Project Lessmeister: 91 318iS Restomod w/ MTech2 and modern drivetrain

[Jordan]

I don't expect it will sound much if any different than a M50/M52/S50/S52 swap. All the 24v engines sound about the same.

This evening I dumped out a box of wire clippings onto my bench to best overwhelm myself with.



Then while carefully thumbing through MS43 pinout and wiring diagrams, I removed the AT related wiring and other emissions and CAN bus crap that MarkD would be deleting from the DME program.



Here is what it left of the chassis side M54 related wiring, to be trimmed to appropriate length, properly terminated, and wrapped in OE style.

[TimeMachinE30]

What pin tool do you use?

[Jordan]

Hmm, I think it is made by SIR tools. It has everything built into it that I have needed on these cars.



I had just a little time this evening to get something done in the garage, and since I am waiting on some pins to continue on the harness I decided to open the instrument cluster and fiddle with that.

This car did not come with the original instrument cluster. I expected to have to replace the odometer gears on this second hand cluster but imagine my surprise when I opened it and found brand new gears.

The owner was sort of vague on the mileage of the chassis. Autocheck and Carfax also varied in thier record of mileage greatly. Given the vehicles extensive restoration and the fact that the genuine mileage is anyones guess I decided to set the odometer back to zero.

This process requires disassembly of the speedometer followed by desoldering several pads on the PCB to remove some components blocking removal of the guide rods preventing odometer tampering. The design is fairly encouraging of you leaving it alone.



While I had everything apart I thought it would be an excellent time to continue the vehicles red interior accents onto the instrument needles. I actually had a spare set of E30 needles from a cluster I disassembled for parts back in 2001 or so. Crazy how many times these have been moved across the country and state with me in that time, and they were still as new.





I'm going to let these dry overnight and then swap them out in the morning.

[monty23psk]

Any trick to getting the needles oFL and then on at the right alignment point? I heard a fork does the trick for removal.

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[george graves]

Upholstery must be really, really hard to do and make it look factory, or I'm really picky. Or a bit of both.

I do have one question....I've alway wondered this...Does it have a new car smell going on? And what is that smell? I assume outgassing of 100 different plastic parts to make a nose cocktail of yummyness.

[wannasupra]

Good Christ man. Wow.

[AndrewBird]

Upholstery must be really, really hard to do and make it look factory, or I'm really picky. Or a bit of both.

Ditto.

As good as those seats look, there are several things about them that would drive my OCD insane.

A little steam might help:

[Cabriolet]

I'm not sure how I missed this thread. well done sir. I see you have redone the wire harness and I know first hand how terrible that job is. But you did such a nice job. Keep up the work!

[AllydNYC]

Upholstery must be really, really hard to do and make it look factory, or I'm really picky. Or a bit of both.

I do have one question....I've alway wondered this...Does it have a new car smell going on? And what is that smell? I assume outgassing of 100 different plastic parts to make a nose cocktail of yummyness.

I've wondered the same thing.

[Staszek]

Amazing thread, similar to my project except your way better at it then me!!

I also got a new rear seat juke, mine was missing, it does make a difference in the new car smell :)

Definitely following this one.

[Jordan]

Any trick to getting the needles oFL and then on at the right alignment point? I heard a fork does the trick for removal.

If you mark the outside edge of the gauge prior to removal its easy to line the needles back up. A fork or small needle nose pliers work fine.

Upholstery must be really, really hard to do and make it look factory, or I'm really picky. Or a bit of both.

I do have one question....I've alway wondered this...Does it have a new car smell going on? And what is that smell? I assume outgassing of 100 different plastic parts to make a nose cocktail of yummyness.

As good as those seats look, there are several things about them that would drive my OCD insane.

Upholstery is quite hard to do well in my opinion. Even the best pattern made from a disassembled best case scenario seat is still making a pattern off old distorted leather, and no two seat foam bolsters are going to have aged just the same. A bolster cover that fits one seat perfectly may fit another less than ideal. Everything in a perfect world is very close, but in this one we are all dealing with 25+ yr old seat foams etc here.

Steam would help relax the leather yes, but then so does the heat from natural sun light. I've poured over vintage sales literature for these cars and found the seating as new to have much of the same pulls and wrinkles as new.

I think you'd be really surprised how much leather shrinks and changes shape over 25 years with UV, abrasion, moisture, body oils etc thrown at it.


Most of the plastic parts in the car aren't giving off an odorous aromas because while they may be new, they are all NOS and have been sitting on a shelf for years before they came into service. The interior does smell quite strongly of new leather though and it smells awesome.

[kronus]

I bet those seats are nice to be in. Back covers getting reconditioned?

[Jordan]

The back covers will be dyed, I have not been able to do it because the humidity here has been too high.

[Lietuvis]

It's very sad to see those seats, how bad it's done, leather is overstressed, curved seams on headrest :/
Knowing that project is going from A to Z.
My friend also restores red e30, and this is his leather seats, with red threads.
*I apologize for the photo quality, later will be better.

[Jordan]

Thank you for shitting on the thread with your unwelcome opinion. I'm so very glad to hear you have a friend in a 3rd world country that can do it better. Please let me know when he can have a replacement seat kit here in Houston.