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.

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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.

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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.

[blue91lx]

Through the swamp we trudge on.

I have now rebuilt more or less the entire chassis and the car still hasn't gotten any more redeeming.

Dropped the subrame assembly and did stainless lines f&r, sub bushings, TA bushings, billys, bavauto springs, enlinks f/r, new fuel tank, fuel filter, all new rubber lines for the fuel filter and pump, etc.

Finished off the front end with new e36 tie rods, e36 centered rubber control arm bushings, new control arms, and rebuilt e36 rack. Please pretend you don't see the generic hose clamp on the tank return line, i ran out of genuine clamps

Shifter linkage rebuilt as well, engine mounts, trans mounts, guibo, CSB, etc etc

Master cylinder was bad, slave cyl was bad, clutch soft line bad, MC reservoir seals bad (which I have never even seen before), engine harness was bad, oil level sender was bad, etc etc.

Got the motor in and running and the only part i used from the car was the power steering pump, which immediately started spraying fluid everywhere as it is leaking through the impeller shaft seal

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




I also acquired a new to me cheap manual sedan hoopty that I wanted to drive over the winter, but project Texas Holdem is consuming all of my time and energy

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[blue91lx]

Once I got the motor in and running I started added fluid and that didn't go well. I used the power steering components I got with the car. PS pump impeller seal was shot and hoses puked everywhere.

Replaced ALL of that. New hoses, good used pump, etc. No more leaks.

Went to bleed coolant, using radiator I got with the car and it puked from the end tank (seeing a theme here?) New rad, all is well. What's another hundo at this point?

I then turned to the interior and found that someone had hacked the entire radio harness from the amp connector in the trunk all the way to the front. So I deleted the factory amp and wired up a head unit and new speakers using the factory wiring, the right way.

I had a nicer gray parcel shelf as well that I installed with new Kenwood 5.25" speakers I got from crutchfield. Wired up a VDO Continental TR7412UB-OR and we're good to go.

Speaking of interior, I pulled the disgusting dash that was in it and installed a nice-but-cracked one I got from a buddy. I got the sunroof open manually (it's a powered sunroof), lubed the tracks, and got it working well under power.

"While I was in there" I replaced the sun visor panel with a nicer one, which is not a fun job, as it, as well as the a pillar trims I replaced, all sit under the door seals.

At this point the 20 year old tint really started to bug me and I quickly realized I couldn't get it off. It was baked on worse than I'd ever dealt with before so..... I replaced all of the glass lol.

Idk the last time y'all have put glass it but, I am quite glad to have that done and over with.

I am unfortunately losing my warehouse space and building a 30x50x14 at my house, which obviously happened at the perfect time, alongside this unwanted massive white E30 project.

TST said I hadn't posted in a while, so I figured some bit of an update was better than nothing. Oh, and I sold the hoopty sedan from the last post too cheap to a guy in WI just to make room.

I am also developing a cool M20 header with my buddy who runs a great fab shop. V1 is cut up again and we're onto V2. It's 1 3/4" primaries, triple stepped, into clocked/scavenged dual 2.5" out collectors. It should be fun- V2 is mapped out (snaking runner 2 over runner 3 for more oil filter clearance. Should have the car back soon to dyno test and hopefully do a group buy on them. Most folks focus on equal length because it's what everyone did in the past for these cars, but we spent 3mo modeling different designs and found that the car didn't really care about equal length because of the super tight quench in these motors, it heavily favored focusing on scavenging, clocking and stepping the primaries.

Power steering

by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

Dash out

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

E30 factory trunk amp bypass

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

Interior roughly going back together

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


Sun visor panel and sunroof fun

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

New/used glass in w/ better parcel shelf and new speakers (still need to find better speaker grills

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

Entire quarter windows replaced w assemblies that had nicer trim (and no 20 year old tint), had to replace the pop out vent window latches and buttons during this time as those were broken/ugly

Untitled by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

And a shot of fancy header v1

IMG_20240104_161440_01 by Bobbie Morrone, on Flickr

[Bates]

I would have sent that car to some empty field and set it on fire. I can't believe how much work you have put into it so far. It's going to feel so rewarding when you are done with it.

[blue91lx]

Originally Posted by Bates

I would have sent that car to some empty field and set it on fire. I can't believe how much work you have put into it so far. It's going to feel so rewarding when you are done with it.

I wanted to so, so badly. If I didn't pay so much for the initial purchase I would've likely parted it out or something. Regardless, I should have nipped the problem at the bud and got rid of the car, but alas here we are

[Bates]

Originally Posted by blue91lx

I wanted to so, so badly. If I didn't pay so much for the initial purchase I would've likely parted it out or something. Regardless, I should have nipped the problem at the bud and got rid of the car, but alas here we are

We are car people. We don't have any good sense. If we did we wouldn't be car people.

[DocWalt]

God what a pain in the balls. Header looks sick though, haha

[blue91lx]

Originally Posted by Bates

We are car people. We don't have any good sense. If we did we wouldn't be car people.

I paid up for the car under the false pretense that it was nice, so I had to dive in with my time/energy in order to not lose my whole ass on the car.

A tale as old as time.... time vs money

Originally Posted by DocWalt

God what a pain in the balls. Header looks sick though, haha

bahaha yep, header has been the saving grace as I chip away at ole white trash