My 1988 320i Touring Project: Ambitious but Rubbish

[Roadrunner]

It seems like ages since I've updated this thread.... hmm, where to start? Well, the touring has had about a dozen projects on the go for a while that I hadn't been able to wrap up for one reason or another - it seemed like a never-ending spiral of one task leading to several more jobs that had to be completed before getting back to the original task at hand. And why am I always missing at least one critical piece of hardware for every job when I go to reassemble everything? How are they escaping their carefully labeled and sealed ziplock bags?! Even though my organization system is still far from bulletproof, I'm finally starting to enjoy the domino effect of everything falling into place one small job at a time! :)

My SO has been a huge help. If it wasn't for him encouraging me to keep working on it, I probably would have thrown in the towel by now. He even offered to take some of the projects off of my hands so that I have a hope of getting the touring back in one piece someday soon. Aww. Nothing says love like a man who will strip wires and solder for you. ;D

So, when I left off, I thought we had just about finished the heater core job at last, but realized that the heater control valve had been leaking and couldn't be reused as-is. I figured we could try rebuilding it before spending hundreds of dollars on a new one, assuming they're even available to order. I got the idea from this thread - not the same valve as the one in the touring, but close enough. Worst case, it would still leak coolant (so, it would be no different from every other day for the last two years ... sorry car!) and we'd be in the same position of needing to replace it.

Here's the state the heater control valve was in before:



Disassembled and cleaned:



Reassembled with new gaskets, new screws and lock nuts, and sealed with Automotive Goop (he cut away some of the plastic housing to allow easier access to seal it with the goop):



...and reinstalled:



We also used the screws shown here to replace the original bolts and changed the direction for better access. There was literally no room to fit a wrench in this area when the old bolts were facing the other way, especially to remove the one on the top right:



We ran the car, cranked up the heat, and glorious heat poured out of the vents! Sure, it was the height of summer and it was already uncomfortably hot, but the point is, it worked! Now I could move on to prepping the floors for Dynamat, which I'd been holding off on until the coolant leak was fixed for good.

Until the next day.... :curse: *&%$!!!



My partner took it upon himself to rebuild the heater control valve again to get to the bottom of why it was leaking.

Take two: Heater control valve disassembled even more this time, with the Goop cleaned off (the Goop did not work well in this application, as it didn't stick to anything and peeled right off):



It turns out there were two big cracks (one extending up the cylinder) that we didn't see the first time:



Soldered and ready to put back together:



Sealed up with J-B Marine Weld and reinstalled:



Since then, there have been no coolant leaks! :D

Jumping ahead to after we put the carpet back in, the cut-out panel of the heater box clicked back into place:



And, finally, with black electrical tape tacking down the weather stripping:



I have lots of catching up to do - more coming soon!

[Shock(/\)ave]

How To Replace An E30 Heater Core On Cars With Left Hand Drive & No Air Conditioning

The climate control system on E30s appears to have been engineered around the presence of air conditioning, as the replacement of the heater core in a car equipped with air conditioning is a straightforward process. On cars without air conditioning, the same job is just about impossible without modifications to the heater core box and the use of new mounting hardware or removal of the entire dash.

This procedure will describe how to remove your heater core, modify your heater core box, and install a new heater core without dropping the steering column, removing the pedal box, or removing the dash.

Credit for the idea goes to a thread posted by member cyclingches on bimmerforums.com.

Before you begin this job you'll need to first order the replacement heater core that uses plastic lines from your local BMW parts guy. If you haven't made friends with a parts guy yet, now's the time figure out which guy behind the counter is an enthusiast and start being friendly. My parts guy is a friend of mine now, and I've known him for over 10 years.

You'll also need two 17 mm X 22 mm X 2 mm washers, the closest match you can find for the washer inside the heater valve (I used a spout "O" ring for a Peerless faucet), some J-B WaterWeld or J-B MarineWeld, and a strip of flat vinyl "V" weatherstripping about 2 cm total width (preferably black in colour).

The tools you'll need are a full metric socket set with extensions, a drill with an assortment of small drill bits, a Dremel with cut-off wheels, a set of screwdrivers including torx drivers, a utility knife, a hacksaw, and a small clean disposable catch container such as an empty soup can or yogurt container.

Take out the lower dash panel under the steering wheel, the emergency brake handle cover, the rear ashtray, rear centre console, front ashtray, and front centre console.

Look under the driver's side of the dash toward the centre of the car and you'll see your heater core and the lines that feed it (some fasteners were already removed in this picture):



Those are plastic feed lines you're looking at. You'll need to remove all of the torx screws in the heater core as well as the screw holding the air flow diverter flap on, then carefully rotate the flap up and off.

Taking off the black plastic coolant line with the valve on it is a straightforward process. First, loosen both of the hose clamps in the engine bay on the coolant lines going through the firewall near the brake booster and fuse box. Slide the catch container under the connection point of the lines and pull them off, allowing the coolant to drain into the container. Back inside the car in the driver's footwell, remove the two small bolts holding the black plastic line and valve to the heater core, slide the catch container under the connection point and pull off the line, first toward the firewall, then around the heater core and out of the firewall.

Cut the beige plastic coolant line off of the heater core along the red line pictured, catch container in position, being careful not to cut the plastic line itself:



Once cut, the line pulls out from the firewall and the heater core can be slid out toward the steering column if you didn't miss a torx screw. At this point you'll want to cover your carpet with newspapers and an old towel, as your catch container won't suffice. Cut your heater core as close to the heater core box as you can get comfortably (note the steering column has been dropped in this picture, but that is not a requirement for this job):



Pull out the remaining heater core, and cut it again, repeating the process until you can pull all of the heater core out of the car. With the steering column lowered it took two cuts, though it should take three cuts without lowering it.

Looking at the heater core box, you'll see that it's actually two pieces of plastic with a central seam held together with metal clips. What you're going to do is modify the box to create a removable, resealable panel allowing for relatively easy future heater core changes.

Jumping ahead a bit, when I made my cuts I was doing so blind, but I managed to close to the ideal cut lines. A small piece of the box broke off as it was attached to the panel I removed, pictured circled in yellow, with ideal cut lines shown in red:



Mark your cut lines using painter's tape. You'll want your upper cut line to start higher than mine, just below the circular protrusion on the side of the heater box, ending under the mounting bracket just as mine did:



Using a hacksaw blade (mine was just wrapped in a rag as I don't have a proper hacksaw blade handle yet), begin by carefully cutting through the box opening:



I then switched to using my Dremel to continue the cuts along the box toward the central seam - you should use whatever is most comfortable for you at each point in the cutting process:



Pull off the joining clip:



Once at the seam, switch back to the hacksaw blade, squeezing your fingers carefully through the long cut that you made in the side of the box and pulling gently on the plastic:



After the cuts are complete, pull open the outer panel, then carefully pull apart the inner mounting rail, which should separate without breaking if you make your cuts correctly:



Smooth out the cut edges of the heater core box by running a utility knife blade perpendicular to the cut edges, scraping away the worst of the plastic burrs. At this point, you can now easily clean the inside of the heater core box and slide the new heater core into the box:



You can clearly see the inner mounting rail in the picture above. The other half of the rail is attached to the now removable panel.

Fasten two strips of the weatherstripping to the inside of the heater core box along the cut lines:



To be continued...

[Roadrunner]

After we got the shear bolts off the steering column, I set to work on removing the old heater core. I was hoping that at this point the job would be pretty similar to the instructions I could find for the metal pipe version.

First, I loosened the hose clamps on the hoses covering the plastic pipes and drained the coolant that leaked out. The center console and floor ducting were already out (as a bonus, the carpet was already pulled as well, which saved it from more coolant spills). The air diverter was only held on by one screw - I was worried it would break when I pulled it off, but luckily it came off it one piece. So far so good.

Most of the hardware was not too hard to remove, except that this type of heater core is held on by torx screws, not Phillips head screws like in the other version.



Once I had most of the hardware removed, there was still one bolt that was a major PITA to remove:



For the life of me, I could not get a wrench to fit in that space no matter what angle I tried. Flexible sockets did not fit either. My partner had an easier solution: cutting the part of the pipe on the heater core side off with a hacksaw. Well, that worked. How you're supposed to get that bolt off if you don't want to destroy the old heater core, I do not know. Remove the whole dash I guess?

I disconnected the two-pin connector for the heater valve, pulled the pipes out of the firewall, and caught the remaining coolant that dripped out. The heater core was now loose. So, now, all I had to do was pull it out!



Errrm... as you can see, this was not going as planned at all. :sad: The heater core cleared the steering column (barely!), but now the pedals were in the way. So it was looking like the whole lowering-the-steering-column method was total BS - no wonder I couldn't find details from anyone who had actually done it! My research was going nowhere. Did you know that in right hand drive cars you can access the heater core and valve through the glove box? Not that that was helpful me at all...

It was looking like the entire pedal box was going to have to come out. The only info I could find on doing this was for the purposes of doing an auto to manual swap - more evidence that the "right" way to do this job must be to take out the dash, which I was finding out a little late. I was in way over my head and was worried that even if I could somehow get all of the pedals off, I would never be able to get everything set up properly and drive the car again any time soon.

My SO, who had been in favour of the method involving cutting the heater box from the beginning, now had a compelling case for me to stop the madness and just let him help since I was completely stuck at this point. I'll see if he would graciously post some pictures and explain what he did. :) I know some people will seriously cringe at the idea of cutting through the heater box, but I'm happy with it. I'm considering it an improvement that I now have an "access panel" to get into the heater core area if I need to down the road. It seems like a design flaw that the interior of the touring has to be nearly fully dismantled to get to the heater core because of the left hand drive, non-AC setup.

At any rate, the old heater core was out! In case you've ever wondered what a heater core looks like on the inside (who hasn't! ;-)):



My new heater core:



We also replaced the shear bolts from the steering column with hex cap bolts from the hardware store. You can kind of see them under the part of this thing that looks like creepy eye sockets (I probably should have looked up the actual part name... ):



When I get to the end of my current task list with the touring, I'm thinking of adjusting the height of the steering column since I'm short, but mostly so that removing the shear bolts was not completely pointless.

And, in more important news: I have a new car buddy!



I keep catching him hanging out around the touring while I work on it. :mrgreen:

Before finishing the heater core job, I noticed in pictures I'd taken that it looked like the heater control valve had been leaking... so probably not a good idea to reinstall as-is. Somehow I hadn't even considered this yet since I was so focused on the heater core. Before spending a ton of money on a new one (if they're even still available new?), I thought it was worth a try to clean it and rebuild it first since it appeared to be functioning otherwise. Which leads me to my next mini-project - you'll have to check my next update to see if it was successful!

[Roadrunner]

I will snag a new sunroof and have it painted. The rest PDR should be able to take care of through insurance.

Sounds like a good plan! Hopefully the insurance company doesn't give you a hard time. My car had PDR done on some spots and there are no traces of the damage in those areas now. :)

The good news is I have an excuse to tackle the headliner, but need to find someone who has access to OE material (or something close). Let me know if you have any leads and I'll let you know what I find after I do it if you end up doing one.

That's one task I won't have to tackle myself, as the previous owner had it redone before he sold it to us. I'm not sure where he sourced the material - I'll let you know if I find out. The headliner is still listed on ECS Tuning for the electric sunroof and manual sunroof versions, but since it's NLA from the dealer it's possible ECS doesn't actually have it available (that's happened more than once when I've looked into ordering parts from them ). You could also post about it in the touring section to see if anyone else knows where to source the part or similar material.

The color is MalachitGruen Metallic 205.

Nice colour! :up: I don't think I've seen that one before. Have you posted pictures of your touring?

Also, if you ever want the exact HR springs for the touring you can get them off German Ebay. The HR spring code for them is 29684-1 (I just got a set when the stupid tree fell).

Thanks, that's good to know! Hopefully I won't need to replace those for a while, either, since my touring was lowered by the PO not long before I got it. It's pretty much as low as I can get away with for the purposes of daily driving... maybe too low since I'm pushing my luck by doing things like driving it around bumpy parking lots, using it to haul heavy equipment, and driving it in the snow.

What is your next task on the touring?

I'm currently working on making patch panels for a couple of rust holes and prepping the floors for Dynamat which I'll be putting in to replace the factory tar I removed. Hoping to have my car put back together by the weekend!

[Proctor750]

I will snag a new sunroof and have it painted. The rest PDR should be able to take care of through insurance. The good news is I have an excuse to tackle the headliner, but need to find someone who has access to OE material (or something close). Let me know if you have any leads and I'll let you know what I find after I do it if you end up doing one.

The color is MalachitGruen Metallic 205.

Also, if you ever want the exact HR springs for the touring you can get them off German Ebay. The HR spring code for them is 29684-1 (I just got a set when the stupid tree fell).

What is your next task on the touring?

[Roadrunner]

Aw, man, that sucks. What was the story - did the tree branch snap off in a storm or something? Looks like the paint was in beautiful shape, too (what paint colour is it, by the way?). Any word on if you can get the repair covered by insurance?

[Proctor750]

Oh nooo! :sad: Sorry to see that! How bad was the damage? I don't know what the deal is with trees attacking E30 tourings, but so far there are 3 reported cases on this thread alone!

[Roadrunner]

Yeh those bolts im afraid you need to wack in the right spot hard and true and follow through.. Prob just needed a bigger hammer Sometimes hitting them the opposite way a couple of times helps release them as well.

Yeah, I'm assuming I didn't hit them hard enough or maybe not at the right angle. Interesting that hitting them the opposite way helps release them - I was afraid that would tighten them!

down at the bottom of the column there is a couple of bolts holding it to the firewall (push the carpet out of the way), undo those and the bolt on the coupling in the engine bay.. Then you can pull the whole lot out of the way. Dont forget to take the harness off it first ;-)

Thanks for all the info! The heater core cleared the steering column just from lowering it, but the problem I ran into next was that there still wasn't enough room to get the heater core out because the pedals were in the way. I have the heater core replaced now and I'll update with all the details soon!

What's with E30 touring and trees?

Oh nooo! :sad: Sorry to see that! How bad was the damage? I don't know what the deal is with trees attacking E30 tourings, but so far there are 3 reported cases on this thread alone!

Good to see you got it off, now you can put regular hex flange bolts on it. The threads are nothing special, any metric bolt that size will fit in there.

Shouldn't be too hard to get replacements for those bolts, just take them into a hardware store and you should be able to find them.

Thanks, guys! I was going to the hardware store last night to replace them, and then I couldn't find where I put the old bolts to use for comparison. I'll have to find them this weekend. I wasn't kidding about being completely disorganized! I'm in the middle of working on something and then I get distracted by something like this...





...and forget what I was doing and where I put everything. I am hopeless.

Congrats on getting those bolts off, I find myself walking away for 5 minutes to cool down when I get pissed at my car lol

Thanks! I was so fed up with trying to get those bolts off that I had to call it a night and come back to it the next day. I was actually still pissed off the next morning because they were still there, as if I was secretly hoping that a car fairy had come along and removed them for me during the night.

If you have an air compressor you will want to use this for the steering column bolts:

I don't have an air compressor, but even if I did...

Lol those are dangerous in the wrong hands!

...Exactly. :mrgreen:

[bangn]

Lol those are dangerous in the wrong hands!

[Proctor750]

If you have an air compressor you will want to use this for the steering column bolts:

[jpod999]

Shouldn't be too hard to get replacements for those bolts, just take them into a hardware store and you should be able to find them.

Congrats on getting those bolts off, I find myself walking away for 5 minutes to cool down when I get pissed at my car lol

[Proctor750]

What's with E30 touring and trees?

Yesterday:

[bangn]

Yeh those bolts im afraid you need to wack in the right spot hard and true and follow through.. Prob just needed a bigger hammer :) Sometimes hitting them the opposite way a couple of times helps release them as well.

Good to see you got it off, now you can put regular hex flange bolts on it. The threads are nothing special, any metric bolt that size will fit in there.

down at the bottom of the column there is a couple of bolts holding it to the firewall (push the carpet out of the way), undo those and the bolt on the coupling in the engine bay.. Then you can pull the whole lot out of the way. Dont forget to take the harness off it first ;)

[Roadrunner]

I've finally started to tackle the job that I set out to accomplish in the first place: fixing my heater core!



Just doing the research to find out what parts were needed and how to actually do the job proved to be incredibly difficult, which I will explain.

Here are some preliminary things I learned:

1. There are two types of heater cores that came in E30s. The "standard" ones are paired with aluminum inlet pipes. They seem to be in all E30s that had factory-installed air conditioning. If this describes your car, consider yourself lucky as the heater core is *much* easier to replace - you can follow the steps in the Bentley manual or most online DIYs. According to this DIY guide, you can compete the job in 45 - 60 minutes without much effort. :up:

2. The other type, with plastic inlet pipes (like mine), seem to be found only in E30s that did not have AC installed in the factory. This would explain why more tourings have this type of heater core, since many tourings came with base level options (i.e. no AC). I couldn't find any DIYs for this type of heater core job, only threads like this with confused people in the same boat as me pleading for help. If you are unfortunate enough to need to replace your heater core and it falls into this category, you should pretty much just give up right now... :down: The problem: the heater core is too long to be pulled out without hitting the steering column.



3. You can confirm which type of heater core you have by finding the hoses under the hood that lead to the heater valve, and pulling back the hoses to see if the inlet pipes are aluminum or plastic (more info on that here).



As suspected, the touring had the plastic pipes. Here's what they looked like when I disconnected them from the hoses later:



4. The entire heater box is different in E30s with different types of heater cores. You can see the difference between the heater boxes of E30s with the aluminum vs. plastic inlet pipes setup on RealOEM.

According to my research, there were three options for how to go about removing my version of the heater core (other than wait for someone else to do it - already tried that one ):

a) Remove the entire dashboard and heater box to get to the heater core.
b) Lower the steering column to get enough clearance to access the heater core.
c) Cut through the heater box to access the heater core.

As a highly disorganized person, removing the dash would probably be my worst nightmare. I could just imagine my car remaining undriveable for weeks as I searched for lost pieces that would inevitably get scattered all over the lawn in the process. Lowering the steering column looked promising, except there are two shear bolts attached to the steering column that are known to be next to impossible to remove. Assuming it could actually be done, though, this looked like the obvious choice to me. The last option would be easy, but surely there was a better way... right?

I decided to go with option b), lowering the steering column. We removed the center console, the driver's seat, and the steering wheel. This post lists the steps to remove the steering wheel - I didn't know that the key needed to be in the ignition turned one click to get the wheel off. With no airbags to worry about, it was pretty straight forward.



Okay, so now to remove the two shear bolts holding up the steering column. Who knows whether BMW decided to put them in to deter thieves or as a ridiculous "safety" measure - all I can say for sure is that removing them myself seemed so hopeless at one point that I was about to bring the car to a shop just to have them remove the two ****ing bolts so I could move on with my life.

Before admitting defeat, I searched for any possible way to remove the shear bolts. Here are the top 10 ways I found to remove shear bolts from the steering column, in case you were wondering:

1. Use a hammer and chisel – make holes around the perimeter, and angle the chisel to cause the bolts to rotate.
2. Make slots in the bolts with a small hacksaw or Dremel, and then turn them with a screwdriver.
3. Use locking pliers to grip and turn the bolts.
4. Grip the threads with vice grips and wind them out backwards.
5. Drill a pilot hole in the middle of the bolts and use a screw extractor.
6. Use a set of sockets designed to remove rounded off bolts.
7. Drill them out.
8. Angle grind the heads off of the bolts.
9. Make your own “special tool” for removing the bolts (e.g. one person used a clutch push rod from a scrap gearbox with the end sharpened).
10. Weld a lump on the top of the bolts to have something to grip.

Here's what they looked like after we tried over half of these ideas. They were not looking great by that point, but notice how they had not budged. :curse:



Back to the list. 1: I tried the hammer and chisel method. Nothing. I watched this video which explained it in more detail, then tried again. Still nothing. 2: Got my S.O. to Dremel a slot in the bolts, then tried turning them with a screwdriver. The bolts did not budge, but now we have broken screwdrivers to show for the effort. 3 and 4: Both of these ideas were ruled out, since there was not enough access for pliers. 5: Screw extractor drill bits did nothing to actually turn or loosen the bolts. 6: Same with bolt extractor sockets - they wouldn't dig into the bolts enough to turn. 7: This is what it ended up coming to.



Once I had drilled out as much of the head of the bolts as possible, my man saved the day by breaking them free with a chisel and hammer. Don't be fooled by how ordinary these bolts look - they were pure evil!



Now I'm going to have to find a replacement for those bolts. FYI, this is how much the steering column dropped without them - not a whole lot:



I looked for anything connected to the steering column that might still be holding it up - wires, turn signals, etc.



To be continued...

[Roadrunner]

It was time to give my engine some much-needed attention! On the to-do list: changing the spark plugs, doing a valve adjustment, replacing the valve cover gasket, and putting in my refinished valve cover. These videos from E30 Source and CoastalMotorWorks were helpful for understanding how to do a valve adjustment on an M20 engine, which seemed confusing and daunting as a beginner. There were also some good tips on this DIY thread about replacing spark plugs and adjusting the valves.

First, I removed the hardware on the valve cover. I opted to remove the old spark plugs before I took the valve cover off, as I wasn't sure how long this step would take me, and I wanted to minimize the amount of time with my engine open and exposed to mother nature:



It actually didn't take long, although it was a bit more cramped on the left side due to the battery in the engine bay. The channels leading up to the spark plug holes were full of built up debris (possibly a dirt / oil combo) that I cleaned out carefully. Some of the spark plugs had oil on them, especially the one on the far right, and there were different deposits and colours on the firing ends that I'll have to learn how to "read" (any insights on this?). Here are the old spark plugs, in the order they were originally in from left to right:



1, 2 and 3:



4, 5 and 6:



I removed the valve cover and gasket, and looked inside my engine for the first time! :) There had been an oil leak under the old gasket.



Then it was time to adjust the valves. We followed the method of jacking up the car's right rear wheel and putting the car into fifth gear. I got my S.O. to help with turning the wheel while I watched to see when the cam lobes were pointing in the right direction (not sure if there's an easy way to do this part by yourself?), and then adjusted the valves in firing order.

Adjusting the valves took some practice to get the hang of... actually, I'm still not completely convinced that I've got the hang of it yet. I ended up going back and readjusting them since I didn't think I was doing it right when I first started, and I think I'm going to go back again to give it another try and make sure they're all adjusted consistently. The car seems to be running better now and the engine seems "healthier" overall, but there's still a clacking noise when the car is running. Maybe one or two of the valves is still too tight?



I put the new valve cover gasket on, and finally got to install the new valve cover that I refinished previously. I'm so happy with how it turned out! :mrgreen: Plus it was handy to have the new one ready to swap for the old one.



Then, the new spark plugs got put in. For some reason, both of the videos I watched mentioned that they didn't have the right tool for the job. I used a BMW spark plug tool that we found at the scrap yard which worked perfectly.



The one problem we ran into was that after the new spark plugs were in, the plug wires would not snap on to the ends of the plugs. It turned out that the new spark plugs had a threaded aluminum flared cap that had to be removed first for use on this engine.

Next up: Fixing the heater core at last! Right now, I'm stuck on removing the steering column (I've tried both the Dremel & screwdriver method and the hammer & chisel method so far to no avail), but don't worry, it's happening! Damn you, shear head bolts, I will not let you win!!