My 1988 320i Touring Project: Ambitious but Rubbish

[Roadrunner]

A few more items on the to-do list for the touring are getting wrapped up at last, although it seems like there's a law of physics I was not aware of that the total number of unfinished tasks must remain constant when working on an E30. As soon as I accomplish one task, a replacement problem is instantly generated more often than not.

Here's an example: A while ago, a big tree branch hit my car and cracked the passenger's side taillight. To access the taillight to replace it, I had to remove the side panel in the hatch which is now used to house a subwoofer (part of the stereo system the PO had put in). The problem was that the stereo installer covered inside that area with Dynamat, including the moving parts on the back of the latch, which broke when I tried to open it. The broken taillight was fixed, but I was left with this sticky mess:



I found out that I could order the parts I needed from the dealer as a repair kit (#26 on this RealOEM diagram). After cleaning up the sloppy Dynamat job inside the enclosure so that it could be opened without incident in the future to change taillight bulbs, I replaced the storage compartment latch with the replacement parts and re-installed subwoofer. Much better! Actually, this is the cleanest the hatch has ever been since I've owned it, so I figured I should document it. ;)



With the subwoofer reinstalled, we tested out the sound system (which, with all the Dynamat now in the car, should now sound mind-blowingly awesome if you believe the hype from Dynamat about their product). It sounded worse than before - there was no bass. My SO cleaned up the frayed wire connections on the subwoofer and on the amplifier. It worked! :) Satisfied that the problem was solved, we put the carpet back in.



The next day, I was ready to reinstall the center console, but the carpet in that area was soaking wet. Ahhh! It wasn't coolant, so what could it possibly be? My SO figured out that the elephant trunk hose (which I thought he was inventing to pull my leg, but I learned is in fact a real part) was clogged with leaves, so after a heavy rain storm, the water became backed up and leaked into the car. Once the debris was cleared out of the hose, the problem was solved. New problem: now that I know that the elephant trunk hose exists, it's clear that it's dry rotted and will need to be replaced. :roll:

Before putting the seats in, I thought it would be a good time to address the rust on the seat rails.



We ground off the rust, cleaned up the rails, and sprayed them with black rust-inhibiting paint. I'm hoping to replace these seats with sports seats at some point, but for now, they look a lot better than they did.

Here's the interior now with the carpet, cluster, seats and console reinstalled:







Related unresolved problems now: The stereo sounds fantastic, unless your foot touches the wires connected to the amplifier under the carpet on the front passenger's side, which was never a problem before. I'm not looking forward to taking the carpet out again to troubleshoot that one. :( The trim covering the edges of the carpet can't go back in until I replace the missing tabs. And, for the life of me, I can't remember how this part (bottom of the interior B pillar) was attached before we took the carpet out. The screws I took out and set aside are not big enough to hold it down now. I would check how the other side is attached, but the screw heads are stripped and I think it's glued in place. Anyone know what I might be missing?

[Roadrunner]

I'm not a fan of it in theory, but honestly when I'm behind the wheel of my Z3 I couldn't care less. The M54 is a great engine and has a great power curve. Plus its lighter than the M20 which is a win! BMW also built a M54 with the old fashion drive by cable throttle, the M52tu. It just has a restrictive intake manifold so you need to swap over the M54 one and a tune wouldn't hurt.

Edit: M54 is a very good swap and extremely efficient, more efficient than an s5x swap.

Although I have considered pulling m54 out of a wrecked 330 to put in the touring I think an om606 with a diesel meken 7mm pump would be a blast too.

M20 is an excellent motor though and there's not really a reason to replace. It gets a lot of hate but I love it.

Thanks for all the feedback and ideas, guys! I have to admit that I feel ridiculously out of my depth when it comes to discussing engines, but I'm trying to start learning anyway. :)

By the way I forgot to mention, your door is hitting you because you need to replace the door brake. It's the metal piece you see that bolts through the grommeted hole. easy job and will really be a relief to fix.

Easy job? I'm sold. Thanks for your help! I think our unofficial parts car at the scrap yard has one in good condition I can pull (assuming the door brake on a coupe is the same as on a 4 door? ... and assuming it hasn't been crushed yet of course). It would make a big difference to have that fixed since it's one of those things that annoys me every time I drive or work on the car.

[Proctor750]

By the way I forgot to mention, your door is hitting you because you need to replace the door brake. It's the metal piece you see that bolts through the grommeted hole. easy job and will really be a relief to fix.

Edit: M54 is a very good swap and extremely efficient, more efficient than an s5x swap.

Although I have considered pulling m54 out of a wrecked 330 to put in the touring I think an om606 with a diesel meken 7mm pump would be a blast too.

M20 is an excellent motor though and there's not really a reason to replace. It gets a lot of hate but I love it.

[stonea]

What do you think of the electronic throttle in the M54 compared to the connection to the road you get with mechanical throttle control? I'm nowhere near planning an engine swap in the touring at this stage (but if I did, I'd steal the S38B38 from Shock(/\)ave's M5, haha... :mrgreen: hopefully he's not reading this) - maybe some day, though. In the meantime, one good thing about the stock engine in the touring is that I no longer have to worry about speeding tickets since it makes it physically impossible to surpass the speed limit.

I'm not a fan of it in theory, but honestly when I'm behind the wheel of my Z3 I couldn't care less. The M54 is a great engine and has a great power curve. Plus its lighter than the M20 which is a win! BMW also built a M54 with the old fashion drive by cable throttle, the M52tu. It just has a restrictive intake manifold so you need to swap over the M54 one and a tune wouldn't hurt.

[Roadrunner]

Great job on the touring so far. My dream car would be a Jordan level restomoded e30 touring with the M54 and everything.

Thanks! :) I'm having a lot of fun working on it.

I've seen some of Jordan's builds and they're unbelievable. Assuming I ever had the amount of talent, garage space, and the funds necessary to complete a project on that level (hey, we're dreaming here, right? ;) ), I still don't know if I could bring myself to drive a masterpiece like that and use it the way I'd want to.

What do you think of the electronic throttle in the M54 compared to the connection to the road you get with mechanical throttle control? I'm nowhere near planning an engine swap in the touring at this stage (but if I did, I'd steal the S38B38 from Shock(/\)ave's M5, haha... :mrgreen: hopefully he's not reading this) - maybe some day, though. In the meantime, one good thing about the stock engine in the touring is that I no longer have to worry about speeding tickets since it makes it physically impossible to surpass the speed limit.

[stonea]

Great job on the touring so far. My dream car would be a Jordan level restomoded e30 touring with the M54 and everything.

[Roadrunner]

great progress! I'll have to show my wife this build... give her some ideas. haha!

Thanks! And that will be interesting... can't wait to hear how that goes over. :popcorn: You never know, your wife just might surprise you. ;)

[jeenyus]

great progress! I'll have to show my wife this build... give her some ideas. haha!

[Roadrunner]

With the heater core job finally done after the second coolant valve rebuild, and the modifications to the mounting hardware and heater core box successful, I was highly motivated to tackle a few of the interior projects I thought would really finish the car off well.

My (not so) secret plan is working! Sweet. :devil:

After putting the seats, steering wheel, and other essentials (minus the cluster, which we found out will eventually cause the car to die as the main battery cannot charge without it) back in the car we took it to the drive-in to enjoy the work done by that point.

That was a fun date. ;) Luckily we're both crazy enough to not be fazed by minor details like that.

Success! :) Those lights have already come in handy several times, too.

I use the lights on that map light mirror (which I got from a member on r3v) all the time. I don't even know how I functioned without it before. Now I actually have a chance of finding my keys in my purse at night! :up:

As you can see in the picture, he also replaced the English check panel with the original German one. Not only does it look cooler in my opinion, but as an added benefit, I've found that when most of the lights on the check panel are lit up it's less alarming to passengers when they don't know the meaning of the words.

First you'll need to remove the steering wheel, then the cluster, then the S.I. board itself from the cluster. Excellent guides for those steps can be found with a quick search.

I used this helpful guide to figure out how to remove and reinstall the cluster. Removing the steering wheel is supposed to be optional, but it doesn't take a lot of extra effort and I wanted to make it as easy as possible to remove the brittle trim pieces around the cluster without breaking them.

[Shock(/\)ave]

NiCad Battery S.I. Board Remote Battery Pack Modification

I didn't find any good pictures of the S.I. board remote battery pack modification during my research, so this should be helpful to anyone deciding to tackle this job in the future.

First you'll need to remove the steering wheel, then the cluster, then the S.I. board itself from the cluster. Excellent guides for those steps can be found with a quick search.

Here's what I started with after I carefully removed both exploded NiCad batteries from the S.I. board:





Nasty, and this is after gently brushing away most of the dried battery acid.

Before you begin your work, take a few pictures of the S.I. board with the batteries still installed.

To remove your batteries, use a utility knife to extremely carefully cut through the strips of glue on the batteries, then use a variable temperature soldering iron on a low setting to add fresh solder to each of the mounting points of the battery mounting tabs. This will ensure you've got your iron set to the lowest temperature that will actually melt your solder, and will make the ancient solder on the board easy to remove. Now use a solder sucker or soldering wick to carefully suck or draw up the solder holding in the battery mounting tabs from the back side of the circuit board. After removing the solder the tabs should pop free with a careful pull from needle nose pliers; if they don't, carefully apply heat with the iron while you very gently pull on the mounting point you're working on from behind.

Here's what you'll be left with:



Blow off the remaining dried battery acid with compressed air, then carefully and gently clean the entire area with Q-tips (don't use the cheap stuff on a job like this) and isopropyl alcohol:





The blue colour you're seeing is copper circuit traces combining with sulphuric acid to form copper sulphate, which is not something you want to see. Clean any of that off with a soft plastic or wooden scraper so you don't damage the traces, then cover any exposed copper with a good epoxy when you've finished your soldering work.

I'll let the pictures do most of the explaining, but what you need to do is mimic the entire path of the in series electrical connection flowing through the batteries with small carefully stripped, tinned, and soldered wires. If you look carefully at the circuit paths before you start soldering you'll notice that only one of the two negative mounting tabs is electrically connected, but if you simply bridge both of them with a small piece of wire you aren't going to make a mistake. Your wires should follow the path of the current flow, and when you've finished here's what you're aiming for (the epoxy was applied to cover the exposed copper traces - you might not need it):









Cut a small notch in the plastic cluster housing just big enough to fit both of the remote battery pack wires through it, and carefully reinstall the S.I. board into the cluster housing while routing the wires around and under the board so they don't get pinched. When you're done you'll have your remote battery pack neatly and securely hanging from your cluster:



Mount the battery pack after mounting the cluster with velcro tape, and enjoy the peace of mind of an easy battery replacement in your distant future. :)

[Shock(/\)ave]

It's difficult to tell from looking at the pictures of the end result, but she installed the Dynamat to an exceptionally high standard without any gaps whatsoever, and only covered the seams with tape to keep butyl from oozing out onto the bottom of the carpet. Awesome job. :)

With the heater core job finally done after the second coolant valve rebuild, and the modifications to the mounting hardware and heater core box successful, I was highly motivated to tackle a few of the interior projects I thought would really finish the car off well. Since I'd talked her into getting a map light mirror as an upgrade (they should really have been standard equipment on all trim levels), I decided to install it for her. That job led me to pull out one of the interior lights to confirm wiring colours, shattering it in the process with a piece of plastic shrapnel hitting me in the face, all due to it having been insanely tightly wedged in by whoever did the recovering of the headliner. As it turned out, during the installation of the recovered headliner they must have caught the wires for the light somewhere as two of the three wires were far too short. Their solution to this problem was to shove the fragile light into the hole and hope the bulb never burned out.

After putting the seats, steering wheel, and other essentials (minus the cluster, which we found out will eventually cause the car to die as the main battery cannot charge without it) back in the car we took it to the drive-in to enjoy the work done by that point. On the way there the driver’s side sun visor locking pin decided to free itself, causing the sun visor to droop down into my field of vision as I drove the car.

The next day, I went back to our unofficial parts car, which is still awaiting being put out of its misery in the wrecking yard, and pulled both interior lights along with both of the mint condition black sun visors. The sun visors on the touring were grey, looked grimy, and the vinyl was cracking around their mounting arms. The foul cocktail of mould and rodent excrement had mercifully diminished in intensity if not foulness after I pulled both rear vent windows for a retrofit on my M3 many weeks ago, but mouse nesting material and droppings still rained down in startling amounts from the headliner as I worked. I ended up with my parts and various interior fasteners as spares, and the new sun visors went on very easily:



You can also see the new map light mirror installed in that picture.

The map light mirror install was a surprisingly big job, and I have proper wire stripping and soldering tools and some soldering skill (electrical connections on something you never intend to see again should be soldered). I had to find the correct coloured wires, then cut, strip, tin, solder, and finally wrap them in electrical tape. That was very time consuming to do correctly and neatly, but actually snapping the mirror into position felt nearly impossible. I ended up using the biggest flat head screwdriver in my toolbox pressed against the spring loaded pin along with a ton of force on the mirror itself to pry the mirror into the base.



Success! :) Those lights have already come in handy several times, too.

I also took it upon myself to attempt to repair the cluster, which had a flaky tachometer and non functioning fuel economy gauge and service interval lights.



More on that in the next post...

[Roadrunner]

Figured I would follow up with you on the tree situation. Roof fixed, new panel and even got hood peeling clear area fixed.

Nice work! :up: Feel free to post some pictures of how your touring is coming along any time. Are you going to start a project thread?

Hopefully trees worldwide will stop their senseless attacks on E30 tourings and move on to cars I wouldn't mind seeing put out of their misery, like Pontiac Sunfires or something. :devil:

as for headliner i used opal gray winchester 1/8" foam backed 4 yards. I believe it is called world uupholstery or some such place. Excellent match.
adhesive was dap weldwood high temp spray adhesive.

Thanks for the info - that's good to know. I looked through the touring's service history and found that the previous owner had the headliner reupholstered at a custom auto trim shop in Toronto 3 years ago (no info on the materials they used, though), so I'm hoping mine won't have to be redone for a while.

the screws that hold some of the metal strips and wind deflector have some kind of goop to keep water from falling into the sunroof cassette. Im struggling to find something to use besides butyl.

My car doesn't have a sunroof, but my go-to for stuff like you described is Amazing Automotive Goop - it's waterproof, sticks to just about everything, goes on clear, and can be painted over.

[Proctor750]

Figured I would follow up with you on the tree situation. Roof fixed, new panel and even got hood peeling clear area fixed.
as for headliner i used opal gray winchester 1/8" foam backed 4 yards. I believe it is called world uupholstery or some such place. Excellent match.
adhesive was dap weldwood high temp spray adhesive.

the screws that hold some of the metal strips and wind deflector have some kind of goop to keep water from falling into the sunroof cassette. Im struggling to find something to use besides butyl.

[Roadrunner]

Next on the to-do list was replacing the factory sound-deadening tar on the floor pans. It was an obvious choice to remove most of it in the first place because it was soaked with coolant and trapping moisture, needed to be removed to treat rust, or was already peeling up on its own in sections.

While researching options for replacement sound-deadening, I found tons of (unintentionally) hilarious user reviews. For one of the 3M products that was similar to Dynamat, there was a product giveaway for reviewers on Amazon which seriously backfired and resulted in a string of whiny reviews along the lines of, "I'm not a rocket scientist or some kind of mechanical god - how could I possibly be expected to use this product?! Who would go to such insane lengths to soundproof their car? Whyyyy can't it be easier?? Wahh! 0.5 / 5 stars!!" One guy said that when he found out he was actually supposed to remove the carpet to install the sound deadening, he thought that would be way too much work, so he put a full sheet under each floor mat, and was shocked and disappointed that it didn't make much of a difference. I think George Carlin said it best: "Some people are really f**king stupid." :mrgreen:

I ordered a bulk pack of Dynamat Xtreme which had 9 18" x 32" sheets, enough to cover 36 sq. ft. Here's a guide to applying sound-deadening with some useful things to keep in mind. Before starting, I touched up a few final spots on the floor with rust converter, removed the goo left behind by the original tar, vacuumed the floor, and gave it a final wipe with isopropyl alcohol to make sure the Dynamat would adhere well. I decided to cover the entire floor pan from the firewall to the base of the back seats with no gaps (erring on the side of going a bit overboard since I've read you don't need 100% coverage).

I used a Dynamat roller and a tennis ball to roll the sheets into the contours and crevices of the floor, and a utility knife to cut the Dynamat into smaller pieces as well as to cut around holes, screws and so on. I taped up the seams with duct tape since I didn't want the tar to stick to my clothes as I worked or the carpet when I put it back in. Leatherman always comes in handy, too.



I had no idea what I was doing when I started, so I just figured out what worked best for me as I went. I cut the big sheets of Dynamat into three big sections along the crease lines from the way they were folded in the box, then cut those into smaller sections as needed. I wore gloves at first, but they constantly stuck to the tar and made it nearly impossible to place the sheets of Dynamat, so I ditched them early on. I used up all of the smaller scraps on odd-shaped gaps and saved the smaller cut-off pieces for covering the transmission tunnel. I tried laying the sheets of Dynamat out in the sun as suggested in the guide I read, but I found that the tar stuck to the backing making it much harder to peel off if the sheets got too hot.



With the amount of time I've spent fixing things in this specific area of the car, I should really fix that door to keep it from closing on me all the time ... and figure out how to reattach the trim on that door handle...



Since I'm already sidetracked, can you guess at least three more projects underway in this picture?




?

?

?

?


Answers:
1) The gauge cluster was being repaired.
2) The stock mirror was removed so that it could be replaced with a maplight mirror.
3) The English check panel was going to be replaced with the original German check panel.
4) Bonus - The sun visors, which were cracked and did not match any of the other trim, were about to be replaced with black, crack-free sun visors.

More about those all of those things coming soon!

Back to the Dynamat job, the biggest pain was having to work around the wires in on the driver's side...



...and on the passenger's side, including the amplifier and its crazy wiring that kept getting in the way:



Done at last!





I still have almost two huge sheets of Dynamat left which I'm going to use for extra sound deadening in the doors once I cut down on the list of unfinished tasks.

We put the seats back in and took it for a test drive. :)



Sure there was no carpet, center console, check panel, mirror, gauge cluster, etc., but the touring was already sounding better and quieter. One step forward, too many steps backward to count at the moment... but it will all come together eventually.

[Roadrunner]

With the coolant leak taken care of at last, it was time to replace the factory tar. Before I could get to that, though, the floors needed work. The carpet was already out, so I just needed to take the seats out again. I've taken the seats out and put them back in so many times now (since I have to keep driving the touring while I work on it) that I think I could remove them blindfolded. I was going to time how fast I could remove them and reinstall them to keep it interesting for myself after the bazillionth time, but I've been told that I'm being weird and perhaps taking this hobby too far. :p

I still had a bunch of tar to remove. I've heard of many methods to make it easier to take the factory tar off, including a great idea to use dry ice and a hammer in this Salt City Euros episode (amazing YouTube channel with an E30 touring build BTW - check out their videos if you haven't already!) which unfortunately I didn't see until after I was already done this job. Luckily, it was humid enough that most of the tar peeled right off in large sections. I suspected that the rust spot in the passenger's side footwell continued further under the tar:



Sure enough, more rust:



...and even more rust:



I poked at the big rust spot and it became a rust hole. This was not getting better. :(



I grudgingly decided that while I was at it, I might as well re-do the patch job that was done at the shop on the rust hole in the driver's side footwell, which appeared to be filled in with silicone. As tempting as it was to leave it in place, I didn't want to worry about untreated rust continuing to eat away at the car underneath the silicone once it was covered with new sound deadening tar and carpeting.



Now that I had two holes to patch, I needed to cut out the flaps of metal covering the rust holes (both spots had rusted out from underneath). But how? My partner / car adviser recommended using a Dremel to cut it out and gave me the idea for how to make patch panels. Since I'd never used a Dremel before, I practiced on one of the old rusty fenders from the touring (good thing I didn't get rid of those yet - I knew procrastination would pay off one day! :up:), and then cut into the metal in the car to clean up the edges.



The old fenders just so happened to come in handy again. I made a template out of a cereal box, but I recently saw a better idea on an episode of Wheeler Dealers to use painter's tape to form a template right on the car so you know the exact shape, size and angles needed for metal patch panels (good ol' Edd China - he's thought of everything! :) ). I cut two panels out of a scrap fender using tin snips, bent them on an angle on a wooden crate...



...and then bent them some more to fit the contours of the car:



Then it was time for some POR-15 to treat the rusty areas as well as the patch panels. My SO ordered the biggest container of it we could get in Canada a while back, which apparently was not designed to ever be resealed. Every time the container is opened, you have to practically destroy the can to pry it open because, umm, it's stuck shut with f'ing POR-15! At least this can is in no danger of rusting. We later transferred the contents to a glass jar.



I'd never worked with POR-15 before, but it spread onto the metal panels pretty easily and smoothly with a paint brush. The coffee tray that had been temporarily serving as the touring's cup holder worked surprisingly well as a drying rack.



I coated the rust holes with POR-15 after scraping them with wire brushes and giving them a through cleaning. I'd had to remove some of the seam sealer to get rid of surface rust, so I covered those spots as well just to be safe. Here's the passenger's side:



...and the driver's side:



Once the coats of POR-15 had dried, I applied some J-B Weld to the edges with a coffee stir stick, using my lap as a workbench. By some miracle, I managed to not spill any of it on myself. I'd never worked with J-B Weld before and didn't know how much time I'd have before it set, but it turned out to be more forgiving than I'd imagined. I filled in the cavities with caulking, pressed the patch panels into place and sealed up the edges.



The few remaining areas of surface rust on the floor (especially around the gas pedal, drain holes, and a couple of other spots) were wire brushed, cleaned up and sprayed with rust inhibiting paint:



Here's one of the patch panels in place, and a preview of my Dynamat job - more on that next time!



In case you're wondering, the clip-on flashlight was there to keep the driver's side door from hitting me in the face since it won't stay open and I don't know how to fix it yet.