Howdy. Long time listener, first time caller. I've been on the forums for a while now. I loved going through members project threads and learning/dreaming. I never got around to making one for my last e30 and figured why not make one for this one.
I'll start off going through my BMW history. I’ve had 3 e30s and an e36. My first car was 1985 BMW 325e that I found not running in it's original owner's garage back in 2011. I bought it for $500 got it running, and dailied it for 4 years. It went through some changes over the years. I built some coilovers for it and did small oem+ mods like euro bumpers, headlights, grilles, headlight wipers, oem mudflaps, rear plate filler. Paint was beat but the interior was mint and the car was the perfect first car in my eyes.
Heres a pic of my first e30 when we dug it out of PO's garage. Also added a few pics of the changes it went through over the years.
After owning it for 4 years I wanted more power. As a broke college student I was looking into swapping in an m52 or m30 and getting the AC working but quickly realized I’d be dumping way more money than I would want to at that time in my life. So I looked for a replacement and found a clean 2 owner 95 M3. Unfortunately I had to sell the e30 to fund the M3. Luckily I sold the E30 for the same price that I paid for the M3. So I got double the HP and A/C for $0. It was my daily on and off for 5 years. What a fun car. I still own it today. I'll never get rid of it.
Heres a pic of the car when I first got it and some changes through the past few years. Pretty simple car. Mostly stock. Just some period correct Kelleners wheels, suspension upgrades, and euro spec/OEM+ touches.
Years after selling my e30, My buddy Justin from Race German bought the car and s52 swapped it. After seeing that I knew I wanted to build an e30 one day. It was awesome to see the car built to pretty much exactly how I would have done it. If anyone knows the current owner, lmk. I'd love to talk to him/her.
Heres a link to his build and a link to the BAT auction it was sold with.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1985-bmw-325-2/
So after graduating from college and starting a big boi job, I figured why not get another shitbox to dump a ton of money and time into.
This brings me to the E30. So I wasn't activity looking for an e30. but randomly, my good friend knew of one for sale. A red 91 325i 2 door auto that his friend had parked in his lawn.
Here’s a pic of the car that the seller sent me.
Backstory on the car: The original owner sold it to the 2nd owners back in the late 90s. The 2nd owner sold it to his brother a few years back, and his brother is who I got it from. When I heard this I was excited. A 3 owner 30 year old car! Well turns out the 2nd/3rd owner didn’t keep up with the car aesthetically. They drove it a lot and seemed to keep it decently maintained but just did random questionable things to the car. I’ll get into that later.
Here’s the car when I first checked it out back in May. As you can see the car is a bit rough. Paint is faded bad but the body is pretty straight. Not too many dings, all the paint is original except the driver door and front fender and front bumper cover. Those were repainted with 2 stage paint back in the 90s after I’m guessing an accident. Not sure tbh Carfax is doesn’t show any lol. Good news is all the vin tags are present except the driver fender and front bumper. Vin is still on the door which is nice. DOT-R Bumper is dated 1994 so I guess this happened early in this car’s life. I’m hoping I can get the paint restored to a pretty good shine and then get another front bumper and have it painted along with the driver door and fender. Passenger side rain gutter trim and most of the bumper trim was missing on this car too. Notable Mods. black grilles, DTM exhaust tips and a rad Nurburgring sticker on the rear glass!
I looked for rust and could only find a decently sized hole in the rear valance/battery box. I hate rust so I was sure to look as much as possible. It sucks that there is a hole but it shouldn’t be too bad to fix and its fairly common. It’s a southern car so over all its super solid
Rot pic:
Interior was rough on this car too. dash a couple small cracks. It originally came with grey leather. It still has it but the front sport seats were replaced with ugly Hyundai genesis seats. Those went immediately. The carpet was nasty and cut up to fit the Genesis seats so I’ll need to replace it. Interior was really gross too. Lots of sticky surfaces. I’ve got plenty of work to knock out!
Another thing that really bothers me about the car was It’s push button start. So it turns out the PO lost the key and instead of getting a new one from the dealer he just drilled through the steering lock and installed a push button start. So dumb lol.
Heres the seats and the rigged ignition:
As far as mechanically, the owner said the car ran the month before and it just randomly stopped running. He changed out all the relays and checked the fuel pump and said it couldn’t start. He was having a hectic time juggling life so he was looking to let go of the car as is. He was asking $500 for the car
I looked past the negatives of the car once I heard the price. Sure it was a bit rough but a late model coupe with little rust and most the factory paint/panels for $500??? Heck yeah.
So I told him I’d think about it then I called him the next day and said yes lol. I picked it up a few days later! Protip. If you don’t have a truck and trailer you need to get AAA premier. Its $100 a year and it comes with like a 200 mile tow and a bunch of shorter (50-100 mile) tows. I got the car towed to my house (1.5 hours away) fairly quickly.
Once I brought the car home I got those sweet sweet e30 feelz again! It was good to be back! But I knew I had a ton of work to do!
Me stunting in front my next financial mistake!
Once home, I assessed the car a little more. Heres some things I noticed. On the passenger side the bumper to valance gap is huge, I saw it when I first looked at the car but didn’t think much of it. I took the bumper off and found that the bumper shock welds failed and pulled the bumper shock out of the frame rail shock mounts. Im guessing this was from it was getting towed a while back. Easy fix. I found a good bumper shock and hammered down the mounting surface back into shape.
Bumper to valance gap:
failed passenger side bumper shock (bolts loosed to show how messed up it was):
compared to the driver side:
Pic of the fixed bumper gap (extra gap is from the busted bumper cover)
After this I pulled the awful Hyundai Genesis seats lol. Holy crap. The PO installed the seats by using the 2 rear mounting studs and then drilling a hole through the floor pan on only one side of the seat rail so basically the seats where held in my the 2 factory holes and loosely held in my 1 other bolt. 3 bolts per seat lol. Thank god it’s only 3 bolts. Its already a bummer that he drilled through floor pan, but I’m glad its only two holes I need to address and not 4 lol. It’s a shame that the carpet is ruined though.
Pic of the seats right before I sold them:
Pic of the nasty carpet with a hole in floor pan:
The PO literally just ran a bolt though the floor and put a nut on the other side lolololol. Here is the bolt sticking out under the car:
Found this too :shifty
Then I set out to try to get the car running! So like I said before the PO said the car cranked but didn’t start. so I tried it. The push button start is sorta neat lol. He made the window circuit breaker switch; the ACC and the push button; the ignition switch. Once I figured out how to get it to crank I saw exactly what he saw. Same thing, it cranks but doesn’t start. I spent about 2 weeks trying to diagnose it. The first wrong thing I found was that the main/DME relay was wrong. Luckily my e36 m3 uses the same one so I swapped it out. The problem persists. Eventually I check for fuel pressure and realized it is super low. The pump worked fine so I ordered a cheap regulator to try. The day after I ordered it I said screw it and pulled the fuel pump. I almost didn’t notice it but I saw that this line was busted! Could $1 of fuel hose really be the issue? I change it out and the car starts up! So basically $35 in parts and I have a running e30!
Here’s the busted fuel line:
Once I got the e30 running, I got deeper into looking for rust on the chassis. I pulled the carpets and the oem IS side skirts to check for hidden rust. Fortunately the rockers are mint. No rust. The floor pan is pretty rust free too except for a little surface rust on driver side floor board and 2 small holes. I’m guessing it’s from the carpet getting wet from wet shoes/leaks. I’m sad that there are a couple holes but that should be easy to address! Overall not bad.
Floor pan rust pic:
After all this I realize that this car would a perfect base for a swap project. So I make a build sheet on excel (I’m an engineer so I love playing with numbers lol). After coming up with a soft budget, I’m almost ready to start buying parts. After seeing the budget I figure I might as well register the car to make sure I have the title in my name so when the swap is done I'll have a registered car! It would suck to dump a ton of money into a car and then lose the title or something. So after 2 trips to the dmv I get the car registered!
Now that I have an e30 registered in my name I’ll go over the project goals. I want this e30 to be a presentable weekend fun car that I can take to a couple track days a year, have a ton of fun in the N. Ga mountains, and have it be reliable enough to take on long drives to car events like the Vintage or e30 Octoberfest. After loving the chassis of my old e30 and loving the s50 in my e36m, I figured why not build a 24v e30? The best of both worlds.
So my plans are:
Powerplant: obd2 iron block m52b28 with m50 manifold and s50/s52 cams and a tune
Drivetrain: zf320 with 3.25 lsd (I currently have a 4:10 open, I sorta wanna try out the 4:10 just to see how dumb it would be lol. zf gearing with a 4:10 and small e30 tires. 1st gear will be useless. Lolololol)
Suspension: After much back and forth I bit the bullet and ordered koni yellows front and rear (E30 front, SN95 Mustang rear) and H&R races with e90 top hats. I built a set of GEs for my last e30. I loved the coilover conversion, but at the moment I think I’d rather try shocks and springs and see how I like it.
Wheels: TBD. I have a set of M systems with Turbines that I bought for my e36 but I sorta wanna run them on the e30. I don’t like the 5 lug options atm. So I think I’ll run the 14” basket weaves with fairly recent tires until I find a set of wheels that piques my interest
Exterior: I want the outside to look stock except for small oem+ mods like fog deletes, euro trim, grilles, headlights, IS lip, some period correct spoiler, keep the IS side skirts.
Interior: I’m torn here. I really wanna do a factory black/grey Houndstooth or Uberkaro sport interior, so I’ll keep an eye out. But for now I’ll run the current grey interior with black dyed carpet and I’ll run a set of Recaro lemans confetti Sr3s with an Italvolanti formel that I have stashed away.
Pic of the seats I have for the car.
Now off to ordering/finding parts. Im an engineer and middle eastern so I’m inherently cheap. I love finding deals so over the past month I've been scouring FB to get parts.
Here’s some parts that I have sourced locally:
First piece of the puzzle was an e34 oipan/dipstick/pickup. I pulled it at a junk yard. Took 3 hours with 2 of my buddies! Thanks to Austin and Jacob. What a fun but also annoying day lol. We used a sawzall to cut the subframe lol
Then I found a zf320 from a wrecked e46 330i
Then I scored a deal on a good set of carpets, and a full set of door/trunk locks with a matching steering column with trim/stalks/and ignition, and some random parts for the interior
Then I found a clutch pedal and trans crossbrace
Then I lucked out and found a set of S50 cams locally for a great price
Then I went back to the junk yard and got an m50 manifold and an e36 x-brace for my m3.
I've also got a lead on an m52 from a friend’s e39 that I will pull.
So now I need to find a Driveshaft and make a ton of part orders.
I'll start off going through my BMW history. I’ve had 3 e30s and an e36. My first car was 1985 BMW 325e that I found not running in it's original owner's garage back in 2011. I bought it for $500 got it running, and dailied it for 4 years. It went through some changes over the years. I built some coilovers for it and did small oem+ mods like euro bumpers, headlights, grilles, headlight wipers, oem mudflaps, rear plate filler. Paint was beat but the interior was mint and the car was the perfect first car in my eyes.
Heres a pic of my first e30 when we dug it out of PO's garage. Also added a few pics of the changes it went through over the years.
After owning it for 4 years I wanted more power. As a broke college student I was looking into swapping in an m52 or m30 and getting the AC working but quickly realized I’d be dumping way more money than I would want to at that time in my life. So I looked for a replacement and found a clean 2 owner 95 M3. Unfortunately I had to sell the e30 to fund the M3. Luckily I sold the E30 for the same price that I paid for the M3. So I got double the HP and A/C for $0. It was my daily on and off for 5 years. What a fun car. I still own it today. I'll never get rid of it.
Heres a pic of the car when I first got it and some changes through the past few years. Pretty simple car. Mostly stock. Just some period correct Kelleners wheels, suspension upgrades, and euro spec/OEM+ touches.
Years after selling my e30, My buddy Justin from Race German bought the car and s52 swapped it. After seeing that I knew I wanted to build an e30 one day. It was awesome to see the car built to pretty much exactly how I would have done it. If anyone knows the current owner, lmk. I'd love to talk to him/her.
Heres a link to his build and a link to the BAT auction it was sold with.
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1985-bmw-325-2/
So after graduating from college and starting a big boi job, I figured why not get another shitbox to dump a ton of money and time into.
This brings me to the E30. So I wasn't activity looking for an e30. but randomly, my good friend knew of one for sale. A red 91 325i 2 door auto that his friend had parked in his lawn.
Here’s a pic of the car that the seller sent me.
Backstory on the car: The original owner sold it to the 2nd owners back in the late 90s. The 2nd owner sold it to his brother a few years back, and his brother is who I got it from. When I heard this I was excited. A 3 owner 30 year old car! Well turns out the 2nd/3rd owner didn’t keep up with the car aesthetically. They drove it a lot and seemed to keep it decently maintained but just did random questionable things to the car. I’ll get into that later.
Here’s the car when I first checked it out back in May. As you can see the car is a bit rough. Paint is faded bad but the body is pretty straight. Not too many dings, all the paint is original except the driver door and front fender and front bumper cover. Those were repainted with 2 stage paint back in the 90s after I’m guessing an accident. Not sure tbh Carfax is doesn’t show any lol. Good news is all the vin tags are present except the driver fender and front bumper. Vin is still on the door which is nice. DOT-R Bumper is dated 1994 so I guess this happened early in this car’s life. I’m hoping I can get the paint restored to a pretty good shine and then get another front bumper and have it painted along with the driver door and fender. Passenger side rain gutter trim and most of the bumper trim was missing on this car too. Notable Mods. black grilles, DTM exhaust tips and a rad Nurburgring sticker on the rear glass!
I looked for rust and could only find a decently sized hole in the rear valance/battery box. I hate rust so I was sure to look as much as possible. It sucks that there is a hole but it shouldn’t be too bad to fix and its fairly common. It’s a southern car so over all its super solid
Rot pic:
Interior was rough on this car too. dash a couple small cracks. It originally came with grey leather. It still has it but the front sport seats were replaced with ugly Hyundai genesis seats. Those went immediately. The carpet was nasty and cut up to fit the Genesis seats so I’ll need to replace it. Interior was really gross too. Lots of sticky surfaces. I’ve got plenty of work to knock out!
Another thing that really bothers me about the car was It’s push button start. So it turns out the PO lost the key and instead of getting a new one from the dealer he just drilled through the steering lock and installed a push button start. So dumb lol.
Heres the seats and the rigged ignition:
As far as mechanically, the owner said the car ran the month before and it just randomly stopped running. He changed out all the relays and checked the fuel pump and said it couldn’t start. He was having a hectic time juggling life so he was looking to let go of the car as is. He was asking $500 for the car
I looked past the negatives of the car once I heard the price. Sure it was a bit rough but a late model coupe with little rust and most the factory paint/panels for $500??? Heck yeah.
So I told him I’d think about it then I called him the next day and said yes lol. I picked it up a few days later! Protip. If you don’t have a truck and trailer you need to get AAA premier. Its $100 a year and it comes with like a 200 mile tow and a bunch of shorter (50-100 mile) tows. I got the car towed to my house (1.5 hours away) fairly quickly.
Once I brought the car home I got those sweet sweet e30 feelz again! It was good to be back! But I knew I had a ton of work to do!
Me stunting in front my next financial mistake!
Once home, I assessed the car a little more. Heres some things I noticed. On the passenger side the bumper to valance gap is huge, I saw it when I first looked at the car but didn’t think much of it. I took the bumper off and found that the bumper shock welds failed and pulled the bumper shock out of the frame rail shock mounts. Im guessing this was from it was getting towed a while back. Easy fix. I found a good bumper shock and hammered down the mounting surface back into shape.
Bumper to valance gap:
failed passenger side bumper shock (bolts loosed to show how messed up it was):
compared to the driver side:
Pic of the fixed bumper gap (extra gap is from the busted bumper cover)
After this I pulled the awful Hyundai Genesis seats lol. Holy crap. The PO installed the seats by using the 2 rear mounting studs and then drilling a hole through the floor pan on only one side of the seat rail so basically the seats where held in my the 2 factory holes and loosely held in my 1 other bolt. 3 bolts per seat lol. Thank god it’s only 3 bolts. Its already a bummer that he drilled through floor pan, but I’m glad its only two holes I need to address and not 4 lol. It’s a shame that the carpet is ruined though.
Pic of the seats right before I sold them:
Pic of the nasty carpet with a hole in floor pan:
The PO literally just ran a bolt though the floor and put a nut on the other side lolololol. Here is the bolt sticking out under the car:
Found this too :shifty
Then I set out to try to get the car running! So like I said before the PO said the car cranked but didn’t start. so I tried it. The push button start is sorta neat lol. He made the window circuit breaker switch; the ACC and the push button; the ignition switch. Once I figured out how to get it to crank I saw exactly what he saw. Same thing, it cranks but doesn’t start. I spent about 2 weeks trying to diagnose it. The first wrong thing I found was that the main/DME relay was wrong. Luckily my e36 m3 uses the same one so I swapped it out. The problem persists. Eventually I check for fuel pressure and realized it is super low. The pump worked fine so I ordered a cheap regulator to try. The day after I ordered it I said screw it and pulled the fuel pump. I almost didn’t notice it but I saw that this line was busted! Could $1 of fuel hose really be the issue? I change it out and the car starts up! So basically $35 in parts and I have a running e30!
Here’s the busted fuel line:
Once I got the e30 running, I got deeper into looking for rust on the chassis. I pulled the carpets and the oem IS side skirts to check for hidden rust. Fortunately the rockers are mint. No rust. The floor pan is pretty rust free too except for a little surface rust on driver side floor board and 2 small holes. I’m guessing it’s from the carpet getting wet from wet shoes/leaks. I’m sad that there are a couple holes but that should be easy to address! Overall not bad.
Floor pan rust pic:
After all this I realize that this car would a perfect base for a swap project. So I make a build sheet on excel (I’m an engineer so I love playing with numbers lol). After coming up with a soft budget, I’m almost ready to start buying parts. After seeing the budget I figure I might as well register the car to make sure I have the title in my name so when the swap is done I'll have a registered car! It would suck to dump a ton of money into a car and then lose the title or something. So after 2 trips to the dmv I get the car registered!
Now that I have an e30 registered in my name I’ll go over the project goals. I want this e30 to be a presentable weekend fun car that I can take to a couple track days a year, have a ton of fun in the N. Ga mountains, and have it be reliable enough to take on long drives to car events like the Vintage or e30 Octoberfest. After loving the chassis of my old e30 and loving the s50 in my e36m, I figured why not build a 24v e30? The best of both worlds.
So my plans are:
Powerplant: obd2 iron block m52b28 with m50 manifold and s50/s52 cams and a tune
Drivetrain: zf320 with 3.25 lsd (I currently have a 4:10 open, I sorta wanna try out the 4:10 just to see how dumb it would be lol. zf gearing with a 4:10 and small e30 tires. 1st gear will be useless. Lolololol)
Suspension: After much back and forth I bit the bullet and ordered koni yellows front and rear (E30 front, SN95 Mustang rear) and H&R races with e90 top hats. I built a set of GEs for my last e30. I loved the coilover conversion, but at the moment I think I’d rather try shocks and springs and see how I like it.
Wheels: TBD. I have a set of M systems with Turbines that I bought for my e36 but I sorta wanna run them on the e30. I don’t like the 5 lug options atm. So I think I’ll run the 14” basket weaves with fairly recent tires until I find a set of wheels that piques my interest
Exterior: I want the outside to look stock except for small oem+ mods like fog deletes, euro trim, grilles, headlights, IS lip, some period correct spoiler, keep the IS side skirts.
Interior: I’m torn here. I really wanna do a factory black/grey Houndstooth or Uberkaro sport interior, so I’ll keep an eye out. But for now I’ll run the current grey interior with black dyed carpet and I’ll run a set of Recaro lemans confetti Sr3s with an Italvolanti formel that I have stashed away.
Pic of the seats I have for the car.
Now off to ordering/finding parts. Im an engineer and middle eastern so I’m inherently cheap. I love finding deals so over the past month I've been scouring FB to get parts.
Here’s some parts that I have sourced locally:
First piece of the puzzle was an e34 oipan/dipstick/pickup. I pulled it at a junk yard. Took 3 hours with 2 of my buddies! Thanks to Austin and Jacob. What a fun but also annoying day lol. We used a sawzall to cut the subframe lol
Then I found a zf320 from a wrecked e46 330i
Then I scored a deal on a good set of carpets, and a full set of door/trunk locks with a matching steering column with trim/stalks/and ignition, and some random parts for the interior
Then I found a clutch pedal and trans crossbrace
Then I lucked out and found a set of S50 cams locally for a great price
Then I went back to the junk yard and got an m50 manifold and an e36 x-brace for my m3.
I've also got a lead on an m52 from a friend’s e39 that I will pull.
So now I need to find a Driveshaft and make a ton of part orders.
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