So I've been here a while, mainly on the classifieds, so I figured id start a build to introduce myself and my car.
For the story since every build seems to have a story attached to it. I bought a cheap 85 325e that was a "drift car" for cheap to get into the e30 world. Put a little bit into it and had a decent car on a budget. Planned on doing a budget turbo, but cruising Craigslist saw an ad for a non running 84 325e with power everything, clean Cali/ Colorado car and bonus it came with an s52. All the kid wanted was a running e30, so I drove to Denver traded cars and sent this one right to the shop to do the engine swap. Well after 7 months and a $7000 price increase to do the swap over the intial quote I said screw it and brought the car home.
Ive owned this car 3 years and lost motivation a million times for a bunch of reason. Ive never driven it and until a month ago it never had a drivers seat actually bolted in. So hopefully this build thread will help keep me motivated and put this all in one place for my future reference. I'm calling this Formally Functional because there's some sweet performance going into it but also some cool rare parts I've been collecting.
So the plan as of now. S52 with a Zf, LSD, CATuned coilovers, IE sway bars, revshift bushings, 5 lug swap, BBS', OE MTech1 body kit, cage, carbon interior, custom rear end,and whatever else catches my eye and blows any sort of budget.
This first post is 3 years of what I've been doing to get caught up.
The original car and junkyard special since I sourced most parts from there. I put a new interior in since it was gutted. Some VW snowflakes and cleaned it up alittle
And the car I traded for.
The MTech 1 kit from the UK
Victor steering wheel from Poland that will get mounted on a Longacre quick release. With some cool pieces to keep a horn and turn signal cancel. Even though I have a 385 and 370 MTech 1 wheel.
Here she is washed up after getting pushed a half mile down the road at 11pm from the house I was in to the shop i shared with some friends. One of the wheels fell off since the axle shafts weren't in so that added some fun.
Engine bay painted in Diamond Swartz.
This is one of the road blocks that's really killed motivation. I painted the engine and was pulling the vanos so I could reseal the engine and the timing was way off. So I'm still debating what route to take on that. And this lovely groove on the dampner.
Now some of the fun stuff. e36 m3/ 318ti 5 lug swap with CATuned 5 lug swap coilovers. Which in the end I should have just bought everything new.
BBS RC041 which again killed motivation after finding cracked barrels and a cracked face.
New single pump fuel system with a DeatschWerks DW250 fuel pump, Earl's fuel filter and all new lines. All factory hardlines we're thoroughly cleaned and painted.
The fun restoration of the under side. Everything got stripped cleaned and new paint. Replaced if needed but like the ebrake lines show, this car was in amazing shape. A 2.93 LSD was sourced and rebuilt with a Thayer 3 clutch setup.
Now the diff rebuild didn't stop there and this is where the build starts to get a little wild and has really pushed what I've built before. I saw a build on a Z3M by Vorshlag and figured I could do that to an E30. So here is my conversion from a single ear diff cover to a dual ear e36 cover. The original crossmemebr was cut out and a new one fabricated. To beef up the trunk and body I made a reinforcement plate and some tube gussets. One problem with the e36 cover is it's shallower and since the diff was together already putting a new tone wheel in was out. So I kind of messed up on the crossmember but it worked perfect in the end. I cut a spacer for the whole cover so everything plays nice.
Not stopping with reinforcement there a 6 point cage is going in. I want to be safe on the track even though it'll be open lap days and some local time attack but on the street with all the crazies out there. So keeping a race feel inside some Sparco Grids were sourced from Poland, a cage from Roll Cage Components, carbon fiber door cards from Vink Motorsports in the Netherlands and not shown is some other carbon that is coming.
For now that is fairly caught up. So shoot away with questions. It'll be slow progress but I think it'll be pretty cool when it's done.
For the story since every build seems to have a story attached to it. I bought a cheap 85 325e that was a "drift car" for cheap to get into the e30 world. Put a little bit into it and had a decent car on a budget. Planned on doing a budget turbo, but cruising Craigslist saw an ad for a non running 84 325e with power everything, clean Cali/ Colorado car and bonus it came with an s52. All the kid wanted was a running e30, so I drove to Denver traded cars and sent this one right to the shop to do the engine swap. Well after 7 months and a $7000 price increase to do the swap over the intial quote I said screw it and brought the car home.
Ive owned this car 3 years and lost motivation a million times for a bunch of reason. Ive never driven it and until a month ago it never had a drivers seat actually bolted in. So hopefully this build thread will help keep me motivated and put this all in one place for my future reference. I'm calling this Formally Functional because there's some sweet performance going into it but also some cool rare parts I've been collecting.
So the plan as of now. S52 with a Zf, LSD, CATuned coilovers, IE sway bars, revshift bushings, 5 lug swap, BBS', OE MTech1 body kit, cage, carbon interior, custom rear end,and whatever else catches my eye and blows any sort of budget.
This first post is 3 years of what I've been doing to get caught up.
The original car and junkyard special since I sourced most parts from there. I put a new interior in since it was gutted. Some VW snowflakes and cleaned it up alittle
And the car I traded for.
The MTech 1 kit from the UK
Victor steering wheel from Poland that will get mounted on a Longacre quick release. With some cool pieces to keep a horn and turn signal cancel. Even though I have a 385 and 370 MTech 1 wheel.
Here she is washed up after getting pushed a half mile down the road at 11pm from the house I was in to the shop i shared with some friends. One of the wheels fell off since the axle shafts weren't in so that added some fun.
Engine bay painted in Diamond Swartz.
This is one of the road blocks that's really killed motivation. I painted the engine and was pulling the vanos so I could reseal the engine and the timing was way off. So I'm still debating what route to take on that. And this lovely groove on the dampner.
Now some of the fun stuff. e36 m3/ 318ti 5 lug swap with CATuned 5 lug swap coilovers. Which in the end I should have just bought everything new.
BBS RC041 which again killed motivation after finding cracked barrels and a cracked face.
New single pump fuel system with a DeatschWerks DW250 fuel pump, Earl's fuel filter and all new lines. All factory hardlines we're thoroughly cleaned and painted.
The fun restoration of the under side. Everything got stripped cleaned and new paint. Replaced if needed but like the ebrake lines show, this car was in amazing shape. A 2.93 LSD was sourced and rebuilt with a Thayer 3 clutch setup.
Now the diff rebuild didn't stop there and this is where the build starts to get a little wild and has really pushed what I've built before. I saw a build on a Z3M by Vorshlag and figured I could do that to an E30. So here is my conversion from a single ear diff cover to a dual ear e36 cover. The original crossmemebr was cut out and a new one fabricated. To beef up the trunk and body I made a reinforcement plate and some tube gussets. One problem with the e36 cover is it's shallower and since the diff was together already putting a new tone wheel in was out. So I kind of messed up on the crossmember but it worked perfect in the end. I cut a spacer for the whole cover so everything plays nice.
Not stopping with reinforcement there a 6 point cage is going in. I want to be safe on the track even though it'll be open lap days and some local time attack but on the street with all the crazies out there. So keeping a race feel inside some Sparco Grids were sourced from Poland, a cage from Roll Cage Components, carbon fiber door cards from Vink Motorsports in the Netherlands and not shown is some other carbon that is coming.
For now that is fairly caught up. So shoot away with questions. It'll be slow progress but I think it'll be pretty cool when it's done.
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