My First Project: an '86 Arktisblau Metallic 325e

[zwill23]

Nice start! Going through the usual E30 fixes I see. Glad to hear you picked up a new timing belt with the plan to swap that on soon... that's the most common way M20s are killed with them being an interference engine and all.

Plan for anything rubber being shot and needing replacing, as was mentioned fuel lines as well as brake lines, and engine / trans mounts are critical. You can chip away at the suspension bits without too much worry of worn mounts leaving you stranded. The driveshaft guibo and center support bearing are also common failure points with age that could cause some trouble.

One more item I figure I'll bring up are water leaks. Consider replacing the hood and trunk seals, tail light gaskets, trunk rear side molding breather gaskets (o-rings), and the trunk antenna grommet.

This will be a sweet ride in no time

P.S. The reupholstered seats look good!!

[e30m3s54turbo]

Great project.

[rudy]

Hey Rudy - congrats on your new purchase and welcome to the forum. The E30 is a great platform for learning how to wrench and there is a lot of knowledge available if you get in a bind.

Sounds like you have a good plan for going through the typical maintenance parts but I would also suggest that you look closely at the condition of the fuel hoses. Chances are many of them are original and likely dry-rotted or nearly so and you don't want a fuel leak ruining your day.

On an early car you should see two rubber hoses in the engine bay (leading from the drivers side frame rail to the fuel rail & depending on build date, the fuel filter could be in the mounted down near the frame rail as well), a couple under the drivers side (near the fuel pump assy) and a couple on top of the tank (below the pass side rear seat - underneath the metal cover).

With the exception of one molded hose the fuel lines are either 8x13mm or 12x18mm.

Molded hose near external fuel pump - 13 53 1 726 960

1 meter 8x13mm fuel hose - 16 12 1 180 409

12-15mm hose clamp - 07 12 9 952 104

1 meter 12x18mm fuel hose -16 12 1 176 440

15-19mm hose clamp -07 12 9 952 107



Good luck with your projects

Thank you! I'll definitely make sure to replace these as well.

[mjweimer]

Hey Rudy - congrats on your new purchase and welcome to the forum. The E30 is a great platform for learning how to wrench and there is a lot of knowledge available if you get in a bind.

Sounds like you have a good plan for going through the typical maintenance parts but I would also suggest that you look closely at the condition of the fuel hoses. Chances are many of them are original and likely dry-rotted or nearly so and you don't want a fuel leak ruining your day.

On an early car you should see two rubber hoses in the engine bay (leading from the drivers side frame rail to the fuel rail & depending on build date, the fuel filter could be in the mounted down near the frame rail as well), a couple under the drivers side (near the fuel pump assy) and a couple on top of the tank (below the pass side rear seat - underneath the metal cover).

With the exception of one molded hose the fuel lines are either 8x13mm or 12x18mm.

Molded hose near external fuel pump - 13 53 1 726 960

1 meter 8x13mm fuel hose - 16 12 1 180 409

12-15mm hose clamp - 07 12 9 952 104

1 meter 12x18mm fuel hose -16 12 1 176 440

15-19mm hose clamp -07 12 9 952 107



Good luck with your projects

[rudy]

As is standard, my odometer is broken. I received the replacement gears today and while ripping the cluster out it dawned upon me that the po has installed a cluster from a 325i or some other car into this one. So it has the wrong tachometer. The previous owner left certain screws out and also broke one of the tabs on the cluster while replacing it, I seriously question him. What's left me stuck though is that I can't rip out the plastic cover for the gears due to an additional board that no one else seems to have. The vdo part number for this speedometer seems to be K=7849EG, which only returns one relevant google result of a guy with the same problem I encountered, except he just ended up replacing the entire speedometer. I can seriously only get this cover off if I break some of the connections on this board. Does anybody have any insight into this specific speedometer? For now I'm just gonna put everything back because I'd rather not break the connections on that board.

EDIT: I literally figured out my problem right after posting this. Excuse my idiocy and impatience.





It also rained today! Which meant another day of the trunk filling with water. I decided to just watch for a bit to see where the leak was coming from and it was from my taillights as I had guessed. So if anyone has any good-condition early model taillights in SD, dm me please. I know that the gaskets behind them are more likely the problem here, but my tails are cracked anyways so I'd just like to replace them alongside the gaskets.

[rudy]

Hi r3v, late last year I bought my first car right before turning 17: an arktisblau metallic 325e coupe. I'm proud to say that this car has been the beginning of many firsts for me. It was the first large purchase I made out of my own pocket, my first time driving a manual, and most importantly the first car I've begun to work on. My mechanical experience is practically non-existent and what I do have all comes from working with my school's robotics club, but I'm extremely excited and determined to learn how to wrench on cars. I'm learning as I go here by reading through the Bentley manual and through other member's posts, so feel free to criticize or guide me as much as possible with your own advice as well (it'd be incredibly helpful!) Now onto the car itself.

I spent about a year looking around and saving up funds to buy an e30 before deciding upon this one which was up in Van Nuys. After a rough test drive by my dad where he started in third, the middleman took us for a proper ride and I had a hell of a time even just being a passenger. He was negotiated down from 5k to 4k and we were soon driving it back down to San Diego. I'm now the third owner of the car. I have no info about the first owner, but the second owner drove it for a few years and then let it sit for six years. In 2019 he began trying to revive it with some basic maintenance and had the r-134a conversion done to the ac system. He moved out of state and left the car behind for the aforementioned middleman to sell on his behalf. It still has the original paint, license plate, comfort beige interior, and bottlecaps. I don't think the car has been tampered with too much besides a cupholder in place of the ashtray, the r-134a conversion, and a terrible cluster swap.



The first things I did were giving the interior a good cleaning, replacing the snapped seat cables, and reupholstering the seats with a kit from Lseat. In hindsight I should have just bought used sport seats or a better condition pair of comfort seats, but this was a fun first project for me. Side note: do not order from Lseat. They no longer include the leather for the back panel and when I questioned about it, they simply said "extra leather hide $4.5 per sqft." The addition of foam in places where it's not supposed to be also made the install super annoying. The headrest leather was basically a completely different template and I can see a large amount of the headrest foam whenever the headrests are tilted forward. Either way I had a lot of fun installing the kit and was happy with how I did on the passenger seat, I definitely messed up the hog rings on the bottom bolster for the driver seat though.







A few weeks later, my dad came back from running an errand with the car smoking due to a coolant leak. I was actually a bit excited to get to poke around the engine and diagnose what was wrong. After getting under, I noticed a thin line of coolant running down the hose connecting the thermostat housing to the radiator. Sure enough there was a gash in the hose due to it riding up against the alternator. I think it's missing a clamp of some sort that mounts to the body and prevents this from happening normally.





Which leads us to now. Rather than just replacing that hose and topping off the coolant, I got a case of while I'm in there. I ordered all the parts required to replace the coolant hoses, vacuum hoses, timing belt, water pump, thermostat, and some various other things while I'm in there. About half of the stuff is here already with the other half coming on Wednesday, so the goal is to start on everything this weekend and have some fun. This is just some preventative maintenance to introduce myself to working on the car. I'm not entirely sure what I'd like to do later on, but a rack swap, shifter swap, and paint job of the same color are things that I'd sure like to do. Tuning the engine like Jonhansen's build also sounds fun, but I think I'll just enjoy the eta for what it's meant to be while I'm still getting comfortable working on it.. Thank you all.