E30 Zone

Hi everyone, I’m now onto my second e30, but have bigger and better plans for this one. First a little bit about myself, and my first e30.

I bought a 316i coupe in brilliant red around 18 months ago. It was in a tatty state, and quite a bit needed doing to get it up to scratch. At the time, I was 18, living in my own house with my girlfriend, and had a single garage to fill with a project of my choice. The e30 was the project, but I now realise I bit off more than I could chew. With a house to run and hardly any time to spend on the car, the e30 was somewhat rushed. I focused more on driving the car than I did on enjoying the restoration process. The car was all ”˜show’ and no ”˜go’, was overheating, but I enjoyed it while it lasted. Then, my girlfriend moved out and I couldn’t afford to run the 4 bedroom house on my own. Inevitably I had to move back in with my parents and had nowhere to store or work on the car. Long story short, I parted the car, scrapped the shell and stored most of the parts. I honestly think this decision was one of the worst I have ever made.
A few pics of my old e30:




I'm now 20, my girlfriend and I broke up, and I am still living with my parents. I am currently an apprentice mechanical engineer, working in the steel works in Port Talbot. I have learned a lot about cars since I started driving, and owning an e30 in the past has made me more prepared. I wanted to put things right and do what i set out to do 18 months ago. I wanted an e30 to upgrade and restore, and wanted to bring it back to its former glory. So I put a bid on a car a couple of weeks ago, won it for £1050, and picked it up the weekend before last. It was advertised as having a blown head gasket, but the body work is in pretty good condition. Here’s some pics:




The car will be getting a full restoration, accompanied with an engine upgrade. I hope to replace the 1.8 with a 4 litre v8, with 6 speed box, so I will keep my eyes open for a suitable setup. If anyone knows for a decent m60b40 or gearbox (or both) then please let me know. 300mm.de mounts, subframe spacers, mishimoto radiator, smoothed bay, brake booster in cab behind glovebox, battery and washer bottle relocated to boot. Saw somewhere that mini cooper s discs and e90 calipers are a do-able upgrade, not sure if this will be suitable yet. As for suspension and wheels, I am undecided what I'll do, but will not be lowering the car much and won't run daft alloys and tyres (like my last). A respray is in order, not sure of colour yet but that can wait for now. Interior I want to re-trim in dark red leather.

I am using my parents garage for the project. I've spent the last 6 months sorting it out and clearing it for a project car. It's a single garage, but is bigger than average. I'm also renting a shipping container nearby, so storage shouldn't be a problem.

Sorry for the life story, but I had to cover all the bases before I started, and there should be plenty of updates from here on out.

First thing to come off was the bonnet. The arm that holds the bonnet in place was disconnected, and the 6 bolts holding the bonnet on were removed. I didn't mark the position of the bonnet as I'll be adjusting this anyway.
The bonnet 'arm' was also removed, I think this is only held on with one bolt.

The bonnet 'bar', which is essentially the hinge for the bonnet, was removed, held on by, I think, 2 bolts each side.

Next to come off was the bumper, held on with two large bolts that are accessed underneath the bumper.
Progress so far:

i saw this on ebay it looked quite solid,good luck with it .

4 bed house at 18
4l v8 at 20 and single.

Sanchez wrote:4 bed house at 18
4l v8 at 20 and single.

Winning combination!

magpie wrote:i saw this on ebay it looked quite solid,good luck with it .

Thanks mate

Nice, don't ruin this one with angel eyes though... A good clean 318IS is going up in value so you might be on to a winner if you do it properly

Duke137 wrote:Nice, don't ruin this one with angel eyes though... A good clean 318IS is going up in value so you might be on to a winner if you do it properly

Whether the angel eyes will be going on I don't know, the current bosch smileys are smashed on one side. The car won't be standard, but I want it to look as oem as possible, and I want it done properly. I appreciate the comments!

Next up, I removed the headlights, grilles and bumper mounts. 3 bolts hold each headlight assembly on, and the grilles are held on by a number of screws and also clips along the top edge. The bumper mounts are pretty easy, 2 bolts hold each one on.

Ok, next things to come off were the wings. I removed the row of bolts along the top of the wing, and cut and removed the sealer covering the join between the wing and the scuttle panel. Anyone have any idea what this sealer is? is it just regular seam sealer or something else?




I then removed the bolts holding the wing to the valance. The inner arches had to be removed to access the bolts inside the wheel arch.


There is a bolt at the very bottom of the arch, by the sill, which needed to be dug out from all the underseal and crap covering it over. The wing could then be removed completely. Unfortunately, the bottom of my offside wing disintegrated when I removed it.


Progress so far:

Nice car, good luck with the project!

I think I read that the seal for the wings is Tiger Seal or anything similar...

Good work chap, liking this thread already.!

If you are going to the trouble of dropping an m60 in why not make it the 4.4L version - m60b44? It make sense. ;)

Nice little project you got here. Is that a 'warrior' jack? Any good?

TSM3 wrote: Nice car, good luck with the project!

I think I read that the seal for the wings is Tiger Seal or anything similar...

Thanks mate, I will have to google tiger seal as I haven't read much about it.

mcbonio wrote: Good work chap, liking this thread already.!

If you are going to the trouble of dropping an m60 in why not make it the 4.4L version - m60b44? It make sense. ;)

Cheers! A hybrid version means I need to buy 2 v8s, and I'm finding it difficult to find 1! I'd like to go for an m5 v8 but I've got to draw a line somewhere lol

Jimbob wrote: Nice little project you got here. Is that a 'warrior' jack? Any good?

Thanks mate, no it's an arcan 2t aluminium jack. Its ok if you need to move the jack around a lot as its quite light, but if you don't, the steel equivalent is made stronger, can lift more, is faster etc. They are decent jacks though, good value for money!

I'm a bit behind on updates at the moment so please bare with me, lots more to come!

A hybrid engine? No, just look for an M62 engine, they come in 4 flavours, 3.5L, 4.4L, 4.6L and 5L.

Good luck with it, the engine conversion itself isn't too hard.

mcbonio wrote:A hybrid engine? No, just look for an M62 engine, they come in 4 flavours, 3.5L, 4.4L, 4.6L and 5L.

Sorry I just got confused because you said m60b44 ;) heheh
Joking aside, apparently they are more expensive than the m60 engines, and are harder to fit etc. If one comes up, then price may be the deciding factor if it comes up cheap.

GB69 wrote:Good luck with it, the engine conversion itself isn't too hard.

Thanks, it'll be the first non-standard swap I've done so we'll see how it goes.

As for engine choice, I have seen many m60b30's for very cheap. Have they got the same block as the b40's, except for the smaller bore and stroke? I am thinking, if I buy a b30, can I rebore it and then fit b40 pistons, con rods and crank? This may be a stupid idea but I can't seem to find a decent m60b40/ m62 anywhere.

As far as I'm aware none of the 3L and 4L M60 blocks, heads or crankshafts are interchangeable.

You need to speak to a few BMW breakers like Quarry motors. They have loads of engines and gearboxes.

Hmm, ok thanks I will have to ask them

I started in the engine bay by removing the battery, leads, coils, fan, shroud, pipes, air box etc. This is all fairly straight forward stuff so I thought I'd skip over this part.

The exhaust manifold needed to be split from the head, so I decided to remove it altogether. The studs in the manifold, and the nuts on the exhaust studs were removed and then the manifold could be wiggled up and out of the engine bay.


Quick question, is this manifold standard? I would have thought bmw would have used a cast manifold like on the m40.

With this done, next up was to get the head off. I didn't have to do this as the engine could have come out as a whole, but I wanted to see the extent of the damage to the head gasket.

Before I started any stripping of the engine, I dropped the oil, coolant and PAS fluid. I could tell at this point that there was quite a bit of water in the oil.

I disconnected the breather pipe, removed the rocker cover and from this point it all looks ok. The lobes have minimal, if no scoring at all.




I then took the plugs out and placed a long (clean) screwdriver in cylinder 1. I turned the engine over by hand to find top dead centre for this cylinder. The screwdriver rises and falls with the piston so this is how you know where TDC is.

I could then remove the top chain cover and mark where the cam sprockets sit in relation to the engine, using tip-ex. They could then be unbolted from the cams.

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I then removed the head by undoing the head bolts in the correct order. I have heard snapped head bolts aren't much fun!



The bores of the cylinders don't look too great as I can't see many honing marks. I guess wear can be expected for over 150,000 miles of use!


After inspection of the head gasket I couldn't see any definitive signs of failure. But, after inspecting the head... I spy with my little eye....

So it wasn't a head gasket failure after all! More reason for a new engine now I guess!

josh-uk wrote: So it wasn't a head gasket failure after all! More reason for a new engine now I guess!

Thats the spirit!

The iS looks pretty solid from the pics, should be a good base for a nice conversion

DanThe wrote:

josh-uk wrote: So it wasn't a head gasket failure after all! More reason for a new engine now I guess!

Thats the spirit!

Too right! My first engine conversion was because of a slipping clutch... I figured if I was taking the engine out to change the clutch, I may as well change the engine too

Sorry for the delay posting.

I decided to take the drivers seat out and take a look why its not operating as it should. It is very stiff and doesn't recline, raise/lower, slide as it should.

You can see how rusty the sliders of the seat are. Not sure how it gets exposed to this much moisture...

I took the back and side covers off the seat and removed the cable that tilts the seat for rear passenger access. I then removed the seat mechanisms. With these off the seat, they seemed to work fine, so led me to believe the problem lies in the sliders themselves.


I removed the sliders from the seats.

I wanted to split these as I can sandblast and repaint them, this can't be done easily in one piece. To split them I had to cut one of the mounts off the inner sliders.

I then had to drill out the crimps that hold the sliders together.


Be careful not to drop the tiny roller balls in the sliders as they will roll and hide in the farthest corners of the garage!
I now had 4 separate parts for blasting:


I also plan to get the seat itself refurbished; new bolsters, new material to recover the bolsters, recover the back of the seat, etc. I essentially want near-brand new seats but want to keep the original check pattern.

What a lad.. all sounds good.. reupholstering my interior is something I want to get done too at some stage.. need deep pockets for that though!

Mitchen wrote:What a lad.. all sounds good.. reupholstering my interior is something I want to get done too at some stage.. need deep pockets for that though!

Cheers mate! Yes, I haven't priced it up yet and I'm not looking forward to it!

A quick update, I did a little welding work on the drivers side sill (I couldn't resist!). Someone had used the wrong jack on the sill and crushed it, so I decided to cut it out and weld in a piece of angle iron. The welding isn't great but I thought I'd get the practice in on somewhere that won't be seen!

Really finding it hard to find the time to make updates, but I’m trying my best!

Basically, the majority of progress so far has just been stripping the car down. After I got the head off the engine, the block had to come out. To do this, I removed all the remaining ancillaries, unbolted the gearbox and undid the engine mounts. I propped up the gearbox with an axle stand. With all fluids out of the engine it was light enough to (barely) lift the engine out of the bay with the help of a friend. I am going to borrow his engine crane at some point, but he needs to dig it out of the back of his garage first.


Next to come off was the gearbox and propshaft. I rested the gearbox on my trolley jack while I undid the mount and disconnected the prop. The gearbox could then be lowered and wheeled out on the jack. The prop was quite tricky to support and disconnect as one, I used my foot to hold up the front end, while I unbolted the centre bearing and disconnected the back end from the diff. It then kinda collapsed on top of me but at least it didn’t fall to the floor. Next time I would definitely ask for another pair of hands to help! The diff unbolted from its carrier easily enough with help from the trolley jack again.

After work one night I managed to get the passenger seat, rear bench seat, dash and carpet removed. The dash is a bit fiddly locating all the hidden screws and disconnecting all the wires, but with a bit of patience it comes out ok. I also removed the pedal box at this point. (More about the rust later!)





A Saturday was spent with my mate stripping the car as much as possible. We managed to remove both subframes, which are pretty easy jobs to do with 2 people and a jack. The fuel tank came off, which was a horrible job as it required one of us to hold the tank while the other searched for all the pipes and wires that needed to be disconnected to let it drop. The fuel in the tank gave the e46 an extra few miles though! The boot and drivers door were also removed. We spent the rest of the day stripping off smaller random bits and pieces.


I'm sure I've missed something but the general idea is that everything needs to be removed!

it looks in pretty good condition that shell really, nice work

jimbom30cab wrote:it looks in pretty good condition that shell really, nice work

Cheers mate, yes it doesn't look too bad so far

More on the rust...

When I took the carpet up I found a previous repair, that was supposedly decent. I'll let the photos do the talking...

What looks like flaking paint here is actually metal.


Apart from this there is a rust hole in the drivers side boot well about the size of a 50p piece, the front drivers side arch has come away from the engine bay, and the same arch has began to rust through the bulkhead, behind where the pedal box is.

yer standard stuff, cut it all out and replace