Tina the '88 325ix

[6A LDY]

Introducing Tina the 1988 325ix.





I found the car through this forum in NW CT and when I went to go see it, I found a lonely car sitting on the edge of the woods. The car wouldn’t start, even with a good battery, so the PO and I pushed it into his driveway to get a better look. The body was in pretty good shape only a few rusty bits but overall great for New England. The PO told me the timing belt broke on him and he had the head replaced and showed me the receipts. I bought the car on the spot without hearing it run and not knowing if the AWD worked at all. I had it shipped up to my house at school and started to work on it there.

I started working on it around September 1st.

This was possibly the dirtiest car I had ever seen. There was a layer of New England sludge all over it so I decided to wash it before really digging in. You can see the difference in the windshield of the grime vs clean.

[6A LDY]

After getting a new battery and the car still not starting, it was time to replace the starter. This was the biggest pain in the ass to do and I'm glad I won't have to do it again for a long time.



Thankfully though, the car actually started after that although it did sound pretty miserable. I figured the gas was bad since the car had sat in the woods for a few months so I pumped the old gas out of the tank and poured in fresh gas. Here's a video of what the car sounded like at this point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o7TFv_rbmw

After that I decided to adjust the valve timing and replace a few obviously cracked vacuum hoses and the breather hose, which was disgusting as you can see

[6A LDY]

I figured there was an exhaust leak and with a propane torch, nut extractor sockets, hammer, and a roommate I managed to get the down-pipe off the manifold. One of the flanges had broken off of the down-pipe and was leaking like crazy. I had to take the exhaust off in one piece, which was a PITA because the cat and muffler were rusted together like crazy.



you can see the exhaust has a couple holes rusted through it and a family of mice had lived there at some point



I cut the exhaust pipes and managed to get another muffler from a r3v user in Maine.



I had the flange welded back on and got some new hardware to connect the muffler and cat and installed the whole thing back on.

I didn't take the exhaust manifold off at this point because I was afraid of breaking a stud or not being able to get the studs back in properly, so that gasket remained unchanged.

[6A LDY]

After that I decided to try to get rid of the funky smell in the car. The seats were removed and I vacuumed and shampooed the interior. I opened up the glove box and found a terrible surprise. It was covered in mouse crap. It smelled so bad I had to wear a dust mask to clean it and it actually made my eyes water.



I vacuumed, shampooed, and re-vacuumed the carpets





The carpet is in pretty good shape overall and I got a better look at the seat after taking them out. There's only a few small rips in the drivers seat and one place where the stitching popped on the rear seat. With some leather conditioner they should look pretty nice again. The dash is also crack free which is a real treat.

I think I'll need to take out the cluster and dash and clean behind there based on what I found in the glove box

[6A LDY]

The car came with bnib rotors and pads for all four corners so I decided to tackle that next. Turns out one of the caliper guides was rusted in so I replaced both of them on each side only to find that the right front piston was rusted open and cracked. I ordered new calipers for the front to put on later.



you can see the pile of rusty filth that came off the old rotors. The pads weren't actually too worn down, but I decided to change them anyways.







after that I decided to do something easy and fun, so I stripped down the valve cover with a wire wheel and repainted it matte blue. It cam out much lighter than I thought it would, but I still like it. I may change it at some point later.

[6A LDY]

So after a night out, I came home and installed the valve cover and decided to go for a ride. Bad idea. Everything was going great, I made 3-4 laps around my neighborhood in the unregistered, un-titled Tina with no I.D. on me. She stalled out at a stop sign and wouldn’t start back up for anything. So I pushed the car home 1/3 of a mile back to my house. About 300ft from home a neighbor stopped to help and then invited me over for a beer.

I figured it was a fuel issue so I replaced the fuel pump relay and found that the hoses leading to and from the fuel filter were leaking. I replaced the fuel filter and the hose that leads from it and that took care of most of the leak except now I could see the hard line that feeds the engine was leaking.

This was at the end of the semester and I had the car brought back with me by my grandfather to his house/barn. It's like a candy shop for gear heads, he has everything you could ever want or need in terms of tools and materials.

Leaving school


Random treasures in the barn



Offenhauser pistons for about 16:1 compression running pure ethanol

[6A LDY]

I went to the store and got some hard line and ended up making a pretty good piece of line. I wanted to do a mini write up for it because it took me forever to find what size line to get.

If you’re thinking of replacing your hard line you should do it, it is quick and pretty easy and is relatively inexpensive (I had all the tools available to me). The fuel lines are 5/16” and the brake line is 3/16” and you’ll need about 7’ for each of the fuel lines. I got a 25’ spool and that was plenty.

I used a pipe cutter, pipe bender, and double flare tool. The OEM fuel line has an inline flare that acts as a stop so the hose doesn’t get pushed on too far, but it’s impossible to replicate that without a hydraulic flare tool.



It took a fair amount of patience to get it right and I would recommend playing around with it for 30 minutes or so with a spare piece of line making different angle bends. The 90 degree ones are tough without pinching the hose, but if you go slow enough and shift the bender around a bit, you should be fine.

1st try on the far right, finished product in the middle, and the original on the left. I think it turned out pretty well.



Re-installing the line was pretty easy. It runs from the fuel filter basically to the steering knuckle up front. The hardest part was removing the screws from the metal clips that hold the lines up. I can take more specific pics if people want

[6A LDY]

That brings us up to about this week. I decided to finally replace the exhaust manifold gasket. Taking it off was no problem and replacing the gasket was easy because all of the studs came out, but I had to remove all of the stuck nuts off of the studs. I cleaned all of the studs and nuts on a wire wheel and then re-tapped some of the holes and installed the new gasket.

old gasket out and ready for cleaning


new vs old


all done

[nomansland92]

Looks like a great find, keep up the good work man!

[dude8383]

Looks like you've got yourself a fun project there.

Should be a blast when you get a few inches of snow!

[6A LDY]

earlier this week I installed the new front calipers and the rear rotors I had from before as well as new parking brake shoes. I'm waiting for new rear calipers to come in before I put the wheels back on and bleed the brakes. I'm really pleased with how the new calipers look and I'm glad I got new ones instead of trying to rebuild the old ones myself.

Presents!


Fronts all done


Gross old rotors


New parking shoes on


Waiting for new calipers


At this point I noticed something strange about the right rear spring. It looks like theres two springs in there on the top and bottom, but what must have happened was the spring broke at the top and bottom.

[6A LDY]

I spent a couple of days tidying up the engine bay and wheels with a pressure washer and an air hose blowing out all of the acorns.



wheels will need some lovin


I also scraped out the gross hood insulation that was falling apart

before


after

I need to get some adhesive remover to clean off the old stuff

I've been clean all the bolts and studs I remove on a wire wheel and I decided to clean up the lugs. You can see what a difference it makes comparing the clean to the dirty


I also tracked down 3 spots of rust. One is under the left rear passenger footwell, it's pretty small and should be a quick patch, but makes me a little nervous to see what it looks like underneath the carpet.

The second small one is under the battery tray, again pretty small


The third is in the left rear wheel well and was caused by a leak where the hole for the antenna was. It ended up rusting through the jack holder and muffler heat shield



So thats all I've done so far on Tina. My plans for the car are to bring it back as close to stock as possible for a while and then save up and either build up the m20 and turbo or go for an m54b30. I'd like to have it as a daily driver, but it wont be on the road until its buttoned down tight.

The things I need to take care of immediately (in no particular order) are
-Rust
-Change all fluids
-Timing belt
-Needs new springs and shocks/struts
-Replace shifter bushings - very sloppy atm
-Get gauge cluster to work - only gas gauge works
-Sunroof doesnt work
-Some of the stereo/ keyless entry wiring looks suspect
-Clean up the interior
-New tires

I think this weekend I'm going to investigate the gauge cluster and dashboard situation.

For now this is how she sits

[AWDBOB]

Tina's lookin tidy! Lachs 88 FTW.

How is the rust on the rest of the car? Looks to be a solid find.

Turbo......

[6A LDY]

The rest of the car is in pretty great shape for living in connecticut. Theres a few spots that need to be ground and repainted but its solid overall.

It's pretty much an uglier version of your car bob

[jimsill]

Nice build so far. I'm in NW CT not sure how I missed this one.


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