Mike's Alpine White 1991 318is

[mech3ngn]

wow, very clean car. I just picked up my first car last week and this is what I need to make mine look like! Interior looks spotless.

[mike.bmw]

The meets in your area are very nicely attended. Around here you'd never be so luck to have that many clean, well cared for cars show up

Sent from my Robin using Tapatalk

Yes, I'm definitely spoiled. A Ferrari F40 and custom Moal showed up today, among the other amazing cars.

The GRM crew is great, Tim's son Tom used to have an E30 and is building up an LS1 E36 M3 now. Looks like a fun event!

Yeah, we chatted a bit about that. Also chatted about the E30 M3 that Tim restored from being totaled. It was very cool to meet them (been reading GRM for 15+ years). It was even cooler that they are so down to earth and are willing to talk to nut cases like me. :D

wow, very clean car. I just picked up my first car last week and this is what I need to make mine look like! Interior looks spotless.

Cool! Looks like you are local based on your profile (Vienna, VA). Hope to see you around!

[varg]

119whp isn't half bad for a 26 year old 4 cylinder with over 100k mi on it. I wish my 318's body was in that kind of shape.

[laidback93]

Damn that one clean Alpine! I'm really digging the clean OEM look.

[Sail Boat]

Saturday morning Katie's Cars and Coffee!



I met up with Sail Boat this morning. Always a pleasure to check out such a clean E30. An S52 swapped 318is also parked alongside. I met the owner of the S52 swapped car at the Mach V / Grassroots Motorsports Dyno day last week. Cool car!

Always a pleasure, Mike! Re: Katie's, there's always some crazy stuff there. Here's two of the highlights; an F40 and a GT40.

[mike.bmw]

119whp isn't half bad for a 26 year old 4 cylinder with over 100k mi on it. I wish my 318's body was in that kind of shape.

Yeah. Definitely happy with the numbers and consistency. It would be pretty awesome if the car made it into the GRM magazine. ;)

Damn that one clean Alpine! I'm really digging the clean OEM look.

Thanks!

Fuse Box Refresh

Earlier in the week I was spent a couple minutes tracking down why my trunk light wasn't working. It turned out to just be a bulb, but I took a look at the fuse box to see if a fuse had blown (it hadn't). While I was using the owner's manual to figure out which fuse controlled the trunk light, I noticed a number of fuses were incorrect, which I also confirmed by double-checking here. So I ordered a bunch of ATC 7.5, 15, and 30 AMP fuses to replace everything in there. The lot of fuses were only a few bucks on Amazon, so why not replace them all

Before:



After:

[c0rbin9]

Looks nice, hard to beat the original fuses for ease of testing though. Just a visual check without even taking them out!

[industrious]

Looking good Mike :up:

[jeenyus]

replacing those fuses really changed the look of the fuse box. a little weird to see it so none colorful. haha!

[mike.bmw]

Looks nice, hard to beat the original fuses for ease of testing though. Just a visual check without even taking them out!

replacing those fuses really changed the look of the fuse box. a little weird to see it so none colorful. haha!

Yeah, my biggest issue with the old fuses was that there were 10s and 15s where there should have been 7.5s. Whoever (previous owners) replaced fuses over the years didn't really care what rating they were using. The old fuses were fine, but I figured since I had a few packs of new fuses I may as well replace them all.

Looking good Mike :up:

Thanks!

[mike.bmw]

June was an excellent month.

New Addition
My son was born. He is healthy, a great eater, and a great sleeper. You really can't ask for more than that. Photo in E30 onesie coming soon (him, not me :) ). He already knows Blue Steel.



Cars and Coffee
I've been taking my daughter to a fair amount of Cars & Coffee events because she likes it (and obviously I also like it). Recently I met and chatted with the owner of a ridiculously clean MTech convertible. All options, low mileage, original and flawless paint. It was a pleasure to look at the car and chat with the owner.



Timing Case Re-re-seal
I noticed a small oil leak in the timing case since the shop worked on it about 2 months ago. I called the shop, dropped by for them to inspect it, and they did the work again free of charge. RRT is simply awesome. They also included a new upper timing case as the original one may have been slightly warped.

Brake Inspection
I took a look at the front brakes. I measured the rotor thickness, looked at the pads, and lubed the pins. It was all replaced before I purchased the car by the PO. I may swap the pads with something that has a little more initial bite as the current pads have no initial bite.



B]

BMW CCA (NCC) Magazine
Last week Zeemz texted me a couple photos. To my surprise, my car was in the BMW CCA (NCC Chapter) magazine! I had attended an event at BMW of Sterling and parked in the "vintage" section. Fortunately I parked next to a couple award winning 2002s, so my car was captured in a photo alongside them.





Coming Soon
I'll be replacing my O2 sensor and fuel filter in the coming weeks. I need to order some parts and find the time to install them.

[squidmaster]

^^ quality post! Congrats on multiple fronts

[mike.bmw]

E30 Mini Meet

Yesterday I met up with Zeemz and Sail Boat at Katie's Cars and Coffee . We've been trying to coordinate this for months. Our schedules and good weather finally collided and we all arrived at 5:50AM. Yes, 5:50AM. I had been up since 3AM with my newborn son, so it wasn't all that bad. :)

Always a pleasure to chat with Zeemz and Sail Boat. The turnout was good and it was fun to walk around and check out the variety of cars, trucks, and bikes that others brought.













Fuel Filter Replacement
This took all of 3 minutes. It's just 4 hose clamps. I removed the #11 fuse, took off the gas cap, and ran the lines dry (mostly) before disconnecting the lines from original fuel filter, which had a date of 2009 on it. I replaced the existing Mahle KL9 with a new KL9.

Old:


New:


O2 Sensor Replacement
I ordered a Bosch 13108 for $62 shipped on Amazon. This has an OE connector and sensor, but the wiring is a bit longer (which is good for me). It's $30 cheaper than the 13109 which has the shorter, correct length wiring.

Replacement was horrible. I had soaked the sensor threads with PB Blaster for 2 days. After using a torch, more PB Blaster, Freeze off, and an O2 sensor 6pt socket (which rounded the O2 sensor), I ended up using vice grips and the handle of my jack to get the exiting O2 out. At which point I noticed the previous installer had cross threaded the sensor. I bought an O2 sensor tap and chased the threads. The new sensor went in easily and sealed up nicely.

Getting the old one out:


Wiring length differences:


New sensor installed correctly:

[Zeemz]

Great time at Katie's on Saturday hanging out with you guys. First time I got to see Sail Boat's Japanese imported 325i in person and was not disappointed. It is super clean.

Maybe next time we can add another local E30 or two to the group.

[mike.bmw]

Maybe next time we can add another local E30 or two to the group.

Good call! I'll post something in the Mid-Atlantic R3V forum next time to gather interest and let folks know.