Slowly but Surely- 325iX, 325iS, and E30M3 resurrection

[DocWalt]

Originally Posted by blue91lx

Yep, it's the bees knees! I think it wears off eventually, and I'll want a nicer car, but I'll take it while it lasts.

---------

I've been chasing a roundie Tii for a couple years and the guy recently went public with the car and posted it all over the internet, which sucked, and I assumed it would result in me not getting the car. Turns out all of you internet folk were bad enough that he ended up accepting my offer, and I now own a early vin Tii and a roundie parts car! Pretty pumped.

It's not secret in this thread that I have bought lot of cars over the years, which tends to dull the experience a bit..... but when I first set eyes on this Tii I felt that special car tingle that I haven't felt in a long time.

I'll keep all 2 of you posted on the barn extraction and clean up.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

oh man, **** yeah! What a sweet find, congrats.

[blue91lx]

Originally Posted by DocWalt

oh man, **** yeah! What a sweet find, congrats.

Thank you!!! stoked to get started on these things.

-------------

Another road trip down, and hoopty ate up the miles.

I am taking each trip as an opportunity to refine things a bit further.

We spent a week in Appalachia, and against everyones better judgment, I made sure the E30 was the vessel of choice.

A few days beforehand I spent some time chasing a leak on my freshie Sanden R134 AC system, in hopes to finally have cool air running through the vents. Turns out, the only part I didn't replace was leaking.... the evaporator! Thankfully I have a stack on the shelf and got a good used one swapped in in no time. She took about 3lbs of refrigerant and blows so cold I had to turn it down on the test drive to see if the lady approved of the air quality before driving 8hrs east.

I sadly had to do this trip on my 200tw Falkens, as I didn't have time to get tires for my 15" Koseis. With the rear suspension loaded with luggage I was getting some serious rubbing, which was far from ideal, but all was well.

I also spliced in a nice fan switch pigtail in hopes to regain high speed fan function in addition to low speed snowflake aux fan function. Would love it if snowflake = high speed aux fan, so am going to look into making that happen. Installed a new genuine cig lighter socket for all the charges, and she was good to go.

I swapped a premium sound amp in hopes to remedy a terrible stereo interference, but that didn't solve the problem, so I am going to remove the common ground setup, as I assume the system lost a ground somewhere.

I'm still shocked at how good this car runs.

Next round of hooptie improvements needed for it to be the ultimate road tripper:
-rear rubbing quite a bit loaded down. partially offset/tire size on my e38 wheels, but potentially need to swap in stiffer rear coilover springs
-front small bump compliance is mediocre at best. currently springs are 550f/650r. Considering going to a stock spring setup in hopes to smooth out bump compliance and raise the rear more than the GC adjusters are capable of. Sucks, because the car looks great at the current height, but road tripping at this height is far from ideal. Suggestions welcome. Already swapped to the GC street plates up front, which helped a decent bit, but it's not as good as I'd like it to be.
-15" wheels and tires with more sidewall to help the above
-radio fix/aftermarket amp install? decided against lukebox for trunk space, but still feel an aftermarket amp would help the fresh premium sound speakers I installed quite a bit over the stock amp.
-long term, the s3.46 is perfect for the highway but the car doesn't feel as quick as it should with the longer gears. I think a 3.64 would be perfect
-swap wiper motor, it finally gave out on this trip

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[DocWalt]

I love the road trip updates and all of the little changes that improve the car for that usage.

I forget, what are the front shocks? That front spring rate is definitely high for a street car, but shocks valved very "smoothly" on the compression side and rebound damping optimized for the springs help a lot.

[blue91lx]

Originally Posted by DocWalt

I love the road trip updates and all of the little changes that improve the car for that usage.

I forget, what are the front shocks? That front spring rate is definitely high for a street car, but shocks valved very "smoothly" on the compression side and rebound damping optimized for the springs help a lot.

Thanks! It has been a blast to actually use a car for once, and refine as needed. So much different than the build, barely drive, then sell method I have done for so long.

They are Koni Yellow Single Adjustables. I had a feeling I may have over sprung the fronts. The front to rear E30 spring rate delta is typically 200lbs, so the kits typically come with 450f/650r.

I've noticed on the longer Eibach springs (6"x2.25" in this case) that they experience fatigue/coil bind. Makes me think that despite this style of spring commonly being used for the rear E30 trailing arm coilover setups, it is not the ideal spring for the job. I noticed when I bought my KW's for the M3 that they used a stock style rear spring with a wider coil winding.

[blue91lx]

Oh baby the 15s were the right move!!! So glad I put tires on these K1s and got them on the car before I messed with spring rates. All of the wheel shake is gone, and the bump compliance is night and day.

I snagged some 205/55r15 Hankook Ventus Prime2's from Priority Tire on the cheap. They have a limited stock of this tire in the stock E30 15" tire size.

Coupon code LEGITPT723 saves 5% and is good until the end of the month. After tax it was only $86/tire.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[DocWalt]

Tire sidewall is such a huge difference, haha. Even when I just run "too much" pressure in my tires the ride goes to crap.

[blue91lx]

Got the tii all cleaned up and got the og 13x5 steelies on. Car came out great for what it is.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[blue91lx]

I also saved an '88 hooptie vert. Idk why I torture myself with these projects, but alas.

Did 2wks worth of work to get it back on the road and have been enjoying the cabriolet cruiser life.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr




I also built another stroker m20 for my personal E30. It is now at the fab shop getting a custom Tri-Y scavenged header built.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[blue91lx]

Teaser of new not hoopty. Super dry chassis from TX with fresh paint and a hurt motor begging to be saved

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[DocWalt]

What's the plan for this one?

[blue91lx]

Originally Posted by DocWalt

What's the plan for this one?

The plan was to treat myself to a nice clean simple driver that I could keep stock and offset with my hoopty which is getting increasingly modified.

However, when the white car showed up it was nothing at all like it was described, so I legitimately have to do a full mechanical restoration on it, which has absolutely gutted me, as I've diligently fought to rid myself of big projects.

I tried to reach back out to the seller, and he didn't care. Motor that was supposed to be good wasn't, suspension that was supposed to be fresh is all shot, interior hacked, etc etc. Literally needs an entire mechanical resto. It gets worse, but I'll leave it there, haha.

In the face of adversity I built up another stroked M20. I had a new head ready to go with new cam/rockers/springs. Made the two one and got that ready to drop in. Pulled the old block/trans and got the new motor ready to go in after servicing the transmission with some MTL, a shift selector seal, and a shifter rebuild kit. I have a 91oct stroker chip on the way for the 2.7 since I want to keep the car on a stock ecu, M50 injectors.

Everything rubber in the engine bay is in need of replacement. So all hoses will get replaced once the new engine is in the car. Currently waiting on motor mounts because somehow I didn't have spares, and have to clean the Texas dirt out of the engine bay before the engine goes in. Trans is on the motor now as well with a fresh clutch.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr



Onto the diff- it's the factory S3.73 and appears to be tight and not super leaky, so it got a service with some Valvoline Synthetic GL-5 with LSD additive. Available at your local Wally World, and a great fluid for a street car. I always love to see the factory safety wire on the speed sensor plug.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr



Onto the rest of the car....... this thing was supposed to be a "ran and drove not too long ago" type of deal, which in my experience in buying over 50 E30s at this point, means that the car will be at least someone mechanically preserved. However, there's a last inspected sticker on the windshield from 2005, which matches the condition of when it appears to have last been on the road. Every hose, piece of rubber, etc etc is all shot. Brake lines collapsed, etc.

Someone was kind enough to tow the car via the tie rods at some point in the past. The suspension/brakes are absolutely hammered. Pulled the steering rack boots and the rack seals are shot.

I have new control arms, solid centered bushings, tie rods endlinks, bavauto springs, dampers, etc that are all going on the car now. I have an E36 steering rack I'm going to have to swap in as well, which includes modifying the linkage.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr
Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr



Interior I thought was nice, it had a dash cap siliconed on, a 5k (wrong) tach poorly installed in the cluster, old ****e radio shoved in the HVAC panel without wiring or radio cage, clips and screws are missing or replaced with drywall hardware, you get the jist. I'm tackling all of this at once so i have some variation in my workflow.

Whoever painted and assembled the car post paint did a miserable job. The air ducts and drip moldings didn't even make the trek up here. Most stuff is drywall screwed together.... it's bad.

I think that about sums it up lol.

Edit: but wait, theres more

On todays episode of "just recently broke a timing belt and was taken off the road", we have a rotten fuel filler neck and rotten fuel tank from 2005 fuel.

I jest, but this situation makes me sick to my stomach.

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr



E36 rack in and the rest of the front suspension assembled






Nothing bad to see behind a fuel filler hose that looks like this for sure




I scooped a bit of this with a screw driver and the rot is thick. I don't have any good late model tanks because i'm in the midwest so I had to order a spectra tank.

This whole situation is terrible.

[DocWalt]

Man... **** sellers like that, **** them so hard. Complete garbage!

[blue91lx]

Originally Posted by DocWalt

Man... **** sellers like that, **** them so hard. Complete garbage!

haha yup, i am a pretty peaceful dude and fight to keep things that way, but this acquisition made me question a lot of things in regards to how i conduct business. My trust was leveraged for someone to make a buck and offload a liability. It's not even about the $$ at this point, it's about my time and the breaking/exploitation of trust.

I would've given the dude $500 to tell me the honest story so I didn't buy the car. We can't make more time, but i can always make some more dough.... and now I'm stuck spending what will be a couple months of my free time on a project that was sold as a weekend endeavor.

Live and learn.