BMW e30 325i

[Ben J]

Hi guys, thought I'd make a bit of a thread for my e30, even though it's not a VW this is still the forum I spend the most time on by far, and I know there's a few people interested in watching the progress, so instead of continuing to post about it in the mk3 section, figured I'd make a thread here

Early in January I sold the bagged mk3 and soon after flew down to Sydney to buy the new toy.


It's a 1986 e30 325i which was imported into a Australia from London in '99. For those who do not know these cars very well, the 325i was not brought out here (or anywhere except Europe I think) until '88, where the e30 also received a facelift and changed from the chrome bumpers to plastic bumpers, among a few other changes. Basically, this "series 1.5" is pretty rare in Australia, would be surprised if there was more than a couple in the country.

Has all sorts of luxuries my mk3 didn't have, like power windows and sunroof and aircon, and the previous owner had done a lot of work on it, including a respray of everything except the bonnet and boot, 288 shrick cams, 19lb/hr injectors, exhaust, lowering springs, Azev type A wheels, etc etc.

Too much text, so more photos:






Drove it back to Brisbane and it didn't miss a beat. Took it to the track for "happy laps" and had a blast. Got a roadworthy and registered it in QLD. Things were going pretty well until the ECU fried one day on the highway...


Got it fixed up and took it out to another "Happy laps" in the rain, this was a bad idea...


Got a fender off a mate, and straightened out the bumper with a hammer and continued to drive it like that for a few weeks

[Ben J]

Bought a new spray gun and a spoilerless bootlid and painted some things up over easter.


Took the fender back to bare metal (obviously not completed photo)


Sprayed with etch primer, then primer surfacer, wet sanded the primer with a block, sprayed a few coats of colour, then wet sanded the colour:


About 6 coats of clear, with the last 2 coats being thinned out significantly more to flatten it out



I'm very happy with the finish, It is acrylic which is never super glossy straight off the gun unlike 2k, but it does look good. Going to leave it a few weeks, maybe a month, before wet sanding it and buffing it up. Fairly confident that it should come up like glass and match the rest of the car when its sanded back and buffed. Guess we'll see in a couple weeks though. If it does come out good I might try the bumper and the bonnet myself as well.

And yeah. I've fixed up a lot of small things as well that I haven't noted, but the pretty much brings us up to now. Have a lot of plans for this car, so stay tuned

[gldgti]

If your clear coat is even reasonably flat, just hit it with a machine polisher I reckon - thats worked well for me in the past (random orbital with farecla cutting compound). Sometimes I get scared around sharp curves using the wetsanding because its so easy to go right through

Car looks aswesome otherwise, very tasteful. One of my mates had an '88 320i 4-door that he ended up dropping the 2.5L into - with a set of extractors it sounded awesome.

[Ben J]

Thanks for the tip. And yeah these do sounds pretty good, mine doesn't have extractors and I'm not sure what exhaust is on it, but it sounds awesome. Idle sounds pretty aggressive with the cams too

I'll definintely try just hitting it with the buffer before sanding, it is pretty flat, a lot better than my previous attempts at spraying on the old car when I was using cheap gear and had no idea what I was doing. The paint job the previous owner had done is amazing though, there is no orange peel whatsoever, and when it's clean the gloss is amazing, photos don't do it justice. The clear coat alone that they used was $1000 for 5L apparently which wouldn't surprise me. So to get these panels to look as nice, I think it will need a bit of wet sanding to get it perfect. I sprayed enough coats to leave myself some room for sanding, and I've wetsanded clear before (although I will admit, I did go through in a small spot when I got careless) so think I should be fine hopefully.

[Dubba]

epic bmw is epic. One day I will hopefully own one of these!

[Martin]

I'm also looking for a E30 325i...

[Ben J]

Re: BMW e30 325i

Yeah its pretty hard to find a clean one, I was searching for months, was lucky this popped up the same time my car sold... I paid top dollar for it, but like to think it was worth it

Spent today building a pretty cool/complicated immobilizer with a twist, obviously wont go into details as that would defeat the purpose, but it will keep the "honest" theifs (those without tow trucks) from stealing it...

Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk 2

[VWindahouse]

Such a nice example! Great work mate.

[Ben J]

Re: BMW e30 325i

Thanks! Have a lot of plans for this car, standalone is in the very near future, and a 2.8 (possibly 3.0 if I can find pistons) stroker is also likely to happen in the next year (have most of the parts lined up already, just need the time to take the car off the road and do it)

Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk 2

[BrashDaniels]

Thanks! Have a lot of plans for this car, standalone is in the very near future, and a 2.8 (possibly 3.0 if I can find pistons) stroker is also likely to happen in the next year (have most of the parts lined up already, just need the time to take the car off the road and do it)

Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk 2

You know the new RaceRoom beta on Steam has a free E30 you can race round Mount Panorama......

Sent from my ASUS Transformer Pad TF300T using Tapatalk HD

[Ben J]

Re: BMW e30 325i

Sounds fun actually, might have to check it out, if my computer will even run it

Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk 2

[Ben J]

Picked up some headlights on Saturday as one of the surronds for mine was broken in the crash, making it impossible to aim properly. Decided to smoke them before changing them into the car. As the low beams are projectors they're very easy to do, the high beams take a bit more work though...



Bosch lights in a bosch oven...




Here you can kind of see how the high beams are done, you basically make some pieces that make a cross out of sheet metal, paint them black, and glue them in. Doesn't affect light out put, but basically creates a cool smoked optical illusion. I also polished up the lenses and then painted the bottom and sides of them, and used black silicone to increase the smoked affect.


Sealing them back up


Finished product


Excuse the extremely dirty car



Very happy with how the lights turned out, not 100% set on the look though, I feel theres too much black (if there is such a thing). I painted the headlight trim rings black as well but I'm going to strip the old set and polish them up to a mirror finish, think that should look perfect with the rest of the chrome trim on the car.

[guile]

looking good, if you could afford it euro size plates would do wonders for the front end and fill that recess...

[Ben J]

Re: BMW e30 325i

Thanks! Euro size plates would definitely look a lot better, I'll add them to the ever growing list of parts on the wish list for after I fix everything else up, which on my incredibly limited student income is already going to take years of saving for haha

Sent from my GT-I9305T using Tapatalk 2

[guile]

all in good time. always good to have a list of things you want, keeps you interested. if you are anything like me it will never really be finished anyway...