I bought an E30 off of VW dealership unseen. Ya you know this is going to go well.
It is an 86 JDM import (I’m in Canada) marked as a 325I with the Mtech II body kit. I wanted a rust free four door which I found with this and it only cost me $750, Yay! And that’s where the good stuff ends.
I had to put it through an comprehensive out of state inspection which included timing belt & water pump replacements, some bushings on the front end, a lot of work around the drive shafts (u-joints), body work on both the front and rear and a lot of little things to get it through. $4,000 later!!!
Two months after buying it I finally got it home and couple things jumped out at me, first bad wobble at 35 – 50 mph still, feels like the drive shaft (maybe clocked wrong, either way still not fixed) second bad squeak from rear driver as well as the front passenger (might need some bushings I think), but most interesting to me was that the red line was showing around 4500 RPM… it is marked as a 325 i on the back... I'm new to E30’s and so a little research showed 86 325I’s aren’t a thing, but you know maybe it’s a JDM weird thing going on here. So I opened the hood looked for the markings and sure enough I have the damn 2.7 ETA…. dressed as a 325I.
So that’s where I’m sitting now. My plan WAS to manual swap this and upgrade all the bushings in the car and then start slowly upgrading the suspension components. But I have to be budget conscious and at this point of budget as the out of state (province for me) costed quite a bit more then planned, and you start adding up a manual swap, head or engine swap, fixing the current issues and suspension / chassis upgrades and well lets just say my wife is starting to love this car…
So I’m trying to come up with a plan of how do I approach this in a budget friendly way and, what do I do first, what’s my best bang for buck, I need a plan of attack and one that wont leave me divorced with a $20,000 E30 in the end. A lot of guys here know a lot more about these cars then me so if there any wise words any of you have I can very much use them.
Thanks for reading!
It is an 86 JDM import (I’m in Canada) marked as a 325I with the Mtech II body kit. I wanted a rust free four door which I found with this and it only cost me $750, Yay! And that’s where the good stuff ends.
I had to put it through an comprehensive out of state inspection which included timing belt & water pump replacements, some bushings on the front end, a lot of work around the drive shafts (u-joints), body work on both the front and rear and a lot of little things to get it through. $4,000 later!!!
Two months after buying it I finally got it home and couple things jumped out at me, first bad wobble at 35 – 50 mph still, feels like the drive shaft (maybe clocked wrong, either way still not fixed) second bad squeak from rear driver as well as the front passenger (might need some bushings I think), but most interesting to me was that the red line was showing around 4500 RPM… it is marked as a 325 i on the back... I'm new to E30’s and so a little research showed 86 325I’s aren’t a thing, but you know maybe it’s a JDM weird thing going on here. So I opened the hood looked for the markings and sure enough I have the damn 2.7 ETA…. dressed as a 325I.
So that’s where I’m sitting now. My plan WAS to manual swap this and upgrade all the bushings in the car and then start slowly upgrading the suspension components. But I have to be budget conscious and at this point of budget as the out of state (province for me) costed quite a bit more then planned, and you start adding up a manual swap, head or engine swap, fixing the current issues and suspension / chassis upgrades and well lets just say my wife is starting to love this car…
So I’m trying to come up with a plan of how do I approach this in a budget friendly way and, what do I do first, what’s my best bang for buck, I need a plan of attack and one that wont leave me divorced with a $20,000 E30 in the end. A lot of guys here know a lot more about these cars then me so if there any wise words any of you have I can very much use them.
Thanks for reading!
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