Adventures of goldE

[zwill23]

Unfair advantage. Not only have I owned many e30's over the years, work on them every day for a living lol. The community helps me put food on my table, glad to help when possible. :)

Hah! Very true, well I appreciate the input you throw around there. You may just have some business from my end when it comes time to build an M20 turbo suitable head

No dash pull required! I'll post an update in my thread with photos once it's all done.

Oh damn nice! I'll have to check it out because I'm sure I'll have to yank and fix my heatercore on one of my machines at some point too.

[mike.bmw]

Thanks! I'm glad I haven't had to deal with a heatercore issue yet, that requires a dash pull doesn't it?

No dash pull required! I'll post an update in my thread with photos once it's all done.

[ForcedFirebird]

Man, always sliding in and dropping these great tips. You've been in the game a long time

Unfair advantage. Not only have I owned many e30's over the years, work on them every day for a living lol. The community helps me put food on my table, glad to help when possible. :)

[zwill23]

Nice update. I'm replacing my heater valve, heater core, and o-rings this weekend. I'm not really looking forward with the amount of coolant that's going to flow out when I disconnect everything. :(

Thanks! I'm glad I haven't had to deal with a heatercore issue yet, that requires a dash pull doesn't it?

Wet/dry vac on the firewall heater hose connection makes that a non-issue. ;)

Man, always sliding in and dropping these great tips. You've been in the game a long time

[ForcedFirebird]

Nice update. I'm replacing my heater valve, heater core, and o-rings this weekend. I'm not really looking forward with the amount of coolant that's going to flow out when I disconnect everything. :(

Wet/dry vac on the firewall heater hose connection makes that a non-issue. ;)

[mike.bmw]

Nice update. I'm replacing my heater valve, heater core, and o-rings this weekend. I'm not really looking forward with the amount of coolant that's going to flow out when I disconnect everything. :(

[zwill23]

Quickie! Working on a turbo build update, so I wanted to give an update on the daily as well.

Discovered some water in the trunk after some heavy rain, so I replaced the trunk vent o-rings. This is a pretty common source of water in the side pockets so I wanted get it addressed quickly since it will rot out corners in fast-order.



Took a trip to the Willow City Loop during early quarantine to get out of the house and check out the Texas landscape:



Sadly, the euroweaves were pulled out from under GoldE to provide mo'meat for the turbo car. Even with stock suspension and its bronzit glory, the euroweaves made it look that much better. Back to bottle caps with new tires for now!



Added another front lip with new clips, the other one flew off presumably on my drive to and from work. No surprises there though, some of the clips broke after hitting the tumbleweed in West Texas that also claimed the driver side fog light. Probably should have removed the lip before losing it, but oh well! New "i" lips are pretty inexpensive fortunately.



Lastly, GoldE left my girlfriend and I stranded at the grocery store with a full set of groceries when the key refused to turn to the start position. I was able to get it into auxiliary though, so we did our first bump start and I was able to get it home.

After tearing apart the steering column and removing the ignition switch I discovered the tumbler somehow got jammed. Applying key force while turning the backside of the tumbler was enough to get it working properly again. I've never had this happen before, and I'm hoping it was just a "fluke" because I'm not very interested in replacing the tumbler. I added a bit of lube to the tumbler and reassembled, everything has been okay ever since!

Action shot mid tumbler antics!



That's all for now, GoldE is still a plush cruiser but now that Texas is starting to get hot I'm getting the itch to look into the AC...

[zwill23]

GoldE has been distracting me from the turbo car so I decided to give an update on it. I'm the first one to really get some miles on this machine since it sat for all those years so I've been chewing through some "old car problems."

Let's dive into it.

Sprung a fuel leak driving to work and realized the fuel lines that were installed weren't rated for pressure.

Old cracked lines:



Fresh pressure rated lines:



The car became particularly dribbly when I would park it so it was time to address some leaks.

The powersteering was the worst offender so I tackled that first. GoldE was blessed with an E36 steering rack from Kid8 so I ordered some new lines that ran off the reservoir and bent the one to match the new steering rack geometry. A blow torch and mallet work wonders to get these things into shape, only took a few minutes especially since I had the old one that was already bent.

Freshly bent powersteering line:



New lines installed! Note that I pressure washed the engine bay after this leaky mess, looks much cleaner in there now.



Next on the list was a "new" oil cooler line that I stole from the turbo car. I had this line repaired at a hydraulic repair shop a while back and it's been leak free ever since. The turbo car is moving on to an aftermarket cooler so I was happy to recycle this line into GoldE.

Here's the deets on repairing that line for anyone curious: https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/for...56#post6962856

Old leaky line:



New oil cooler line that was installed shortly after this pic:



The cap and rotor was never replaced so I knocked that out with a fresh set of NGK plugs for good measure:



The old cap and rotor was seriously rough:



After knocking that out GoldE gifted me with some interior dribbles.



Removing the under-dash panel I discovered a leaky heatercore valve.



After some digging I realized the carpet was soaked on the driver-side with a trimix of brake fluid, coolant, and water. The brake fluid was apparently from a leaky clutch master cylinder that should have been addressed by the PO (not kid8), but you know how that goes.

So naturally I yanked the carpet out, which I wasn't the most thrilled about.



But then I got excited because the car started to pay for itself.



Right up until I discovered this...



I cut the rust out and crafted up a patch panel:



Had a buddy hit it with a welder:



Cleaned up the weld:



Painted the floor up with POR15 on the top and underside. The underside also got a 3M rubberized undercoating treatment to replace the rubber coating that was cut out and burned up from welding.

Side note - This must be a common rust area on these cars, I've now had to deal with it on both E30s I've owned so if anyone has to remove their carpet I highly recommend checking out the passenger foot well. The exhaust stud that holds the heat shield rots out from the underside.

Where the rust hole used to be:



While I was in there, I hit the driver-side floor with a wire brush because the brake fluid had started to bubble the paint from sitting under the carpet for so long.

Coated the affected area with POR15 too:



There has been some surface rust forming on the sunroof so painted that as well:



Finally after all of that I got to the whole reason I started on this adventure in the first place, the leaky valve. To get the valve out I drained the coolant, undid the heatercore lines, and removed the bolts holding the valve in place.

Valve out!



I discovered that these valves are about $300 to replace, but after a bit of research they can be fixed with a simple o-ring. I drilled out the rivets to pull the valve apart and found a suitable o-ring at autozone.



Bolted back together and reinstalled:



After filling the car back up with coolant and testing that the valve worked and was leak free, I pressure washed and scrubbed the carpet a couple times to get the fluid out.

Drying out the carpet:




Reinstalled the interior (Shit pic, oh well):


Then of course I took it on a 1000 mile round trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras

[zwill23]

Hot damn, I miss that car. The euro weaves really make it a new animal!! Valve cover gasket was fine till I took the damn valve off and it tore it all up!

I think it genuinely looks good with the weaves, some drop hats in the front would level it all out a bit I think. But that also seems like a lot of work

I don't wana hear anymore wrenching excuses! :P

P.S. Fix GreyE already

[kid8]

Hot damn, I miss that car. The euro weaves really make it a new animal!! Valve cover gasket was fine till I took the damn valve off and it tore it all up!

[zwill23]

Big update!

In an interesting turn of events, GoldE popped up on Craigslist almost a year after Kid8 sold it off and I couldn't help but scoop it up as the new daily. I've been itching to take on bigger projects with the black car, and with a new garage space on my horizon it was an easy decision to add another chariot to the stable.

Since picking it up, I've cleaned GoldE up a bit and knocked out some maintenance items that cropped up over its 9 month hiatus with the PO.

Tucked away at home:



New garage space!!!



First item of business was the howling wheel bearing. I've actually never done this before, but it was pretty straight forward. I was going to replace both sides, but discovered the drivers side wheel bearing had already been replaced.

Wheel bearing removed:



Nasty old bearing:



Lubed up the spindle and slapped the bearing on:



I managed to get the windshield wiper fluid system working again with the help of a new pump, grommets, and rubber lines.

Fresh pump and new grommets:



Replaced the check valve with a simple tee fitting:



New hose routing, the hood insulation was a bit wet from testing:



Filled up the reservoir! Also note the fancy new fuel pressure regulator:



aannnnndddd SPRAYERS!



Kid8 botched the valve cover like a rookie wrench, so replaced that:



Installed some new interior lights with some new light retainers:



I don't think I realized these crumbly retainers held the lights in:



Let there be light!



Blower motor only worked on full tilt, so naturally a new resistor was in order:



Swapped some E82 floor mats in to freshen the place up:



Looking lovely, one of my favorite "retro-fits:"



Passenger side rear door trim was rotting so replaced that:



With all that knocked out we did another 1200 mile road trip through West Texas over Thanksgiving!



The crew!



Smooth cruisin':



In true Texan fashion, we hit a tumbleweed and smashed a fog light:



Did some donuts at the infamous Prada store (click me!)

Untitled by Zachary Williamson, on Flickr

Back home! Overall GoldE ran great throughout the trip, with the only causalities being a nicked windshield and a busted fog light. It also became apparent that I needed new tires on the bottle caps when I found some bubbles forming, so I swapped my euroweaves over for now.

The cruise control on these cars is a game changer, I must have used it half the trip. We pulled about 26.5 mpg over the 1200 miles too. Not too shabby for a hunk of old Bavarian metal.

I don't have any big plans for this car other than sprucing it up where I can and knocking out maintenance items. It's a wonderful driver as is, but I admit an AC conversion and a little paint is very tempting. We'll see what happens :)

[zwill23]

What the what?! So glad you ended up buying it so I didn't have too ��

This bronzit has a knack for finding it's way back home...

[kid8]

What the what?! So glad you ended up buying it so I didn't have too ��

[zwill23]

Whelp... turns out GoldE gets another chapter in the book after all.

The Return of God's Golden Chariot :razz:

[kid8]

Thanks guys, pretty happy how it turned out. It could be a little better yet I bet, but it's good enough now and the parts that could use some more help are hidden.

I went over it once with normal resolve carpet cleaner and then a second time with Turtle brand carpet cleaner and a scrub brush. I then just used a wet-vac to bring it all up.

I drove the car a little bit and it seems like the new fuel pump fixed the terrible whine it had, so that's great news! Making progress, shouldn't be long now, it's going to be sad, it's so nice to drive. I just can't have this many cars lol.