BMW e30 325i

[Lito]

Man this thing is turning out so sweet. You have some mad fabrication skills and such attention to detail! I think it sits perfect like that, has a real purposeful stance about it, you ever think about boosting it? Would be 'easy' now with the standalone.

[Ben J]

Thanks man. Yeah "purposeful" is what im going for. I've had my fun with insane stance before, this time im keeping it fun to drive

Bur yeah, wasn't going to say until it happened, but do have definite plans of boosting it in the near future

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[pozzi]

The car's coming along so nicely man! I picked up an e30 myself a few weeks ago (with a m30b35). I'm still slowly ticking off all the much needed maintenance before I start putting performance gear in haha, but I've got some budget coils on the way to replace the flogged out shocks.

[golfmeup]

Ben , love what your doing to this car!
I gotta see this car in the flesh one day.

[Ben J]

Thanks guys.

Sounds like it would be fun with that m30 in it! But yeah im basically doing a major maintenance overhaul too, upgrading anything where possible.


Im at most of the Brisbane euro meets and such, so if you ever come up to those im sure I'll see you there

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[pozzi]

Thanks guys.

Sounds like it would be fun with that m30 in it! But yeah im basically doing a major maintenance overhaul too, upgrading anything where possible.


Im at most of the Brisbane euro meets and such, so if you ever come up to those im sure I'll see you there

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Yeah I came down to one a while ago in my mates '68 Type 3 wagon - think i saw your old bagged mk3. Will definitely need to get the e30 down there next time round. Hopefully I'll have the time and money between uni to get her built up nicely by then!

[Ben J]

Haha yeah if there was a bagged mk3, it woukd have been mine Think I remember seeing a type 3 Wagon there, love seeing something different to the sea of mk5/6s.

Normally get a few e30s at the meets now, would fit right in

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[Ben J]

Have been pretty busy lately, with very little time to work on the car. Had a bit of spare time today though, so decided to finally make up some sort of intake (have been driving it with nothing past the throttle body for the last few months haha)

Cut up a 3 inch aluminium bend, drilled a hole and tig welded up a bung for the temp sensor (first time welding allu, was heaps easier than I was expecting). Drilled a big hole in the oem air box and expoied in a bit of pipe to delete the restrictive afm, painted everything up and joined it all up with some silicone reducers/couplers. Also cut a big chunk out of the corner that gets cold air from the lower section of the airbox, and put in a new filter. Not the prettiest, but will do the job. Couldn't be too bothered with smoothing out the exterior of the airbox for cosmetics, as I'll be redoing everything when I turbo it anyway





Doesn't have an ear piercing high pitch squeal at low rpm like it did when I was just running an open throttle body, and once the engine heats up it definitely feels better, not sucking in hot air haha. Having a filter is always a bonus too

[Lito]

Love it, especially the part where you mentioned re-doing it once you go turbo you going to the euro meet on Saturday?

[Ben J]

Cheers man, so keen to turbo it, but it's going to be a while until I have money to play with again (decided to leave my job and go back to uni). Meets's on the 8th isnt it? I certainly plan to be there If it's this weekend though I'll be out of town

[Ben J]

No real update as I've been to busy to do any more work to the car, but have worked on the tune some more and got a leaky tyre valve stem replaced so I don't have to pump it up every morning. Other than a cracked sump and a coolant hose which ripped, the car has been driving incredibly nicely, I've been finding reasons to take it out every day and have been hitting many mountains, it is finally pulling hard and cornering awesome. Also found out the seller lied about it having a Schrick 288 cam, so disregard that, have no idea what cam it actually has.

Still have many parts sitting in the shed waiting to go in, so have much more to do when I get some spare time

[eri_12]

Cool picture

[Ben J]

Over the last few weeks I've put some serious time into refurbishing the Azev's. Seem to have misplaced my memory card with the photos of the process, which is a shame, because a hell of a lot of work was done, and I don't think any of the photos I have up show how rough the wheels actually were (3/4 had extremely bad curb rash (previous owner), paint was absolutely rooted, etc etc).

Took them down to bare metal all over (many many hours of paint stripper, sanding, etc, wish I'd just had them blasted), fixed up rash/missing chunks in the lips of the wheels with filler, use a 2k primer specifically for bare aluminium, then a 2k primer filler, wetsanded, 2k colour, and then 2k clear. Turned out pretty nice Tyre's going back on tomorrow hopefully. Still have to buff up the centre caps and stick them back on, but other than that they are pretty much done.

[Ben J]

Tyre's back on, and wheels back on the car today. So good to finally drive it again.

[Ben J]

So a while back fire extinguishers were on sale and I bought a couple. This led me to pulling out the passenger seat (not sure if I've posted the interior I picked up in here yet, but its from an M3 Evo 2, front seats are heated with armrests ), stripping the seat down and fixing everything mechanical in it (it wouldn't slide, recline, leg support adjuster was broken, etc) and welded on a couple of tabs to bolt the extinguisher to. I also mounted an extinguisher in the boot. Hopefully I'll never need them, but if I do, they will be there.





The seat still needs a good cleaning, along with the rest of the interior parts. This will happen soon hopefully.

Anyway with 1 seat out I decided to clean the interior up a little and got a little carried away... soon enough this is what I was looking at


I stripped all of the sound deadening (heat gun makes easy work of this) and found a nice surprise in the floors. Going to be fun repairing this.


With the interior out I figure I may as well sort out the numerous electrical issues with the car (basically nothing worked, and that isn't exaggerating).
For a while now the only thing working in my cluster was the speedo. No fuel gauge, tacho, temp, odometer, etc. So I pulled it apart, cleaned up some connections and resoldered a bunch of suspicious looking solder joints and now it works. Also replaced the odometer gears, 3 of 4 of which were broken, with some ones from jaycar, and now the odometer seems to work too (not that I have driven it yet).



I had been having problems with the power windows and mirrors as well, so pulled out and remade the door harnesses, removing a bunch of old now unused central locking wires.


Spent a lot of time fixing a bunch of other electrical issues throughout the inside of the car, and pulled out a huge pile of no longer used wires for things like stock central locking, abs, break wear sensors, stereo, etc. Rewired a lot of things, modified the megasquirt ecu to get the tacho output working properly and fan control, made a heated seat wire loom and spliced it in, rewrapped all of the interior harnesses and so on. Not really any pics of this, its just wires, nothing that exciting, I'm sure you can picture it. Many many hours were spent though.
Wiring sucks.

While I was at sorting out the interior wiring, I got a little more carried away... and decided to cut the 150 or so wires going to the fusebox to relocate it into the car and finish the wire tuck



And thats all I've got for now. Have made more progress, but no photos, so will save that for another time. Slowly getting there. Slowest fire extinguisher install ever.


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