For a while now I’ve wanted to combine my 2 favourite BMW things, a BMW E30 and an E36 M3 S50B32 engine.
So I started looking for an E30”¦
I searched the usual places and enquired about a few, but then one came up for sale on ebay. I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it. It was more than want I wanted to pay for a shell, but I knew in the long run it make things a whole lot easier because it was so clean and tidy.
It’s a late 91 J reg 320i SE 2dr in Calypso Red. It has 129k miles, a pile of history and is in generally mint condition for its age. It was originally supplied by Synter Nottingham and even has the original Sytner tax disc holder and rear window sticker!
Excuse, the poor photos, but hopefully you can tell its a nice one. Its now sitting in my garage over the winter keeping dry.
I have it all pretty much in my head where I want to go with it and I how I want it look, so hopefully you will see progress of this.
I’ve always liked the 318is check interior, I think it looks really retro and suits the car perfect.
So I started to look for a set, but they had to perfect as the current interior is immaculate. So I managed to find a spotless set and a deal was done with the seller. I’ll get a pic up of these later.
Its going to have a full five stud set up, so moving from 4x100 to 5x120. I’ll be using E36 M3 Evo hubs, wishbones etc and hopefully a complete Z3m rear axle (If you know of one for sale anywhere, please contact me!!), if not the e36 compact axle.
So on the basis of this, I parted with the mint original 15inch BBS alloys and the buyer gave me his set of steels, which has made the poor girl, look a bit sorry for herself! Its amazing what wheels do to car.
Poor thing
So onto the donor car”¦
I’ve owned a few of these cars both 3.0 and 3.2, so lucky for me I know what to look for. I found one on Autotrader that I liked the sound off and the seller was saying the right things that I wanted to hear, so made a trip to Kingston and a deal was done with the owner.
It’s a 97 Evo. Its come with a few goodies as well which was a bonus. Its been remapped by Evolve-S, has Evo Sport pullies, Active Autowerke Induction kit and Eisenmann exhaust. The remap resulted in 325bhp and 280 Ib/ft torque. Yes the standard power is 321bhp, but these engines never produce that, just like E46 m3’s never produce 346bhp on the rollers. So I’m pretty happy with that and its def the quickest Evo I’ve driven. Its had the vanos solenoids recently replaced, valve clearances just checked and adjusted and the amount of paperwork with the car is unreal, its been properly maintained and previous owner owned it for 6 years. Fingers crossed I can get the AA kit and Eisenmann exhaust onto the E30 as the sound is awesome.
Here’s a pic
The best thing about it in my eyes, is that is has 129k miles on it, so exactly the same mileage as the E30!! (Small things please simple people). It was obviously meant to be!!
I used the car for a month just to make sure I was happy that it was a good engine. I done a track day at Brands Hatch and 2 drift days and the car acted flawlessly, in fact it was so good, that I almost cancelled the E30 build!
So I’ve started to buy a few things”¦.
E36 328 propshaft (will be using a M3 3.0 5 speed gearbox, not the Evo 6 speed)
E34 525 M50 Sump
An E34 525 sport LSD with 3:45 ratio, so will be using the CWP to go into the E30 casing. Was tempted for a higher ratio, but it will be road car, so not really needed.
Next on the list will be a nice shopping list from BMW. New M50 oil pump, Constant Pressure Valve, new gaskets, LHD water pipe SA air pump blanking plate etc. Also got some ARP bolts to fit. Then get the sump baffled and get all this fitted.
Just bought some new wheels for it, can’t wait to get them on.
Thats it for now, just got a ton of things to buy for it before it gets put together at the end of Feb. AKG mounts ordered, also going to get the treehouse eyeballs and also polybush the rear axle, when i get it.
!
