E30 How-To's

[SethB]

Hi folks,
I've been stalking the forums here for years, looking for a whole lot of info before I bought my first E30, and coming back again and again for answers after I did. I haven't posted much, mostly because I've always found the answers I'm looking for without having to ask.

Recently I've been trying to document any work that I do on my cars. I write a fair number of technical documents for work, and so I figured I could probably do a decent job of capturing step-by-step how-to's. I got a few written up, and decided I could organize them and make them easier to find by hosting a website. Took me a little while to figure it out, but it's now up! Check it out: www.classicbimmerbits.com/e30-how-to/.


I owe most of what I know about E30's to the members on this forum, hopefully I can give a little bit back this way. I'm passionate about old bmw's, and hope to regularly add to the content on the site as I work on my car. If you have ideas on how to make it better, or know of better ways to do things than the way I've done them, please let me know!

[1843lamp]

Good work ,have at it .

[Mazdayasna]

Wow, these are very well put-together, and the pictures are very clear! Just the right amount of depth and explanation. I have subscribed, great work!

Sent from my PH-1 using Tapatalk

[SethB]

Thanks guys! I've been trying to make sure I capture enough detail, without it being tedious. I've got a ton of stuff I'd like to do to my car, any requests to jobs that would be most helpful to document? Long-term I'd like to get all the regular maintenance stuff, and I can think of a bunch of jobs that are super common for our cars, but in the short term it's going to be whatever my car needs next, or any requests that are on the list of things I need to do anyway.

Mazdayasna, thanks for subscribing! I'm trying to write up one job a week, I figured the email list would be the best way to let people know there's new stuff up.

[325e '87]

Thank you so much for taking this on, I hope you manage to build a comprehensive site. I’m subscribed.

I have to say though, my hose clamps and intake boot clamps use a 6mm socket. I’m sure there are many different hose clamps used all over and you specified 8mm in your air filter procedure. My sons eta has 6mm, 7mm, and 8mm hose clamps from prior owners and service. I only mention this to satisfy your needs for precision since you seem to care about it.

I look forward to your shift linkage sequence and front strut housing sequence. Clutch replacement, guibo/carrier bearing, head and head gasket, etc....(lol). Needless to say I thank you for taking this on.

[SethB]

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement! I'm really hoping I can make it comprehensive and helpful.

Great point about the hose clamp sizes, I don't know that the clamps on any of my cars have been original, so the sizes I have might be incorrect. I just updated the page to capture your comments, thanks a ton!

Strut housing are high on my to-do list, my daily driver could use new ones, hopefully I'll have a write-up available soon. In the meantime, I just finished writing up front door panel replacement, here's a link. I'll post this in the interiors sub-forum as well.

https://classicbimmerbits.com/e30-ho...acement-sedan/

[AndrewBird]

Looks good.

Timing belt and tensioner replacement would be a good one. Everyone needs to do that at some point and it can be a bit scary for noobs.

[movet22]

Looks good.

Timing belt and tensioner replacement would be a good one. Everyone needs to do that at some point and it can be a bit scary for noobs.

+1 to this. I have all of the parts for my belts, tensioner and water pump, and I am just waiting, reading, re-reading and waiting some more b/c I am pretty intimidated by this process. Any additional how-to resources would be excellent.

[SethB]

Good call, thanks for the suggestion! I just did the timing belt and water pump on my daily driver, I snapped a ton of pics but haven't had a chance to write it up yet. I'll get right on it.

There's some decent videos on Youtube, and Pelican Parts has a How-to that's not bad, although I don't think it goes as far as replacing the water pump.

[jdt10768]

Thanks, subscribed.

[cirrusblue]

yes subd.

[Flying Potato]

I'll be watching this one. Great stuff here.

[SethB]

Thanks for the feedback everybody, it's motivating me to get this stuff written more quickly. I'm about halfway through the timing belt write-up, I'm hoping to have it finished up by this weekend.

[SethB]

As I was writing, I realized that capturing the whole timing belt job in one page was going to be massive, and maybe too much to be helpful. For that reason, I'm splitting out a couple of the jobs that have to be done to do the timing belt, but aren't part of the actual timing belt job. I think the key ones are, radiator replacement, accessory belt replacement, water pump replacement, and camshaft seal replacement. Radiator replacement is already up, and I just finished up accessory belt replacement. Here's the link:

https://classicbimmerbits.com/e30-ho...t-replacement/

As always, let me know what you think, or if you have any suggestions for improvement. I wanted to post here for everyone subscribed to the thread, but I'll also post in M20 subthread if there are any specific comments for this write-up.

Timing belt How-to is on the way, I needed to knock out the belts first to split the job over a couple of pages.

[Mazdayasna]

As I was writing, I realized that capturing the whole timing belt job in one page was going to be massive, and maybe too much to be helpful. For that reason, I'm splitting out a couple of the jobs that have to be done to do the timing belt, but aren't part of the actual timing belt job. I think the key ones are, radiator replacement, accessory belt replacement, water pump replacement, and camshaft seal replacement. Radiator replacement is already up, and I just finished up accessory belt replacement. Here's the link:

https://classicbimmerbits.com/e30-how-to/e30-accessory-belt-replacement/

As always, let me know what you think, or if you have any suggestions for improvement. I wanted to post here for everyone subscribed to the thread, but I'll also post in M20 subthread if there are any specific comments for this write-up.

Timing belt How-to is on the way, I needed to knock out the belts first to split the job over a couple of pages.

Fantastic quality as before! I really like the idea of chopping all servicing work into short chunks that can be referred back to. (ie: Before attempting this job, follow "removing X" and "removing Y")

Do you think that once you've covered the basics there are already writeups for, you'll go into more specialized things? Properly depowering a steering rack, converting to aftermarket ECU, upgrading fuel pump, etc. How far are you going with this? I would be pretty sweet to have a definitive source for all E30 DIY services.
Also, have you considered using images from RealOEM to help describe parts/systems?