Long Time Dream Fulfillment: E30 Street and Track Car Combo

[CubbyChowder]

Kicked off 2022 with a bucket list item - track day at Laguna Seca raceway in the E30. Held on January 2nd, 2022 with Turn8 Racing. It was a perfect day. Great weather/conditions, tons of seat time and super affordable (got early bird pricing of $165 for the day, great value). Had my dad, my sister and my girlfriend out there with me and we had an awesome time. Got to take all three of them out for a few laps at the end of the day which was super fun too.

This track was really hard on the car. Having stock M20 power, I was struggling in the uphill straights and spent a lot of time in the top of 3rd gear screaming at over 6k rpms. More power would be nice, but I still thoroughly enjoyed my time out there and am yet again so proud of the car for holding up to the abuse.

Ran a 1:53.21 to set a baseline PB for this track and hope to revisit sometime this year. Here is a video of the day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iy52pK5l1Ns

Hitting the iconic Corkscrew:



Me and my girlfriend Nicole about to head out for the open session. She loved it, as you can hear in the video above she couldn't stop giggling through the Corkscrew:

[CubbyChowder]

This is an idea that has been floating around in my head for years and I am excited to finally offer a new product to the community, this one is for my fellow early model E30 owners out there!

It's a rear diving board bumper facelift kit and I call it "The High Dive". It utilizes custom brackets to relocate the factory diving board bumper as high and tight to the body as possible and is finished off with custom sheet metal trim panels to eliminate the original rubber trim entirely, resulting in a slim and refined bumper setup. Designed and produced in my shop in San Luis Obispo, CA. I built all the necessary tooling and fixtures to manufacture these kits in house, and I am ready for production. For now, kits will be built to order so please allow 1-2 weeks to produce and ship.

Installation is simple and straight forward. Reuses the original bumper mounting hardware and 3 self-tapping screws per side. Kits are shipped in a raw steel finish and will need to be painted or powder coated before use.

I've been an E30 enthusiast for a decade now, having owned several examples and spending countless hours working on them, I've gotten to know these cars pretty well. I've always had a soft spot for early model E30's, the slim tail lights and taller rear fender arches really do it for me. Like many others out there, I feel the diving board bumpers are a big downfall for the styling of the car, especially in the rear. Options to address this are limited, often being rare, expensive and/or labor intensive (Euro bumpers or plastic bumper conversion). I set out to create a simple alternative utilizing the parts that are already on the car, and The High Dive was born.

As of right now, fitment is confirmed for 1984-1987 coupe's and sedan's. Early model Convertibles and 1988 year models are not yet confirmed as there are some minor differences but I'm hopeful. Will confirm in time.

Kits are $249. As a promotion, I am offering Free Shipping in the US for orders placed in the next 24 hours!

To place an order, visit my site www.gaumannco.com

I also accept Venmo and Paypal if you prefer to purchase that way. Just message me and I'll get you squared away.
Instagram: @gaumann_co


























Plus a few Before and After's!

[DEV0 E30]

I've already said this one, but this is genius.

I love it.

And if I had a diving board car, I'd get this.

[Mouse]

I've already said this one, but this is genius.

I love it.

And if I had a diving board car, I'd get this.

+1000 This is a true game changer. Can't believe this was never done before. Well done Sir!

[Reichart12]

Been seeing all the posts on IG, but this really is a sweet product you put together.

[CubbyChowder]

Thank you guys, stoked that people are liking it. Really excited to keep pursuing this

[CubbyChowder]

Got a roll of film developed, I pretty much only take pictures of my E30 haha:

[Digitalwave]

Love your car, keep up the good work. Still love seeing new enthusiasts tracking E30's.

Also a big fan of the your diving board bumper dress up... such a great idea.

[CubbyChowder]

Digitalwave Thanks man! I've been itching for another track day so bad, hoping I can get back out there later this year once I'm done with my M50 swap, maybe by August or September.



Speaking of M50 swap, the process has begun! I dropped the M20 out yesterday. It served me well for the past year:




Here's the M50B25 I bought from a friend of mine for $150. Supposedly has 99k miles on it according to the salvage yard he bought it from so I am definitely taking that with a grain of salt:



Started pulling things apart to replace some gaskets and seals and do the E34 pan swap:



For simplicity sake, everything from the flywheel back will stay the same. Running the M20 single mass flywheel (still need to figure out what exactly is needed to make it fit, if anyone has any insight), M20 starter and clutch kit, Getrag G260, E30 manual driveshaft and 3.73 LSD. I'd love to go ZF but that would require sourcing a lot of other different parts so I just want to use what I already have and get it back on the road. My end goal with this car is S50B30 so maybe I'll do the ZF then. Either way, stoked to go 24v!

[amcp]

I run an S52 with all M20/G260 parts. The only thing you'll need is a trans brace that accounts for the 15 degree angle of the trans. Can find them anywhere on the web. G260 has been just fine with no issues on road or track.

[CubbyChowder]

Making good headway on my M50 swap. This has been a lot of time and work so far, but it's been a fun process. I'm learning a lot.

Decided to go the E90 brake booster route, so I ordered one up on eBay for $70. Came with the master cylinder too and looks to be in good shape. There's a few different methods out there on what to do with the clevis. I made my own extended pin which is a common route, using the extended pin to mount the stock E90 clevis to the pedal and it ended up pulling the pedal down significantly from where it was previously, which I didn't like. Also it felt kinda janky. So, I scrapped that whole idea, measured my E30 booster from the baseplate to the pin hole in the clevis, then took the E30 clevis, cut it down to the right length and welded it straight to the E90 booster so it was the same length as my E30 setup. Welded in small bursts and immediately dunked it in a bucket of water to make sure heat didn't travel too much into the booster and melt things. Once installed, the pedal was right where it needs to be.



I really wanted to do it proper and bend two new lines that reach from the ABS unit to the master cylinder, as if OEM. But, with how much more work was ahead of me and how many surprise parts orders I've had to place, I ended up deciding to take the simple route on this one and just use some adapters and short brake lines to get it done quicker. It looks lame, the parts store only had these mismatched colored fittings but it gets the job done for now. I also repurposed the original power steering reservoir mount, cut it up and built a new brake reservoir mount for the 2002 rezzy. Pretty happy with how the reservoir situation worked out:




New PTFE rear main seal:



M50 oil pickup and pan installed:



Ordered some of the "upgraded" exhaust manifold studs and nuts, but they ended up being too short, which was annoying. I think because the OBD1 cast manifold flanges are really thick, and the new gaskets were pretty thick too. So I ended up cleaning and reusing the old hardware. What should've taken 30 minutes ended up taking like 2-3 hours:

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E30 brown top coolant sensor installed and I deleted the throttle body heater port and installed a VDO coolant temp sensor as a backup for my extra temp gauge (I ordered one of those thermostat housings with a VDO temp sender as a coolant bleeder screw, have a hunch it might not work out and I'll end up switching back to a standard t-stat housing):



Got my M20 single mass flywheel shaved down a bit to clear the oil pan bolts, then installed the clutch kit:




G260 installed, pretty much ready to go back in the car now!



Using stock E34 525i engine mounts (the rubber cylindrical ones) and E21 rubber trans mounts. I built some 1/4" spacers for the engine mounts for good measure. Moments before bolting the engine up in it's new home:



I'm using an E34 automatic engine harness and a random X20 to C101 adapter that a buddy gave me which had things pinned in wrong spots for my application so I wanted to get it right. In an effort to get more capable with electrical and wiring diagrams, I spent A LOT of time researching and studying wiring diagrams for both cars to make sure I had everything in order and knew what the hell I was doing. Being an '86 E30, there are a few things that exist outside of the C101 plug that need to be hooked up, like the tachometer, CEL and vehicle speed output. I repinned the adapter to work with my specific E34 X20 to early E30 C101 setup. I also had no idea what plugs went where on the harness so I noted every plug with it's wire colors and looked them up in the ETM to figure out what each one went to. It was very tedious but rewarding, I came out of this feeling much more comfortable with this type of thing:



Once the engine was mounted, I started running the wiring harness and buttoning up loose ends and eventually got the intake manifold installed. It's getting close.





Fun fact, I have no idea if this engine even runs bought it on a pallet and am crossing my fingers that it's healthy.

[OSAH racing]

Your going to love the M50. I have had both m20 ( 272, chip 4.10 ) and m50/ S52 head ( headers, 4.10, ) and the M50 is produces more power through out the rev range so its quicker. do you have plans to do the Streets of Willow down the road? I want to get out there in the fall.

[Northern]

Re: N5x exhaust studs 11127593376, yeah they're pretty short.
Seem to work fine on the OBD2 stainless headers, but need to be wound out a thread or so on turbo manifolds and I guess the OBD1 manifolds.

An alternative is the N47 exhaust stud 11128597830 it's ~5mm longer than the N54 stud.
Downside is they're double the price.

[AWDBOB]

Great work on the M50 swap. I must admit, I am a bit sad to see the M20 go. Makes sense though, if your end goal is S50.

[CubbyChowder]

OSAH racing - I can't wait to see how it feels compared to the M20! I know not to expect much, but I think I'll still enjoy the bump in power and to just have something more modern. Streets of Willow is on the bucket list for sure! I'm really itching to get back out to Buttonwillow too, hoping to get at least a couple track days in towards the end of the year.

Northern - damn that's too bad they're double the price because those sound like they'd be perfect!

AWDBOB - Thanks man, a part of me will miss the M20 for sure, it was such a great engine for the past year.

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Alright guys, the car runs! Finished up a bunch of little odds and ends today and finally reached a point to where I could at least try cranking the car over to see if it even would. Once I verified that the car could crank, I plugged the fuel pump relay back in and turned the key. The car fired right up on the first attempt. That was super rewarding, I was excited. But the excitement was short lived because within about 10 seconds I noticed a puddle forming on the ground. It was pissing oil from somewhere so I quickly turned the car off and inspected, and found that the oil filter housing was leaking badly from one of the plugs:



What sucks is I spent a lot of time cleaning this thing up and took a lot of care in making sure I installed it correctly with new gaskets and what not, and tapped in my oil pressure sensor for my gauge. Had no idea that those plugs were an early version thing and a common leak point, learned that the hard way. I took it out and found that it was all gunked up:



But, luck was on my side. I happened to have another oil filter housing from my E34 parts car which was one of the better later model housings with the threaded plugs, so that was a score. Obviously in hindsight, I wish I had known the differences and chosen the E34 one from the get go, but I ultimately chose the other one originally only because it was less dirty. Here are the two side by side:



So it took a couple hours to tear it all back down, clean the crap out of the other housing, swap my oil pressure sensor over and all that and get it installed. Once I had it buttoned up the car fired right up and didn't leak anymore, so we are back in business. That was an annoying setback, but all in all I'm really happy that all of my hard work paid off and that the car started with no issues. My CEL works, my tachometer works, the engine sounded healthy from what I could tell but it's still too early to really say.