My '89 325ix

[ThatM20Guy]

First real thread so bare with me on this one.

Recently just got my first BMW at the beginning of summer. Needed a 4wd car for college and for Colorado, so I started looking around for an ix in moderately good condition. Found one up in Nebraska that was pretty clean, with the only real rust under the read quarters. Drove up to Omaha the week before my spring finals and got the car for $2400, which seems reasonable for an ix in this condition Drove it home, but had to wait all summer to start tearing it apart. It lived most of its life as an auto, but of course I'm changing that.

Car as it currently sits. Bilstein HD's are on there way and H&R sports will be on there way soon.



Got a complaint from the city that the car couldn't be out in the driveway in an nonoperational state so I finally got enough room cleared in the garage to put it in. Barely have enough space to work but it's what I got.



New shifter bushing cup and new delrin shift arm bushings.





Box of goodies to finish the 5-speed swap. Shift boot, shift knob, rear shift-arm support, timing belt, valve cover gasket, rear sway bar links, etc.



Trans under the car ready to go in. If only parts would get here in hours rather than a week :(

[driftxsequence]

Pictures are broken

[ThatM20Guy]

Pictures are broken

huh. worked fine on my pc. any ideas of why they wont work?

[ThatM20Guy]

Exhaust and Bilsteins got here today. Going to wait till the car is driving to put the bilsteins on though.



Exhaust is as follows-
eBay headers P.O. put on
Vibrant 2" to 2.5" Y-pipe
Borla Pro-XS mid muffler
Vibrant StreetPower

Should sound pretty nice as both mufflers are straight through and hopefully the Borla mid-muffler will get rid of an raspyness in the exhaust.

[driftxsequence]

If you can, inspect the welds on the ebay header. mine just cracked! what a pain.

BTW pictures are working now!

[ThatM20Guy]

If you can, inspect the welds on the ebay header. mine just cracked! what a pain.

BTW pictures are working now!

Yeah I'm going to eventually get Ireland Engineering long tube headers. Got the transmission in. Will upload a couple pictures later.

[ThatM20Guy]

Trans in. Still need to wire the reverse lights in and fix the tach, mpg gauge, and wire the head unit in. Still waiting on a front driveshaft flexdisc so I can get the front driveshaft and transfer case in so I can finally drive the thing after sitting for a month.

[ThatM20Guy]

Finally got it driving yesterday. Shifts well and no irregular noise coming from the swap. Still need to figure out the exhaust and idling though. Need to find a shop in the kc area that will bend up my slipfit system.

Still have an idling issue though. Put teflon around the joints for the throttle body but that didn't seem to fix it. Might need a new o2 sensor or my tps might be out of wack.

Also I don't think that having only my headers for an exhaust is helping either. WIll get some picks up later today.

[ndfspd67]

Nice build! I will be doing a 5 speed swap on my IX very soon!

[MR E30 325is]

Great start!

[ThatM20Guy]

Nice build! I will be doing a 5 speed swap on my IX very soon!

Sweet. Its a bit of a pain to get the auto out because of the transfer case but the manual goes in super easy. I would also recommend putting the manual in separate of the transfer case. Sounds weird but it made installing the trans much easier.

Great start!

Thanks! Still have to figure out some idling issues. I think it might be the o2 sensor because once the ecu goes into open loop it runs fine

[ThatM20Guy]

Well haven't posted an update in quite awhile.

Got a new headunit so I started wiring that in but there is either a short in the system or I wired one of the connecting wrong but I am still trying to figure it out.

Also just got an exhaust welded up this weekend thanks to a friend of mine. He used to own Imagine Auto, one of the specialty Porsche shops in the KC area. Pretty awesome guy.
Don't have a picture of the completed exhaust but will try to take some tomorrow. Setup is:

Ebay headers (eventually getting IE longtubes)
Vibrant 2 - 2.5" Y
Borla Pro-XS Midmuffler
Vibrant streetpower



He also has this beauty under a cover. 500hp Porsche 965 awd conversion. Got to ride in it and its fucking nuts. 285's on the rear and 265's on the front and it still spins at half throttle.




A friend at my school also just finished his LS swap on his c10. Planning on a single 68mm snail this spring. Should be fun

[ThatM20Guy]

Excited to start working on this thing again.

Just placed a order from garagistic:

E30 325ix dssr
New shift knuckle
80a front offset cab's
80a motor mounts and trans case mount
80a rear shift carrier bushing
Front subframe reinforcement plates
Antenna delete plug

Hopefully at the end of next week I can start pulling the front subframe and get the front diff fluid changed. After the front suspension gets poly bushings the only bushing left to replace would be the sway bar link.

Still have to fix the idle. Have yet to check the tps or afm. COld start is way to rich and once warmed up it idled around 1800. Hopefully it is just the tps. Really tempted to get a Miller maf conversion to just get rid of the massive afm.

[ThatM20Guy]

Had some photos sitting around from awhile back and figured I'd throw em up on here.

Had the coolant system out when I was doing the timing belt so I decided that I would freshen up the coolant cross pipe. Hit it with a wire wheel and then prayed it with some high temp black.



One of the first things I did with the car is remove the rear subframe and put 80A poly subframe and trailing arm bushings. Had a fun time burning out the old subframe bushings. Only got a couple concerned looks from passing neighbors :D This summer rust prevention/cleaning will be in store for everything...DIE RUST DIE!





While I was there I decided to deal with a leaky brakeline. Will hopefully be covnerting to a full chase bays brake system with a softline conversion running to the rear and booster/abs delete.

Just a practice piece. Not to bad for my first ISO flare!



Full stainless braided lines for the soft lines on all four corners. Only thing left to put in is the intermediate softlines by the rear subframe.



Finally got my Garagistic order after 6 weeks. Didn't think about the DSSR not fitting with the stock IX carrier. Oh well, lets me justify a shortshifter, Z3 1.9 shifter on the way!



At least it's super shiny :)

Here is the interference. Not even remotely close




Also had to give it a wash on a nice day. Sittin nice and pretty. ;D



Went ahead and threw some Redline MT-90 in the trans the other day. Had some bad whine to it just running autoparts brand shit so hopefully the MT-90 will help out a lot. Also tested my TPS and it seemed to be working ok so I went ahead and got a refurbished ICV that I threw in. Can't test it since the trans is out but I'm hoping that solves my massive cold start idling issue. I still need to fix some small intake leaks on the throttle body but other than that the intake system should be tight.

Will update when I get the short shifter and throw the trans back in the car. Or whenever I stop being lazy and start making some real headway. I just don't like working in the cold

[driftxsequence]

What was your issue with the carrier not fitting? Mine stock shifter fit, I had to simply grind down the edges of the bushing in the shift rod. I think because your assembly is resting low, it is showing an interference - if you hold it up parallel or higher it will be fine! See my build thread for the few pictures i took..haha