E30 Zone

I have been working on this project for a while now, I have a thread here from the beginning of the project http://www.bmw-driver.net/forum/showthread.php?t=38780.

It all started out as a bit of a tidy up and make an alpina rep out of it but the deeper I got into it the more I realised I needed to go ahed and do the M3 Touring that I have been planning and collecting parts for for a number of years.Im lucky enough that I break BMW's here in Ireland so always keep a few nice bits for myself

Here is one of the most recent pics

Wowsers, I think I made a mess in my trousers

Look forward to seeing the progress on this, dream of doing this to my touring!

Come on Dave, you've been at this for ages

is it going to use the touring front doors ?

Going to be an awesome project

Rav335uk wrote:Come on Dave, you've been at this for ages

I know need to get a move on

magpie wrote:is it going to use the touring front doors ?

Yes it's going to stay as a 5 door.

This is just coppied over so part of it references to an Alpina rep that this project started out as

Just picked up this touring, saved it just in time as if it had been left like this for long it would have been a basket case.
Body is really solid,no front seats,

Some people will prob shoot me but I think an alpina rep would suit it down to the ground in brilliant red.









Will get up a few more when I give it a wash and see what it cleans up like





Gave it a wash last night, striped the front off it and washed it again,

It has gotten painted a few time in its life as can be seen above where lacquer was used on a later repair

Body turns out to be excellent, small bit of rot in the usual e30 spots .
Small badly repaired crash damage

Rear pocket



Some light damage to repair






Got a bit of the car stripped today and can't get over how rust free it is, probably overkill doing a full strip on it but I might as well keep going now.





Was a bit surprised at the sunroof panel , no blisters at all on the outside but the bottom was really bad, you would normally see it on the top at this stage

All really good news other than that, windscreen corners and scuttle are mint

Sunroof tray is also mint which was a great relief


Even the notorious touring boot lid looks great

The bulkhead is the only place now that can throw something up.

Got a few hours at the car today between the Olympics and everything.
Still turning out to be way better than expected, I hope my M3 turns out to be as good when I go at it someday.

Engine out

Rear out

Bulkhead rust free even around where the loom goes into the car.




Just finish stripping the interior now and the fun part of removing the loom




Not an awful lot new to report, got most of stripping finished and got it mounted onto the spit. Floor pan looks really good with the fuel tank and everything removed, hope to get a start on some of the rust repairs next weekend.
A few pics of how it stands now















Just realised that if this all goes wrong it will be on a big public forum for everyone to see a˜³

Anyway back to the task in hand


Inner sunroof skin removed




Bottom skin was fairly bad


Then remove cassette
Drill out spot welds around opening


Drill spot welds at b pillar



Then cut supports at the 4 corners being carefull not to cut through the roof skin



Use heat gun to soften sealer and remove cassette

Before


After


Would really suit you leins, nearly 2" more head rooma˜Š

The start of some rust between cassette and roof skin even though it looked perfect


Made up a brace to go in front of the sunroof opening and some filler strips for around the sunroof panel










Time for another bit of an update

Filler strips tacked in


Sunroof panel welded in



Started on some of the rust repairs
rust behind seam sealer

Cut out rust

Make Template

Cut some sheet and beat into shape

Weld

Template again

Weld

From underneath

Ground down and primed



Other side









Was a bit of rust between engine bay a bulkhead which turned out to be a good bit when ground back



Cut out the rust again


From inside

From wheelarch



Templates


Weld in first piece

Inside


Next


Grind

Good effort on the welds

Looking very cool mate. Whats the final colour going to be?

loving the build action ,keep it coming

turk wrote:Looking very cool mate. Whats the final colour going to be?

Thinking of a grey, silver grey,granite, fjord or Ferrari silver stone Grigio . Will have to spray a few samples.

Love a M3 touring. Subscribed

Stripped all the sealer off the bottom of the car. There were a few bits of rust hiding even though the sealer was perfect.



Inner sill

Rear pocket


Cut

Template

Weld

Grind


Front jacking point didn't look too bad till I took it off



So back to the usual
Cut

Template

Weld

Grind

Template

Weld

Jacking point

Like new again


Crash damage at the rear was a bit worse than I had thought. See where the floor was creased and the panel is pushed in near the top mounting point on the spit. Going to have to straighten it all out and probably put a new back panel on it.









Converted the cluster to alpina spec

KM cluster from eBay.de for KM speedo, ltr fuel gauge and ltr/100km fuel consumption


Original cluster from car, note mileage, fair bit of going


Dismantle cluster


Remove needles


And faces


Remove tach to access econo needle which can't be removed from spindle


Remove needles from spindles


Give needles a rub with 400 paper and give a coat of primer



Paint


Mpg v km


Needles back on, km faces and alpina decals applied.


Before

After


The one I was trying to copy


I'm happy with the finished job, the alpina decals are a little larger than the original ones but you would only notice it if you saw them together.

I had these wings from a shell I got from Ben . They're not great to be honest but they will do for mocking up for the moment, priced 2 new rear quarters from bmw at 680 euro for the pair so will probably go that way for the sake of it. Also the M3 had preface lift pockets so the new rear quarters would also be an advantage for fitting the rear bumper.



Cut out the best bit of the quarter and put on the shell


Difference in height of facelift against prefacelift arch


Going to add a nice both of width to the car


Front arch


Side skirt attached for positioning








Will have to do some cutting into the bodywork now and see what's the best way to go. I don't want to just slap the quarters on top as was done on the one in the US. I want to be able to rust proof everything so will be cutting away the original quarters.

Here is the engine that's destined for the engine bay
01 M5 S62 , 400 bhp , should move a 1250 kg e30 on nicely .

Will need to make some custom manifolds for this and also get the ecu flashed to get rid of the Can Bus stuff.

Other plans are to probably use a Z3M back axle and M3 evo front struts.

Might get the shell chemically dipped and E Coated to make a lifelong job of it also when going this far.

Should keep me busy for a while a˜ƒ







Ok another bit of an update,

Made up some new mounts for the spit that allow me to work on the back panel and put on and off the back bumper for lining things up




Made a start on the rear quarter, bit by bit to get an idea of the best way of proceeding.




Rear quarter back on to see how things are,


The main problem is that the standard inner arch comes down and out to the arch lip whereas the m3 inner arch comes out all the way before coming down parallel with the outer quarter. This leaves lots of gaps between the inner arch and the quarter . This could be just filled with new steel but that would leave a lot less clearance for the tyre.
Here you can see the difference



And also see how far the quarter is away from the inner arch at the filler


And at the front of the arch


I have ordered an M3 inner arch to see how I can get on with fitting that also.

The M3 front bumper is held on with a different carrier than the others


Standard car


Only problem is that only the right hand side one is available from bmw so I will have to make one for the other side or modify one . A lot of e30 parts have gone NLA in the last while which is a concern.

Made a couple of back bumper mounts


There is a big difference in the pre and facelift pockets, the facelift ones are wider and are in the way for fitting the M3 bumper.

Prefacelift/M3


Facelift


So lots of fun ahead of me

WOW

Epic!

DavesM3 wrote:Stripped all the sealer off the bottom of the car. There were a few bits of rust hiding even though the sealer was perfect.

Imo there's no such thing as a rust free E30 unless you go to this extent to strip all the sealer off and check.
I bet most zoners 'rust free' cars are rotting away without there knowledge, including mine.


Keep us updated, cracking thread!

Subscribed.

How much extra clearance do you reckon you've got at the outer edge of the rear arch with the M3 wings? Looks like somewhere just over 10mm?

Keep the photos coming!

Cheers. Dave.

You really don't f**k about, nice work.

leeparkes wrote:Epic!

DavesM3 wrote:Stripped all the sealer off the bottom of the car. There were a few bits of rust hiding even though the sealer was perfect.

Imo there's no such thing as a rust free E30 unless you go to this extent to strip all the sealer off and check.
I bet most zoners 'rust free' cars are rotting away without there knowledge, including mine.


Keep us updated, cracking thread!

That's very true, I wasn't going to remove the sealer as it looked like new but I'm very glad I did now. Lots of small bits of corrosion starting wherever there are tabs etc spot welded to the floor pan. Once moisture gets in under the sealer it's worse than anything as its trapped in there

davethegoat wrote:Subscribed.

How much extra clearance do you reckon you've got at the outer edge of the rear arch with the M3 wings? Looks like somewhere just over 10mm?

Keep the photos coming!

Cheers. Dave.

It's very hard to measure. I think the very outside lip is about the same on the m3 as the standard arch the real difference is on the inside where the m3 outer wheel well meets the outer arch. It goes straight up from the outside of the lip unlike the standard one which has to go in to follow the shape of the standard arch. Probably about 20 mm extra clearance when you go up inside the arch. Hope that all makes shape.

That's scarey to see where the rot can hide, good too for the dreamers (me included) to see what can fester.

Excellent work mate. Looking forward to some updates, seems there's a few home fabrications to come.

Not a great lot of progress to be seen this week. Removed the back panel which was a bigger job than I had thought. A load of spot welds and lots of layers where it meets the wings near the top. Took me about 8 hours in total but its out now.


On a side note of something that might be of interest to people.
I always new that the sport evo wings had a bigger wheel arch than the standard M3 wing to allow them to fit 18" wheels for competition but never knew how much so measured them up.
First standard wing

Sport evo wing


Top measurement is probably not 100 % accurate but you can see the difference.

Nice Work Dave! the guys on e30.de do bigger front wings out of carbon fibre. Take a lot of prep for paint etc, but might be just the ticket for u!

This is going to be mad !

My good god you really do take the bull by the horns dont you

Where on earth do you find the time to do this? Do you sleep ever? Surely no wife and kids

Good project

Thanks for all the great comments

This weeks update

Ground down and cleaned up all the joints in preperation for the new back panel


New back panel from bmw, 140 euro which supposed me. You never can tell with bmw.


Lots of weld through primer and tack weld in the panel

Weld up fully and plug weld to the floor and pockets.

Really happy with how it turned out. Really nice to have a lovely straight back panel and valance. Will make a Hugh difference when I put the bumper on and it all lines up

I'm waiting on getting 2 new rear quarters so can't do any more bodywork for the moment.
I pulled out an old S62 that I had for parts and bolted up a gearbox to it


Then made up a pair of engine mounts for it



Bolted them onto the block



The reason why this is a parts engine. Ouch

Yes that is the crank


Next up I want to reinforce the front subframe and modify the steering rack mountings for more clearance.

turk wrote:Nice Work Dave! the guys on e30.de do bigger front wings out of carbon fibre. Take a lot of prep for paint etc, but might be just the ticket for u!

Thanks for the link but I'm going to keep it all steel
Tha sport evo wings should work fine for me

Excellent work. I love seeing new bits of steel let in on old cars.. very satisfying to see.. and it not even my car..

This is looking awesome! Will be keeping an eye on this, keep up the good work!

Perfect job! Congratulations and thanks for the pics!

Weekly update time again

Got a few bits collected for me in the US during the week

Interface for converting the tach signal from the V8 to the correct signal for the 4cyl tach in the cluster
http://Www.dakotadigital.com


Next is a vent gauge from Podi. It is based on the Alpina designed vent gauge, it can be configured with 4 different read outs , I went with oil temp and pressure,voltage and AFR which will be great to have with Alpha-N to keep an eye on the air to fuel ratio.
Can't wait to see this in action. It looks to be a very well made product.
Available from http://www.podi.ca


And what it should look like installed


Also got a new M3 outer wheel well, this should make things come together nicely


The difference can clearly be seen here where it meets the arch,compleatly different profile where it meets the arch.


Then modified the subframe steering rack mounts to gain some clearance to the sump

Cut off the old mounts

Made up some new mounts

And welded them on


Then made up some subframe reinforcements
This is what can happen to e30 subframe engine mount points


To avoid this some reinforcement plates can be made up
Templates

Weld them in underneath

Then some plates to stiffen the mounting points

And weld them in


Used a couple of e39 engine mount to attach the to the subframe to get an idea of what height I needed

They're about 60 mm high and are giving me this much clearance to the steering rack

Should be able to drop it another 6 to 8 mm if I use good solid engine mounts

Mounted the whole lot up on a trolley


Cut a lump out of a scrap shell I had for mocking up purposed


Snug fit




Bulkhead clearance to the water pipes for the heater is tight


Lots of fun ahead

Pretty much my dream E30 in every way here.

Keep it up.