The can of worms 318i

[MR E30 325is]

Awesome to see attention being paid to an 84 M10! Car looks very cool.

[LateFan]

I love cleaning parts. Jobs take me twice as long as they should because I spend so much time on it

We might be related. Also, if I don't know what to do next, I just clean.

Nice thread. Impressive fab skilz.

[The_Lope7]

God damn good work. Not many people would put so much work into an M10 so I'm glad to see that. Love the paint color and the Ronals are glorious. Subd

[2mAn]

That must be it. I gotta say, this thread alone makes me want to really do stupid things to keep the E30 and the roadster... who needs to retire anyways?

Someone get this guy some euro bumpers already!

[E30SPDFRK]

It says 318i on the trunk and door pillar, and realOEM pulls up the VIN as a 318i. I know they made an early 325 that had no letter, but I think all 318's came with letters.

[2mAn]

Yes, Im excited for you to finish filling in the blanks

also, I think these are just 318 not 318i but what the hell do I know, my car has zero original parts on it

[E30SPDFRK]

And now we're up to date as of 6/17. Sorry if your computer crashed trying to load that many photos at once.

[E30SPDFRK]

Broke my phone over the winter and lost some updates, forgot what they even were so they can't be that important. I'll just skip to the interesting stuff anyways. That's what you came to see, right?

I got some replacement coilovers. Talked with H&R about e30 coilover options when we were there, got back and ordered some for myself. Ended up going with their Tief line, which are Maximum drop coilovers. I don't plan on slamming this thing near as low as my last one, but I know it won't ever be high and the extra travel is appreciated. Had them send over some sway bars at the same time.





Since the H&R coilovers are complete strut replacements, I got new bearings and dust shields too.

The rear springs are pretty rediculous







Got some new Ground Control camber plates too since I had a guy interested in buying my complete old setup.







Put them all the way down to start to see how "Tief" they actually go, was impressed until I realized the tire was bottomed out in the fender and the spring was still loose. Suffice it to say they go as low as you would ever want...



I ended up setting it at exactly the same ride height I had before. The ride is so much better, I had designed my old setup just to go low, ride wasn't factored in to the equation. The sway bars helped more than I thought they would; early 318's didn't come with rear sway bars.

My window seal cracked and would flop around on the highway, decided to change both





Good guy BMW just wants to make sure you have enough





New seals. Actually did a lot for highway noise.



Been wanting to do fun track day stuff with my frans, but this is my only car and I wanted to make sure it didn't blow up on me. My boss is an old BMW club racer from long ago, and he tells me that m10's had problems in long left hand turns where the oil would run up the side of the block and starve the engine. So I pulled the pan down yet again and made a windage tray/baffle so that wouldn't happen.





No idea how much is too little or too much for the openings, erred on the side of caution and made them kinda big. No idea if it works, but it's yet to blow up so I guess I didn't make the openings too small at least.



Started looking for a set of wheels after I sold the Brocks. I was looking for 15" BBS RF's at first, since I loved the way they looked on my old car. I've always loved old 80's tuning house cars with the color matched wheels centers, so I was planning on painting the windows between the spokes safari beige. Couldn't find any good sets, but I did come across a set of my bucket list wheels. Sold off a bunch of stuff to get them, and made it happen. They showed up around the time I we got back from Germany.



Test fit them on the car







That was with the rear wheels on front and back. They would have fit super sick if I was doing stancy things, but I wanted a chunky tire so they would have to be redone. The front wheels were only 7" wide too, which just isn't enough to make the ladies swoon.

Got the hookup on the tires I wanted, thanks Mike! 225/45/15 Nitto NT01 R-comps. Threw a wheel together to see how they fit



Yeah, that doesn't work



Stretch was exactly what I wanted, but this confirmed that I needed to get them rebuilt.

Bonus shot with a paid model



Ronal used BBS back in the day for their 3 piece hardware, so I got in contact with BBS to see if they would make me some new barrels. They denied knowing about that fact, so I tried Ronal, and they directed me towards BBS. Do avoid getting trapped in a wormhole, i started looking for used parts. This turned out to be harder than you would think, so after way too long of searching, i had Jongbloed just make the stuff for me. I still wanted that 80's tuning house high on blow look, so I had Matt Alchemy of Alchemy Paint color match them. Finally got everything all together a few weeks ago



I didn't want the wheels to look like brand new show wheels, so I had Matt add some flattener to the clear to make them look like old lacquer paint. He got it perfect. Went with inch smaller lips all around and inch larger barrels to keep the width the same. They are now 15x9 et25 with 3" lips. After spacers to clear the front calipers, they ended up at et10.





Josh came by to try out his new photographer pose







Khalil tried out his pose too, don't think it's as good though...



I love how they look, and the car handles insane with these tires. Haven't had the chance yet to take it to the track or even any fun roads, but my favorite on ramp can be taken at 60 now instead of 50, so you can say things are pretty serious.

[E30SPDFRK]

Got some wheel studs instead of the factory lug bolts.



Had to replace a ball joint that bitched out and gave up on life





The alternators on these things are mounted on bushings for some dumb reason, and mine were completely shot. I took the opportunity to upgrade to some racing polyurethane ones, of course





What was left of the original rubber bushings



My car always leaked a bit of oil, which didn't bother me (how you know it still has oil), but the maintenance guys at my apartment kept coating my parking spot in sawdust, and that was annoying so I decided to do something about it. The main leaks were from the upper oil pan gasket and my power steering pump. Since a new pump lists for $700, and I'd have to drop the subframe anyways to replace the pan gasket, I decided to try out a Z4 manual steering rack. Reviews online say it's way easier to turn than a normal rack without power steering, and it's one of the quickest racks you can fit in an e30. Bought 2 racks for $240, sold one for $250. Much better than $700.



Oil pan leak









I love cleaning parts. Jobs take me twice as long as they should because I spend so much time on it



My lower pan was still leaking a little around the drain plug from the last time I hit it. Welded it up again



Got a box in the mail that worried my girlfriend



Z4 steering coupler. The Z4 rack has different splines than the e30 rack, but the steering column is the same. My plan was to modify this one a bit shorter to keep the telescoping safety feature



Took it apart



Rack in, looks like that plan is out



Had to cut it down so much that the bearings just barely fit. So much for safety.



One of the boots was torn, so I changed them both out. Since I was in there, I got new tie rods as well.







All the old PS stuff out, pulled the AC compressor at the same time since it is dead and racecars don't need AC



All installed and cleaned





Yet another alignment.



Verdict? I **** it. People online that say it's easy to turn must look like The Mountain, pre zombie stage. Parking lots suck, and it's way heavier even at speed. It is much faster though, I'll eventually put a Z3 assisted rack in but that's a lot of work.

Got an exhaust leak. My fault for not using a flex pipe.



Tried a new version of welding using bird shit instead of metal. It works I guess



My new $50 axles started making noise. Shocking, I know. The passengers started throwing grease on my nicely powdercoated trailing arms, and I'll let the video speak for what happened to the drivers side

http://s182.photobucket.com/user/e30spdfrk/media/dildo%20car/DB071614-C72E-412F-90B7-6AAFDBC609B2_zpsyyr2a9u8.mp4.html

Sprung for new OEM axles, wallet still hurts





Had to buy 325i axles since they don't sell 318i axles anymore, and because I have a 325i rear end. The inner flanges are thicker, so I got new bolts too



Finally got around to putting on the correct front sway bar links. I got some e90 links and modified them, had my friend Eric tig them together shorter and with the correct rotation



Compared to stock





Stock ones were dead from all my curb hopping at the races



A whole lot of 2's right before a roadtrip







Was with a friend buying some e24 parts in San Diego, saw a bolster of a seat sticking out of a shelf and made a deal happen.



They're Recaro LS-B's, sold originally by D&W in the early 80's. I wished they matched, but I have plans for the interior anyways

Made some mounts. I wanted to get them as low as possible while keeping the factory sliders, made the passengers side first to see what I could do



It was way too high still. My head is less than an inch away from the ceiling with stock e30 seats, and these were exactly the same. Gave up on the slider idea for the drivers seat and just went for maximum slammed stance.

Pulled the old seat, found one of the studs had tore out, probably from the intense G's this thing pulls in the twisties.



This sucked to fix since I was too lazy to pull the carpet completely









Drivers side mount. The butt of the seat rests on the floor





Did a valve adjustment...



...mostly as an excuse to clean





Dude backed into me in a lot. I saw him coming and started to drive away, he was backing up so fast and 318's are so slow he still hit me. He's being a dick now and is trying to not pay



Started smelling burning oil after the valve adjustment, thought I fucked up somehow but it turned out my shifter selector seal gave up completely and was dumping all my trans fluid out onto my exhaust. Decided to rebuild the shifter while I was in there







Seal put up a good fight, but Momma always told me I'm a winner



More cleaning

[E30SPDFRK]

So I got the exhaust done and decided to take the car to the e30 picnic in Tacoma Washington, 1150 miles each way. It was super hot on the way there, so we cut across from the 5 to the PCH in Redding CA and took it all the way into Washington.







Only picture I took at the show haha



Made it all the way back home with no issues except a rear end noise. I stopped to get gas a mile from my house, started filling up and saw a puddle of oil emerging from under the car. 2300 mile trip and I break down a mile from my house. I had hit a metal plate on the road up by LAX 40 miles away, but it didn't seem bad so I just kept on driving haha. Somehow the engine still had oil in it when I stopped.



I had it towed over to the shop, pulled the pan and welded it back together, filled it with new oil, and made it home a few hours later than planned. 7 years of driving slammed cars and this is my first broken pan. It had to happen eventually, I guess I'm just a late bloomer.

The carnage



So that rear end noise I mentioned. It was a rotational noise, speed dependent, didn't change over bumps or around turns. Without getting under the car to check anything, I decided it was the diff, and that this would be a good time to upgrade to an LSD. I found a 4.10 large case out of an M3 on cl for $50 with a noise, so I grabbed it and bought everything needed for a rebuild.









I also decided to upgrade it to 60% lockup at the same time, since this is a racecar and all. That means I'd be putting 4 clutches back in when only 2 came out. There's no room inside of the differential for 4 clutches however, so I had material shaved off the end cap to make room.

Old worn out clutches



New high friction ones from Bimmerworld, plus some complimentary gummy bears



The piece to be machined



And post-machining



Noticed that my new OEM exhaust hanger was already torn, so I went back to the hose clamp I had built the exhaust to avoid using.



Put the diff all back together and installed it in the car, and it still made the noise :/ it locked up nice though, it almost feels like a welded diff when you get on it.

So when I was changing the diff, I noticed that the rear u-joint on the driveshaft had a little flat spot on it. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but since the car was still making the noise I decided that was the culprit. BMW u-joints are swaged in from the factory, so I took it to a driveshaft shop to get rebuilt rather than attempting it myself. I got a new csb and guibo while in there for good measure.





Put it all in and... Still making the noise.

My tires were getting pretty bad during all of this, so I stopped chasing the noise for a bit to replace them with some track tires to attempt to contain the 1.8l of power.



Drove around for a bit as is to let my wallet recover, the noise kept getting worse and worse



Decided to break the pan again on some more road construction. It was getting time for an oil change anyways. Once you pop, you just can't stop.



Split the drain bung from the stamped metal of the pan



How BMW ships cork gaskets



I welded completely around the bung, but it still leaks a bit. I'll replace the pan with a new one on the next oil change.

I replaced the axles in an attempt to fix the noise (Diagnoses cars for a living, throws parts at his own car), to no avail. Decided it had to be the wheel bearings by process of elimination. They had no play and the noise didn't change during turns, but they were literally the only thing left. The noise was to the point that you couldn't talk to the person next to you while driving, but Mike and I were super busy trying to get Rusty done for SEMA, so I left it for a few months and borrowed my girlfriends car. As soon as we got back from SEMA, I put the car on the lift and started the exorcism.

The early 318i's came with drum brakes in the rear, and mine were getting low. I had been wanting to change them to the disks that came on every other e30, but that involves swapping the trailing arms to the later ones. Since the wheel bearings needed to be done anyways, I decided now was the time to do it, so I found a set on cl and started collecting the new parts. While I was in there, I figured why not make the subframe adjustable too, right?

Old rear end down



And apart



Old bushings out




Collection of new parts to go in. New wheel bearings, pads and rotors, stainless caliper hoses (racecar), e-brake cables, shoes, and hardware, nearly solid subframe and trailing arm bushings (racecar), and the IE eccentric adjusters.



Since the car would be pulling so many G's in the corners, I decided the new trailing arms could use some bracing. I stuck my sidekick KK on making the easy gussets while I made the rest





Welded in





Eccentric guides welded onto the subframe



I started to clean them up for paint, but it was miserable so I brought them down to get sandblasted and powdercoated. While that was getting done, Mike and I traveled with Rusty to Germany to attend the Essen Motor show. H&R invited us to tour their facility while we were over there, and showed us some of their personal collection













Stayed in a castle







Explored the castle, found some sketchy things





Got back to CA to find my parts back from the powdercoaters





Bought some more parts



Started reassembling it all



I bought some brass caliper guides to replace the rubber ones that came stock



Cleaned up the new calipers and painted them. The 318 front came with solid rotors, so I upgraded them to the 325i vented ones, which required new front calipers as well



New ebrake parts



Race pads



All back together







Took it out for a drive and... Still making noise.



Nah, jk, it was all good. The car drove amazing, but the alignment was all screwy since I just threw it together. I put it back in the air to do an eyeball alignment to get me by until I could get it on a rack, and found out that the trailing arms I got off cl and did a bunch of work to without checking were bent. In order to get the sides to match, the adjusters have to be maxed out in opposite directions. Hindsight is 20:20, right? I'm blaming it on KK.

So I'm driving it around as is until I can come up with a solution to fix it that doesn't involve redoing all the work I just did.

[E30SPDFRK]

Decided it was time to tackle the exhaust. It had been giving me trouble since the beginning of my ownership, it hung low and hit a lot, it was a big mismatch of parts and was poorly assembled, and one of the hangers had broke a while back and I was using a hose clamp to hold it up so it rattled. If it wasn't for the rattle I'd probably be leaving it alone.

So I ordered some pieces from Summit. Got a 1 3/4" U bend, a 2 1/4" U bend, 2 4' sections of 2 1/4", and 2 glasspacks. I wanted to try to fit the 18" underneath the car and run just that, but I got the 14" too in case the 18" was too large.



Took the old crap off. What was there was a combination of 1 3/4, 1 7/8, 2, and 2 1/4 tubing, not in that order.



Started with this to make a Y for the downpipe



Measure and cut



Weld together



Cut the end off





And attach to the old flange. I put the Y at a slight angle to help with routing the rest of the system





Used part of the 2 1/4 U bend and some straight to get it under the floor



Couple more bends to attach it to my existing converter.



This was the inside of my "constant radius mandrel bent" tubing.



The 18" had zero possibility of fitting under the floor, so I attempted to fit the 14" under there



But once I had it all welded up it was way too low and I wasn't happy with it. So I cut it off and progressed into plan C, which was run the 18" in the stock muffler location. I ran out of bends from the U bend at this point, so cut up a bunch of 20* pie cuts instead. The muffler I left hanging in the car because it's a pain to get off. I made a couple hangers too





Mig pie cuts, max weldporn bro



Painted it all black since I just used regular steel and black is more racecar



Made a tip



And back up in the car for the final time





Nice and unobtrusive. I swear that's just dirt and not overspray



It sits nice and high now: it's flush with the frame rails up front and only hangs down under the rear subframe, which is unavoidable unless I used [$]oval tubing[/$]





But I'm not in love with the sound. It has the sound I wanted above like 4500rpm, but down low it's slightly diesel-like, and it's a bit louder than I would have liked. I might try a different muffler later on, but for now I'm going to see if it grows on me.

[E30SPDFRK]

Bought some Brock B1's



***** them and took them off a week later





I brought them to get refinished so I could sell them and told the shop I wasn't in a hurry. This was apparently the wrong thing to say because they still have them nearly 6 months later.

Got some new window switches since mine were working intermittently



Before



After



Beautiful shift boot, right?

Found and fixed a squeaking from the engine





Found a large vacuum leak



What was left of the #4 intake gasket





Fixed some more cooling system problems while I was in there









Exhaust snapped off at the manifold



A month after fixing the coolant leaks under the manifold the next weakest spot gave up



This is the hose from the back of the waterpump to the heater pipe, which is a real pita to get to, so I finally bit the bullet and just replaced what was left of the cooling system at the same time. S/O to squishy for the parts, I'll pay you for them one of these days.



Gross



But of course, it wouldn't be a can of worms build if nothing went wrong. Someone had replaced the waterpump at some point and used shitty bolts that corroded themselves into the timing case and snapped off while I was taking everything apart.



I tried vice grips, heat, welding, etc. nothing worked, so I had to drill them out. I was lazy and didn't want to take the radiator and condenser out, which made the job even worse. The drill kept walking it's way into the aluminum timing case, so I had our machinist make me a guide plate.









Drilled and tapped



Helicoiled





And done. All bolts replaced and coated in anti-seize for the next muppet



My girlfriend bought me new window trim for Christmas and I finally installed it 5 months later. It was the wonderful yellow before.







And now it's nice luxurious chromed plastic. I figure it'll last to winter before it turns yellow again







And we're back up to date. So to sum up what you've just read, I've been fixing the same things I've been fixing since day 1.

I need (want) some wheels but I can't find what I want for what I want to pay. I also want some euro bumpers and a new interior, but, once again, I don't want to pay for them. Stuff usually ends up dropping into my lap if I wait long enough though, so I'm just waiting it out.

[E30SPDFRK]

I brought back the suspension from the black car, but the strut housings were rusty from living life in New England, and I couldn't have that, so I had to track down a set of good ones out here. I couldn't use the stock 318i ones because BMW in their infinite wisdom made the diameter a few mm smaller, probably to save weight since it's a racecar, and my strut inserts wouldn't fit. Once I found a good set, I started by cutting them into pieces.









The eagle eyed nerds out there might notice the mounting tab for the sway bar links on the strut tubes. I somehow ended up with the top halves of some e30 M3 strut tubes earlier in the year and I wanted those tabs, so I combined the M3 top halves with the lower halves of the stock 325i housings.









I shortened the housings 2" for good measure while I was in there.

I've seen people and companies brace the hub to the strut tube before and it seemed like a good idea, so I made some gussets and welded them in







Even though I shortened the housings 2" over stock, the strut inserts I had made are 3" shorter than factory, so I needed spacers for the bottom of the strut insert. Find some pipe



And make spacers



Simple


Then since I cut the stock spring seats off, I needed some new ones. I found these decorative thingys at the metal store that would work perfect.



Just open them up slightly



Line them up



And stick them on



Then paint the housings all pretty with a spray can at night



Assemble and compare to stock



I had my camber plates rebuilt sometime during this as well, which was a story in itself, but here they are before. Open raceplate design used for 3 years in New England means they weren't pretty





Of course I didn't take pictures afterwards.


But back to the struts



I just put the stock 318i front brakes on the new housings for now since the rear is still drum and my new housings didn't come with the vented rotor calipers.



I got these new sway bar links from a friend to use in those swanky new tabs



But they're from a mustang so they're nowhere close to working. I'm going to cut and sleeve them in order to extend and rotate them, but I still need to get material. I'm still using the stock control arm mounts for now.



Laugh at how much lower it is before moving on to the rear suspension



Then pull the rear apart and put the new stuff in.







Then pull it outside and think about how you just ruined a nice car









The suspension is very stiff since I originally built it for the black car that was 1/4" off the ground, so it rides quite a bit different. The suspension is basically all tire at the moment. It handles so much better than it did before, but now I'm gonna need some new wheels so I can get better tires. I have all new bushings for the rear end, but I'm waiting on some new trailing arms for the brake swap before I put them in.

[E30SPDFRK]

Been a while since updates, I've been busy. Starting where I left off, I had an unnecessarily hard time getting my crate shipped over here, so I flew back to RI and brought it back myself. I managed to fit 400 lbs of parts and stuff that took up a 4' square box into the back of a Hyundai somethingorothertheyalllookthesame.



Made some tourist stops along the way













Then I got the car PDR'd, I didn't take pictures of the after because I'm dumb but the car looks perfect. These are some of the before, the car was covered in door dings and the like







These two were the worst



(Big crease on the bottom half of the door)



If anyone needs to get there car PDR'd in SoCal hit up Shane at AllDentsOut, the car came out amazing. I had him roll the fenders for me too to since the bottle caps were getting close.

Then I threw a larger front sway and poly bushings in the front end. There's no rear sway but at least the front will be racecar.

You probably can't tell but the larger one is on the right.



Old was 18.7mm



New is 21ish mm



The bushing brackets were pretty ugly so I cleaned them up and painted them













Cleaned up the nuts and bolts too



Installed



Decided to change my engine mounts while I was in there because they were looking a bit saggy



The oil pan was sitting just below the subframe, which was giving it extremely little ground clearance on the stock suspension.



Passengers side compared to new



And how the drivers side came out. I'm sensing a pattern with rubber on this car.



I didn't take a picture of the ground clearance now because I suck, but the pan is about half an inch above the subframe. Since I did the engine mounts, I decided to do the transmission mounts as well. Once again no pictures because idk. I did take some of the transmission brace before and after cleaning though, so there's that





Riveting indeed



Then I found a cat



Next I got to work on my headlights. I thought I took pictures of this, but nope.
I had bought some Depo euro smileys for the black car right before it blew up, but I never got to put them in. I brought them back and looked them over and decided they were crap, so I bought some cool 3d printed projector adapters for OEM Hellas that allowed me to put some Morimoto mini H1 bi-xenon projectors into the Depo housings. Then I got some Morimoto 5000k HID's and it's amazing. But anyways, here they are



Compared to the stock sealed beams





Threw some euro grills in at the same time since I didn't want to go through all the trouble of taking the grills out again later



Cleaned the car up again





Stock finish 32 year old bottle caps



And threw some new wiper blades on to deal with all this rain we've been having

[E30SPDFRK]

Still doing maintenance. Got all the parts for a tune up.



The plugs and wires weren't too bad but the cap and rotor were shot.







Only the best for this 318i



Found that some douche had left my fuse box lid unlatched *cough Moose cough*



Also found this beauty chillin under the intake waiting to fuck me over on a long drive far away from home





Changed it up. Still want to address the rest of the cooling system as it's getting old



The fuel hoses weren't looking too hot either





And the fuel filter was 7 years old almost to the day



New one has some fancy chrome trim too that I think really classes up the look of the car



Changed all the hoses I could get to, but there are some that run up to the top of the tank that I'll have to change later. I'll probably drop the tank when I have the rear subframe out but I really don't want to.



This stupid useless hanger kept smacking against my subframe making my car sound like a cow coming for dinner, so I cut it off. Strike 2 for the exhaust, steadily moving up the list.



Someone explain to me what this exhaust guy was thinking





My ICV hose was cracked so I changed it





Started the car up and drove it down the street to see if it was any better and it ran way smoother but was still slow. Decided to check the timing to see if goon had messed with it. Spec is 30* BTDC, it was roughly at 5*, which explains why I was getting passed by cyclists on the road. Bumped it up a bunch and it made a huge difference, the car is still slow but reasonably slow now. Those damn bikers don't stand a chance. The idle got all screwy once I set the timing correctly, which I assume is why goon had it set so low. The ICV seems to be working correctly, and searches online show people still having problems even with new ICV's and ICV computers, so I clamped the hose shut to fix it for now. I say I'll fix it eventually but it's working great like this so I'll probably end up forgetting about it.




And hopefully my new pet gorilla will be here in time for the next update.