e30 316 build x2 (m52/m50, turbo, 3pcs bottle caps etc)

[pazi88]

And new outer skirt in place:


Then we had to buy more stuff to fix all the rust:


And we also bought this:


it's broken m52b28 from 528i e39, so we can now stroke the e34 engine to 2.8 litres.

But back to rust fixing. To change the front structure, you need to cut the old one away:


And then just weld the new one back in place. Very easy, and much faster that sandblasting all the rust spots etc.


And then we bought more rust free pieces:


The front axle support was sandblasted and painted:


And then started to change the support beam:


Looks even more horrible inside:


All gone:


Fixing the gas pedal support:


All the rust fixed, so I can install the new part:


But even the new part wasn't rust free:


After some sandblasting and paint:




And then just weld it in place:




The next place to be fixed is the rear end. just cut all the rotten parts away:


And replace with new:



(Welds need to be finished).

We alos bought some new seats, becuse we got them cheap:


Of course the drivers seat was broken, so that had to be fixed.


And fixed:

[pazi88]

And continue with the build. First we removed the crusty old rear section:




Only big hole left:


Welding some new sheet metal:


Unfortunately, I forgot to take the picture from finished piece. But here's picture of my brother trying to dig through to floor by hand :D


Then we started fixing the framerail:


All rust cut out:


And weld new pieces in place:


Both fixed:


Then we removed lots of rust with few cuts:


So now there is huge hole in the trunk floor:


Time for break:


And we had time to make "patch":


That flat sheet metal can look bit wobbly.But next we will add new frame beams for the seat belt supports and for the rear axle, so those will strengthen up the floor. We are also using e34 axle, so we cannot fit the stock gas tank. Instead we are going to put fuel cell in the trunk and it will be sunk to trunk floor and that will also give more strength.

[pazi88]

At this point we started modifying the e34 rear axle to fit the e30:


Then I took the original bushing mounts apart from the rear axle, removed the rust and welded them in e34 rear axle. The MIG didn't give me good enough penetration, so it was good place to practice TIG welding:


I had used powerflex urethane bushings, which I used for this.


Top piece required some cutting, but otherwise it sit's ok.


And axle in place:


Then welded the new rear support:


We also tried some 9x15" et 35 wheels to se how much room we have with those fiberglass arches. Seems to be lot, so we can run some proper wheels.


Wheel can go even higher than with stock e30 rear axle:


Only problem is that we need some very short coilover shocks for the rear. Something like 10" when pressed is all the way. Not sure yet where to get those.

We also put the seat belt supports back:


The drive shaft seemed little problematic because the e34 center bearing is in the wrong spot. And the e34 diff has CV-joint in stead the oldschool one, so the e36 320 drive shaft in the picture doesn't fit.


But the flange for diff is easy to change, so we can use the e36 shaft.


The 320 one seems bit long but if that doesn't work, I have to buy 325 one, because that is bit shorter.

But first, let me apply some paint:




And because of the e34 rear axle we cannot fit the original fuel tank, we decided to use some fuel cell in trunk. The problem is that if you just bolt standard fuel cell to the trunk floor it will look very stupid, you have to fill it in the trunk and you can't use the factory fuel gauge. So we decided to make our own custom tank. The starting point was sheet of 1,5mm stainless steel:


Cut it in to pieces:


Tag it into shape:


Weld it:




Add some baffles:




And then hole for the original fuel sender unit (only the level sensor is used):


And the finished product. Only hose connectors are missing:


Then the mounting hole for the trunk floor:


Filler pipe:




This was the original filler pipe :D


And because the underside is starting to be ready, it's time for the worst part. Removing the underside sealing. The original white one can be left there because it's very good quality and can be painted over. But that filthy black goo has to go. Its very sticky and only way to remove it is to take all in bare metal...


Also got the wheels:


Or only two :D The other two wheels are still in way.

[pazi88]

After we got all the black goo of the underside, we seam sealed it and painted with epoxy.


Then some cheap stone chip protection.


And finally some white paint, so it will look nice and is easy to clean.


Some paint for engine compartment also:


After the paint cured, I added new fuel lines:




For the rear axle, I made toe adjustment. There was no room for camber adjustment, so I thought toe is more critical.


And painted:


The rust was removed from front wishbones, added some paint and finally new ball joints.


Also cleaned the e36 steering rack.

Some new parts also, for example camber adjustment strut supports for front.


And ZF s5d 320z gearbox. Same as in my e30 and e36. I think this is the best you can get with these engines :D


For the front we got the e36 m3 eccentric bushes. These are needed because of e36 front hubs we are going to use, we should also have e36 euro 3.2 m3 wishbones, but i think we will just modify something else to get front tires in the middle of the wheel arch


Wishbones in place


Then rear axle:


Brakelines:


The pipe for rear brakes goes inside the car, so it's easy to mount the hydraulic e-brake.


Everything in place, that we need to get the car on wheels.


And there it is:




New steering wheel:


Trying the seat placement:


Removing the sound deadning


And some paint with brush:

[pazi88]

Then I cut out the rear valance. Or what was left of it :D


I also had to cut the end of the frame rails off, because they were rusted through.


It would have been nice to fabricate the frame rail ends first, and then put the new valance in place. But it looked like, that it's impossible to get them in the right place because of all the damage. So I decided to put the valance first where it belongs. And then fabricate the frame rail ends to fit.


These kind of holes i have to fill:


Ordered cheap chinese hydraulic e-brake from ebay:


Blower, dash, some of the wiring etc. already in place.


The brakes are going to be e34 325 brakes in the rear and e36 328 brakes in front. The calibers are the same size, but e34 rear rotors are bit bigger than e36. But I don't think it makes much difference in brake balance. The car's owner wanted to paint the calibers, and doing that he broke the dust seal:


So complete rebuilt with new seals it is:


I had set of refurbished e36 328 rear calibers with new ATE seals and everything. these are unused, because i broke the bleeding screws, so I just grabbed the seals and new pistons from these.


Rear calibers ready (forgot to take pictures of the front ones)


The front coilovers came at this point. They are for e36 because we have e36 knuckles and hubs in front.


And we also needed these, because the top mounts we have do work like the stock ones (no bearing to rotate):


These just got to the top of the spring:



Now the tires will turn without any banging noises from the springs.

[pazi88]

As mentioned previously, the front wheels needed to be more forward. So i made this to the bushing mounts. Now I also have caster adjustment for the front wheels.


Then the needle bearing to the top of the strut and the top mounts in place.


And installed to the car. Also e36 328i brakes in place.


Unfortunately that modification to bush mounts wasn't enough to bring the wheel forward enough, so we hammered the corner little bit to make all fit :D


Next we needed to make the wheels turn. For that I used basic e30 steering u-joints and one e34 u-joint.


And finished product:


It even fits:


After that I made new brake lines for the front and ran some wires.




Previosly we did rest of the rust work for the trunk and this was the last rust patch for the car:


Trunk painted, seam sealed and some cavity wax sprayed.


Also started to tear apart the engine:


It was filthy as hell but fortunately it was in very good shape inside. Couldn't believe that this has been driven +400 thousand kilometers (over 250k miles).


There are all the parts in box waiting to be cleaned.


Cylinder head waiting for engine shop visit.


And back from the machine shop.




They only did the basic stuff and to save money we did the valve leaking test by ourselves, using this technique: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkH4cNAahZQ

Four inlet valves were leaking, but others were ok.


Next we need to take those valves of and fix leaking. And here are the other parts i have, so maybe this is enough to build one engine :D


I have also bought 318is/m3 plastic covers for the wire harness:


Also installed drives seat:

[pazi88]

And now was the time to start assembling the engine. Starting point was this m52b28 engine from e39 with cracked head.


The problem in that was broken threads for head studs. This is common problem for alumium blocks that have been overheated (the crack in the head) and someone has replaced the threads with helicoils. But I know that those will not hold so this block is no go. Fortunately I had one spare m52b28 block sitting on the shelf, so this was the one we decided to use.


Problem in this was the stuck gearbox bolt, that had to be drilled out. No biggie.


And fixed with helicoil:


Then we cleaned the b28 crank, pistons and rods and checked them for any damage. Everything was fine so we just swapped them to new block. Because the rod bearings tend to be the weak link, we changed them and bolts to new ones:


Rest of the engine parts are going to be from previously disassembled m50b25 engine, but there was small problem when removing crank sensor:


So we ended up using the m52 front cover. That causes some problems with cooling hoses but nothing serious.

Then we made this tool to remove leaking valves :D



We just used grinding paste to fix the leaking, because the valves looked quite ok.

So after reinstalling valves, the head goes in. First new headgasget:


And in his pic everything is installed already.



In this pic we tried on new valvecover, but didn't install it, because we got the wrong seal.


And engine in:










The rest of the drive shaft is now ready, made from e36 320I and e34 525IA sections:


Hopefully this will hold:


The brake booster is also ready now. made from VW mk3 golf booster with e30 master.

[pazi88]

We assembled rest of the brake system and did new brake lines that were missing. Also installed all the clutch components and modified the getrag gear selector parts to work with the ZF trans. Also added extra long sifter and lines for hydraulic e-brake.


That e-brake cost less than 40 dollars and even seems to work and doesn't leak. After bleeding the brakes and clutch, I started wiring the engine. It was super easy job because I just soldered the round engine harness connector from e34 t the e30 body harness. There was about 5 wires to connect to make everything work. I used the e30 318is cover to mount the connector.


Here is all the engine wires connected, but most of the other stuff is still missing:


For first start we will need fuel of course. So i just made quick and dirty fuel system installation with old exhaust clamps:


The pump is cheap knockoff of bosch 044 and the fuel filter is genuine bosch. The self made gas tank was leaking a bit, so i fixed the leaks and installed it. Also the battery was installed in the trunk.


Then we tackled few problems with leaking power steering. Also the cooler was leaking and we tried to change the broken end of the cooler. After third try, it was still leaking, so we decided to order new one.


But even with leaking cooler, we tried to start the car. First start is KDFI ECU straight from the box. Only TPS is calibrated. The second is with few adjustments in tunerstudio:


After that we finished the engine compartment:


The filter is like that because it's easy to convert to turbo use:


I had old e36 exhaust laying around in our garage, because it didn't fit. So we decided to modify it to fit the e30 chassis:




Great quality from china, because it fitted better to e30 than e36 which it was meant to.

Then some primer to repaired areas:


And the real paint job will be done next winter, so we started putting back rest of the parts, so we could drive this summer:


This was the look, when we tuned the engine:


Unfortunately we forgot to put oil in the rear diff and it seized up during the engine tuning. So we got new LSD diff from another 525IA e34:



Sandblasted, painted, and installed with new oil.


Lastly we installed the fiberglass arches and did some other tweaks also. Everything is ready for the inspection aside from rear springs. I ordered them with totally wrong stiffness, so those can't handle the weight and rear end is laying on ground. But here is few pics of the "finished" product:






The new diff started leaking because the breather hole was shut:


As you can see nothing really fits and almost everything looks like shit. :rofl In addition, the rear wheels are too front in wheel arch and front wheels are too back. But at least we are not afraid to push this to limit, because we don' need to be afraid of damaging anything :eyebrows

On the test drive we got about half of the distance from last time. Now one coil broke and it started running on 5 cylinders. Luckily we had spares and continued tuning fuel maps. Here's short test video after quick tuning:

[econti]

That diff mount is very cool

[Northern]

Awesome pair of cars. You give me inspiration to fix all the rust on my iX someday...

[pazi88]

Last weekend I put this back to garage for winter. Before that I destroyed the new tires that I had so enjoy:

I even did third gear burnouts easily You can even see the rear brakes glowing red hot because of that.

After that I just washed the whole thing and it's now waiting for upgrades during winter:

[pazi88]

Found old photos of the white ONE from internet. This was the look in 2011:





The shaved BMW logo is from that time:


After paint (this is the reason for the parts with yellow parts):


And the look was Angry Birds themed in 2011 bimmerparty:




After that, someone has painted it back to white and replaced the pfeba front spoiler with M-Tech bumper.

And to this was the look two years after when we got it:


And recap how it looks now:

[pazi88]

My brother took the white ONE to local Yka meet which is held at small airfield. There is no 1/4 mile, drifting or anything like that. Just having fun with the cars. I couldn't attempt but here's few photos I found from internet:











And Youtube clip where you can see the ONE in action:

[pazi88]

Last video before winter. We already pushed the thing back to garage to receive upgrades, but first we had some fun:

[pazi88]

The garage season has started in Finland but nothing big hasn't yet happened to these projects. Mostly we have gathered parts which we will need. For example for the white ONE we bought cheap eBay turbo for more power:


Lets see which one gives up first. The engine with stock internals or that :D I'm starting YouTube series of this turbo project and also other BMW related project videos are coming. Currently I'm editing first two videos and I hope I can publishing those before christmas. So stay tuned! In the meantime here is video you may find interesting. I shot few 1/4 pulls in bimmerparty 2015 and featuring in this video is 1000+ hp 325ix e30. It's still running m20 and stock based AWD drivetrain pulling low tens with street tires. Sick machine and I love the sleeper look: