Project: 2002 325i Drift Car

[noah_salvato]

I picked this car up early May of this year after getting back from school and driving the e46 that I'd sold to a friend before coming down to school. To say the least, I missed the hell out of the car but didn't have the money to meet his asking price. So I found the next best thing: a 2002 325i with a rebuilt title from a rear end collision 4 years ago. After some digging, I found out the car was totaled out in New York from a "low speed parking lot collision". The trunk doesn't line up perfect, there's some Bondo that was obviously done in a hurry, and the quarters don't exactly follow the original body lines, but who cares. 

The previous owner had listed the car on Facebook as a "BMW 1 series", with the details filled out as "4 cylinder" "automatic transmission", and the only description was "Service light for misfire and vacuum leak". He was asking $2500 for the car which was way more than I was willing to spend, but at 10:30PM just 5 minutes from my friends garage we figured we'd go take a look. It started right up... On 5 cylinders. Previous owner had "installed" what looks like an m50 coilpack he'd had laying around which wasn't delivering any spark. He let us know that the front right caliper was seizing at random times, test driving it for a minute it became obvious that the diff bushing was toast, and we found countless other things that I'd replace either way that could help drive the price down. 

I came back the next day with a scanner to verify everything and found the car was running pretty lean, 7% LTFT (I still need to swap the maf to OEM and replace a rear o2 sensor), found a little rust around the rear drain holes, noticed the kidney grilles beat up, windshield cowel rotted, and the rear right window motor broken, all things that were cheap enough to fix, or irrelevant enough to ignore for a while (like the rear window). The sunroof also didn't like to close once you opened it (I'll probably try to fix this eventually). In the end, I got the car for $800 because he was tired of it sitting in his driveway.  

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The fun started pretty much immediately after I got the car home when I pulled the spark plugs and found the tubes filled with oil. Valve cover gasket, plugs, coil packs and my spark issues and misfire were gone.




Next came brakes; pads, rotors, and calipers (turns out 3 of the 4 needed rebuilt). 

Then the fun part, the rear subframe project. The whole reinforcement project was supposed to take me memorial day weekend to get done, it ended up taking about 2 weeks because the number of bolts that stripped, got lost, or broke during the process of removing them. While my friends had a good time during the holiday weekend, I cut my knuckles open time and time again on German metal. When the subframe finally lowered out from under the car, there was luckily only one small crack in the body, and one of the body studs had bent either from the crash earlier in the cars life, or from getting caught as I lowered the subframe out. 

Getting the parking brake cables out of the body tunnels on the car was by far the hardest part of the job, as the passenger side cable had frayed apart a bit and gotten stuck in the tunnel. After burning out the old diff and subframe bushings, I installed flo-flex polyurethane bushings while a buddy of mine welded up the crack in the body, welded in reinforcement plates for the subframe, and welded up the factory 3.15 differential. I reinstalled everything with maxspeedingrods adjustable camber arms knowing that I still have all the smaller bushings to do (LCA, UCA, sway bar links, and RTAB)





Aside from breaking heat shield bolts, bending a subframe stud, losing $25 in BMW-specific bolts, and leaving a scar on my knuckle, the subframe wasn't that bad.

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More recently, I installed V-Maxx coilovers on the front and a set of eibach (I believe) lowering springs on the rear which I got in exchange for driving a friend to Baltimore to buy a water pump (for his e46). The 17's that came on the car didn't clear the coils in the front so, for the time being, I am stuck running 2 of the ugly 16's (drift spares) I picked up a couple weeks ago. 



I've still got a decent list of stuff to do, but I'm making progress. I'll post a full list of done/need to do when I finish working on my "money in the furnace" spreadsheet and have all the parts I've bought listed out. Next changes are going to be front control arms, tie rods, RTABS and then an alignment. 

I am looking to buy some half-decent 17's or 18's that I can drive the car on, preferably Millie Miglia MM-II's or another "budget friendly" wheel for the time being. I've come to realize that 5x120 is basically BMW OEM wheels, a few good brands that I can't afford, a few older brands like Millie that aren't made anymore that are budget friendly, a bunch of cheap garbage, and old Corvette wheels. 

In hopes of saving a little money, I am also searching for a sest and steering wheel + hub adapter (worst case I wait a little and buy new).