Mila - Alpine White 318is - Daily Driver/Autox - Pic Heavy

[The_Lope7]

Hey guys! At this point I've had my car almost two years. I've been documenting the whole process along the way, but have never made the effort to put together a project thread. In the near future ill be posting the pictures I've collected over the past two years, so get ready for some serious spam.

1991 318is
145k Miles on stopped odo, probably more like 180k
Manual
Well maintained with lots of records and supposedly owned by BMW master mechanic who did most of the mods present on the car (Billy sports and H&R OE spring w/ Ronal LS wheels)
Turner Performance Chip
Originally blue interior, previous owners swapped in front and rear seats from an '85 for unknown reasons, but they're the black and grey checked so I prefer that over blue for sure. As soon as I got the car I started looking for black door cards cause I really hate the blue interior.
Dash has one tiny crack above the glove box in the tray thingys

Known issues at time of purchase:
Rust in battery tray
Small rust under rear driver side window
Rusted out exhaust
Car had been repainted in the past and driver side clear coat is starting to yellow
Intermittent/Rarely working A/C (living in Florida this was my main priority)

When I purchased the car most of my knowledge was in suspension so that's what I allocated most of my money towards, as the engine seems to have been well taken care of.

For now, enjoy this pic of when I first bought the car in June 2015

[The_Lope7]

Interior Pics:





The car spent most of the following summer at a friends shop getting the A/C converted to 134. The friend didn't have much spare time and looking back I really should have done the work myself, but I was new to the car and wasn't sure I could tackle a project like A/C with the knowledge I had at the time. While he was in there he was also able to delete an aftermarket alarm system that was interfering with the door lock system.
In the mean time, I was able to get a set of black door cards, Euro clock, e36 M3 shift knob, factory sunshade, and a rear plate filler.

Finally Back at home


Next I started to strip back the car and try to tackle any rust I could find.
First and most obvious was the battery tray. After some cleaning:

I got in contact with a friend and planned to tackle the tray in the near future.
In the mean time I found rust under the rear trunk seal, trunk lid, and licence plate lights.


Treated and painted promptly. With MUCH overkill on the masking.


Definitely not happy with the paint job but its a lot better than having rust

And new lights

New trunk seal

And back together with the new plate filler


Out with the old

And in with the new (hopefully upgrading to a better one in the future). A friend was nice enough to let us use his lift for a few hours. God I wish I had my own. Also a peek a the soon to be refreshed suspension.


New door cards installed. Interior looks a million times better already.


Got a visit from a friend to see his recently picked up 240z

[The_Lope7]

Small photo shoot in December 2015

Took some time to respray the speaker deck with dupicolor


Care package from ECS

Aftermarket euro trim and plate filler installed. Also testing out clear signals and black kidneys (ft. my brothers neverending 240sx hatch project)


New hood insulation


Coming into 2016 I noticed a decent size oil leak

Ordered valve cover gaskets as well as new control arm ball joints and inner tie rod ends as I noticed my ball joints were ripped

February 2016 The teardown begins

The further I got into the engine the more I realized it wasn't just the valve cover gasket. The timing case profile gasket, which is a known issue with the m42, was the main culprit along with the oil filter reservoir. Decided to just teardown the whole engine and refresh all the seals down to the headgasket.

Everything went smoothly and for the time being, all the leaks were taken care of. Also took the time to paint and shave the valve cover and intake manifold, making the engine bay look much nicer
Before and After:


I was also able to pick up a cheap Mtech 1 wheel and e46 floormats. The interior was coming along nicely

[The_Lope7]

Next up I took some time to tint my rear tails. Came out pretty nicely


E36 switches wired in. Cheap mod would definitely recommend.

I was really considering getting rid of my Ronals but I first wanted to see how they would look without the BMW center logo. Ordered some 3d decals online and was super happy with the result. After this I decided to stick with the Ronals.


And the suspension parts started rolling in

I decided to tackle the front suspension first. Before:

Decided to go with Ground Control Coilovers. Here are the struts getting welded up along with new m3 style sway bay endlink tabs

Pressing in new ball joints

Skipping ahead a bit, control arms were painted, coliovers assembled, and all the parts were laid out and ready to install. (ST sway bars were already installed on the car

After:


The next project was the battery tray. My friend is an experienced welder and agreed to give me a hand repairing the tray.

The extent of the rust




Came out very nicely


Next up: Rear suspension

[The_Lope7]

Summer 2016 - Rear end parts:
4.10 LSD
Ground Control Coilovers
ST Sway bars w/ adjustable end links
Revshift 80A poly bushings
Stoptech brake lines
Hawk HPS pads
FAG wheel bearings
New E Brake Cables and shoes
Garagistic adjustable camber and toe hardware

Before dropping out the rear

Rebuilding the axles


Started cleaning up the tanks and scraping off the old coating before respraying with undercoating


The subframe bolt refused to move so I was forced to cut off the old sleeve. What a pain in the ass :finger:

Picked up a 4.10 LSD to replace my non lsd 4.10

ST sway bars and hardware vs old rear sway


Always a joy to smell burning rubber

Welding up the adjustable hardware plates

Sandblasetd

Before pressing in the new bearings

Fast forward to everything assembled and looking brand new ;D

The night of the subframe install was two days before I was supposed to leave for college. I really wanted to bring the e30 with me so it had to get done. The following pic was taken around 2am and we finished up around 4am. I scheduled an alignment at 11am and by some miracle I was able to make it with no issues.


The result. Very happy with the height. Not so low that I scrape on everything but also not a whole lot of wheel gap. The ride is great, fairly stiff but very responsive.


The next day I left for college with the E30 and no issues to be found. School is around an hour from my house so I knew that if I noticed any issues, I could come back and work on it if need be. But basically the next 4 months I was in school and didn't do much work on the car.

[The_Lope7]

During my time away from school my father went through a bit of a mid life crisis and the remedy of course was an E30. Surprisingly enough he just happened to pick up another Alpine 318is. Twins

His is ridiculously clean though and pretty much bone stock


Now onto December 2016. Finally finished up with the fall semester and wanted to investigate the drivers floor as I expected there to be rust. Sure enough...

Just to make sure there wasn't more hidden


Used ospho to treat and then coated with POR 15


I still need to properly weld closed the hole near the dead pedal, but for now seam sealer should do fine

After treating the floor it was time to head back to school for another semester. Fast forward again to May of this year and surprise surprise, another e30 joins the family. My brothers car on the left (86 325 e), my 318is in the middle, and my father's on the right.

My brother at the time worked at a german import shop and some old lady was driving around this 325i (so we thought). She really needed to get rid of it so he picked it up off of her for just a few hundred bucks and here we are. Turns out the car is actually an '86 325e that was rear ended really badly. The previous owners swapped the entire front and rear end of a late model (including the tail light panel) and actually did a nice job of it. At first glance you would think its a late model but nope. The sunroof and passenger door are also seriously rusted out. So another project it is.


Catching up to the present here, I started off the summer by refreshing my shifter with a Z3 shifter, Ireland engineering DSSR and Garagistic bushings.


Z3 Shifter with ZHP knob

Overall the shifting is much nicer. The Z3 throw is noticeably shorter and very notchy. However I'm still not satisfied with the side to side play and have decided to go with a DTM style mount in the near future.

Also cleaned up the trans tunnel cover while I was at it


Garagistic rear strut bar installed


Last month the car started to idle very poorly and it got to the point that the car would bearly start without a decent amount of gas. I suspected it to be a vaccum leak. Sure enough the infamous m42 'mess under the intake' was the source of the leak.

Tore everything apart to find that both of the four way hoses were totally split open. I had heard about an option to delete all these hoses as well as the throttle body heater (which living in Florida I of course don't need). After some research I found this diagram and went at it.

I was able to reuse one of the old lines that was still in good shape to block off the coolant passage. For the rest I got a few feet of vacuum hose. Overall it was pretty straightforward.



Everything went back together nicely and the car idles perfectly again. I would highly reccomend this mod for anyone with an m42.
:finger:



At this point we're pretty much caught up to the present! I hope you've enjoyed the build so far. All feedback is appreciated and will continue to update the thread from here.

[The_Lope7]

Been awhile since I updated here, been really busy with college, but wanted to share the progress I've made over the last 10 months or so.

Around summer last year I started to notice my trim was looking pretty rough, so I decided to give the car a good once over, excluding the window trim.

Started off with the bumper trim




Once I got the rear bumper off I noticed the mounts looked like shit so I derusted and painted them while I was at it. Also picked up some new stainless screws.





Took care of the bumper trim along with my euro plate filler, door handles, and euro grilles.

[The_Lope7]

Next up were the rocker panels



They actually turned out really nice. Just used a can of 3M rubberized undercoating


Next up was the door trim which turned out to be the biggest pain
The previous owner, rather than replacing the clips, used some fucking awful adhesive that took way too long to remove


Finally got all the trim off and cleaned up the old adhesive. Picked up some new clips and got to painting


I actually had a lot of trouble getting the trim paint I was using to stick, so I ended up just priming and using regular automotive paint. Did the job pretty well.

[The_Lope7]

Window Rust Repair and Quarter Panel Paint Correction

Now finally, we get to something I've been hoping to get to for a long time. Ever since I purchased the car there has been a small, quarter sized spot of rust under the driver side rear window.
In addition to this, you may have noticed in previous pictures, the clear coat on part of drivers side of the car has begun to turn yellow. The previous owner was in a minor accident and they fixed and repainted the quarter panel and door, but the clear coat they used was pretty cheap.
To knock two birds out with one stone I got in touch with my friend that fixed my battery tray and decided to repair the rust and respray the quarter panel.

Here's the spot, didn't look like too much from the outside, but wasn't sure how much we would find after getting the trim off and window out.



Well it was worse than I had hoped but nothing too bad. Marked it out, cut, and replaced with fresh metal.



Filled, sanded the window along with the rest of the quarter panel and got ready for paint.




Here it is after the first round of paint. We just used a spray can of factory alpine white from Sherwin-Williams Automotive, turned out alot better than I expected for just a spray can



While I was at it i decided to fill the mounting spots for the door trim, as the previous owner had drilled extra holes to use screws rather than buy replacement clips


One more round of paint and a layer of 2k clear coat had it looking like new




As you can see the door still needs to be color matched

But overall I'm really glad with how it came out


Here's the spot where the rust was, hard to tell anything was ever replaced



Also threw in an antenna delete plug from garagistic


While it was being worked on I noticed I really needed some new tires.

Got her home after paint and received the new tires in the mail!


I was waiting to throw the trim back on once I got the quarter panel wet sanded a couple weeks after paint.

[The_Lope7]

Strömung Catback

After treating the quarter panel I returned to school for the fall of 2017. During that time I returned home a couple times to work on the e30.

I received my exhaust from the Strömung Catback group buy in September and finally got around to installing it in November



The old shitty exhaust


Got it installed without too much trouble, and was pretty happy with the fitment

[The_Lope7]

Around January I finally got around to swapping in my euro smilies which were sitting in my closet for over a year




Shortly after getting the smilies installed I blew up my lip running over some trash on the highway. Had a spare one sitting around and replaced it right away.
I'm not even that low smh


Got an alignment before returning to school for Spring 2018 and replaced my roundel



Well that pretty much catches us up to now. Here's how she currently sits at school

[Mazdayasna]

Wow, that's looking fantastic! Did you cut that replacement piece for the rear window rust out of another car or fab it yourself?

[The_Lope7]

Wow, that's looking fantastic! Did you cut that replacement piece for the rear window rust out of another car or fab it yourself?

Thanks! I wish I had moe pics of the process but yeah we just fabd it ourselves based on the piece we chopped out

[Fergi]

Dude this build is sweet, you went all out! Your car puts my alpine white 318is to shame!

[ATL_E30]

Dude this build is sweet, you went all out! Your car puts my alpine white 318is to shame!

Ditto what Fergi said! I'd love to see some updates!