BMW e30 325i

[evorobin]

I picked up an 89' 325 on Wednesday and I'm loving it. None of the UK guys can believe it came with factory air-con or that it still works!

Crappy pic after I got it home.

[Ben J]

Re: BMW e30 325i

very nice! looks beautiful.

Mine has working factory ac too not that I've used it much unless its stupidly hot or to demist the windscreen

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[STI65]

Both gorgeous E30's. The black one sounds great too. I'm very jealous. I was close to buying one of these about 8-9 years ago but it was very rough so decided against it. Would love to get an E30 one day.

[Big_M]

Damn all this E30 325i /325is talk has me looking on bloody forsale webpages. Would love an E30 M3, but really i'd be happy as with a nice 325i sport.

[Ben J]

Re: BMW e30 325i

Yeah Id love an m3 one day, maybe when I'm older (less poor) I'll find a cheap run down one and fully rebuild it to complete oem showroom spec, that's been a dream of mine for a while. For now though, Ill play around with this

Moving from my small ****ty unit to a house with a garage and so much more space tomorrow, pretty keen to be able to get stuck into car work without having to go up to the parents place!

Not much of an update but got 4 new tyres and a wheel alignment today, feels so muxh better to drive, and having grip ia nice! (in 4th gear in the wet if I got on the accelerator hard the rear would start spinning, let alone 1-3, was quite terrifying to be honest)

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[Machine]

...(in 4th gear in the wet if I got on the accelerator hard the rear would start spinning, let alone 1-3, was quite terrifying to be honest)

Indeed

[Ben J]

Lots of work done on this lately, will do a write up later. For now though...
[YOUTUBE]7ZbLLVEiBrI[/YOUTUBE]

[ByronRichesMk1]

Mmmmmm yis!

[ryana89]

Ferocious beast.

[Zalemate]

So lumpy i love it! that other vid reminds me of my old VR man i miss that thing. owell **** happens haha

Love this car Ben its super nice and i mean Euro.. and RWD and 6 cyl.. so good

[Ben J]

Cheers guys. I've played with the idle a a bit more and made it a touch more tame, still very lumpy though, which I love too I Miss my vr6 too sometimes, would love to get one again as a daily so I can pull this thing apart and do some real work to it, but we'll see what happens. Looks like I might be dropping out of uni and moving into full time work, so thats a pretty big change, not that anyone on here would care, but will mean I will have a little more cash for car parts

So anyway, a couple weeks back the starter motor died, so I took the opportunity to do some work to the car while it was off the road. To make getting to the starter easier I decided to take off the intake manifold (otherwise you have to try and get at one of the bolts with a couple of universal joints and some luck) which it turns out is not as easy as one would expect. Had to drain both water and oil to get the thing off, as oil runs through it and the previous owner had ran a coolant hose through it... Anyway after getting it off, I cleaned it up really well and gave it some paint. Did the same with the rocker cover. Didn't take a before photo, but just imagine 27 year old dirty parts... I also sanded and buffed up the strut brace and painted the ends of it.



With that done and my new starter still not here, I decided to start a wire tuck. All the wires running down the side were extended and ran through the fender, and I removed the ABS wires altogether as I am deleting it.


I've mounted the wires much better than they are in this photo, so don't worry haha


Insert parts here


Also painted these up as they were looking very old and faded



I also cleaned up the old fuel injectors from my mk3 VR6 which had been professionally reconditioned shortly before I wrapped the old beast around a pole, and decided to swap them into the e30, as I believe one of the injectors which were in there (which were ford mustang injectors) was stuffed (it was reading ~9ohms while the rest were at ~16). The VR6 injectors are a little bigger, around 20lb/hr from what I can find, while the ones that were in there before were 19, and stock are like 15 or 16 I think. I tuned the AFM to compensate and it runs great!

I simply had to put some VW in it...



And yeah. I also swapped the starter obviously, put in a second hand unit from a later m20, which is much smaller and lighter, yet more powerful than the original one. Required a little modifying of the wiring but other than that was a straight bolt on. Hopefully it lasts a while, as changing them is not a fun job on these. Also adjusted the valve clearance and put on new gaskets for everything that was taken off. Car is running very nice now

[team_v]

Some nice upgrades.
Any particular reason why you are deleting the ABS?

Great news about the full time job!

[Ben J]

Some nice upgrades.
Any particular reason why you are deleting the ABS?

Great news about the full time job!

Thanks.

The ABS has never actually worked, so it's simpler to just get rid of it instead of fixing it. I trust my right foot more than an ABS system this old anyway, all it really did was give a false sense of security. I'll hold onto the parts though so if I ever feel the need I can put it back in

[Ben J]

Re: BMW e30 325i



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[BossXR]

Thanks.

The ABS has never actually worked, so it's simpler to just get rid of it instead of fixing it. I trust my right foot more than an ABS system this old anyway, all it really did was give a false sense of security. I'll hold onto the parts though so if I ever feel the need I can put it back in

Great build thread Ben. I've been looking at getting a good 325is for a few years now. A good upgrade for the brakes is the replacement of the std brake master cylinder for one off a 7 series E30 Brakes...pads and ATE Powerdisc advice - Page 3

How's the seats in this one : Sickest E30 M3 interior re-trim I've ever seen!

G