-meadows-campground-802718

That wet shot is pretty good!

[varg]

I picked out my photos from killboy and purchased them on sale before Christmas. They're a good souvenir for this experience, if the E30 ever goes back it will probably be a radically different car.

Headed in to the house on the lake we drove down in the rain. Unfortunately my wife gets motion sick very easily so even though I was going really slow this was not a fun experience for her.
I am not a big fan of the vignetting of this image, I might try and get RAWs or unprocessed JPGs from killboy so I can filter these to my tastes and get a big print.



These are from the morning I spent driving up and down with my buddy. His S2000 is the one visible in the first photo, setting the pace. He's a much better driver than I am and had been down this road many times so I followed him for all of the runs we did.





This was a great experience in the E30. It really is great for these roads the way I have it set up, and I could not have asked for better conditions and traffic. We only got stuck behind slow vehicles a couple of times.

Road tripping an E30 is great. Restores that connection and builds a better car. Sounds time to build up some travel spares. I keep an extra fuel pump, as it seems like they are all garbage.

You already have me excited for a week in the NC mountains for The Vintage event already.

Did you go out to the brodeo event?

Yeah I really didn't even think to bring a spare fuel pump because this one was not that old. A spare fuel pump is definitely in the list of parts to bring next time, it won't take up much additional space with my usual belts, radiator hoses, sensors. As for the brodeo event I'm not even sure what that is.

[Northern]

Nice to see an update, sorry to hear about the frustrations with the bumpers and pump

[moatilliatta]

Road tripping an E30 is great. Restores that connection and builds a better car. Sounds time to build up some travel spares. I keep an extra fuel pump, as it seems like they are all garbage.

You already have me excited for a week in the NC mountains for The Vintage event already.

Did you go out to the brodeo event?

[varg]

It has been a long time since I had an update, that's probably because there was no (good) news. My car got clipped in traffic earlier this year and I've been having a hard time sourcing bumpers. Old bumpers are fragile so I don't want to ship them, and the shipping on new ones is ridiculous. Catuned wants something like $500 to ship generic replacements, Garagistic went out of stock, people want a lot of money for them locally.

But now there is good news. I took the E30 on a road trip. This was supposed to be an E34 trip but I didn't finish it in time, so I checked everything I could on the E30, installed an oil pressure gauge, and went for it. I took the car to Chattanooga, then to Graham county NC, home of Lake Santeetlah, the section of US129 known as the tail of the dragon, and the eastern end of the Cherohala skyway. After all of these years of having this taut E30 with a bunch of handling mods, I finally got to drive it on some great driving roads, and it handles great. The car is a pleasure to drive even without power steering.







Cherohala skyway was gorgeous with fresh snow in the trees and almost perfectly clear roads, it would have been impassable on my R1Rs if any snow or ice remained. Highly recommended drive, very scenic especially if there's snow and clouds.





Tail of the dragon was great on a cold Monday morning, I did 3 laps up and down tail of the dragon of it with my buddy (inactive) member here Shredwick, following his S2000. This was the most fun I'd had driving and the car handled great. I really wish there were some decent driving roads in Florida because this car feels at home on the mountain roads, where it's slow for drag racing and laggy for autocross.





I also took the car up to the top of Clingmans Dome out in the Smokies which was an atmospheric drive with the clouds, rain and fog shrouding parts of the mountain.

TN was a bit less driving, mostly hiking. I drove the E30 up lookout mountain (no pics, sorry), and around the raccoon mountain reservoir.


If you go to the reservoir, do not drive a car that is lowered, stiffly sprung, or has low hanging exhaust around the drivepark road. They've put some really aggressive speed bumps on it that I had to creep over at a below walking pace and they took a toll on my forward V-band clamp which luckily survived the trip. My exhaust is banged up from this road and there is no turning back. You can't see the bumps from the entrance.

Unfortunately in the end, the E30 broke down on the way home, too far for a AAA tow and my best choice at the time was to tow it back with a U-haul truck. Of course the only one they had was the biggest truck they rent, and it was a long and crappy late night drive home from northern FL. It really sucked but I am thankful but my trip went off any major issues, just oil leaking and a banged up exhaust. The cause of the breakdown was the fuel pump melting down, it took one of the in-tank wires and the connector with it and was completely dead, basically open circuit. The pump was around 7 years old and as far as I can tell probably had around 70,000mi on it. As an aside, DeatschWerks are almost no help in sourcing a local replacement, I had to prod at their reps to get a partial list of FL dealers and wound up shipping one second day from Summit since I couldn't find any local companies who stocked the DW200. I hope DeatschWerks guys are reading this; I don't think I'll buy another DW pump based on how lackluster the customer service has become. I have bought several of their pumps now and have referred many people to them; they should have immediately provided me with a list of the dealers in FL so I could find try and something fast, not just quote their lead time and make me press to get 3 dealer names - none of which had what I needed. Uncool. Can no longer recommend unless their CS improves! I'll return with some photos from killboy if I decide to buy them.

[Northern]

Throw a knock sensor on there and setup boost/lean/knock failsafes and Oring that MF

If you buy the isky tool, I'd buy it from you, or pay to rent it... EDIT: nvm I own one now

[varg]

E85 is a non-starter for me. Limited availability. The bigger injectors I'm working on, I have some 60lb injectors in my M42. I need to pull them and get two matching ones, then upgrade my MAP sensor so I'm not running at the ragged edge of its capabilities. Once the turbo is maxed out I'm likely done chasing more power for the E30. It honestly doesn't need any more than the 500bhp or so that turbo is good for and incredible straight line performance is the goal of my next build. Plus I'm concerned about the stock head gasket holding up with so much cylinder pressure and don't want to convert to MLS or O-ring because the head gasket is a good "fuse".

[zwill23]

Guess it's time for bigger injectors... and an E85 conversion...