The '80s did it better

[FunfGan]

Figured I'd make a new thread for this as I bought the car off my father a few months ago. I'll recap the previous progress.


The car is a 1984 325es with a low mileage i swap. The car had ~260,000 miles in 1996, so it currently has a lot.

Here it is a year or so ago after we got it running











Started messing around with a shift knob idea.











The car was without a head unit of any kind, any front speaker wiring and pretty ghetto rigged rear wiring. I fixed all of that, rewired everything and threw some speakers in, fixed some interior pieces and vacuumed. Plan is to spray the carpet and rear seats black, to finish the big interior projects.









My friend also gave me a maplight mirror for free, so I put that in, still need to wiring it in.










Work was slow on saturday, so I got to wash the car.











Today I decided to give it a good wax, not thinking that I should have done cutting compound and polish first. So I'll be removing the wax and doing all that soon, but on to pics.



before





after






In this, right side has wax, center does not








I ended the day by polishing some of the trim pieces, here's a comparison pic

[FunfGan]

I've done a bunch of things in the past few weeks that are pretty boring and I don't have pics of, so I'll keep going from today.


Put the wheels from Gretta on, unfortunately one of the rear spacers(20mm all around) pretty much welded itself to the hub. I got a pair from a friend, but the hub size is something crazy big, so unfortunately, that won't work. I'll probably just end up ordering a new pair, but here they are in the meantime.










Threw one of Gretta's fixed back Corbeaus in, love these seats.







Picked up on of those $20 suction mount, phone holders. Absolutely love it.







I had a few spare mats from work/ my garage, but unfortunately, none of them were e30 ones/ a close fit. So I ended up cutting a notch out of some Acura ones for the gas pedal(passenger side just sat down) and threw some Maxima rear mats in the back. The mat kept sliding forward and hitting the gas pedal, because it had no hold down. simple fix.










Painted the mirrors black, old coat was pretty worn.







Decided I wanted to spruce up the interior a little bit, and I had some spare wood pieces lying around. I had an idea, got a piece of cardboard, and made a templet for the little section directly below the dash, in front of the coin holder and shifter. Came out alright, though I messed it up a little so I may redo it later on. Happy with it for now, especially using the tools I had on sight...










I'll get a pic of it installed when there's more light.





Lastly for today, I got a little tired of the custom shift boot I had in the car, so I grabbed the stock one that was in Gretta, and put it in.

[FunfGan]

Well first of I replaced the driver's side, inside door handle. It just kind of, well, just look for yourself.









Then I ate some food as a reward for myself(as if being able to open my door again wasn't enough).









Then I parked at work.










Then I stumbled upon some stupid kids, parked, and ate with them.









Then while it was slow at work one day, I decided to go ahead and try to Rotax 30 year old paint. I'm doing this piece by piece as it's a learning curve as well as having limited time to do it with such nice and plentiful supplies as are available at my work.



Left is cut with very light polish, right is untouched.










Entire hood after full light polish and quick wax.









I have a habit of ruining things.








Then I did the trunk another night in a heavier polish, which looked about the same but a bit worse. In the bottom of the first picture, you can see what it started as. Second is finished.












The kid who was working me with that night had a pretty cool 1-series, it's crazy how similar in size to e30's these are.






Did an oil change today, was the first one I've done, very much overdue.






Just as a reminder







Full bay pics, and those tasty, heat-cycled ebay headers.









Short, terrible sound clip. R3v at the end was to ~3-4000rpm. Terrible sounding now, as I've actually worn through part of the piping, so there is a massive leak...







Just ordered some nice goodies for it, so I'll be waiting for those.

[FunfGan]

After the bi-weekly wash, claybar, wax, vacuum and interior protectant application:








The next day I finally got around to heavy compound buffing the roof- before and after.










Ate a burrito.









And I also got the Italian Peyton woodgrain wheel I bought, as well as the OEM e46 cabrio floor mats from Turner.









And because I never got a shot of that wood insert I did,










Installing a new headunit, as my favorite one that I had in here finally died.

[FunfGan]

Haven't done much, lowered the rear more, full new stereo/ speakers/ subs/ etc, new steering wheel and other random stuff.











Will update as things happen(slowly).

[FunfGan]

I have a bunch of stuff to catch up on, so thanks for looking and will update when the time between work/ preparing for school/ etc makes itself available.

[MaxBell]

Looks good! I take it you like red cars? (cuz u have 2)

[ST1G]

Great build so far. I like what you did with the wood panel where the coil holder use to be. My coil holder is all messed up so I might do the same thing you did. It seems to match up well with your wood wheel, and knob.

[dmoney(AB)]

What happened to Gretta?

[HennaE30]

Looking good... Did a couple things I wouldn'tve, but still looks really nice. Mines about to get a bunch of changes too :)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[rmdashrf]

Where's the v8

[lambo]

ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

[FunfGan]

Looks good! I take it you like red cars? (cuz u have 2)

Great build so far. I like what you did with the wood panel where the coil holder use to be. My coil holder is all messed up so I might do the same thing you did. It seems to match up well with your wood wheel, and knob.

Thanks! And yep, stained it the best I could(wasn't about to spend money on one of my small "mods", so chosen from what we had in the garage) to match.

What happened to Gretta?

Where's the v8

Hiding

ᕦ(ò_óˇ)ᕤ

I wanted one of those so bad! He sold out pretty quickly though.

[lambo]

I wanted one of those so bad! He sold out pretty quickly though.

Yeah they have small meets local to me. I meant to check it out but then I broke my car... And now it's lame :(

[FunfGan]

Been working on a Volvo lip for a bit, had to cut about 2" out of the center hole as well as deleting the large pop-out for the tow hook.

This is how it was looking after starting with the bondo(it is connected with more than just bondo).







And then finished waiting for paint.




And the only picture after mount(excuse the lack of front bumper)




Finally decided to paint the center of my steering wheel, it had been badly polished by someone before, and I also have great disdain for polished centers as they tend to blind me.

How it looked




After sanding and primer





Painted and then installed






My DSSR that had disappeared finally reappeared so I figured I would FINALLY install that along with my Delrin rear bushing from Condor.






After a lot of cutting and grinding I had most of the old bushing out





Then I used a vice to hold the bracket, line the area with some wheel bearing grease and hammered the new bushing in with a long socket and used a large dead-blow hammer to set it in.





Then I realized that the transmission side mount for the dssr was the wider of the two, and the 10 spares my buddy and I had were also the wider ones, I cut one to fit and bingo, perfect.





Swapped the diff as well, but no point for pictures haha. Went from a very, very old 2.93 open to the 3.73LSD out of my 5.0L car.


Also decided I hated how quite it was with the small resonator to muffler, so off the muffler came.







Threw a quick coat of wax on the old girl, currently waiting for a bunch of parts from Pelican parts, so I'll have another update next weekend.