E30 Zone

It's been a while since I've spent much time on here having sold my last E30 about 9 years ago to fulfil the childhood dream of owning a Sunbeam Lotus. Actually, that's a lie - I wrapped the E30 around a lamp post quite spectacularly one afternoon. I made a bit of a profit a couple of years into Talbot ownership and have regretted selling ever since, especially when my old car surfaced at Bonham's with a guide price of £25k on it. Let's just say I didn't quite make the £21,250 profit that it now seems I could have done. Oops.

I followed that up by turning to the dark side with a bit of Golf GTi ownership but couldn't resist too long and ended up buying a really tidy E36 328i Sport. Nearly 5 years later I've finally managed to bring myself to part with her for next to nothing and throw money at an E30 instead. Everyone I know has long thrown out all of their E30 spares (which is a painful lesson given how much bits cost now, as I've since discovered) but the shell was too solid to turn down with the only proper rust hole being along the boot shut, so not a big deal. As a bonus, the sunroof tray doesn't sound like a maraca either.



Those of you who are more observant may have noticed that the wings and bonnet are a different colour to the rest of the car and look like a well-used blackboard in a stunning shade of chalky white. It's not bent by any means but there's a small crease in the front sill behind the bumper that'll be pulled out as things progress.

I'm not sure why the previous owner bothered though, as the wings that he used to replace whatever was there before are pretty haggard in any case:



Oh, and the door... An altercation with his uncle's right boot, allegedly:



Other pretty stunning but not game-ending bodges include repairing the probably once rusty aerial hole using a hole cutter, a bit of scrap steel and some Sikaflex. It'll be getting a proper aerial delete when the rest of the small bodywork issues are sorted and she gets a blow over with the spray gun. Let's just say that it looks as if somebody has tried cleaning it with a Brillo pad.



So far, not so bad... But trust me, this is probably going to take a little while.

If you've spied the front lip then you'll know just which model this one is. If you're a die-hard purist, you might want to stop reading now because whilst the badge on the bootlid will be staying, the engine won't. I know, there aren't exactly loads of them left (I think we only have 4 over here in Jersey) but it was a solid shell at near the right price (although long gone are the days where you could pick up a half decent 325i for under £100 as I've learnt!) and the M42 was never quite going to cut it for me.



This was the deciding factor though, I've not seen one quite this chocolatey before:



In the meantime I spotted an ad for a pair of wings and set of lowering springs bundled in together locally. Once I'd wiped a bit of the dust from them and realised that they're pretty much spot on I thought it'd be rude not to. As it happened, a few weeks later a wanted ad cropped up looking for some rear lowering springs for an E30 and as I was only after the wings anyway a deal was struck, but my luck hadn't ended there.



Stickers. It was covered in them, which took a good hour and a half to get the worst off. Those ones, irritatingly, are in the numberplate.

Amusingly, a pair of E30 wings fit in the boot of an E30 with no trouble at all but they couldn't be shoehorned into the back of the E36 when I went to pick them up.

The car came with a load of random trim bits, a grotty rad and a few other bits of treasure stuffed into the boot along with the obligatory 2 litres of water that any E30 that's ever been outside manages to accrue in the rear battery tray (I know, I know, this is a 4 pot so the battery tray is up front but I'm not sure what else to call it apart from sink) but thankfully none of the usual accompanying rot and nobody had drilled any holes in it so it should stay solid for a little while at least. When a mate of mine's E30 was binned fairly spectacularly at a trackday recently with somebody else behind the wheel I donated a few grille bits, one of the dubious wings and a smiley headlamp (I had absolutely no idea that these are now worth a small fortune and that the one in the boot was there with good reason having now noticed that my N/S dipped beam bounces, but in fairness his need was definitely greater than mine) to get it back on the road, which brings me to where we were a few weeks ago:

Right, so you know that luck I was talking about earlier?

Well the lad who bought the lowering springs wanted them for his 318iS so we got chatting about my plans for the car as I think he knew of the previous owner. Anyway, he called me the next day to ask if he could pass my number on to a mate of his who might be interested in the M42 if it was available, and as I wasn't in any rush to even try and hook it out until I'd sold the E36 and had the cash to fork out for a new motor it was, of course, very available. Despite the rocker box full of chocolate pudding it still ran and sounded bang on and he's a mechanic so knew what he was getting into. A deal was struck, and it turned out that he worked at the garage at the bottom of my road and had a tow rope in the boot. Time to get it up on the ramp then, no crawling around on the floor. That's my kind of spannering. Luxury spannering, if you will.





A Saturday morning cuppa and bacon roll later and we were done, easy as that.





As good an excuse as ever, and to minimise the likelihood of being stopped by the law on the way back up to mine we threw a silver wing on and took advantage of the workshop's power washer and generous supply of degreaser, then dragged her back up the hill. I'd forgotten what they were like to drive (I use the term fairly loosely, what with the lack of engine) and it all came flooding back to me as I suddenly felt as if I was sitting a bit high up and nearly fell asleep endlessly feeding the steering wheel around the first corner, but I don't think I've made a mistake by any stretch as much as I was gutted to have to part with the E36 to make some progress on the E30. With cash in my pocket, I saw an ad placed for a Z3 rack locally which as it turned out belonged to somebody I know. Cash exchanged, steering problem hopefully solved. Going to pair that up with the Corsa C steering linkage mod as he had one of those spare as well.





So, engines... I know someone over here who's built an S50 E30 touring and an M62 E30 coupe and was hoping to convince him to part with the touring a while back, but he's pretty set on keeping both. Can you blame him? I can't. The hunt for either an M60 or M62 over here has come up with nothing despite plenty of wanted ads and sticking notes under windscreen wipers and all of the engines over in the UK have intergalactic starship mileages on them compared to what we're used to over here which worries me even though it probably shouldn't.

Having possibly set my sights a little too high at first given that we don't have a great deal of donor cars to choose from kicking about over here and fragging a decent one is also pretty hard no thanks to high postage costs to the UK I've just picked up another 328i Sport to hack around in but it didn't take long to decide it'd be put to better use laying the groundwork for an S54 at a later date by dropping in the M52 and ZF 'box in for now. It probably wouldn't be a bad idea to get the E30 on the road and the much needed space back in the garage, as much as I'm not adverse to cycling everywhere.

The donor is tatty on the outside but mechanically sound with 84k on the clock and new discs, pads and bearings all round so they can come off for a 5-stud conversion at the same time. Plus it's a 1996 so the spare LSD could come in handy one day.

My first hiccup and a word of warning for anyone thinking of an M5X or S5X conversion - I'm guessing that either I haven't been paying enough attentional (highly probable) or most of the threads and wikis I've read were written before the Phase 3 Clio existed. This is because when people recommend a brake servo from a Clio manufactured 2001 onwards they must mean specifically the Phase 2 up to 2006 and before Renault added steroids to the mix because my nice new Clio servo is, well, the same size as the existing E30 one. NEXT!

Oops:

Nice to see another local turd being built on here

ross_jsy wrote:Nice to see another local turd being built on here

At least yours doesn't look like a turd Ross! Going to try and get my 4-plate out of the E36 casing and into the E30 casing I've finally managed to get hold of thanks to someone on here within the next fortnight so I'll have to give you a shout about the cover plate and speedo ring you're after.

Awesome cheers mate!

Mine really does look like a turd right now, wings off to repair that tin worm in the scuttle

E30 xmas happened when this lot arrived, plus a box of brand-spanking bits from the local stealers a day later:



Managed to find a sump on US eBay what feels like about eight years ago which was meticulously tracked on its voyage across the atlantic thanks to FedEx and USPS. Then it arrived in England, which wasn't too bad until it was passed onto Hermes over here. Mis-delivered, allegedly recovered and even with a phonecall and a couple of emails every day for a week it's still MIA. I'm quietly optimisitc if for no other reason than the integrity of my sanity.

Trying to forget about that, I decided it was time to start getting shit done on Saturday:



Having given up on trying to understand too much about EWS we started snipping and eliminating wires. Basically, it now takes three pairs of hands to start the car using a combination of conventional key turning and hot-wiring through the window. Today I decided that I'm going to splice it into the harness between the E30 and E36 looms when the M52 is sitting in the E30 and glue the chip to the halo before tucking it under the dash in the tidiest way possible. Job done. Hopefully.



This Saturday? Engine out, E36 fragged to oblivion, have a couple of pints before the sun goes down. Optimistic? Probably.

Nice project you have, love the number plates you guy's have over there.

Fal_325i wrote:Nice project you have, love the number plates you guy's have over there.

Cheers! I'm hoping to keep the momentum up and get it on the road and fairly soon.

Sadly, the plates in Guernsey are even better - they're just numbers and they're also allowed to display silver type on a black background regardless of vehicle age.

So, after wrestling an exhaust off whole when the centre section bolts decided to disintegrate enough to stop me removing them but not enough to make splitting the exhaust possible and spilling a mix of petrol, coolant and PAS fluid on the garage floor we got the M52 out in one piece without breaking anything. Not one pipe or cable was left connected. Pats on the back all around.



The dual-mass flywheel has seen better days so I'm considering a lightweight S5X one as a replacement but know somebody who has a decent dual-mass sitting in his shed collecting dust so might put that in for now. I don't want to regret not going for it whilst the engine is out though. We'll see...

With everything on the stand it was time to collect the E30 from mine...



Luckily, one of the lads brought this along which made life easier:



Time to get her pushed in and have a bit of a tidy up. You know you're balls deep into a project when you have this much crap inside a garage that isn't yours as well as a car parked outside packed in pieces and full of bits. Must photograph and sell some stuff this week. Anyone after a small case E30 diff or some E36 spares?!





We were optimistically going to swap the sump over (it took less time for it to get from California to Jersey harbour than it did to get from Jersey harbour to my house, which is no more than a mile away - cheers for that Hermes) but it was getting late so we had a cider instead. I've decided to take a day off this week to try and get the engine bay in the E30 fully stripped, cleaned off and painted ahead of the weekend so we can try and drop the engine and gearbox in and get the new front end built up and fitted with the Z3 rack and Corsa linkage. Then the wiring fun can begin.

Just use a lightened m20 fly/clutch/starter

ross_jsy wrote:Just use a lightened m20 fly/clutch/starter

I'm trying to future proof things mate, but it seems a bit counterproductive buying an M20 flywheel, clutch and starter motor when I can either just buy an S5X single mass flywheel that'll go straight in with what I've already got for not too much difference in price.

It's said that a picture paints a thousand words, so here are about a thousand pictures. Everybody loves pictures. Yesterday we managed to get a couple of jobs done...

Front end panels and trim stripped:



Goodbye dogging old E30 suspension, arms and steering rack:



Cleaned and degreased the engine bay. Gunk is incredible, but even thinners couldn't remove some of the 23 year old yellowed lacquer that the local stealers decided, in their infinite wisdom, to soak brand new BMW engine bays in during the mid nineties:



So this happened:



Much better:



Hello new Lemforder arms, Powerflex eccentric bushes, E36 Billies (a temporary measure so that the car can roll in and out of the garage until the coilovers arrive), 328i brakes and calipers, brand new tie rods and track rod ends and the Z3 steering rack (still needs a spacer machining or a trillion washers and the Corsa linkage building up). I reckon the BBS RC041s are going to look better than expected when it's all finished too:



Shed tidied and E30 tucked back inside for the night:



Just a couple of jobs to tidy up now before this goes in, hopefully tomorrow:

Looking sweeeet mate! I am fooked today and I only did half a day. You must be a right state!

Good nights sleep tonight then on with the engine fitting!!!

Tris wrote:Looking sweeeet mate! I am fooked today and I only did half a day. You must be a right state!

Good nights sleep tonight then on with the engine fitting!!!

Yeah I'm feeling it a bit today mate, I think Ben pulled the short straw wrestling the E36 by the sound of things though!

See you bright and early and with any luck I'll have that sump on by the time you get back. Yep, still got some optimism left!

Nice project you got there! Why didn't you remove the coil pack brackets before paint?

Your right we all love pics, keep them coming!

Jozi wrote:Nice project you got there! Why didn't you remove the coil pack brackets before paint?

Thanks Jozi! Also, good question... Admittedly we did stare at them on Thursday afternoon and it had been so long since the M42 came out that I'd forgotten what went there originally. Eventually we agreed that it must have been for the header tank and decided to keep them so that I've got somewhere to mount the header when I eventually upgrade to a Mishimoto rad but now you've pointed out what they actually are and I've done some Googling I realise that people generally site the header tank in the battery tray so thank you for pointing that out - they're now gone!





Alas, the M52 is still sitting on the stand but I've swapped the sump and pickup, added a few dabs of silicon, positioned a new gasket and torqued up all of the bolts, losing only one of them to the cover on top of the inlet manifold (as the engine was upside down at the time).



We also got a few silly little time consuming jobs where you say words that you try to avoid saying in the presence of the fairer sex at the top of your voice quite frequently, you know the ones; removing 20+ year old throttle cables through the bulkhead and fitting the new ones, fitting a longer pipe to the clutch master cylinder cramped under the dash with your elbows being grated by the floor mats that you haven't removed not being able to see the bolts you're supposed to be unfastening/fastening (and don't even get me started on removing the old pipe), that sort of thing.

The steering rack is now also spaced perfectly thanks to a generous handful of M10 washers (completely didn't consider that we'll need to fit the new steering linkage first though, standard idiocy there) and the engine mounts in place to (hopefully) receive the M52 sometime soon.



Tris also knocked me up a braided line for the clutch slave cylinder and removed the CDV from the line taken from the 328i. Cheers for that mate!

appletree wrote:Your right we all love pics, keep them coming!

I'll try my best! Here's one of the interior which, along with the entire bodyshell not having been devoured by tinworm was another selling point when I went to see the car. The M-tech 1 wheel could do with a re-trim though, not sure if I'll keep that as much as I do like it.

Could have given you some machined spacers I had spare for the rack but donated them to Sean's project a few months ago.

Nice progress! Want to come help me pull the box?

Monday off work + 3 pairs of hands = a much heavier E30.

PAS pipes from the E36 fitted to the Z3 rack including small bracket made to attach front side hoses to fixing point and after a lot of head scratching, tapping, vice squeezing, winding and pressing back and forth and one knackered set of roller bearings in the dismantled and reassembled UJ we nailed it (cheers Tris!) getting the Corsa linkage in. Oh, and some drilling too.



The main event (eventually, after a bit of fiddling with engine mount positioning...). It's a good job we had the use of a gigantic engine crane:







Simple as that.



EXHAUST QUESTION FOR ALL YOU M52 SWAPPERS!
I seem to read everywhere that it's the rearmost manifold that needs loads of chopping and welding when you use the standard M52 ones, but my rear one clears everything (including the steering linkage without any modification to the manifold, surprisingly) absolutely fine. It's the front one that's going to need a bit of fettling.

What have you done with yours? Adjusted it to suit a 325i system, full custom or a stunning bodge? In the interest of futureproofing, I had originally intended to use the better flowing S54 manifolds I've been donated but have since been rightly informed by a very knowledgeable friend that they won't bolt on to an M52. Proper facepalm moment there. As I won't be keeping the M52 forever I'm reluctant to buy a fancy system (from Ergen, for instance) just yet.

Any thoughts or suggestions? I've a feeling it's going to end up being a lot of hacksaw and MIG action.

I got a modified manifold from DanThe on here and I'm mating it up to a e30 M3 centre and back box. Generally the 325 exhaust is considered restrictive (Cook still got good power though with his) and most go for a pair of 50mm pipes, which is what the M3 came with.

I've messaged you on Facebook Russ. Check the for sale section, there is a chap selling new DanThe manifolds.

I don't know if it will affect the engine alignment causing the exhaust problems, and doubt it will, but you have used the wrong mounts:

http://www.e30zone.net/modules.php?name ... c&t=247432

Jozi wrote:I got a modified manifold from DanThe on here and I'm mating it up to a e30 M3 centre and back box. Generally the 325 exhaust is considered restrictive (Cook still got good power though with his) and most go for a pair of 50mm pipes, which is what the M3 came with.

Thanks for the info about the pipe bore Jozi, I'd rather it not be too restrictive! I've seen the DanThe pipes and they do look lovely.

ross_jsy wrote:I've messaged you on Facebook Russ. Check the for sale section, there is a chap selling new DanThe manifolds.

I don't know if it will affect the engine alignment causing the exhaust problems, and doubt it will, but you have used the wrong mounts:

http://www.e30zone.net/modules.php?name ... c&t=247432

Cheers Ross, will check that out. I confident that I haven't used the wrong mounts though, they're the same as the non-cylindrical E28 M5 ones in the link you provided there except minus the M-tax - loads of people in the US have happily used them so I'm pretty confident they're fine. It just fouls on the rack at the front, but looking at DanThe's modified pipe offerings it seems the kink in the front header would probably just about do the trick in any case.

Either way, we'll soon see if the engine isn't sitting correctly when the LSD gets built into the new casing and I try to bolt the prop up!

In other news, braided brake lines and fittings arrived in the post this morning and I've ordered the motherlode of heat shrink so if that arrives before the weekend I'll try and get it wired up.

Those mounts will be fine for a few years, when they do fail though they just fall apart very quickly

DanThe wrote:Those mounts will be fine for a few years, when they do fail though they just fall apart very quickly

I'm not planning on having the M52 in there for much longer than that but will keep an eye on them...

This is a great read. Good effort.
I am looking at doing the same type of swap so will be watching this very carefully.

natdawson wrote:This is a great read. Good effort.
I am looking at doing the same type of swap so will be watching this very carefully.

Thanks! I'll keep the photos and updates coming but didn't have much time to get things done over the weekend. With any luck we should have it running properly and moving under its own steam by the end of the month. He says.

So, I started attacking the wiring this weekend after managing to tick off a few smaller jobs and start trying to get my head around it all on Thursday evening. Rather than try making an X20-C101 adapter harness after I saw how little space there is to play with behind the plastic cover at the back of the engine bay I cracked and decided that if it's good enough for 90% of E30 owners it'll be good enough for me. Yep, out came the side-cutters and off came the X20.

Before all of that happened though, I decided to shorten and tidy up the EWS wiring, break open a key to retrieve the chip and used a liberal amount of glue to attach it to the halo before using a bit of trusty double sided tape to attach it to the underside of the ECU cradle. Which lasted about 12 minutes.





Then came the science bit:







We were about to hook up the fuel lines, double check everything and temporarily wire in the ground, live and crank wires for the EWS module now tucked under the dash to check that it'll actually work but realised that we were starting to rush things and that it was probably better to enjoy a cold one before the sun disappeared and crack on again next week than set the garage alight / fry the ECU / something else fairly terrible.



In other news, at least one of my friends is an absolute clown and rigged me up this beauty as a surprise. Nice.

Im not sure where it is in danthe thread but if you remove some plastic around the ignition you can manage to fit the ews ring there. Just need a key then that can accept the chip, thats the plan for mine anyway.

I wasnt ballsy enough to do the wiring and went with a loom from danthe on here

I'm not sure whether my ballsiness tackling the wiring will pay off but we'll soon see... I'm going to dig out a couple of fire extinguishers just in case!

I've seen examples of the halo fitted to an E30 ignition barrel and it did look nice but if I recall correctly there is a bit of cutting necessary to the column which isn't ideal given how much E30 parts set you back these days! I figured being able to get rid of the lot when I upgrade the engine in a year or so (that's the plan, anyway) could be an advantage. I'm just hoping I've managed to connect it all up correctly!

How do you find the power delivery in yours Jozi? I have no idea what to expect from it so I'm trying to keep expectations low (but feel free to tell me it's brilliant, if it is!)

I wish i knew, im a good few steps behind you and thatsbeven before thebengine goes in and i can drive it. The only comparison I have is with a alpina c2 2.7 that i drove back to back with a m52 with to short a diff and in needbof suspension sorting, it felt quicker though!

You are right, some cutting os rrquired. I have a spare cowling for if it goes wrong I can use the other one.

I've just had a scan of your build thread and you really aren't doing things by halves! Top work. That'll be me in about 5 years I think, depending on how well this all goes getting mine back on the road again. Have you got a timeframe in mind for completing yours?

I've been too scared to take the carpet up but am going to have to soon to relocate the battery into the boot. I've got a feeling I'll be hanging it out to dry for a few days and cracking out the flappy pads and a grinder. Not looking forward to that one, although she looks solid underneath.

Thanks Russ, i meant to reply or maybe i did, crappy internet at work.

I had hoped it was finished by now, never wanted it to go on for 3+ years, it got slightly out of handy if im honest.

No point putting it of if theres rust there it will get worse but im sure you know this already

Hey Russ did you go with the single mass flywheel in the end? If so do you have the old dual mass knocking around? Need to lock my crank to undo the crank bolt and m20 fly's don't have the provision for a locking stud