DirtE30 - 1990 BMW 325i

[Senor_Taylor]

Got home last night after dropping some cash at Advance and Best Buy. Grabbed an alternator (probably don't need it now), vacuum hose, some plumbing, fluids, wiper blades, and some other odds and ends. Got home and attempted to get the license plate bulbs to work. I managed to break the housing for those, only to find the bulbs weren't blown so I gave up and moved onto the dash lights. Spent too long getting the cluster out without removing the steering wheel, only to find those bulbs weren't blown either. No matter, I could just move on to wiring the head unit! Well it turns out that E30s are not that simple to wire radios up to, especially after the previous owner has hacked up the harness. I'm not sure how, but at 1:30 AM I wrapped up my project and now my POS E30 has a really nice head unit. The speakers in the car are actually fantastic, so I'm assuming they've been replaced. Adding this makes the car 100% more enjoyable. Did I mention I got a great deal on an open box head unit with Blue tooth? Yeah, I did.

Woke up early this morning and dropped it off to get aligned and they basically charged me $150 to say "ur shit's fucced". They said they couldn't adjust anything but toe and got it close, but the rear is still really off. Probably needs some bushings or something back there. Also, the car was pulling to the left, then they rotated the tires and it now pulled to the right. I rotated those tires to the rear and now it drives straight so I won't worry about it. The tires I have are all 7-8 years old, so I need to get some new ones. I'm really looking for some wheels with tires on them already so I can get two birds with one stone, so let me know if anyone has a lead on some!





Attempted to go to the DMV with Joey this morning and gave up since the line was at least 2 hours just to get IN the building. Insane stuff. So we hung out and I let him drive this pile. I hope he was pleasantly surprised but how solid it actually is. After getting home, I decided to tackle so more stuff. Checked for vacuum leaks, cleaned some sensors, and discovered the engine ground that allows the starter to work was covered in what I can assume is Power Steering fluid and had lost all of its shielding, so I made a new one and hooked it up. Fixed that and somehow managed to make it idle worse than it did before, and at one point, it wouldn't start for a few minutes. I'm guessing the engine needs to relearn how to run properly with whatever vacuum leaks I can't find. After that, Zach was about to install a LED strip above the license plate to circumvent the lights that didn't work while I was rotating the tires and I realized that the Dash lights, License Plate lights, and right side running lights are all on the same circuit. I replaced a lot of fuses the other day so I was certain I had already replaced that fuse, but when I checked, it was blown. I spent the next few hours trying to find out where the short is, to no avail, but I have some ideas I'll tackle soon. I began to deodorize the car with some of the good stuff, and I ran to the store to get some more fuses to replace the 10 or so I blew during testing, then I got called in for some urgent stuff at work, so that's all for today. Full day tomorrow!

I'm fully aware of all of the impending work, and I'm being very careful not to throw money at losing battles right now. Here's Joey's car, DirtE30 and the Chariot of Victory all in one photo. Exciting.