My 1988 320i Touring Project: Ambitious but Rubbish

[Staszek]

Yep, that's my old touring! Thanks for sharing the link.



I was wondering the same thing since I hadn't heard from the new owner in a while. I hope that car will be back on the road being enjoyed again soon!



It's such a shame that the new owner never got it registered. :sad: I know he put a lot of effort into getting it to pass and even swapped the engine from the original M20B20 to an M20B25, but it looks like he ran out of runway.



The only reason I sold it is because I had an opportunity I couldn't turn down to import my current car (a '94 316i design edition touring) and needed to sell the 320i to make that happen. I still miss the 320i though!

Thanks for the update, I went back and looked at your sig and realized I missed the new car you bought:)

[Roadrunner]

I think this car is on San Francisco bay craigslist.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto...331683334.html

Yep, that's my old touring! Thanks for sharing the link.

I was wondering where this story was going to end up! The new owner went silent for a long time. Glad to see its going to get a new owner that might be able to finish it off nicely.

I was wondering the same thing since I hadn't heard from the new owner in a while. I hope that car will be back on the road being enjoyed again soon!

I saw this the other day too, still hasn't been smogged...

It's such a shame that the new owner never got it registered. :sad: I know he put a lot of effort into getting it to pass and even swapped the engine from the original M20B20 to an M20B25, but it looks like he ran out of runway.

Just read through this, I may have missed but why did you sell?

The only reason I sold it is because I had an opportunity I couldn't turn down to import my current car (a '94 316i design edition touring) and needed to sell the 320i to make that happen. I still miss the 320i though!

[Staszek]

Just read through this, I may have missed but why did you sell?

[jpod999]

I think this car is on San Francisco bay craigslist.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto...331683334.html

I saw this the other day too, still hasn't been smogged...

[Powling]

I was wondering where this story was going to end up! The new owner went silent for a long time. Glad to see its going to get a new owner that might be able to finish it off nicely.

[mottati]

I think this car is on San Francisco bay craigslist.

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto/d/rare-imported-1988-bmw-320i/6331683334.html

[Roadrunner]

The touring is officially on its way to its new home. I really loved this car and am going to miss it!

I'm happy to know that the touring will be in great hands with its new owner. I hope he'll enjoy it as much as I have. :D

[Shock(/\)ave]

The last items on the list for the car's tune up were a new coolant temperature sensor and refreshed idle control valve - both of which I took care of this afternoon. The car always idled well, but it's now very smooth, better than it's been since we bought it years ago. :)

[Roadrunner]

We took care of a few minor things the car needed this week: the rear license plate lights and the brake light switch needed to be replaced. Now the check panel is happy and all is well once again. :up:

Yesterday, we took the touring to the drive in probably for the last time this season. I was excited that they were playing classic Halloween movies on one of the screens. They even played the first Looney Tunes cartoon with the Road Runner (called "Fast and Furry-ous") before the movies started. Awesome! :D



I think this would be perfect to use for my new avatar. ;)



Then we watched Friday the 13th (1980) and Halloween (1978), and I learned what not to do when a psychotic killer is on the loose and hunting you down.





I have some exciting news coming soon, but in the meantime, you can read the backstory of how I got into cars to begin with and how I ended up owning the touring here.

[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:

[Roadrunner]

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

[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:

[Grime]

:(

[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:

[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: