My first e30, finally. Latest Update: The Restoration Begins

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The care & love spent on this car is AMAZING, though if I lived in such an icy climate, I would probs wanna have the iX as my daily

That would be too easy though, so easy it would become boring...

excited for m30 turbo + snow.
Are you gonna run flares?

Although I'm prolly going to kick myself later, I'm probably not going to put flares on right now. (When I do, expect real steel box flares )

your gonna need a whole new flex pipe, cut out the old one. go to napa, get a new one. you cant weld to a flex section lol.

Yeah I learned the hard way lol. It flexes for a reason, because its super thin!!!

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So the restoration begins. All these photos were taken August/Sept of last year.

Background music to listen to while you read this post


Teardown





Note the rusted out fuel expansion tank tube on the left





One of the few things that really piss me off in the 30. I'm sure the guy who did the dash assembly back in the 80s was a master at jiggling this nut just right to get it on.



Essential dismantling tools



Misc pictures taken to for later reference for wiring routing



Dash out!!! Unfortunately I was doing it all by myself and scratched my A piller trim on the way out :(









Zip tied DME and cluster for driving purposes B)



Removing the HVAC unit



4 of these guys holding it in



Complicated setup to get the rear ones out



HVAC connections



And out



On to removing the carpet. Gas pedal was really fighting me. It did give out eventually....



First look with the carpet out. Lots of rust, crumbly floor insulation and a ton of road debris packed on the left side in the rocker panel area.



Passenger side had tons of road gravel since it collects on the side of the road





Insulation removed from driver's side



Big hole



Gas Pedal mount area



Next day. What the hole looks from the outside



And floor



Passenger side de-insulating.



Removing it piece and piece and you can see there's still trapped moisture underneath







Convenient trash hole





Front rocker area fared much better on the passenger side



Fenders off





Probs my fave photo from that day, looking like such a pile



Driver's side hole



Pass hole



German tools for German cars



Children at play



My car is crying. Remember these are the lollypops I freshly painted when I installed the new CAs and CABs. :/



Starting doing some sanding and cutting....





And after like 5 hours of this



I made this



Did a pretty good job replicating the top curve but it has none of the lower curves to bend inward to meet with the fender. Attempts at making those were less than successful




I got kind of tired of struggling with this piece so I decided to practice welding. I picked up a 10 pound spool of Hobart wire for this project. Went with 0.023" wire since 0.035 is more of a general welding wire and this is going to be used exclusively for thin bodywork.



Copper coated



First weld attempted, a lap joint



A non-car friend of mine was with. I gave him the welder for shits and giggles. Results were less than spectacular lol







Another one of mine. I thought this was great at the time but in retrospect it probably needs a little more power so the puddle would have melted in more and not protruded out.



Then for funsies I found some super thick stuff sitting around the shop that I could try welding with the power and wire speed maxed out.



Looks good. Not sure how good the penetration is though. I didn't want to cut it.



Also made this guy too. Ran out of shielding gas at the beginning so it looks kinda crappy.



Got back to hacking more rust out.



Photo of inside the rocker. Although it looked ok from the outside it was pretty rusted from the inside.



So I cut a section out.



And made a new piece



Some other pattern making and observation of the lap joint where the firewall and floor meet.





Then reality set in and had to work on the new DD to make her road worthy before winter came. All work on the e30 stopped while I replaced upper and lower control arms, swaybar links, ABS sensors, driveshaft, and a few other things on the e28. That will be in another thread though.



Winter came and she sat





Some nice boxes came during winter though...



S38 ITBs


S38 ITB to M30B35 head adapter flanges



I'm pretty set on saving up and buying my own TIG welder to assemble the turbo manifold and after doing a lot of thought I decided that if I'm going to go to all this effort I might as well build a T4 manifold instead of T3 for the HX35. I know I'm going to want more power. So anyways I picked up Kamotor's gently used Precision 6266. Now someone buy my HX35 lol.




I never got around to welding all those pieces I made in. I was planning on fabbing up all new floors in the front but after some thought this winter I've been thinking it might be worth the money to find someone with a parts car with good floors to buy with all the time saved. Some of the curves around going to difficult to say the least.

Also I need to use my dslr more, photo quality is leagues above my iphone 5S in all but the brightest of light. The autofocus is broken on my go to 15-55mm lens and since I usually always take photos one handed for various reasons this has led to a decline of its use. I shall buy another lens.

I have started more restoration work in the past few weeks. I've temporarily halted work on the front floor areas till I decide what I want to do and have been working in the rear passenger wheel well which is a total mess. Once I get that area completed I will update the thread. I want to do more regular updates (small ones) now that I'm working on it now instead of the marathon ones I've been doing lately.

[econti]

Music fits well with the post. You do have some decent skill for fabricating the panels too

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Yeah that one curved piece came out surprisingly well. At least the top of it. Luckily I'm doing all the work at my friend's place and his dad has a ton of tools. One of them being a combination sheetmetal tool that allows you to roll curves and press 90 degree bends. There was a spot I patched by the rear shock tower that was really difficult to make. It was a compound curve (I think that's what its called) where its was S shaped in one axis and U shaped in the other axis. The first set of curves is easy but when trying to form the second set of curves on the parallel axis it wants to undo the first set. I eventually ended up breaking it up into 4 U shaped pieces and approximating the S curve using the multiple pieces, similar to doing pie cuts on a tube. It came out half decent, It'll be in my next update.

A little teaser vid from the other weekend before I got to work in the rear wheel well.



I'm going to a bachelor's party this Saturday so hopefully I'm not too hung over to work on my car Sunday. :drink: