Meet 'Goat'...my '89 325i Zinno 4 door.

[shawmcbigdis]

Nice.

I'm with you, in that I prefer a 2 door, but a red e30 always wins.

I must say I feel a lot less happy about my beat to hell es that I got for $1k, after seeing this one that you paid the same for. Oh well, still happy to finally have an e30 though.

[Cptcarisma]

GO GOAT GO!

GO GOAT GOO!!

GO GOATGOOOOO!!!

Great story, dude!

CAPP :-)

[Eric Giles]

Nice.

I'm with you, in that I prefer a 2 door, but a red e30 always wins.

I must say I feel a lot less happy about my beat to hell es that I got for $1k, after seeing this one that you paid the same for. Oh well, still happy to finally have an e30 though.

Heck...right after I got this car and started digging into it and discovering all that it needed, I felt like I overpaid at $1k. Then again, I have lucked into some amazing deals on some of my other E30's and E46's, but in today's market a basically rust free, no accident history 5 speed E30 with plastic bumpers is worth more than $1k.



But as you said, in the end you have an E30...and with enough time and money, you can make it into whatever you want it to be. Congrats on finding one!

[Court M3]

That's great! What area of MS?

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Interestingly enough same city hopefully, keeping fingers crossed everything goes fine. Actually looking at a couple properties there.

[Eric Giles]

Did a good bit of work this weekend, but due to trying to work as fast as I could and not miss out on too much family time, I did not take many pictures.

First thing was to address the whining and loud fuel pump that was just over a month old. It was a cheap pump that came with the new fuel tank (tank and pump $221 shipped on eBay), but it was the same exact pump that I paid $109 for from Autozone for a different E30 just a few months back. I first threw the Autozone pump in and...it was dead. It was just working 3 weeks ago, but unexpectedly quit...and it was only 5 months old. Luckily, I saved the relatively new fuel pump that the previous owner had installed last year in Goat...I put it in and it works, and is quiet.

Next up was the conversion to R134a, and replacement of the normal A/C parts. I got a parallel flow condenser from eBay for $66, new Behr receiver/dryer, combination pressure switch, and all new o-rings. I found a new Rein r134a expansion valve that I had bought probably 10 years ago that I had not used, so that saved me from purchasing another one. I also replaced the auxiliary fan, and used the one from my '89 325i parts car as the replacement. It worked fine, and I had just replaced the low speed resistor earlier this year.

Once I pulled the front bumper and valence off, it was the perfect time to respray the valence. From others experiences, Rustoleum Regal Red is an almost exact match to Zinno. Here you can see how the paint was failing on the front valence.

I then got to work on replacing the A/C components. New condenser and fan were in, all o-rings in the system were replaced, and then I replaced the expansion valve. BTW, that has always been the worst part of A/C work in an E30...it's probably the 5th or 6th time I have done that job, and it's a major PITA no matter what. Glad that is done.

Once it was all back together, I connected my friends SnapOn A/C machine and pulled a vacuum for 30 minutes. Let it sit for a while, and then set it to charge the system. I was only able to get the machine to deliver around 26oz to the system. The machine is set to work by recharging the system with the car off, but in hindsight I should have started the car to try to get up to 28oz of charge. That seems to be around the correct weight in a converted E30 r134a setup. I have a spare can, so I will try to give it a couple more ounces when I get a chance.

I cannot find my vent temp gauge, but today it is around 90 degrees outside with typical high Mississippi humidity, and I am getting around 40-45 degrees at the vents while driving. It is working very well, but I want to maximize it with those extra couple ounces. Still, I am very pleased with the results from all of the effort.

While the valence was off, I also used my SEM euro trim satin paint to respray the small grill in front of the oil cooler. Since the fog lights were in bad shape, and I had purchased a cheap Chinese set of replicas on eBay, I figured...why not? So I installed the lights, and they actually fit very well. I still need to get them wired and working. Last step after reinstalling the front valence and bumper was to install the $40 eBay front iS lip spoiler. This is the second one that I have purchased, and although the factory iS lip is of higher quality, for $40 this works perfectly for this car. Here's everything reinstalled...excuse the mess at home.


Not too bad, especially if you take a look back at how it was when I bought it. I still badly need to do a full cleanup and polish, and that is coming soon. Also, I have to do something in regards to paint on the front and rear bumpers.


So it wouldn't be an E30 without something else going wrong after fixing almost everything else, now would it? Late yesterday afternoon after a drive, I get home and notice a strong smell of fuel, as well as something leaking under the car. Come to find out, the o-ring on the fuel pressure regulator I bought 2 months ago got slightly pinched, and started to leak fuel after I got home. Hard to tell from the pic, but it is just slightly squished.


Put on a spare FPR and no more leaks. Tested the A/C out again in hotter weather during lunch, and it performed very well. Now I just need to put in a blower motor that doesn't sound like a bucket of crickets, and then start on the rest of the cosmetics.

[Eric Giles]

If you go back to look at some of my first pictures, you will see that the car had some very old and bubbling window tint installed. During my first attempt at removal, the tint layer separated from the adhesive layer, leaving a cloudy, bubbling film on the windows. I had managed to use a razor blade to remove the tint from the front windows, and eventually the rear side windows...but that just wasn't going to work on the rear glass with the defroster lines.

I tried every trick in the book-sprayed ammonia cleaner on the inside of the glass with black plastic bags covering the inside and outside in the hot sun, steel wool with nail polish remover, etc.-nothing was working. The adhesive layer was like a rock after being baked on for all of these years. So in the end, I chose what was the easiest overall route to remove the tint from the rear glass-I removed the old glass, and installed a spare rear windshield I had been saving.

Much better! Now I can actually see out of the rear of the car.

Next up will be the front windshield, as it is terribly cracked and has scratches from the goat hooves. At the same time, I will be changing out the dash that is cracked so badly it looks like the Grand Canyon with a crack-free dash I purchased earlier this year. Respraying of the front and rear bumpers, as well as rearview mirrors, front iS lip spoiler and a rear iS trunk spoiler I have might be coming soon...

[Mpolito3355]

I am deff going to be following this build !!!

good luck with it !

also what brand condenser did you use for parallel ? and is it direct fit or "direct fit" ???

[Eric Giles]

I am deff going to be following this build !!!

good luck with it !

also what brand condenser did you use for parallel ? and is it direct fit or "direct fit" ???

Thank you, I appreciate it! The condenser I bought was from here:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/A-C-Condens...72.m2749.l2649

It is definitely a direct fit...absolutely no modification needed at all. I swapped over the rubber mounting grommets for the fan from the old condenser, slid them into place on this one, mounted the fan and it bolted up into place perfectly.

[Shu]

None of your images on the second page are loading for me. First page is fine, just not the second.

[Eric Giles]

None of your images on the second page are loading for me. First page is fine, just not the second.

Are they showing up now? Thanks for letting me know...I forgot to put the new pics in my shared album.

[jeenyus]

i cant see any either.

[Eric Giles]

i cant see any either.

Maybe now they are showing up?

[Shu]

Nope, still not showing up for me.

[Eric Giles]

No major updates, but I am still working on cosmetics bit by bit when I get some free time. Last night, I polished the entire passenger side with my Porter Cable DA and Mequiars M105 compound. For comparisons sake, let's remember what Goat looked like the day I bought it:




Now, after one step of compounding/polishing:


Not done yet, but definitely getting there.


I've also found the reason for my latest pictures not showing up, so I am in the process hosting them to another site.

[fresh_TD]

Red is a good color to bring back to life. If you cut, polish, wax and seal(most important with single stage paint), you will get good results regardless of what products you use.

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