Hank's e30 #6 - lightweight 24 valve

[ahrensNW]

Can't bel;ieve I haven't updated this in a month.

The current goal is to get it running by e30 picnic. I feel like it's doable, 4 months isn't even overly ambitious.

School has been drowning me recently, but I should be graduating early June, so long as I can get my senior project wrapped up. I'm doing some research in aquaculture, basically using fish shit as food for plants.

My pursuit for lightness has not ceased, and I ended up selling my 4runner this past week and taking a 318i in for a partial trade.



!!!!!! CRANK WINDOWS!!!!!!!


Hell yes, along with a whole bunch of other lightweight goodies.

I'll be stripping the dash, carpet, window regulators and cranks, hvac controls and heater box (maybe), and a number of other things off it and slapping them on this white car.

Still not completely sold on the end game of this car, the lightweight goodies from the 318i are starting to make me think that I want to make it a more street oriented car. I think maybe I'd like heat, at least.

Got my first bike! 79 cx500 for 500 bucks



Looking to this as inspiration


Also, some obligatory snow pictures.

[ahrensNW]

I’ve been tinkering on this here and there. I’m almost done with school and the pressure is ramping up a bit.

I’ve mostly been dealing with the interior in the past month. I’ve decided to remove as much of the seam sealer as I can. And I can also confidently say that I’ve removed every bit of tar from the interior, aside from a small amount from the front doors. I think I should probably just remove it out of virtue lol. The whole point is to see how light it’ll go haha.











I used a heat gun and a chisel to take out the bulk of the tar and seam sealer. After that a couple of hours with a drill and wire brush took out basically the rest of the tar residue. I still have a solid hour of work, but it’s pretty close to clean.

I also secured some fia approved race seats, and I think I bought literally the cheapest seats I possibly could. I snagged a pair of OMP TRS-E from an Irish company and I think i may have taken advantage of some exchange rate glitch haha. Anyhow, I got the pair shipped, along with some aluminum side mount for just over 600 usd. They have a 2019 build date too, so they should be good until I can afford some really nice carbon or kevlar seats.



I’ll be utilizing garagistic aluminum seat bases, such a nice beefy chunk of milled aluminum mmmm.

I saw a slick top for sale on craigslist and it was mine a day later. When I showed up to the house it was still on the 318is haha, 5 minutes and a sawzall fixed that. I also got the headliner and vinyl front panel with it, so I’ll have all the essential parts to go about the swap. I don’t intend to do this in the near future. Just too involved of a project for me to get entangled with at the moment, but it was certainly nice to secure the parts.



I swapped out the power windows for crank windows and weighed everything out properly.

When I was doing research on this I never found a definitive answer on how much weight you’ll lose by going to crank windows, so now i have some rough weights at least.

Power window regulator and motor - 3.8lbs
Crank windows with handle cap and screw - 2lbs
Wiring - 4lbs
Power lock actuators, lock wiring, power mirror wiring - 3.2lbs

And the main battery cable, front of car to back oem - 6 lbs
(reference for later, I’ll find a thinner gauge cable then the factory copper rope)

So, my total weight loss for the analog doors comes out to 10 pounds.

If you choose be civilized and keep your power locks and mirrors then your total weight savings comes out to 6.8 lbs.











I took some time to clean out the doors, removing 35 years of grime was utterly satisfying. I wasn’t expecting it to be so drastic.





I need to reset a few of the rivnuts for the condor motorsport door cards, also need to drill out holes for the window cranks. I’m going to line the inside edge of the door with black rubber edge trim just to save my forearms. Also thinking about putting some edge material in the hole that the door lock rod rests in to diet down the rattles. Although i think a small rubber hose over the rod itself might be cleaner.

I also bought another obd1 harness for the engine to try and sort things out quicker. The body harness is plugged to a 24v adapter so swapping harnesses is easy. This is actually a call for help because I’m struggling to figure out the routing for the wiring of the engine harness since I’ve only had experience with a modified harness.

Basically, I have the obd1 bracket and everything, I’m just looking for direction on where to lay the main part of the loom as it exits from the firewall towards the front of the car below the intake manifold. I’m not sure if it should start at the point near the starter or at the upper channel? that comes in at an angle. I hope my shitty description makes sense.

[moatilliatta]

Need pix fix :(