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.
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.
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