Maybe in the Spring

[Zyth01]

Well, I sold my first e30 about four years ago because the transmission was giving out and it was generally not in good shape. I also didn't have an appreciation for cars like I do now. But after months of trolling various e30 forums I can finally say that I am yet again an e30 owner.

Picked it up from a gentlemen whose phone was ringing off the hook with people calling for this car this morning. It is a 1985 325e automatic (auto) it runs real strong with 250k on the odo (still working odo mind you) and cleaned up real nice after I gave it a bath.





Paint is about two years old, probably a Maaco special or something like that, I might change it if it starts to bubble but for now it'll have to do, it matches the door jamb and trunk though so I think they reused a stock color, I'll have to check.

Plans for the future include a refreshed "i" head swap with a lower end rebuild with a 666 turbo manifold adapter and turbonetics or garrett turbo. Looking for high 200s low 300s on moderate boost. Hope to be done this Spring so I can go to the track with my dad (He owns a 77 porsche 911s completely gutted w/ roll cage and "too much" money in the suspension)

Added some boost, first day maintenance is key.


Cleanin it up, previous owner's wife was a smoker but it smells alot better after some Febreeze and carpet cleaner (and a new air freshener )



All clean


Smoked a little when I put Seafoam in the vacuum line ;)


Parked next to the daily driver


Overall, I think it was a pretty good deal for $800. Going to follow some leads on a Getrag 260 on Monday, wish me luck.

Copied from original thread, gonna keep up a posting of all I do to the car in this project thread from now on. It will be slow going but maybe it'll be done in the Spring. :up:

[Zyth01]

Well, I was looking at my e30 today, and I thought to myself, 'Self, this bumper would look a lot better if it was blacked out.' and well being the Devil's Advocate that I am, I replied to myself and said, 'I agree wholeheartedly, but I bet it would look ever better if they were tucked in!' Always having to have the last word, I added in, 'Well hell! Lets black out the whole front end AND tuck the bumpers!" And so it was.

Scrubbing in down so hopefully the paint will stick


Missing something


Taped off so I could spray the trim


Back tucked and blacked


And the front


Looks a lot better in my opinion, anyone know where you can find a new plastic trim piece for right above the bumper?

[motorsports_3]

It looks much better, keep up the good work.

[Zyth01]

Turn signal lights on the front never worked, when I bought the car one of them was even unplugged and full of corrosion, the other wasn't in good shape either, wish I would have taken a picture of it. But a trip down to the local auto parts store and some elbow grease and now I've got two fully functional front signal lights.

If I had a dollar for each time I've taken this bumper off


Undo those two bolts that hold the light assembly on, my assembly was full of corrosion as well


Assembly removed


I cleaned it out with brakleen pretty good just to have a nicer piece to be working with, still filthy though


From the autoparts store, a 1157 style bulb socket and 1157 bulb, cost 5 dollars per socket and 5 dollars for the bulbs


Put the socket through without the bulb on it, and then put the bulb in, with the stock socket out of the way there is alot of room for the new one to shake around and it is very vulnerable, I filled the gap with some foam.


Be sure to stay hydrated when working in the garage


Drill a hole in your beverage's cap when you're done, and fix it onto the back of the socket to make sure the foam/socket won't move around.


I put some adhesive in to make sure the foam didn't move around, and as a temporary holder I wrapped it in a bit of duct tape, then some gasket silicone to make sure no water gets splashed into the back of the socket.


Taped it a bit more because I like to go overboard, and set up the connectors


Off!


On!

[Zyth01]

Also, I decided to dive under the car today and check out the differential



Hard to read (god damn whitewashin camera) but the first digits read S293, and indeed when the back end is jacked up both wheels spin the same way :twisted:

[Zyth01]

Found an "i" head locally and went to pick it up today, it has been fully rebuild and it was milled .020, kind of dirty though :giggle:



Some gaskets still attached, and some studs missing, but looks good




More missing studs

[ProjektONE]

Looking good!! Congrats! Now I need to find an E30 in Florida.

[Zyth01]

FL? Dang probably hard to find one without a ton of rust. WA is the same way.

[Zyth01]

Well, the blower motor never worked in the car since I bought it. And fuse #20 kept blowing every time I would try to turn it on. I tried doing nothing and hoping it would magically fix itself, unfortunately that never seems to work, so I got to work fixing it.

Barely got the cover off and already I can see a ton of pine needles


Mmmm Mmmm good!


My ShopVac made quick work of that nasty crap


Didn't get a picture of the resistor board, it all looked clean and I sprayed it off with some electrical cleaner hoping that was all that I would need to do. Unfortunately when I put it back in the fan still would not turn on and simply blew the fuse again.

So I took the whole fan assembly out


Bit rusty eh?


Sprayed all the electrical parts inside and out with electrical parts cleaner, its quick drying stuff just like brakleen and does a nice job real quick. After the cleaner, I put some WD-40 on all the rusty moving parts and it works just like new. A bit loud when its on "4" but I'm not one to spend $200 on a comfort item like a blower fan, after all, its a race car right?

[Nicademus]

Subscribed :) I need to check and see if I have a ton of pine needles in mine too. Have you checked your intake filter? Bet its pretty dirty too.

Are you coming to the meet on the 27th?

Your name isn't Justin is it?

[Zyth01]

I'm not sure if I can make it to the meet, I might though.

Unfortunately no, my name is not Justin :)

[george graves]

awesome

[Zyth01]

Well, Fall has come and for those of you that live in Western Washington, you know that we have 9 months of rain and cold to look forward to. Yet another thing that never worked in this car was the A/C, and since it'll be 9 months until I could possibly need it, I'm perfectly fine with yanking it out. So I did.

First and foremost, you should ALWAYS take your car in to have R12 or R134 systems evacuated! If you let the refrigerant out into the atmosphere you're going to kill polar bears and shit. And then Al Gore won't let you use his internet anymore.

So, just in case the shop that evacuated your R12 left some in the system by accident, take the cap off of your two lines, put a towel over top of it, then through the towel poke down on the little release valve inside with a screw driver.

Do it to both of them just to be sure. You do not want this crap flying out into your face when you disconnect any lines.


Then move over to where the passenger side hood latch sits, I loosened one bolt and completely took out the second so that I could swing it up out of the way of the lines. You can take it completely off, or just work around it, but I felt this was easiest.

I used an adjustable crescent wrench for most of these lines, they weren't tough to take off at all.


Follow the line that runs along the fender and it'll have another attachment near the hinge of the hood


Under the hinge on the hood on the passenger side you should see a black plate with instructions in German how much refrigerant to fill the system with, take that out and you should see this


Disconnect all the lines and that canister should come right out, and the line that ran along the passenger side fender should come out too



You can now look down to where the AC pump is set up, and you'll see two hoses attached to the top of it, it might be easier to use the right size crescent wrench instead of the adjustable one I used, but I'm lazy.



The fatter of the two lines runs back to the firewall and travels under the coolant reservoir, you could possibly unbolt the bracket that holds the hose but I chose to simply move the reservoir out of the way to undo the bracket.

Let it rest on the exhaust manifold, hopefully your engine is cool.


Bolt the reservoir back into place after you pull the hose out


More junk on the floor


Next, you're going to want to take out the grills and kidneys from the vehicle, and also undo the two bolts that bolt the evaporator to the radiator core support



Stock BMW mechanics wire was holding my AC fan in place, I'm sure


Undo the lines of the AC that are now in view


The fan is bolted on on the top of the fan and on the bottom, I believe the nut is a 9mm


I'm not entirely sure if this is standard procedure, but my fan was broken and I didn't really care, so I simply pulled it out through that hole and cut (What was left, alot of it was already frayed) the wiring that ran to it. If anyone cares to point out the correct procedure that'd be great.


Once the fan is out of the way you can now see the final connection that needs to be undone to take the evaporator out


The two tabs you unbolted from the top of the evaporator should be all that hold it in place, it should simply rest on two rubber stoppers at the bottom. Bend the tabs at the top and pull it through the front just like you did with the fan, and voila, its out.


Go back into the engine bay and down in the passenger side corner there are two hoses that ran from the canister to the evaporator, they shouldn't be connected to anything so pull them on through and take them out


Alot of crap on the floor


So, once you're all done with that you are left with two things.
LOTS of space for an intercooler


And about 17 pounds of useless metal



The next step would be to remove the A/C pump from the engine, but I haven't done that yet since space in the engine bay is somewhat tight, and I'll probably be pulling the motor in a few weeks anyway, so I'll save the hassle of finding a shorter v-belt that will fit for then.

[Zyth01]

Last emissions test I'll ever have to do. Yay for 25 year old cars.

[Zyth01]

I wasn't planning on doing an oil change until after I took the motor out and rebuilt the bottom end + put the "i" head on top. But since I've owned the car for about two weeks now and already put 1000 miles on it I decided better not risk it (since I have no idea how many miles the PO put on the oil that was in it) and did an oil change.

I didn't take any pictures, because well, hopefully everyone on here already knows what that experience is like. But I must say, the m20 is BY FAR the easiest car to do an oil change on that I've ever worked on. I rolled the car up onto my ghetto ramps (A 2x4 nailed to a longer 2x4) that are like four inches tall. Drain plug? Bam, right in front of you. Oil filter? Bam right under the exhaust manifolds. I've never had a car that you can change the oil filter by standing over the engine bay and reaching down, so much easier than trying to get a good grip from underneath like on most cars.

So yeah... yay for the m20.