1983 Henna Red 323i

[kdevitt]

You can definitely have both AC and PS if you want, it all bolts right up.

Thats what I initially thought alright. From what I know, BMW SA only offered the 333i with power steering or AC - and as a result people thought that you couldn't have both.

[kdevitt]

The majority of parts still needed arrived yesterday, so had a chance to look through them today. For such an expensive order, I did expect a larger box. Arrived in a package no bigger than a shoe box. I know there's no correlation between cost of products and size of the packaging, but still :D

Anyway - this is what €50 worth of nuts (12) look like!



Lots of gaskets (yes, I have club thumbs!)







M3 shifter



Lots of other bits, but ultimately nothing exciting. Still waiting on a cylinder head gasket, am also order a slimline steering linkage from Ergen Motorsport, and still need to figure out something with the prop and guibo as well as the diff. Ideally looking for a 3.46 medium case, have heard even a 3.64 is a bit nuts in them, so will hopefully get something sorted.

[kdevitt]

Second update of the evening -

Its pretty easy to look at the engine bay empty and think that we're almost finished, which is quite obviously not the case. Given this is such an early production date car, even some simple jobs are causing problems.

Case in point - relocating the battery to the boot. Firstly - theres no hole in the bulkhead for it! (although if I leave that rust long enough there will be)



And with the carpet stripped back to access the wiring - instead of seeing something like this:



There was some very odd sticky stuff -



It was pretty brittle, so could be removed in big enough chunks -





With that getting closer to be sorted - time to kick off the manual conversion in earnest - pedal box is now out



Some wiring to be tidied up -



Really getting places now.

[kdevitt]

A good news / bad news kind of day. Still trying to decide which one is in the ascendancy. Either way, the curse of the early production E30 struck again.

So the picture below if what would greet you inside the boot of 99% of all E30's - in a 6 cylinder car the battery sits in here. A 4 pot car still has the battery up front, but its a popular mod to shift it to the rear. Very early 6 pot cars such as mine also have the battery up front. Given the amount of space the M30 engine is taking up in my engine bay, there's no real space for it, plus there's already too much weight up there, AND the washer reservoir needs to sit where the battery currently is. Hence it being moved to the boot.



Spot the difference! I will say, its not immediately obvious -



If you haven't managed to spot it - take a look again at where the wheel arch is in each picture. So it turns out that there is no room for a standard battery in the boot. Given that I'd only recently invested in a brand new battery from BMW, its a bit of a pain. Need to source a racing battery now.

Its not the end of the world - and there was plenty of other progress today.

Pilot hole and outline for the bulkhead hole needed to feed the battery wiring -



Cut out -



Cable fed through and positive terminal mounted -



The other end of the cable in the boot - again my car resists the change! The trims for the boot don't fit over the cable, so will need to source later model versions



Quick check of the scuttle panel showed up no rust though - which is rather excellent news given E30's propensity to rust here





Few more bits going in now too - a new E34 throttle cable was bought from BMW - the original E30 one is quite a bit shorter in comparison



Engine work is all scheduled to be complete next week - so that can start going back together then.

[ColeTown]

wow, i just made my friends go drinking without me so i could finish reading this. My hats off to you, so much attention to the little details. Cant wait to see this build keep on progressing!

[kdevitt]

wow, i just made my friends go drinking without me so i could finish reading this. My hats off to you, so much attention to the little details. Cant wait to see this build keep on progressing!

Never let a website get in the way of some quality drinking time!

[kdevitt]

Another day of bad news unfortunately. Am pretty convinced at this stage that the car is cursed. Got a message when I was in work with some photos of the head. Was pretty hectic, so only glanced at it - and it looked fantastic, nice and clean. Quickly scanned the text below the two photos - 'dropping the second head in now, hopefully its better'. Had a bit of a huh moment, opened up the photos again. Not what I wanted to see on my Monday afternoon.



If there is a silver lining to having had to buy two engines for this swap - this may be it. Will find out soon. Luckily the block has been re-honed and finished off, and is fine.

The hard line for the clutch is also now in place -



Should also have the new battery by tomorrow - ordered it from Merlin Motorsport in the UK. Went for this one - https://www.merlinmotorsport.co.uk/p...y-pc950-ody-30

[e30m3s54turbo]

I love your car. I'm doing m30 swap on my Alpina B3.5 clone. I feel your pain on the m30 parts I need to order. Are you going to keep your head light wiper reservoir?

[kdevitt]

I love your car. I'm doing m30 swap on my Alpina B3.5 clone. I feel your pain on the m30 parts I need to order. Are you going to keep your head light wiper reservoir?

The parts purchasing has been painful alright - light at the end of the tunnel though. Went with the 324td reservoir which is dual pump / will allow me to retain the headlight washers.

[e30m3s54turbo]

I be looking forward seeing the 324dt reservoir. I had never seen one. I'm going to use a ix and e24 m6. It sits inside the cowling.

[kdevitt]

Things are still progressing nicely -

Had a refreshed servo fitted - am slightly underwhelmed at the WMS brake performance, so decided to swap out the servo in case it was the culprit.



Also delighted to see a full set of pedals at last -



And 4 years after buying them - my pop outs are fitted!



Nice to see a professional job was doing putting the headliner back in by the garage who did the respray - lots of masking tape!



Window in place - luckily the trim on these is perfect, the previous fixed window trims had been badly damaged when being fitted, so its once less thing to aggravate me -

[kdevitt]

Am waiting for the last major parts order to come on, which is currently holding up things a bit. In the meantime Dave got the timing chain sprocket off the crank. Bit of heat and a bit of brute force required -



Now ready for the brand new sprocket which should be on its way from BMW now -



Also got the racing battery into place - very neat, its a snug fit though -

[kingston]

Rock on!!!!

[CorvallisBMW]

Battery looks awesome!

[kdevitt]

Engine came back today so its full steam ahead -





Here's the list of items done - not a minor piece of work



I bought POR-15 engine enamel paint from cleancar.ie for re-doing the block. First up, the block was sanded -



Engine was then steam cleaned to clean out oil galleries after machining and water galleries and remove traces of oil from honing from the block.



Finally ready for paint -



First coat -



Second coat -





Threads for head bolts were tapped out to clean them out -



Have the injectors ready to be cleaned also have inlet manifold and a few other bits to be collected on Wednesday for vapour blasting.