My Forever Car: '89 325i Touring

[erynapolean777]

Loving the detail in your thread. Look forward to following your thread

[-J-]

I'm going to try to fit the 53bz this fall. I didn't have the time to fab the parts to make 6-speed fit, and I was sick of driving a slush box. Speaking of which...



Finally acquired a third pedal. Write-up coming soon.

[ba114]

Are you not using the 53bz box anymore?

[-J-]

It's on

[/URL]

[rzerob]

Subscribed.

[jeenyus]

this is great!

[MR E30 325is]

Cool build!

[Piotr]

Really looking forward to following this.

[-J-]

*UPDATED FIRST POST WITH GOALS*

Long time no post. PHOTOBOMB, INCOMING

I've made a lot of little fixes to the car since the last update, but they certainly add up. The car is now back to its fully functional daily self with all the important bits working. Engine and chassis are butter smooth once again.

Took care of the rust around the rear hatch pinch weld. It was a tedious process as there were a lot of little spots forming in awkward spaces, but I got them all to bare metal, POR-15'd, primed, and painted.







Who needs help when you're got an engine hoist?

Unfortunately the color match was garbage. I'm planning on a full respray in the future, so I'm not too upset.


Also picked up an E46 "purple tag" rack. This is not the mythical ZHP rack (gold tag) but is significantly cheaper and still 40% faster than stock. I got lucky and got this one for 120 bucks shipped from the UK. I didn’t trust the condition though, so I ordered the rebuild kit and got to work.

Some Neanderthal-like grunting noises and hammer swings later…

Rebuilding this rack was remarkably simple. I used this write-up as a guide: http://www.e30performance.info/viewt...=1015&start=20

Ditch all of the old seals...


Clean it up...


and boom. Like-new rack.

All of the seals inside looked great, and this rack probably didn’t need a rebuild. But hey, now I know it's good and I learned how to rebuild steering racks.


Also picked up Moog inner and outer rods. I don't mind shelling out for the good stuff for this car and I'm not about to fuck around with my ability to steer. Per our right-hand drivin' homies over at E30Zone, I picked up E46 inner rods with the pressure-relief slots, and E36 outers.

As for the RHD steering linkage, E30Zone proposes several options. There's one that uses an E36 lower mated to an E30 upper, one that uses an Opel Corsa lower mated to an E30 upper, and one even says remove the steering guibo and bolt them together. The E36 option maintains the steering giubo, but that might cause a clearance issue with the S54 exhaust. The Corsa option sounded solid, but it requires grinding on the input spline of the rack. No thanks. And the third is a no go because removing the guibo rotates the lower joint 90deg, putting the u-joints out of phase. This causes non-linearity in the steering. In the end I hit up Summit and ordered Flaming River low-profile steering joints. This should allow for maximum exhaust clearance when I go S54. The price was tough to stomach though…

Next up was the exhaust. While under the car for an oil change, I noticed the rear muffler hanger was looking a bit ragged. "Meh, it'll probably be fine" I though. I'm dumb. On a routine trip to the West side of Michigan, I was greeted by the unholy sound of my exhaust scraping on the highway. I pulled to the shoulder immediately and got as far over as I could, but waist high grass prevented me from going as far as I would have liked (thanks MDOT!). I got under the car, and sure enough, that hanger was gone. I scoured the car for anything I could use to tie the forward-most hanger to the chassis until I could find an exit, and I shit-you-not the only wire I had on me was the handle from a Chinese place take-out container. I McGuyver'd the exhaust in place (which was terrifying, because apparently no one moves over for disabled vehicles in Michigan) and limped the car to an exit. 7 over-priced dollars worth of bungee strap later, and I was back on the road.

When I got back home, I ordered the rear hanger kit and the rubber "theta" hanger and went to install. No bullshit, the bungee cords had disintegrated but the take-out container wire was still there, still supporting the exhaust. Say what you want about Chinese parts, but they don't fuck around with their take-out containers.

The muffler and resonator (the UK didn't require cats back then) are definitely aftermarket, as they didn't match the RealOEM drawings. However, they were still in pretty good condition. I had noticed an exhaust leak from the resonator section and noted a small hole in the bottom. I didn't worry about it much considering my swap plans, but it had seemed to get louder in the few weeks leading up to the hanger install. Well, when I went to install the "theta" hanger I had to reef on the exhaust to get it to slide into place. This reefing action tore what was remaining of the resonator exit pipe weld, and it snapped off completely.



Fuck. The car was now unbearably loud to drive, given that the resonator is directly in the center of the car. It had to be patched sooner than later. I ran to the local metal outlet store and picked up some scrap steel. A few minutes with a hammer and an hour or so with my friend's welder and it was all sealed up. Welding credit goes to my friend, Vegas. He did two FSAE tube chassis' pretty much solo, and he's able to weld even the crappiest of my pipe fits.






Primed with VHT high-temp and installed. The difference it made to the car was remarkable. It has to be a placebo effect from getting shit done, but the car as a whole car feels smoother. From engine to drivetrain, this is the best the car has felt.

Also fixed some random part failures: coolant level sensor, fuel level sender, and diff speed sensor connector. At one point I had no fuel indicator and no speedometer, and in incorrect tach. Classic E30. I had to cannibalize parts from the coupe, which I feel bad about. She'll get some much-needed TLC soon.

The coding plug was obviously from a 4-cylinder, so I swapped that and now the RPM reads correctly. The bulb was also burnt on the speedo side, so that was swapped with a spare I had lying around. For the first time since I got the car the cluster is fully functional.

The last thing I did was on the engi-nerd side of things. How do you know how much you've improved if you don't know where you started?


I do all of my own set-ups for the race car, so I have all of the alignment tools at my disposal. I measured corner weights, camber, toe, and ride height. I use roll-off leveling scale pads and a laser level to true the pads.






Note that these measurements were taken with 180lbs of my simulated ass in the driver's seat and the fuel tank full. This works out to 2900lbs curb weight. This car is completely stock, has an M20, an automatic trans, no A/C, electric sunroof, and the rear windows are manual. Overall, not terrible for a 28 year old grocery getter with womped out bushings.

Next was a benchmark of performance. I borrowed the AIM EVO4 data acquisition unit from the race car and waited for a clear, quiet night. I did several 0-62.5mph runs, several 62.5-0mph runs, and hit some round-abouts to get some lat accel data. These were probably pretty good in 1989, but are far from impressive in 2017…

0-62.5mph: 10.7s
62.5-0mph: 39.1m (128ft)
Lat accel: 0.84g

That 0-62.5mph hurts my soul. The autotragic needs to go. Speaking of which…

I've accumulated all the parts needed to do the manual swap. The only current issue is time. I want to do this in one go, so I need to find a free weekend. Looks like it'll be July at the earliest.

[Heitzke]

Lookin' good! I love my lachssilber touring as well. Just now getting mine up on stands for some.. involved rust repairing.

I have many of the same rust spots in mine. In your right rear quarter, check behind that little felt-like rear wheel-well cover on the inside. I had a pretty big rust hole right there that tossed water into that same spot.

Besides that, it's all the same rusty E30 areas, the front toe-box area on both sides, the bottoms of the front fenders, etc.

[-J-]

Got the garage mod for Christmas.

[ba114]

interesting. Havent seen anyone use the 53bz on these yet. I love mine in the 135i, so i'm sure you'll like it too. 135i runs a 3.08 diff so grab a 3.15 or 2.93 and you'll be sweet

[-J-]

Thanks for the kind words dudes/dudettes! I managed to make some progress before the snow hit. One part rust repair, one part manual swap parts accumulation.

I pulled her into the garage after major rain fall and found this:


Fuuuuuuuuuuu.....

But miraculously, very limited rust. Mostly just dirty.


The other side hadn't fared so well.


The hole you see is actually a water vent intended to allow any water inside to get out. What it also does very well is allow the water kicked up by the rear tire in. As a whole, automotive engineers are some pretty smart people but stuff like this make you say WTF. That will definitely need to be addressed.

I then went on a rust hunt around the rear hatch (they are notoriously rust-prone on Tourings).



What you see here is is corrosion caused by a physical crack in the chassis around the taillights. Uniform on both sides. Touring peeps, is this a thing?

Also found this yellow goo on the inside of the sheet metal. Anybody know if this is factory rust-proofing or aftermarket?


At this point the rear hatch is removed and I've ground most of the rust off. The plan is to POR-15 the cleaned bits, primer and paint. That's held up at the moment due to mother nature and an unheated garage.

In tandem to the rust hunt, I began sourcing parts for the manual swap. I had originally thought that sourcing a decent condition Getrag 260 wouldn't be a problem, hence compromising on the auto. It appears I was mistaken. G260's are scarce here in Michigan. 70% of yard cars are auto, and any manuals get snatched quick. So I started researching 6-speeds and wound up with this:

A ZF GS6-53BZ out of an '08 335i. It was a wreck part-out so I got the trans, clutch, flywheel, and starter. I'll be upfront about the 6-speed swap: it makes no sense. Financially, it's more expensive. Physically, it's more difficult to do. Fuel economy wise, it's 6th is worse than the G260's 5th (although potentially more efficient, as WanganStyle has pointed out). So why would I do this? So I can say I have a 6-speed E30, haha. Plus, it's modern parts are more likely to be good than our 25-year-old-at-the-youngest G260's.

A special note about manual swaps for RHD cars in LHD markets: Everything appears to be the same except the pedal box (thanks RealOEM!). It appears that the pedal bracket is the same between auto and manual RHD cars, but the manual has a longer brake pedal bolt that also mounts the clutch pedal. Unfortunately it's not as simple as ordering the long bolt and and bolting on an LHD clutch pedal and master cylinder; the clutch pedal is also RHD-specific. So, your best bet is to get the whole pedal box from across the pond, as I did, from Sskoda. Thanks for putting up with my constant questions, and for the wicked fast shipping!

Unfortunately progress is stalled at the moment, but for good reason. Currently working on a significant garage upgrade...

[Klug]

Nice! I call my zinno '89 coupe my "Forever car" too....I'd sell everything else I have before I sell it.

I also say, one day, when I get my shit together- i'll give it to my kid to drive and he will probably end up totaling it...but at least I have a good detailed progression of the work I did on it here on R3v- make him realize how much blood sweat and tears I dropped into the thing ;)

[jpod999]

This should be good. It's awesome when an ME goes into a big project like this.