*** Editors Note: Ive been wanting to start expanding the feature because some of you guys reallllyy love E30s and own multiple ones. This is a perfect example here of the love. Two cars that have gone through quite a HUGE transformation and continue to evolve. They are long reads that were longer! I shortened them to give you a nice summary. Head to the build threads for the in-depth work that went into these cars. Congrats Pasi, you got the CARS of the month double feature for October 2018!
My e30: 316 -85
Factory options:
- S311 Electrical front seat passenger mirror
- S500A Headlight wipe/wash/Intensive cleaning
- S820 Nordic version
- S850A add fuel tank filling for export
- S860A Additional turn indicator lamp
Color:
Sepang Bronze (originally black)
Interior color:
Grey fabric
Engine modifications:
- m52b28 (from RHD e36 328ia)
- later aluminum cylinder block with steel liners
- m50 non-vanos connecting rods
- Athena cooper ring head gasket with stock head bolts
- Upgraded VANOS with spring washer and m52tu solenoid for PWM control
- e34 m50 oil pan, suction pipe and rubber mountings
- Non-vanos m50b20 intake cam machined to fit as exhaust cam
- s52b32 intake cam
- euro-s50 oil filter housing
- euro-s50 oil cooler
- e36 radiator from model with air conditioning
- e39 PWM controlled fan
- Rewon Motors twin scroll turbo manifold
- Holset hx35 turbocharger with 12cm2 exhaust housing
- Turbosmart 45mm replica wastegate
- 2,5” charge piping
- 450x300mm intercooler
- Biltema dump valve
- Siemens DEKA 630cc injectors
- Megasquirt ms3x engine management
- continental flex fuel sensor
- VW n75 boost controller valve
- PLX DM-6 + SM-AFR wide band lambda
- walbro 450lph e85 fuel pump
- BMC air filter
- 557hp 756Nm / 557lb/ft runs on e85 @1.2 bar of boost
Exhaust:
- selfmade 3” RST exhaust
- Vibrant stealth RST rear silencer
Transmission:
- ZF S5d 320z out of 330i e46
- e36 328 shifter linkage
- Biltema short shifter
- Finnish made billet flywheel
- Sachs sre -765 pressure assembly
- e36 328i clutch disk
Differential:
- e34 525tds rear diff (2.65 ratio)
- e28 528eta lsd unit
- e36 diff cover
Suspension:
- All parts from 325i e30
- BC BR Extreme drop coilover set with softer springs
- thicker m-tech swaybars
- e36 steering rack
Wheels:
- custom made 3pcs bottlecaps 8,75x16” and 9,75x16”
- Yokohama Advan Neova AD08R tires 205/50r16 and 225/45r16
Exterior modifications:
- All dody panels except roof is from late model e30
- black plastic bumpers from late model e30
- black trim from late model e30
- hella look a like headlights with black cross inside
- us model grills
Interior modifications:
- Black headliner
- All sound deadening removed. Including floor mats. only the fabric is left.
- late model sport seats
- leather shifter and handbrake boots
- m-tech II steering wheel
- maustech instrument cluster (oil temp gauge, speedup to 300km/h and tacho up to 8k)
- no stereo system etc.
Story behind the car:
I have wanted to build turbo e30 since I was something like 15. The plan how to do that has evolved during the years but I made no progress at all. But in 2012, I finally had the place and know-how to start the project. The car was missing but then I got my hands on late model 316 which was in almost mint condition. Unfortunately it was too new legally put turbo on it in Finland and I couldn't get it registered for my. Still I bought the car and started hunting older car with proper paperwork. When the 2012 was almost at end, I finally bought the cheapest pre -86 e30 I could find in driving condition. It was -85 316 which was horrible, 4 speed, rusty, engine had like 30hp left, parts missing and dangerous to drive. But the paperwork was clean so I bought it, stripped both cars to pieces and started the two year restoration project. Goal was to make the car in restomod style. With lots of modifications, but still have everything looking as OEM as possible. Using BMW parts where ever I could.
The car I bought should have been crushed long time ago because it was so horrible condition. But I wasn't afraid because I had the almost mint condition donor car. So I took apart both cars and lifted the bare chassis of the one I got papers to the grill I made. In which I could rotate the chassis and do the rust work. Piece by piece I transferred the metal work from the late model car to this one including the late model quarter panels and bought some pieces new. The front panel for e30 with air conditioning and front side panels without side marker holes came from BMW. The rear panel was aftermarket part. And of course I had to do lot of rust fixes from regular sheet metal. When the rust work and modifications were done, I painted the fixed parts with wash primer, followed with some epoxy. And finished the chassis with some sanding primer. Underneath the car I sprayed some 3m 08800 to protect from stone chips, applied some seam sealer and finished up it with sepang bronze and clear coat. Yes even the cars bottom has clear coat. I also painted the engine bay in same go. The inside I also painted with sepang bronze, but left it without clear coat, for more OEM look.
All the suspension parts are from 325i e30 and I sandplasted everything, applied washprimer, expoxy and finished with gloss black paint. Every part that car wear in suspension is new, or refurbished in like new condition. All the nuts and bolts are new from BMW if possible. Everything is new. The finished suspension and other parts underneath the car were mounted to freshly finished chassis and in 2014. The car finally was standing on it's wheels. First time in over 2 years. The car was finally ready for paint. Which my friend laid over the car when he was working on paint shop. This was the first time, someone else than me was working on the car. All other things were made by me. After paint I could start assembling the car. I replaced all the nuts, bolts, clips so on with new OEM stuff. There is no single rusty bolt on cracked plastic clip in the car. For weight saving I left out all the sound deadening when assembling the car.
For the wheels I wanted to have some unique look. And one day I saw pic from internet where someone had put stepped lip over e30 bottle cap. I thought that I have to make wheels like that. I did hunt down cheapest set of BMW bottlecaps and cut those in 3 pieces. I ordered two radinox lips for front wheel and when those came, it was confirmed that those will fit. The measures turned out to be perfect because I only had few mm room everywhere for the wheels to rotate. I then wrapped some tires on the wheels and finally the car was "ready" at 2014 autumn.
The heart of the car came from United Kingdom, because I found one running and working m52b28 engine from ebay.co.uk for really cheap price. The engine was cleaned and got some basic maintenance done before I fitted it to the car. I also installed the turbo parts and the plan was to run the engine as stock first with low boost. I bought the turbo manifold ready, installed holset hx35 to it and made all the charge piping and exhaust myself. The fuse box and the ecu are moved underneath the dash inside the car. And I had the PnP ms2 clone called KDFI to control the engine. Gearbox was also form ebay.co.uk taken from 330i e46. 5speed manual ones came with the regular S5d 320 ZF gearbox.
I got the car also MOT checked after some arguing that how come the turbo only increases the engine power like 10hp (In finland I can only have legally 203 hp in e30). But it was already winter in finland. Next summer I continued tuning the car. The next few years were spent chasing issues and having life distractions, but for 2018 season I started working with the car again. I again fixed all kinds of problems that the car had and upgraded the ecu to ms3x megasquirt with all the fancy stuff. Like sequential injection and spark, fuel and oil pressure sensors, flexfuel, sd-card datalogging, PWM controlled fan, knock control, launch control and so on. The engine also got s52 intake cam and with that the engine made 557hp in dyno. Biggest number I have ever seen with hx35 holset turbo. This summer I also upgraded the vanos with m52tu vanos solenoid or PWM control and added traction control with ms3. And run 12.029 at 1/4 mile
The ONE: 316 -85
Factory options:
S311 Electrical front seat passenger mirror
S500A Headlight wipe/wash/Intensive cleaning
S820 Nordic version
S850A add fuel tank filling for export
S860A Additional turn indicator lamp
Color:
Alpine Weiss III (originally Gazelle Beige)
Interior color:
Black
Engine modifications:
- m50b25 non-vanos from 525ia e34
- m52b28 crank and damper/trigger wheel
- 135mm max speeding rods connecting rods
- Wiseco m50b25 vanos pistons with 8.8:1 compression ratio. Making the resulting compression ratio closer to 10:1
- ARP main studs
- ARP head studs
- Athena cooper ring head gasket
- regrind stock cams (260 degrees both. Intake 10.4mm lift and exhaust 9.5mm)
- customised aluminium intake plenum with m52 throttle body
- self made single entry exhaust manifold
- Holset HX40 turbo with 16cm2 exhaust housing
- Turbosmart 45mm wastegate
- 2,5” charge piping
- 450x300mm intercooler
- e34 big radiator
- spall 350mm fan
- Biltema dump valve
- Siemens DEKA 830cc injectors
- Megasquirt ms3x engine management
- cherry hall sensors for crank and cam
- continental flex fuel sensor
- 4-way mac boost solenoid
- PLX DM-6 + SM-AFR wide band lambda
- 2x Aeroflow AF49-1012 fuel pump (bosch 044 replica)
- self made RST fuel tank at the trunk
- BMC air filter
- 562hp on e85 @1.2 bar of boost (boost problems at the dyno)
Exhaust:
- selfmade 3” RST exhaust
- 3,5"downpipe
- magnaflow rear silencer
- vibrant resonator
Transmission:
- ZF S5d 320z out of 523i e39
- e36 328 shifter linkage
- Biltema short shifter
- RHD billet chromo flywheel
- Sachs sre -765 pressure assembly
- e36 328i clutch disk
Differential:
- e34 typ188 diff with 3.15 ratio
- refurbished LSD
Suspension:
- e36 steering knuckle, brakes and coilovers at the front
- e36 euro-m3 3.0 control arm bushes
- e36 euro-m3 3.2 control arms
- e46 steering rack
- e34 525i m50 rear axle with brakes
- e34 3.15 ratio LSD
Wheels:
- Work Equip Anhelo 3pcs wheels. 16"
- Toyo proxess tires (r888r at the back)
Exterior modifications:
- m-tech I front bumper
- fiberglass m-tech II sideskirts and panels
- fiberglass m-tech I rear skirt
- fiberglass m-tech I rear spoiler
- fiberglass wheel arches
Interior modifications:
- Almost All sound deadening removed. Including floor mats. only the fabric is left.
- Sparco seats
- aftermarket steering wheel
- hydro e-brake
- some gauges
- no stereo system etc.
Story behind the car:
It was 2013 fall when my brother wanted to have e30 as his winter beater because of he got glimpse of e30 driving experience before I took apart mine. He found really cheap early model 4-speed carburated 316 locally which looked like fairly solid car with fresh paint and it was just MOT inspected with clean papers. Well it wasn't long when the car started to show it's real nature. Suspension was horrible, steering was loose and the exhaust was leaking so that you would suffocate inside the car while standing in traffic lights. So to use the car, we gave it quick overhaul using the parts that were left of my late model parts e30. The whole front suspension was replaced including the steering rack. We also replaced the cracked headers, rear shocks and took away like 20 meters of extra wires from the engine bay. Which didn't do anything. We also tried to swap in the 5-speed gearbox, but it had two gears engaged at the same time. So we took the 5-speed I had from the parts car with the shorter driveshaft and installed those to the car. And after that the car was driveable and it served as his daily for the winter.
During the Spring the clutch and brakes stopped working, and the floor was so gone that there was snow coming inside the car. It barely made through the winter. It turned out that the car was so rusty from the bottom that it was in really dangerous condition and also there was lot of hack jobs in the brakes which failed. Like "fixing" leaking brake hoses with zipties and replacing rear brake hoses with hard line. Which obviously cracked... It looked like we were going to give up with the car but at the same time, I bough 525ia e34 with m50 engine. It was also rusted through but had mostly working mechanics. So we thought that maybe we patch up the rust problems in the e30 and swap in the m50 from the e34 using the axles from that. So we could get capable winterbeater for next winter really cheap. And that was what we started to do and the car was taken apart for rust repairs. The car didn't even have proper rocker panels. The original ones were rusted away and someone had replaced those with new ones using bondo and couple of screws. So when we took of the rear axle, the rockers panels came off too.
Well even after finding out how bad the car was, we didn't give up. Needless to say the car wasn't finished during the summer, even with all the work hours we put into it. But to summarize we replaced: whole front clip, front subframe, drivers side frame rail, front fenders, drivers side door, inner and outer part of rocker panel, like half of the floor and some parts of the firewall, battery shelf, inner and outer part of the lower rear quarters, whole trunk floor including frame rails and whole back panel. We also modified the trunk floor and frame rails to accept the e34 rear axle and also modified the axle itself to fit e30 body. The stock gas tank didn't fit with e34 rear axle and it was also rusted through, so we did new stainless steel gas tank in the trunk. For the front axle we used e36 parts to make the 5-lug conversion with bigger brakes to match the e34 rear. For the color we chose the alpinweiss III because we like the white color that was on the car.
The m50 engine from e34 was planned to be used as stock but the MAF was destroyed and the cylinder bores were worn. So to fix that we got cheap m52b28 which had cracked head and stripped headbolts. I also had spare m52 alu-block so we did put the rotating assembly from the broken m52b28 to that block and took rest of the parts from the original m50 to build alu-block m50b28 without vanos. And because of the special engine and no MAF, we decided to get aftermarket ecu because the m50 PnP KDFI was the same price as new MAF from bmw to the m50nv. The engine was put to car with m52b28 dualmass flywheel and clutch I had laying around. And to complete the setup, we bought s5d 320z ZF gearbox from ebay that came from 523i e39. Add some 16 by 9 borbet A wheels and fiberglass arches to hide the wheels because the wider axels and we were done.
Well almost. The car was only painted inside and underside but rest of the parts were only primed or some other color. We tried to do some tuning for the ecu but it quickly ended by car stopping itself from 60mph speed. After short WTF moment, we realised the we forgot to put any oil to the diff so it totally nuked itself and bas basically welded shut. So we needed to get new diff and managed to find matching one with lsd. And that's how the car was left for rest of the summer.
When winter came, Petri didn't want to drive the car anymore as winterbeater. But wanted to put turbo to it because the car was so slow compared to my m52 turbo. So we bought the cheapest suitable turbo from ebay, some parts to make turbo manifold and started the work. This is also where my youtube videos start. The setup was really simple. Ebay turbo, weld together turbo manifold from some steel water pipes. It made 370hp with instant throttle response and that's how my brother drove the car for whole summer. When the summer did end, he wanted to have more power than me and bought holset hx40 to replace the ebay turbo. The plan escalated quickly from that...it was all upgraded significantly. The car also finally got proper paint laid over and many many little things done to the car to make it better. The car was finished well before summer and the 2017 season was supposed to be big season for the car. Unfortunately there was strange ignition problem which took whole summer to solve. When the problem was found, the summer was almost over. Still my brother managed to find some rare 3pcs work wheels and turn the old rubbers from those to smoke before winter.
After the summer 2017 we changed the m50 intake to aluminium plenum, added oil cooler with s54 oil filter housing, changed the spark plug wires to better ones and upgraded the engine management to megasquirt 3x. The car was finished for summer 2018. Well almost... there was more problems that took a while to fix. After this headache and with new head the car was working and there was still summer left to drive the car. We also went to dyno to tune the car, but unfortunately the wastegate stopped working at the dyno and we couldn't get the boost past 1.2 bar. So the engine only made 562hp. The wastegate was later replaced by genuine turbosmart one, which fixed the boost problem. But now we were maxing out the injectors. So we have not yet seen what the engine is capable of. Maybe next summer...
The build threads are here
My e30: 316 -85
Factory options:
- S311 Electrical front seat passenger mirror
- S500A Headlight wipe/wash/Intensive cleaning
- S820 Nordic version
- S850A add fuel tank filling for export
- S860A Additional turn indicator lamp
Color:
Sepang Bronze (originally black)
Interior color:
Grey fabric
Engine modifications:
- m52b28 (from RHD e36 328ia)
- later aluminum cylinder block with steel liners
- m50 non-vanos connecting rods
- Athena cooper ring head gasket with stock head bolts
- Upgraded VANOS with spring washer and m52tu solenoid for PWM control
- e34 m50 oil pan, suction pipe and rubber mountings
- Non-vanos m50b20 intake cam machined to fit as exhaust cam
- s52b32 intake cam
- euro-s50 oil filter housing
- euro-s50 oil cooler
- e36 radiator from model with air conditioning
- e39 PWM controlled fan
- Rewon Motors twin scroll turbo manifold
- Holset hx35 turbocharger with 12cm2 exhaust housing
- Turbosmart 45mm replica wastegate
- 2,5” charge piping
- 450x300mm intercooler
- Biltema dump valve
- Siemens DEKA 630cc injectors
- Megasquirt ms3x engine management
- continental flex fuel sensor
- VW n75 boost controller valve
- PLX DM-6 + SM-AFR wide band lambda
- walbro 450lph e85 fuel pump
- BMC air filter
- 557hp 756Nm / 557lb/ft runs on e85 @1.2 bar of boost
Exhaust:
- selfmade 3” RST exhaust
- Vibrant stealth RST rear silencer
Transmission:
- ZF S5d 320z out of 330i e46
- e36 328 shifter linkage
- Biltema short shifter
- Finnish made billet flywheel
- Sachs sre -765 pressure assembly
- e36 328i clutch disk
Differential:
- e34 525tds rear diff (2.65 ratio)
- e28 528eta lsd unit
- e36 diff cover
Suspension:
- All parts from 325i e30
- BC BR Extreme drop coilover set with softer springs
- thicker m-tech swaybars
- e36 steering rack
Wheels:
- custom made 3pcs bottlecaps 8,75x16” and 9,75x16”
- Yokohama Advan Neova AD08R tires 205/50r16 and 225/45r16
Exterior modifications:
- All dody panels except roof is from late model e30
- black plastic bumpers from late model e30
- black trim from late model e30
- hella look a like headlights with black cross inside
- us model grills
Interior modifications:
- Black headliner
- All sound deadening removed. Including floor mats. only the fabric is left.
- late model sport seats
- leather shifter and handbrake boots
- m-tech II steering wheel
- maustech instrument cluster (oil temp gauge, speedup to 300km/h and tacho up to 8k)
- no stereo system etc.
Story behind the car:
I have wanted to build turbo e30 since I was something like 15. The plan how to do that has evolved during the years but I made no progress at all. But in 2012, I finally had the place and know-how to start the project. The car was missing but then I got my hands on late model 316 which was in almost mint condition. Unfortunately it was too new legally put turbo on it in Finland and I couldn't get it registered for my. Still I bought the car and started hunting older car with proper paperwork. When the 2012 was almost at end, I finally bought the cheapest pre -86 e30 I could find in driving condition. It was -85 316 which was horrible, 4 speed, rusty, engine had like 30hp left, parts missing and dangerous to drive. But the paperwork was clean so I bought it, stripped both cars to pieces and started the two year restoration project. Goal was to make the car in restomod style. With lots of modifications, but still have everything looking as OEM as possible. Using BMW parts where ever I could.
The car I bought should have been crushed long time ago because it was so horrible condition. But I wasn't afraid because I had the almost mint condition donor car. So I took apart both cars and lifted the bare chassis of the one I got papers to the grill I made. In which I could rotate the chassis and do the rust work. Piece by piece I transferred the metal work from the late model car to this one including the late model quarter panels and bought some pieces new. The front panel for e30 with air conditioning and front side panels without side marker holes came from BMW. The rear panel was aftermarket part. And of course I had to do lot of rust fixes from regular sheet metal. When the rust work and modifications were done, I painted the fixed parts with wash primer, followed with some epoxy. And finished the chassis with some sanding primer. Underneath the car I sprayed some 3m 08800 to protect from stone chips, applied some seam sealer and finished up it with sepang bronze and clear coat. Yes even the cars bottom has clear coat. I also painted the engine bay in same go. The inside I also painted with sepang bronze, but left it without clear coat, for more OEM look.
All the suspension parts are from 325i e30 and I sandplasted everything, applied washprimer, expoxy and finished with gloss black paint. Every part that car wear in suspension is new, or refurbished in like new condition. All the nuts and bolts are new from BMW if possible. Everything is new. The finished suspension and other parts underneath the car were mounted to freshly finished chassis and in 2014. The car finally was standing on it's wheels. First time in over 2 years. The car was finally ready for paint. Which my friend laid over the car when he was working on paint shop. This was the first time, someone else than me was working on the car. All other things were made by me. After paint I could start assembling the car. I replaced all the nuts, bolts, clips so on with new OEM stuff. There is no single rusty bolt on cracked plastic clip in the car. For weight saving I left out all the sound deadening when assembling the car.
For the wheels I wanted to have some unique look. And one day I saw pic from internet where someone had put stepped lip over e30 bottle cap. I thought that I have to make wheels like that. I did hunt down cheapest set of BMW bottlecaps and cut those in 3 pieces. I ordered two radinox lips for front wheel and when those came, it was confirmed that those will fit. The measures turned out to be perfect because I only had few mm room everywhere for the wheels to rotate. I then wrapped some tires on the wheels and finally the car was "ready" at 2014 autumn.
The heart of the car came from United Kingdom, because I found one running and working m52b28 engine from ebay.co.uk for really cheap price. The engine was cleaned and got some basic maintenance done before I fitted it to the car. I also installed the turbo parts and the plan was to run the engine as stock first with low boost. I bought the turbo manifold ready, installed holset hx35 to it and made all the charge piping and exhaust myself. The fuse box and the ecu are moved underneath the dash inside the car. And I had the PnP ms2 clone called KDFI to control the engine. Gearbox was also form ebay.co.uk taken from 330i e46. 5speed manual ones came with the regular S5d 320 ZF gearbox.
I got the car also MOT checked after some arguing that how come the turbo only increases the engine power like 10hp (In finland I can only have legally 203 hp in e30). But it was already winter in finland. Next summer I continued tuning the car. The next few years were spent chasing issues and having life distractions, but for 2018 season I started working with the car again. I again fixed all kinds of problems that the car had and upgraded the ecu to ms3x megasquirt with all the fancy stuff. Like sequential injection and spark, fuel and oil pressure sensors, flexfuel, sd-card datalogging, PWM controlled fan, knock control, launch control and so on. The engine also got s52 intake cam and with that the engine made 557hp in dyno. Biggest number I have ever seen with hx35 holset turbo. This summer I also upgraded the vanos with m52tu vanos solenoid or PWM control and added traction control with ms3. And run 12.029 at 1/4 mile
The ONE: 316 -85
Factory options:
S311 Electrical front seat passenger mirror
S500A Headlight wipe/wash/Intensive cleaning
S820 Nordic version
S850A add fuel tank filling for export
S860A Additional turn indicator lamp
Color:
Alpine Weiss III (originally Gazelle Beige)
Interior color:
Black
Engine modifications:
- m50b25 non-vanos from 525ia e34
- m52b28 crank and damper/trigger wheel
- 135mm max speeding rods connecting rods
- Wiseco m50b25 vanos pistons with 8.8:1 compression ratio. Making the resulting compression ratio closer to 10:1
- ARP main studs
- ARP head studs
- Athena cooper ring head gasket
- regrind stock cams (260 degrees both. Intake 10.4mm lift and exhaust 9.5mm)
- customised aluminium intake plenum with m52 throttle body
- self made single entry exhaust manifold
- Holset HX40 turbo with 16cm2 exhaust housing
- Turbosmart 45mm wastegate
- 2,5” charge piping
- 450x300mm intercooler
- e34 big radiator
- spall 350mm fan
- Biltema dump valve
- Siemens DEKA 830cc injectors
- Megasquirt ms3x engine management
- cherry hall sensors for crank and cam
- continental flex fuel sensor
- 4-way mac boost solenoid
- PLX DM-6 + SM-AFR wide band lambda
- 2x Aeroflow AF49-1012 fuel pump (bosch 044 replica)
- self made RST fuel tank at the trunk
- BMC air filter
- 562hp on e85 @1.2 bar of boost (boost problems at the dyno)
Exhaust:
- selfmade 3” RST exhaust
- 3,5"downpipe
- magnaflow rear silencer
- vibrant resonator
Transmission:
- ZF S5d 320z out of 523i e39
- e36 328 shifter linkage
- Biltema short shifter
- RHD billet chromo flywheel
- Sachs sre -765 pressure assembly
- e36 328i clutch disk
Differential:
- e34 typ188 diff with 3.15 ratio
- refurbished LSD
Suspension:
- e36 steering knuckle, brakes and coilovers at the front
- e36 euro-m3 3.0 control arm bushes
- e36 euro-m3 3.2 control arms
- e46 steering rack
- e34 525i m50 rear axle with brakes
- e34 3.15 ratio LSD
Wheels:
- Work Equip Anhelo 3pcs wheels. 16"
- Toyo proxess tires (r888r at the back)
Exterior modifications:
- m-tech I front bumper
- fiberglass m-tech II sideskirts and panels
- fiberglass m-tech I rear skirt
- fiberglass m-tech I rear spoiler
- fiberglass wheel arches
Interior modifications:
- Almost All sound deadening removed. Including floor mats. only the fabric is left.
- Sparco seats
- aftermarket steering wheel
- hydro e-brake
- some gauges
- no stereo system etc.
Story behind the car:
It was 2013 fall when my brother wanted to have e30 as his winter beater because of he got glimpse of e30 driving experience before I took apart mine. He found really cheap early model 4-speed carburated 316 locally which looked like fairly solid car with fresh paint and it was just MOT inspected with clean papers. Well it wasn't long when the car started to show it's real nature. Suspension was horrible, steering was loose and the exhaust was leaking so that you would suffocate inside the car while standing in traffic lights. So to use the car, we gave it quick overhaul using the parts that were left of my late model parts e30. The whole front suspension was replaced including the steering rack. We also replaced the cracked headers, rear shocks and took away like 20 meters of extra wires from the engine bay. Which didn't do anything. We also tried to swap in the 5-speed gearbox, but it had two gears engaged at the same time. So we took the 5-speed I had from the parts car with the shorter driveshaft and installed those to the car. And after that the car was driveable and it served as his daily for the winter.
During the Spring the clutch and brakes stopped working, and the floor was so gone that there was snow coming inside the car. It barely made through the winter. It turned out that the car was so rusty from the bottom that it was in really dangerous condition and also there was lot of hack jobs in the brakes which failed. Like "fixing" leaking brake hoses with zipties and replacing rear brake hoses with hard line. Which obviously cracked... It looked like we were going to give up with the car but at the same time, I bough 525ia e34 with m50 engine. It was also rusted through but had mostly working mechanics. So we thought that maybe we patch up the rust problems in the e30 and swap in the m50 from the e34 using the axles from that. So we could get capable winterbeater for next winter really cheap. And that was what we started to do and the car was taken apart for rust repairs. The car didn't even have proper rocker panels. The original ones were rusted away and someone had replaced those with new ones using bondo and couple of screws. So when we took of the rear axle, the rockers panels came off too.
Well even after finding out how bad the car was, we didn't give up. Needless to say the car wasn't finished during the summer, even with all the work hours we put into it. But to summarize we replaced: whole front clip, front subframe, drivers side frame rail, front fenders, drivers side door, inner and outer part of rocker panel, like half of the floor and some parts of the firewall, battery shelf, inner and outer part of the lower rear quarters, whole trunk floor including frame rails and whole back panel. We also modified the trunk floor and frame rails to accept the e34 rear axle and also modified the axle itself to fit e30 body. The stock gas tank didn't fit with e34 rear axle and it was also rusted through, so we did new stainless steel gas tank in the trunk. For the front axle we used e36 parts to make the 5-lug conversion with bigger brakes to match the e34 rear. For the color we chose the alpinweiss III because we like the white color that was on the car.
The m50 engine from e34 was planned to be used as stock but the MAF was destroyed and the cylinder bores were worn. So to fix that we got cheap m52b28 which had cracked head and stripped headbolts. I also had spare m52 alu-block so we did put the rotating assembly from the broken m52b28 to that block and took rest of the parts from the original m50 to build alu-block m50b28 without vanos. And because of the special engine and no MAF, we decided to get aftermarket ecu because the m50 PnP KDFI was the same price as new MAF from bmw to the m50nv. The engine was put to car with m52b28 dualmass flywheel and clutch I had laying around. And to complete the setup, we bought s5d 320z ZF gearbox from ebay that came from 523i e39. Add some 16 by 9 borbet A wheels and fiberglass arches to hide the wheels because the wider axels and we were done.
Well almost. The car was only painted inside and underside but rest of the parts were only primed or some other color. We tried to do some tuning for the ecu but it quickly ended by car stopping itself from 60mph speed. After short WTF moment, we realised the we forgot to put any oil to the diff so it totally nuked itself and bas basically welded shut. So we needed to get new diff and managed to find matching one with lsd. And that's how the car was left for rest of the summer.
When winter came, Petri didn't want to drive the car anymore as winterbeater. But wanted to put turbo to it because the car was so slow compared to my m52 turbo. So we bought the cheapest suitable turbo from ebay, some parts to make turbo manifold and started the work. This is also where my youtube videos start. The setup was really simple. Ebay turbo, weld together turbo manifold from some steel water pipes. It made 370hp with instant throttle response and that's how my brother drove the car for whole summer. When the summer did end, he wanted to have more power than me and bought holset hx40 to replace the ebay turbo. The plan escalated quickly from that...it was all upgraded significantly. The car also finally got proper paint laid over and many many little things done to the car to make it better. The car was finished well before summer and the 2017 season was supposed to be big season for the car. Unfortunately there was strange ignition problem which took whole summer to solve. When the problem was found, the summer was almost over. Still my brother managed to find some rare 3pcs work wheels and turn the old rubbers from those to smoke before winter.
After the summer 2017 we changed the m50 intake to aluminium plenum, added oil cooler with s54 oil filter housing, changed the spark plug wires to better ones and upgraded the engine management to megasquirt 3x. The car was finished for summer 2018. Well almost... there was more problems that took a while to fix. After this headache and with new head the car was working and there was still summer left to drive the car. We also went to dyno to tune the car, but unfortunately the wastegate stopped working at the dyno and we couldn't get the boost past 1.2 bar. So the engine only made 562hp. The wastegate was later replaced by genuine turbosmart one, which fixed the boost problem. But now we were maxing out the injectors. So we have not yet seen what the engine is capable of. Maybe next summer...
The build threads are here
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