DirtE30 - 1990 BMW 325i

[Senor_Taylor]

Doesn't bother me at all; just trying to drop some knowledge in a snarky trollesque manner. My advice, from someone with a deeply ingrained cheap-car fetish, is don't buy cheap cars and fix them up. Been that done there. Enjoy them for what they are. You can autox it without new diff fluids and a working speedo and springs and you will enjoy it just the same.

Of course. I've been trying to talk myself out of replacing all of the fluids since I bought it.

Yeah fuck that noise. My utility bills were $400 this month and I have zero e30’s to show for it. 

That said, it needs a suspension, euro grilles, an iS front lip, and BBS.’  

Delphin grey?

Dave has a valence thing for me, everything else, I'm just going to grab as I find free/cheap parts. Jake L has a glove box and some seats I can snag for cheap, but I kind of want to stick with grey seats, which he has none of. 
Last night I pulled the seats and some carpet and gave it a good vacuum and scrub. I drove it to work this morning and with the windows up, it's a pleasant ride. I have an appointment to get it aligned tomorrow since it pulls hard left after the control arm replacement. I'm going to snag a cheap head unit and bulbs for the dash today so driving it is a little more... possible. 

The headlights seems to flicker at idle and even out at speed, so I'm assuming it needs an alt. If it's not crazy expensive, I'll throw one on some time soon for cheap insurance and to make sure i don't blow up any electronics. I also replaced 4 blown/melted fuses last night and I have no idea what they were for. 
I definitely have a vacuum leak somewhere to find since occasionally the idle will peg at 2000 or 3000, but for some reason, it's far less annoying than when the Miata did it. Also, the clutch is so much harder on my knee than the Miata. I have screwed up cartilage in both knees so a lot of repeated clutching really starts to bother me, so my drive from Arlington to Sterling at 6:30 yesterday was pretty awful. 

Once I get the car in the air and confirm no part of this car will try to kill me, I'm going to look into the refrigerator bowl or something to stretch its legs. The torque of this fresh straight six is amazing and it makes all the right sounds.

[RawrImAMonster]

Also, the clutch is so much harder on my knee than the Miata. I have screwed up cartilage in both knees so a lot of repeated clutching really starts to bother me, so my drive from Arlington to Sterling at 6:30 yesterday was pretty awful. 

Try out the manual in a VW sometime.  They're so light from the factory that I thought the clutch was broken the first time I drove a mk6 GTI.  The Golf R is the same way so I guess it's probably just a VW thing.

When are you bringing this to Harrisonburg?  I want to see it.  I don't mind spiders.

[Senor_Taylor]

Also, the clutch is so much harder on my knee than the Miata. I have screwed up cartilage in both knees so a lot of repeated clutching really starts to bother me, so my drive from Arlington to Sterling at 6:30 yesterday was pretty awful. 

Try out the manual in a VW sometime.  They're so light from the factory that I thought the clutch was broken the first time I drove a mk6 GTI.  The Golf R is the same way so I guess it's probably just a VW thing.

When are you bringing this to Harrisonburg?  I want to see it.  I don't mind spiders.

I told Jackson I'll probably drive it down October 14th. The spiders are all gone! I'm going to pull the dents out and give it a detail before then and Hopefully grab the interior bits from Jake next weekend to make it very presentable.

It's a real shame this exhaust is brand new. Like it still has the stickers on it. I'd feel bad cutting out a resonator or muffler, but I kind of want to.

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[ScottyB]

cool! put some praying mantises inside, they'll eat the spiders. then later add some snakes to eat the mantises. i'm not sure what to do after that, but hey, if you ever get pulled over for speeding just tell the officer you were trying to escape the snakes.

[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.

[JPolen01]

$150 for an alignment?! That's insane. I paid $120 at an independent shop for my "performance" alignment when my accord was lowered.

Also, work on a Saturday!

[Senor_Taylor]

$150 for an alignment?! That's insane. I paid $120 at an independent shop for my "performance" alignment when my accord was lowered.

Also, work on a Saturday!

Yeah, I've never payed more than $70 for an alignment so I'm pretty disappointed.

[Senor_Taylor]

Day 3!

Woke up early planning on getting a lot done, but again got called in to do some stuff for work for a few hours. Still a good day. We're moving next week so I tidied up the garage a little bit and then got set adjusting the sunroof. It's actually really simple and easy to do, but it seems my frame is a little tired, so it doesn't want to stay adjusted all the way up like it should. Not a huge deal, but when I washed the car, it leaked a little. I'm not sure if that's okay since it'll never rain that much (and this car will never be outside), but not ideal. Got the headliner back in and continued cleaning. I wash both of my cars and convinced Zach to wash his miata for the first time in over a year. Decided I wanted something simple and relaxing to do, so I decided to polish and wax the car to see what would happen.

What a surprise! The paint is pretty damn great considering it was a barn find SE30 parts car. Clear is gone on a small section of the roof and there are some deep chips in places, but otherwise with a quick polish, I got it looking pretty decent! Here's a few comparison photos of the door where there were a ton of scuffs, the trunk, and a shot in the sun. Not bad. Other than that, I continued my deoderizing schedule, found some bilsteins for cheap to use with Dave's is springs (should lower it a bit), started the hunt for wheels and tires that won't explode and kill me, and got a glove box and rear seat lined up as well. Still looking for front seats from an e30 so I don't have to do any mods to fit them as well as a speed sensor for the diff.

Narrowed down the dash light issue to probably the dimmer switch or the ashtray light. Will tackle that some time this week.

[Deceus]

$150 for an alignment?! That's insane. I paid $120 at an independent shop for my "performance" alignment when my accord was lowered.

Also, work on a Saturday!

Yeah, I've never payed more than $70 for an alignment so I'm pretty disappointed.

If it makes you feel better, mine basically cost close to $600. In their defense they did have to add a few grease fittings and and grease up a few balljoints. The brakes also sucked so I'm sure it was a bitch to move around. Still wasn't happy about it.

[.RJ]

something about polishing a turd....

[Jake]

Looks good! Take the grills out on either side of the kidneys and spray them with some black paint to freshen up the nose a bit more.

[Senor_Taylor]

Looks good! Take the grills out on either side of the kidneys and spray them with some black paint to freshen up the nose a bit more.

Good idea! I should have some black paint somewhere. 

Also, I did a thing this morning. At first, I thought it would be a dumb idea, but if I keep a set of the bottle caps, i can just take the wheels off and use them on something else or sell them separately. Plus it helps me save money on the mounting, balancing, and road hazard protection. Also, my car will look hella fresh. 

[.RJ]

stahp

[Senor_Taylor]

[JPolen01]

Those TRMOTORSPORT wheels will look good. I can't believe I am encouraging this car...

[ScottyB]

fix your bushings/alignment before you possibly bork a set of perfectly good new tires.

also

[Senor_Taylor]

Only thing really wonky I believe is one rear wheel has a toe of .63 degrees. Not sure how terribly that would tear up a tire. Spec goes up to .48. The rest is fine and the car drive straight now that I've rotated the tires. I'll certainly do some research and look into getting another control arm if I need to.

[ScottyB]

that's a lot for a single wheel - that's somewhere in the neighborhood of a half inch? what is the toe on the other rear tire?

camber doesn't kill tires, toe does...and on a drive wheel you might be seeing even worse because of the dynamics (under power the bushings allow for even more toe-in for stability, and yours are already worn soft)

just my .02, would hate to see you kill a set of new tires.

[Senor_Taylor]

You're right. I might be misremembering and it could be less than that. I'll check when I get home.

[Senor_Taylor]

Just checked. It's .63 degrees of toe on the rear left wheel. The thing is, toe goes in on the rear when you lower it, so I'll just throw Dave's springs on with the shocks I just ordered and hopefully that'll bring it within spec. Otherwise this tires will be toast rather quickly. All other specs look good. I'm running a little more camber than spec, but I'm still under 2 degrees all around.