While stood out on the drive with Alan and John we were approached by a younger lad called Arron asking us if we were interested in his e reg 318i non starter
So we agreed to go and view the car the following day
26 February 2012
We set off in the 7 series to go and see the car and after getting lost driving around Milber we finally arrived
The car was a facelift 1987 m40 318i and what should have been red had turned into a pinky white couler, all in all was looking very sorry for itself, it was bog standard no sunroof! No electric windows! Very basic
As Arron had previously said it wouldn't start, and the heater matrix had sprung a leak,
We also noticed the standard E30 crack across the dash board
Besides these items the body was in good condition, it was abit minging as itd been stood for six months but nothing to bad
We agreed to take it paid our £225 and towed it home with the 7 series, thinking it could be the ideal platform for a m50 conversion
When we got it and started our investigation it became obvious that the head gasket had failed and the dme relay had been removed to sabotage the engine so it could be sold as having a potentially simple non start issue not a blown head gasket
But this didn't matter as we had a spare engine in stock along with an uncracked dashboard and a spare heater matrix,
We pulled our fingers out and had the engine out of the car that after noon
And power washed the engine bay to give it a bit of a fresher look
Unfortunately when we removed the engine we realised that the slave cylinder for the clutch had failed and that the propshaft centre bearing and mount were completely unserviceable, the mount was so badly worn the the prop had been whipping up and down and turned the bracket into an oval shape
27 February - 2 march 2012
During this week we installed the new engine using the original gear box, we did all the work in the evenings using spotlights
The new engine had a power steering pump but the car was not equipt with power steering gear itself so we just removed the belt for the pump and left it bolted to the engine
Once we had the engine sat in place bolted down we were keen to start it up to see if it would run,
The engine we put in was from my 1992 318i and had been sat still in my garage for the best part of a year
The moment came where the engine could be started,
No radiator, no exhaust and no prop shaft so it couldn't be ran for long but it should be long enough to see it would fire up or not.
I got the key in the ignition while Alan and John kept and eye out in the engine bay for any potential problems,
First I switched the ignition on with no problems
Next I turned the key round to the crank position and as soon as the starter engaged and the engine started cranking John and Alan started shouting "stop stop shut it off!"
The wiring loom had started to melt and there was a very scary amount of smoke, fortunately having had a few "thermal incidents" before I was on it with the extinguisher, abit confused about what had happened we dismantled the fuse box where a lot of smoke was coming from,
As soon as the fuse box lid was removed a lot more smoke apeared, the type of smoke from melting wiring just seems to linger, eventually we traced the damage to a wire that was piggy backed off of one of the relays, still a bit confused we carried on looking and using a wiring diagram from the zone realised that pin 20 on the engine plug had on early cars been an earth and late cars been a feed for the abs and this clashed of the car and engine looms and had melted,
We traced all the wires and had amazingly only damaged one wire which was repaired and then we were back on track
3 - 4 march
I was feeling optimistic that the car would be finished this weekend, despite John and Alan being away riding on a steam loco to paddington station ( the king 6024) but I ended up with some sort of bug and got very little done,
On the Saturday morning I traveled into work and pressed a new prop centre bearing and mount onto the prop, went home and fitted the prop back up, but didn't get much further because I felt so rough I just went back to bed ( what a let down!)
Then sunday I stayed in bed for the best part of the day but got up late after noon and removed the cracked dashboard with John and Alan (who had a wonderful time on the train the day before)
8 march
It was a Thursday night and instead of our normal Thursday night curry in wetherspoons we were all round mine to try and get the E30 drivable
With Alan or torch holding dutys, john fitting the rad and bleeding the cooling system the best he could with out the engine running and fitting the new slave cylinder , Karl fixing exhaust up ( lots of complaining from Karl about having dirt in his eyes ) and myself tidying up the engine bay so that nothing would be chewed up or melted once we went for a drive within an hour or so it was drivable,
We lowered it off the axel stands and got ready to go for a ride ( the rear seats were out of the car being cleaned) along with the missing dash, centre console and instrument cluster, it was a little diferent to normal,
We all piled into the old tub john and Karl in the back sat on the metal chassis where the seat would normally be and Alan in the front with me, the first thing that hit me was we forget how easy it is with power steering, (something we'll upgrade when we put the m50 in)
The second thing I noticed was how dreadfull the brakes were, only non vented discs on the front and drums on the back, we raced through the lane up from my house and went sideways round a bend near a quarry entrance ( lots a dusty dried mud on the ground) after a while the brakes improved slightly but not much
We took the old girl back home parked it up and called it a day
Happy that it drove ok,
10 - 11 march
The Saturday I was working the morning and didnt have as much time spare in the afternoon as i would have liked
when i got home at about 1 we thought we'd run the car up again to check everything was ok and happy
with the instrument cluster plugged in i noticed the rev counter wasnt working
so i made it my first job to sort that
i checked the voltage on the line from the dme to the instrument cluster and it was comepletely different to what it should have been, normally it starts at 0v and rises with the engine rpm but this was starting and 12 v and droping as the engine was reved
after a wasted afternoon of wire testing and swaping dmes, and ignition rev counter pick ups, id gotten nowhere
so i put i post up on the zone where danthe said itd be worth checking fuses 21 and 23 i checked all the fuses previously and they were all ok
but i rechecked it any way and one of the two was missing so i replaced it and the rev counter instantly worked as normal
i can only imagine it was removed when attempting to sabotage the car by the previous owner
the only other thing we achieved that after noon was fitting my spare heater matrix which bled up and worked nicely
the sunday got going abit more and in the morning i replaced the heater box duct foam seals, reassembled the dashboard and centre console and by the time alan and john got to mine the interior only needed the rear seat fitting
having done that we spent the day polishing the old girl up and getting her shining like a beaut
16 march
i had booked a half day at work as during the past few days of driving the e30 i'd noticed a really strong smell of transmission oil
when i checked it the output shaft seal on the box was leaking severly
i suspected that this was due to the output shaft bearing taking bit of a beating from the completely worn out state that the prop was in previously
and whether it was down to oil loss or just being worn out it didnt like selecting 2nd gear
so i thought id put a spare box in i had in my garden
which i did and it was a tad noisy but was servicable
i also took the rear drums off as one of the brakes was seized on
after freeing the brake off and finding a leaking wheel cylinder i thought may be it was best just to do the disc brake upgrade early that id been planning for the m50 swap, so i went on ebay and bought a pair of rear trailing arms with discs and calipers, while john sourced me a set of front 325 calipers off the zone
19 march
we decided we'd go up and collect my new suspention arms for the rear axel so we set off to go to bristol in the morning, but using an iphone to navigate was proving abit tricky
eventualy arriving we collected the arms and also picked up a rear anti roll bar to fit, to try and improve the ride for when we m50 it later this year
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