DirtE30 - 1990 BMW 325i

[Senor_Taylor]

Rear IS springs are on now, so I should be a little lower and stiffer. Found that my hard line was pinched shut, so either it was damaged before I put that trailing arm on, or I pinched it with the jack. Luckily the one on the old arm was in good condition so I swapped that over.

Deren has my strut housings and is going to swap over my is springs from Dave and put new top hats on. The lock collar was pretty corroded and I had no way to get it off. Good way to get myself introduced. Once I get those back and I get them on the car, I should be ~1/2" lower and a little stiffer with the "new" bilsteins. It was kind of embarrassing dropping off a box of rusty parts for him to mess with, but what can you do?

Once the car is back on the ground, I'll drop it off with him for a good inspection and some advice on what should be done before a season of DE. Right now, I'm planning on doing adjustment tabs welded onto the subframe so I can control camber and toe in the rear, and OEM rubber bushings for the trailing arms, Poly for the diff and subframe. I figure I'll get Deren to do all of that at the same time since the subframe needs to be dropped to weld the tabs. Does that sounds reasonable or am I missing some awful reason not to do it? E30s apparently bend trailing arms pretty easily, so it'll be nice to be able to fix the alignment when I need to.

I've read that E30s can rip the sway bar brackets out of the car under track conditions. Has anyone heard this? If this isn't the case, would it be useful to swap poly sway bar links, or is that not needed?

I've also heard people say to remove the clutch fan since the electric fan on the front of the radiator does fine. Is this what Spec E30 people do? Should I go aluminium radiator before I even start DEing?

What are some things I NEED to do. Not "nice to haves" but things that would be a terrible idea not to do before DE. I can build the car as I go for the "nice to haves".

I'm looking for used seats and some brackets before March, so let me know if anyone has a lead on some. I'll keep my stock belts until I can do harnesses properly, but the car needs to be street able for a few more months at least.