My 1988 320i Touring Project: Ambitious but Rubbish

[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.

[jeenyus]

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

[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. ;)

[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 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]

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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

It was time for another trip to our local scrap yard. There was still only one E30 in the lot -- the one I never wanted to see again way back in post 23 -- yet there we were, back for more parts. It was looking a bit worse for wear:



I thought the interior was pretty bad last time we were there, but... um, yeah... :shock:



We got the passenger's side door brake off of that car to replace the one on the front driver's side in the touring. I considered checking out the condition of the kick panels, but my SO advised against it - I wouldn't want to ruin our junkyard date by getting hantavirus (I can't believe I just said that...). We sourced a few key pieces of hardware I was missing to install the rear wiper arm and the side skirts on the touring off of the E36s in the lot.

Now I had everything I needed to complete a few small projects. Before I got a chance, though, my SO took it upon himself to install the new rear wiper arm and wiper blade as well as the driver's side door brake - I can't get him to keep his hands off of the touring now! ;D The rear wiper is now functional and no longer hits the paint, and it looks so much better. And the driver's door actually stays open now! I'll still need to look into fixing the washer fluid reservoir which is leaking. I'm also planning to replace the plastic vapor barriers in the doors since they're grungy and not re-sticking well, just need to figure out what to replace them with.



The front section of the side skirts had been removed since I replaced the front fenders and had them painted a while ago. Someone at the car show I went to earlier in the summer asked if I was aware that they were missing (yes) and if they had fallen off while I was driving (no), so I figured I should probably get around to installing them at some point. :oops: The rust spots on the doors will have to be one of the next things I address on the touring.



The side skirts were quite faded:





They looked better once they were sprayed with black trim paint:



On one section of the side skirts, the part that attaches to the bottom of the front fender had broken off. Even if I could glue it back together, it would probably just crack and break again.



My SO's idea was to plastic weld the pieces by brushing a mixture of MEC and acetone onto the edges where the plastic had broken off to soften the plastic and fuse the pieces together, as well as using ABS cement, a liquefied plastic, as a filler and bonding agent. It worked! :) An added benefit is that the plastic in that area was made less brittle, so it should resist cracking. Here's what it looked like when I was done:



I ordered the hardware to install the side skirts from the dealer (the old hardware disintegrated when it was removed), but the new hardware I received was completely different. When I looked into how to install the side skirts (this Salt City Euros video explains it well), I found out that the mounting hardware that comes with a kit is not the same as what I received from the dealer. :| We were still missing two plastic nuts, which we replaced with similar ones that we found on the plastic cover panels in the trunks of E36s at the scrap yard. The plastic tab in the picture below also had to be modified with a Dremel on both pieces, since the new metal fasteners didn't clip in properly.



Once we were ready to install the front side skirt sections, we measured where the holes would need to be drilled, marked the spots on painter's tape with a sharpie, and double checked by doing a test fit to make sure everything lined up before drilling into the fenders. The newly exposed metal and new hardware got coated in POR-15, since I don't want a repeat of the rust that led me to redo this job in the first place. Finally, we attached the side skirts as it was getting dark - check out my driveway set up and the finished job!



In case you couldn't see much in the last picture, here are more shots of the touring on a drive the next day:









The touring was hauling a cast iron woodstove in those pictures that we're planning to put in our future garage to be built next year. :mrgreen:

[Roadrunner]

I can't believe I'm saying this, but the touring is up for sale! I've become so attached to this car that it's not going to be easy to let it go. If you know anyone who might be interested, you can find my for sale listing and more information here.

In the meantime, I'm planning to have some fun with the touring while it's still mine. :mrgreen: I'm getting it ready to bring to the maXbimmer Autumn Cruise which is coming up next weekend. Anyone else here going? If you live near Toronto, check it out - it would be cool to see some other E30s there!

To finish off the exterior of the touring, there were a few spots on the paint that needed some work. The touch up paint I ordered from the dealer came in a set with base coat and clear coat with brushes similar to nail polish - much better than those useless touch-up paint pens I've used on other cars.



My SO insisted on helping with this highly technical job - I think he missed me since I was spending more quality time with the touring than him ;). We marked all of the spots on the body I wanted to fix with painter's tape, prepped any surface rust spots with POR-15 rust converter and primed them before I touched them up with the base coat and clear coat.

The dashboard had developed a crack on the passenger's side that we wanted to fix. We used the stop-drilling method of drilling a small hole on each side of the crack (actually, the drill bit just pushed right into the dash by hand) to stop it from spreading further.



Then I filled the crack with black exterior silicone. It took about four applications to make sure it was filled all the way. It looks a lot less noticeable now and should protect the dashboard from cracking further in that area.



I ordered a few missing pieces of hardware from the dealer for the door sill cover panels and the driver's side interior b-pillar so we could finish off the interior.



Here's how the touring looks now:

[Grime]

:(

[Roadrunner]

:(

I know... :puppy:

Today we treated the dashboard and areas with vinyl trim with 303 Aerospace Protectant to get them looking their best (thanks to my partner and his knowledge of obscure products that can be used for detailing ):



The dashboard...



...and the door cards are looking younger and rejuvenated now:



We added lots of pictures of the interior to the FS thread, as well as a video of the touring:

[Roadrunner]

More pictures of the touring from last weekend courtesy of Shock(/\)ave. Enjoy! ;D

[Roadrunner]

We took advantage of a rare opportunity on the weekend to detail the touring on an actual paved driveway. :up: We washed, clayed, polished, and waxed the touring, and my partner taught me the basics of how to use his pro level random orbital polisher (Flex 3401 VRG). We started too late in the day to get pictures of the process, but the touring is looking extra nice and shiny now.



While I was at a gas station filling up the touring the next day, a gentleman who was probably in his 80's came over and started chatting with me about my car. He used to race BMWs back in the day and was excited because he'd never seen an E30 touring. I love how this car brings random moments of happiness to people when you least expect it. :)

We took the touring to the maxbimmer autumn cruise on Sunday. As usual at these type of events, there were not nearly enough classic BMWs. It was pretty much impossible for us to keep up with the group of mostly newer, faster cars.











On top of that, people were pulling some seriously dangerous, stupid shit to keep up with the group that we had no desire to be part of. Instead, we kept our distance and enjoyed the beautiful drive:









I only saw two other E30s at the first stop on the cruise, but neither of them made it to the next stop. :( Apparently, a large part of the group followed someone who was headed in the opposite direction.









More pictures from the way back: