My First Project: an '86 Arktisblau Metallic 325e

[rudy]

Well I finally got it smogged. Some higher power must have been looking down upon me because the max NO is 977 and Blu measured at 976. I'm pretty damn thankful it passed and can get new tags now.



On Monday, I took advantage of that garagistic memorial day sale and ordered the reinforcement kit, 95a centered cabs, and a 22mm front sway bar. Right now I'm putting together an order to refresh the suspension, including upgrading to konis and h&r's. I also got a z3 shifter from mjweimer, so I'll get around to installing that soon.

I don't really want to bend the subframe to do the steering rack swap, so I'm planning to drop it and refresh everything down there along with the rack swap. Hopefully that'll happen soon enough since summer's going to be begin for me next week.

[rudy]

Update! First thing that happened since my last post was a date with my girlfriend where I got to take us both out in Blu. Both of them are quite photogenic unlike me.



Shortly after that, I began to take an auto shop class at Palomar College since enrollment is free for high schoolers. Typically this class has students doing work on cars local people bring in, but due to covid we got to work on our own cars or our family's cars. Since I now had access to a lift and every tool imaginable, I went to work on my suspension. Here's a list of everything that I replaced during this job:

-Rear subframe, trailing arm, and control arm bushings replaced with 95a garagistic poly bushings
-Front and rear end links
-Control arms
-Strut mounts
-Rear shock mounts
-Strut and shocks replaced with Koni Sports
-Springs replaced with H&R Sports
-Purple tag rack swap (new e36 outers, kept the e46 inners)
-Power steering return hoses
-Front sway bar replaced with 22mm garagistic sway bar
-O2 sensor replaced with a 1997 Ford 5.4 liter V8 one that I spliced in
-Garagistic stainless steel hoses minus the clutch hose (in retrospect I should have just replaced the clutch hose while the system was empty, but it looks very new anyways)
-CV Boot replacement

I went with 95a poly all around besides the engine mounts, tranny mounts, and diff because I don't mind a decrease in comfort, but the added noise from changing those parts to poly was something I did not want, so I let them be. I did end up ordering the chassis reinforcements, but due to the short timespan of the class I simply didn't have time to get them welded on while everything was off, so I'll just hang onto them for now. I also found out that the tranny mounts, giubo, csb, slave cylinder, and clutch line had been replaced quite recently which was a nice surprise. Overall everything went quite well and I'm really happy with how it rides now. I had my teacher help me bleed the brakes since I had never done it before and some classmates help me with the heavy lifting, but besides that I torqued every nut and bolt myself which I'm quite proud of. After finishing it, I performed a smoke test and found a leak on the bitch tube, so I'll try and fix that soon. I just need to perform an alignment tomorrow and the suspension will be complete, but I've been driving it around today anyways. Now for the photos! (Excuse my lack of front photos, I was in a rush)

New Parts


Her New Home For A While


Rear End Out




Burned Them Out


New Bushings


Back In!


All Buttoned Up












How It Sat Before


How It Sits Now


That's it for the suspension! Before this I had also reflowed the solder joints on my speedometer and it now works intermittently, but I'd like a working one so if anybody in SD has one let me know please. I'm not too sure what's next for this car. A full brake job is probably in store soon, but after that it's pretty much all cosmetic stuff I wanna do that I probably don't have enough money for, like new paint and an mtech1 kit. m30, m50, and m60 swaps all sound very cool, with an m30 swap being my favorite option, but it feels wrong wanting to swap the engine after having done all that work to it and barely driving it so far. Hope you guys enjoy the update and thanks for reading.

[mjweimer]

You certainly made the most out of that shop class opportunity - well done. Stance looks great and I'm sure it feels so much better now...it is amazing how a few parts makes such a big difference.

I'd certainly recommend putting many miles on the car before thinking too hard about an engine swap...every swap has its pro's and con's. The M20 is a great engine, super reliable, and the torque of the 'e' makes it fun at lower speeds. A logical next step for you might be a 15" wheel and tire combo, the Yokohama Flevia is available in the right size and not too spendy.

Keep the updates coming.

[rudy]

You certainly made the most out of that shop class opportunity - well done. Stance looks great and I'm sure it feels so much better now...it is amazing how a few parts makes such a big difference.

I'd certainly recommend putting many miles on the car before thinking too hard about an engine swap...every swap has its pro's and con's. The M20 is a great engine, super reliable, and the torque of the 'e' makes it fun at lower speeds. A logical next step for you might be a 15" wheel and tire combo, the Yokohama Flevia is available in the right size and not too spendy.

Keep the updates coming.

Thanks for the comments and advice. I really do love the m20 and have a lot of fun driving it, it's more so just a desire to keep working on the car that makes me wanna do an engine swap lol. I've been looking for wheels locally and came across some 15" Hartges in LA that I sadly couldn't travel to get. I'll keep an eye out though as that is quite a reasonable next step.

[zwill23]

Whatever you do, don't watch any M20 turbo videos

[2mAn]

Nice use of the lift, great learning experience for the right price!

Not sure how you'll feel about all the poly long-term, but you're young Im sure it will be fine... Also, if the rear isnt as low as you want, you can try "adjusting" it with the spring pads. They offer them in different thicknesses or you can remove them completely.

A set of Hartges would've been wonderful, are they sold?

[rudy]

Nice use of the lift, great learning experience for the right price!

Not sure how you'll feel about all the poly long-term, but you're young Im sure it will be fine... Also, if the rear isnt as low as you want, you can try "adjusting" it with the spring pads. They offer them in different thicknesses or you can remove them completely.

A set of Hartges would've been wonderful, are they sold?

I'm completely happy with the ride height actually, wouldn't want it any lower. Thanks for the tip about the spring pads though!

The listing is down now but I doubt they've been sold. It was some dude on craigslist with a bunch of different listings for 4x100 wheels. Lots of BBS from what I remember and the Hartges. About a month ago they were all deleted then went back up again about a week later, so I'm sure they'll pop up again.

[rudy]

Sorry for the lack of photos for this post, but here's a small update.

My o-rings came in yesterday and I buttoned it all up. After letting the RTV cure overnight I went to start it up for an early morning drive today, but it didn't crank! I was panicked and started diagnosing, but eventually took out the airbox and saw a wire not connected to the starter. Must have came off when I was wrangling the manifold in.

It started up great after that and now has a super healthy idle! Sounds amazing and the revs no longer bounce. I also rebuilt the fuel injectors and changed out the alternator bushings while everything was out. Mine were worn quite a bit and the alternator was slanted all sideways, but it's all good now.

Tomorrow I'll be filling up my tank and counting my miles, so I'm praying that my fuel economy will have improved significantly. That's all! Thanks for reading.

[Codym42]

Is Arktisblau a rare color? I like that a lot. Don't remember ever seeing one.

Awesome work on the car so far! If you keep having cluster issues, you may want to send it off to get rebuilt. There are a couple guys around that do it.

Keep up the good work.

[rudy]

Is Arktisblau a rare color? I like that a lot. Don't remember ever seeing one.

Awesome work on the car so far! If you keep having cluster issues, you may want to send it off to get rebuilt. There are a couple guys around that do it.

Keep up the good work.

I'm not too sure if Arktisblau is a rare color but I haven't seen another one in person yet. There's some pretty cool ones on google images though lol.

If anything else happens cluster-wise I'll make sure to look into getting it rebuilt, thanks man!

[2mAn]

Great work on the car, it’s just a few steps away from being badass. Get some wheels !

[rudy]

Well, after a failed attempt to buy the Hartges from some craigslist seller in LA, I came across these AC Schnitzers on offerup. Met the guy with my buddy today, and left back home to put them on right away lol.

[2mAn]

Those look fantastic! Real ones or Reps? 15"?

[rudy]

Those look fantastic! Real ones or Reps? 15"?

Yep 15"! From my comparisons to others they seem real. The embossments lack some definition in certain areas, but they're all there. Gonna go out on a limb and say they got too thick of a coat in those spots. In terms of condition, there's no curb rash but there is some flaking present.

I honestly didn't know how to check if they were reps or not besides looking for the embossments, so I just chatted with the seller for a while. He had a 325is which he manual swapped and put coilovers on, but sold it over 4 years ago here on r3v. The buyer didn't bring the agreed amount, so he just took the wheels off and left them in his garage till he listed them about 8 months ago. He had gotten the wheels yearsss ago from some guy on r3v in LA for $1k. The guy seemed pretty genuine from all our conversation, so I do think they're real all things considered.

[2mAn]

Real or not, they look great. 15" is a good size though tire selection kinda sucks.

Cars coming along really nicely now. Whats next ? Euro bumpers right? RIGHT!!??? lol