Restoring a 30 year old BMW - 7 Years in the Making

in #cars7 years ago (edited)

Welcome Steemians, E30 fans, followers of this epic restoration!

Since I joined and blogged about the car it seemingly refuses to start unless I attach this to the front bumper...

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:)

So this is my 1987 BMW E30:

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This is where I started with this particular car in May of 2015:

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This is my personal blog about the full on #restoration of a 1980s #BMW which actually turned out to be two restorations and one engine rebuild.

Some people say you don't buy an #E30 you build one. Man I hear that! I'm here to share my story with you and give some insights into what my mechanic and I went through to get this car on the road (again). I'll go through every detail and leave nothing out.

Today I'll go into a recap of the disassembly of the donor and the new base, removing rust and repainting the engine bay and starting reassembly.

So after stripping the old body due to catastrophic corrosion...

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Yeah that was a rear frame spring mount. Instant death sentence basically.

I guess you spend most time during restorations with stripping and reassembling cars. Lesson learned and I can't emphasize this enough is that you should take great care in labeling, sorting and storing old parts. You're gonna need some of them, will want to get rid of others later on, will need to restore/fix some and nothing will be more frustrating or time intensive as searching for parts you need and know you have but are unable to find. I learned that the hard way. In the end I put more than 100 parts, screws, etc. on a big table took a picture and posted it on a forum to have the old cracks tell me what's what - true story!

So I had my interior set aside...

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...and stripped the rest to prep it for the crusher. One last look at that genuine tire pressure sticker confirming it is an authentic 325i:

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And off it goes...

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Time then to disassemble another E30 only this time the body condition warrants spending more time on it :)

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As you can see the engine is out as I'll be putting in my newly rebuild stroker engine later. Good thing is this car had an engine failure years ago so it was largely disposed of. I bought it in 2014, it had been deregistered since 2008. The fatally damaged engine block:

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So lot's to chew on for the metals scrapper: engine block, rusty exhaust from header to muffler, transmission and some more 'spare parts':

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Enough room then for the new engine but first some work to do in the engine bay in terms of cleaning and painting.

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Lots to do on the inside as well. Long story short EVERYTHING goes including the carpet and that rather tasteful if completely out of place Personal Nardi steering wheel which was quite popular in 70s and 80s Porsches, Ferraris and Audis.

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So up it goes let's check the substance of this bugger...

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Hmmm...there's nothing there really. Not even a fluke of rust only some botanic signs of life due to the long early retirement. These are just the top spots to check on E30s along the rocker panels, rear apron, jack attach points etc. and they all looked great.

First order of business before putting anything back into that engine bay was the removal of any dirt or surface corrosion and seal and paint it good. We did that in January of 2016 including manually removing all rusty paint, sealing and priming it and in the end putting some fresh paint on. The main part to watch here is the horizontal plane next to the firewall which often gets hit by corrosion. I even took the trouble of photgraphing the bottom side :)...

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There we go then. We let it dry a bit and let RL issues take over for a while until continuing on March. Issue on that day in March was that it was unusually hot in the shop somewhere around 30deg C which meant the paint didn't stick at all. It works for now but will need to be taken care of by a professional at some point to give it a perfect finish.

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So after that paint had dried and some more parts had been sourced the often completely rotten heat and sound insulation in the transmission tunnel and along the firewall was replaced and fitted.

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The engine then, it was broken in proper more than a year before, had clocked around 4.000km and was fresh as ever.

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You might notice the headers are different ones. That is due to the fact that my original so called 'shorty headers' by IE in California didn't have equal pipe lengths thereby completely obliterating any potential performance gains. It did sound nicely but as I've always put a priority on mechanical perfection and sensible changes to the motor and car in terms of performance I went out and found a nice little shop who sell customized headers for BMW M20 engines with equal pipe lengths, stainless steel and a nice fit and finish. It fit nicely even though one exhaust header sealing had to be replaced because the old headers partially destroyed one sealing due to a tiny deviation in fit along the cylinder head.

Long story short we put it in the same day:

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Whadda ya say shall we try to start it and check out the sound with open headers!? Yeah I thought so...put some good headphones on if you have some handy:

Ok so that's working. No worries as always in this epic story it will fail to start at some point but that won't be the engine's fault. Check parts 2 and 3 if you'd like to know how this motor came together.

Anyway unfortunately one can't leave the exhaust open like that in civilized driving conditions so I needed a cat. Preferably one that can facilitate good outflow, doesn't have too much resistance and most importantly fits inbetween the headers' X-pipe and the muffler which I chose to leave stock M20B25 - in this case it's a BOSAL one. I'll later find out that the near racing metal cat I aquired in combination with the headers are so loud and distinctive that a bassy and deep growling muffler is actually better suited to this than the stock one but more on that later.

The first choice however fell on a standard M20B25 BMW catalytic converter. Well it was worth a shot shall we say as it didn't fit AT ALL.

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Looks alright you might say. Well, yeah only that the front was a complete misfit with the x-pipe:

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See here:

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No welding in the world is going to make that work. Thing why I opted for the stock cat in the first place was that it would facilitate a near stock exhaust system combined with headers. At this point I realized that won't happen. There is no way to alter the header/x-pipe location at all and so there had to be a compact cat solution that fits under the car and has roughly equal pipe diameters from front to back.

I went out to hunt for a good cat and bought some stainless steel exhaust pipes with a diameter of around 55mm.

For now this was my exhaust setup :)

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I was going to go into detail on the exhaust and start on the interior but I'm out of time for now.

I'll leave you with the overview of this (always evolving as I always find stuff I had forgotten had happened in the beginning) overview of this epic project. We are now in March 2016. See you next time!

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The inside of that engine case looks clean enough to eat off of. Great work, beautiful car. Bummer on the pipe mismatch, it looks like it might be off by over a foot!

I just got my first BMW today and this is probably a better time and place than any to post-brag about it, I guess!

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2004, 35k, $8000. Feels like I stole it.

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Someone kept this thing in a time capsule after the first of two owners drove it 27000 miles on a three-year lease.

Wow... Drools...

Oh man I always loved that lovely little first gen Z4. If you haven't noticed the extended hood/shoulder line and the rocker panel line form a 'Z' in conjunction with the cross through the BMW roundel. One of Chris Bangle's coolest designs I think. You might want to throw some nice 18" BMW rims on there, it will go a long way to make it look even better.

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It really does look like it just rolled off the factory floor and that is an '04. Incredible. That 2.5 engine has a beautiful intake howling love that engine sound. Take good care of it and enjoy it! Congrats!

In about 50.000 miles you'll start to notice an increased oil consumption which is really the only downside to this long-stroke engine design. It's usually down to the double VANOS sealing rings slowly giving up. If you get there and you remember this post just google 'BEISAN systems' ;)

Ah, thanks for the info! Given how little I drive, I'll have to check back with you in about 50 years =)

Cool, feel free to do that. By the way I just found a pic of your car in 3.0L and 19" M3 rims parked in Istanbul in 2008:

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How'd it get all the way over here, then? Those liars told me both owners lived in my state! =)

My friend has a BMW... it always need to go to the shop. And he bought new.
not a fan.

The relevance being? Did he buy it new in the late 80s? If so please let me know for what it had to go to the shop :)

If it's some newer model I can relate they're a disaster, all the German Premiums are. That said, I'd never recommend to anyone to buy a car new, let alone a German premium car - your friend must be out of his mind or simply got played by the ads :). Losing 30% the moment he rolled off the lot must also have been a pain which is the number 1 reason I'd always go for 2nd or 3rd hand otherwise you're the 'beta tester' of the product you acquired or as it's BMW most likely leased.

You got my upvote don't get me wrong. Anyone who can spread the word about warning potential victims of this is a friend here but this simply has nothing to do with the cars from 30 years ago. They built the spiritual foundation that is today being eroded! When I say they of course I mean stuff like the E30 and E34 etc. even in the late 80s something like the $100.000+ 750i on occasion swallowed that same amount in the shop at BMW...when they were still selling it!!! The ultra reliable, yet luxurious and techy German super cars are simply a myth.

wow you did a lot of work. how difficult was it to take out the engine. did you have an engine hoist?

Yeah engine hoist is a must of course. On the E30 and all BMW's from that era it's generally quite convenient as they have rather huge and square engine bays. We usually assembled the clutch and transmission and cable tree to the engine and then lifted it into the transmission tunnel at an angle and then down and back onto the attachment points on the front axle mount.

All in all with an M20 engine it's not that big of a deal. As I've stated in a previous part of this blog by the end of the first car we were down to 4 hrs engine out and back in :).

If you have anything larger than an M20 such as an S38 (3.6L M5 straight six engine) it is more sensible to put the front axle onto some solid base and put the engine with the transmission on that, fix it to the mounts and then lower the entire car down onto the front axle mount. That way you do it like they did at the factory and that's a pretty elegant way of installation but with the M20 you can usually just assemble it, lower it down and watch for the shift stick assembly which sometimes will be in the way of the transmission (happened to us and took us about 1 hour to figure out:).

Oh and just for fun here are the steps as I remember them:

  • drain coolant from the engine
  • remove all coolant hoses connected to the cooler and remove that
  • remove visco drive fan
  • remove ECU relay unit and ignition cable and put them on top of the engine
  • disconnect and remove airbox as well as ground strip
  • disconnect fuel hose from in and outlet of injection system
  • disconnect main electrical (DME) switch from engine
  • disconnect gear lever switch and gear lever assembly from transmission
  • disconnect lamdba node switch
  • disconnect throttle wire

Now you're pretty much good to go to lift the car, disconnect driveshaft from transmission and disconnect engine mounts from front axle and lift it out...

Yeah I'm kinda used to this operation :)

Upvoted as usual :)
I do a series called becoming one with nature and just released the 4th one. It is going okay at the moment but if anyone could Resteem and Upvote that would mean the world as i think the pictures are pretty good :p

Thanks
Otto

Hey buddy @peterschroeter... Thanks for sharing your whole experience of this build.🚗🏎️ If these pictures are to be believed, I must have to give you all the credit to put in you heart and sole into the project. After all a master piece does demand its creators blood and sweat.
As they say, you are what you drive. And now with the pictures, I know what a sweet ride this one is, and that only is a reflection of your personality... Peace ✌️

Wow what a nice and insightful comment man! This actually makes me feel even better about the whole thing cuz you reminded me of something that sometimes you forget when you're in this painful process of shedding the blood sweat tears and dollars to make it all happen.

Appreciate the comment and glad you like it!

Hey buddy @peterschroeter... You deserve all the praises for what you have achieved. I know how difficult it can be to pour in a lot of time and efforts, not to mention the $$ bills, for a dream project, which is really close to your heart. And you have achieved it. Way to go man! Peace ✌️

Wow, this is just awesome!

For an older car, it really looks great now :) Also, 7 years is a great amount of time for a project like that! Well done that you were able to be so patient :)

hello! I have a bmw e90 ( 320d). There were problems with the distribution chain. I do not know why the new models are not as reliable as they are in the past. Probably the "bear" is the best chioce.

It's called planned obsolescence at least that's what it started with in the mid 90s. Nowadays it's just lazy development and the downside of disributed suppliers and just in time delivery creating ever greater problems in terms of make or buy and the consequent quality issues that entails. I'll tell you this, the rocker arms for this car I bought 3 times and before I found the right quality part in a small california parts dealer's online shop I actually went to BMW and asked them. Their part was gonna be more than 3 times what I paid for the 'good part' I ended up buying so I asked them what assurances I have that the part they deliver actually is worth the money. You know what they said? 'We can only assure you that the part is within our manufacturing standards requirements we give to suppliers. We cannot tell you what manufacturer it's going to be and generally nothing about the quality except that it meets the standard.'

I later found someone who had bought the BMW rocker arms, they turned out to be FEBI parts with milled off logos. No joke. The part apparently fits BMW's 'standard' of the day. I dismissed that part right out of the box, it was a joke in terms of finish. If you had delivered that kind of part into the BMW engine assembly line 30 years ago they'd have kicked your ass off the factory grounds faster than you could count up your POS rocker arms.

Today it's all a question of liability. The finance and legal guys and girls get together and determine exactly what threshold is good enough so they can make the product function for a while and just bad enough to satisfy cost and supplier reqs. In the end some poor fucker who has no idea what so ever about manufacturing or acceptable standards of fit and finish decides the 'tolerances' for third party parts and spreads the contracts out over just enough suppliers so that no one ever has any chance of holding anyone liable least of which the big B.

Different world here guys. No nostalgia and no dreaming just a raw fact and it can be explained rather easily.

That is some beauty. I wonder why they do not make such beautiful cars these days.

I wonder if people are gonna say that about today's cars in 30 years time. Can't see it really but then again the guys back in the 80s probably didn't see that coming either.

The beauty of this design language is its pure minimalist style. Basically the car only has 2 defining lines that are more or less straight and wrap around it. It's a very nice job in terms of design and proportions no doubt!

One of my dream cars is a restored BMW 2002 converted to EV.

Let me know when you got that working :). Personally I think it'd be hilarious if I saw an '02 and it went by silently with slight tire roar and electric hum!

Hell yeah, those things [2002s] were tight cars in their day. Cool looking, incredible visibility, good handling, and that 4 cyl perfectly matched to manual transmission. Only early 1970s 4 cyl car in my experience that could counquer the Waldo Grade (Mill Valley to Golden Gate Bridge) without slowing down. Porsche 914 doesn't count, well because... Porsche.

They probably weighed just about the same at around 2000lbs right!?

It was absolutely the forefather of all these later hits such as the E21, E30 and the quick and nimble yet flashy and comfortable power saloon that would become such a runner in the late 80s. For me though the design language only began to get the proportions right with the E21. The '02 still has lots of ponton bodystyle going on that makes it look somewhat awkward imho.

You did an amazing job.