325is Father/daughter project

[japsasuke]

Hello!

New here, not to e30s. Owned a few, one swapped, coupe other little projects. I finally finished up my Master's degree, got a job, and I feel I can final spend the appropriate amount of time and money into a project (we can all attest to the cost and time e30s take).

I've been looking for the right car for about 6 months. This is going to be a project to do with my daughter (10 years old). She loves e30s and hated my previous car (Mazdaspeed3) because "it wouldn't go sideways." My kind of girl haha! As you all know the e30 market is crazy right now with overpriced junk. I finally found a 325is in Detroit. It was a two owner California car. The current owner had it since 06 and it had been driven by his wife once in a while, mostly just sitting under a tree (I'll get to that later ). We spoke, talked numbers, paid him 200 to bring it to me and bought it for $1,500. It was cute because it was a 75 year old german man who moved to the US in the 80s. He brought his whole family (3 people) to take pictures with the car as it left the family. When I saw how much he cared about the car, I knew I had to have it!





Details:
250k
Auto (swap will take care of that)
tan interior plus a bunch of other colors
No rust (minus the rear battery area)
Brilliant rot (with clear so it was probably resprayed)

Plans:
Re-do the interior (totally stock)
Clean the paint (sap, turds, etc.)
shadowline
Polish the paint
Alpina front valance
e28 spoiler
16x9 wheels (havent decided yet)
s5x swap w/manual
Suspension refresh with lowtec springs/struts
And a ton of other things once I start tearing in down

Parts I have ready to go:
e28 spoiler
alpina valance (ordered)
kidneys (ordered)
euro grills (ordered)
euro trim (ordered)
tan sport reupholster kit (ordered)

The first day I had it I stripped the interior (minus the dash which I will deal with later). I also removed the nasty pin stripe and stripped the paint of 10 years of sap and bird turds. Pulling the carpets to steam clean tomorrow and polish the paint.




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[2002jm]

:)

Good deal~and good to start the kids young:)
Looking forward to seeing what you do with this project!
jm

[Staszek]

Thats awesome, good luck with the build!

[Anthony B]

Looks like a great base to start with, props to you making it a Dad & Daughter project.

[E30 Wagen]

You got a good deal, cool to see your daughter is enthusiastic about getting her hands dirty with it. Are you from Michigan?

[stonea]

Really cool you're making it a Dad/Daughter project.

[fresh_TD]

Subd

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-N910A using Tapatalk

[cat97628]

Just last week i took my daughter (10 also) to her first car show and track day and now she wants to help with my restore and start her own for first car. Good luck and enjoy your time together.

[kts]

Very cool project. I have a few more years before my daughter can help me out in the garage but when she's old enough I'm hoping to get into a project like this with her.

[jeenyus]

awesome! can't wait till my daughter is old enough to build a car with me. seems like she is interested now at the age of 11 months! fingers crossed! haha

[Roadrunner]

That's awesome! :) I wish I'd had someone to show me how to work on cars when I was your daughter's age - I would have traded my ballet lessons for that any day. I bet she would love go-karting - she's probably old enough to drive at most places if she passes the height requirement.

Sounds like you got a great deal on the car, and I like the backstory too. You must be doing the previous owner and his family proud by restoring the car and giving it the care it needs and deserves.

I'm also interested to hear how it goes with removing and cleaning the carpets since I'm in the middle of that with my car right now. Looking forward to seeing more about your project! :up:

[japsasuke]

Thanks guys! Few updates. Just ordered a few parts including a upholstery kit. I'll be doing a step by step on that as I'll be new to it, and I'm sure the more pictures we have of the process the better. Cleaned the carpet by hand. This was literally THE dirtyiest thing I have ever touched. I may upload the video, but the water was thick dark brown. It was awful but it turned out decent. Most of the discoloration is under the seats so that should be good. May get to polishing the paint tomorrow and doing the chrome around the windows. She's coming along!



Before:




After:

[sam_]

clean!

[Staszek]

Thanks guys! Few updates. Just ordered a few parts including a upholstery kit. I'll be doing a step by step on that as I'll be new to it, and I'm sure the more pictures we have of the process the better. Cleaned the carpet by hand. This was literally THE dirtyiest thing I have ever touched. I may upload the video, but the water was thick dark brown. It was awful but it turned out decent. Most of the discoloration is under the seats so that should be good. May get to polishing the paint tomorrow and doing the chrome around the windows. She's coming along!



Before:




After:

That looks great! I just pulled mine and put a black one in, but I also pulled it to see rust damage.

That thing looks basically brand new!

[Rontgen]

Very cool! I recently picked up an E30 (also a late model iS) for my 14 y/o son and I to build together. We pulled the M20 and auto trans last weekend and will start tearing down the M20 for rebuild tonight. It's a good learning experience for the kids and a great bonding experience for everyone. Best of luck!