Heres my 1989 Facelift 316i
I bought her 22nd September 2012 as a cheap run around whilst I did a bit of work on my 1.8t Passat.
At the time I was looking for a cheap car after totalling my previous run around (1.3 Suzuki swift LOL), and stumbled across a white 318i touring e30, straight away i fell inlove with it and went to view it a couple of days after. Although, being ebay all was not as it seemed!!!
All four arches suffered major rust along with the tailgate, skuttle pan, rear valance, wheel well! it was a let down! so we left empty handed!
That night I returned back to ebay only to find a closer 4 door saloon! I looked at the price and couldnt believe it! £600 classified ad, Mtech2 skirts and spoiler, colour coded bumpers, Strut Brace, All four electric windows, lowered on springs with 14" bbs rz, Dash conversion to the 6 button computer, Toad alarm with remote centeral locking, rear sports seats upgrade, Brand new jvc stereo, two new tyres, 12 months mot, 11 months tax! (£220 alone) as well as more! quickly going through the list of things it soon added up to way over the asking price?
I got straight on the phone and arranged to view the car the weekend coming and that is exactly what i did!
comparing the two cars i'd looked at, this car was a gem! small ammounts of rust under the boot and rear valance but for 24 years old she was mighty fine! considering price.
The guy was a real genuine bloke who told me he'd been trying to shift it for months with no joy in which time it had developed an irratic idle when cold, something which would later spark the entire build I'm currently doing
Small problems aside I couldn't believe it! it came with a box of spare parts! (some I'm still using to this day) 6 e30 hard back books including 2 haynes manuals reciepts adding up to well over £1500 that he had spent alone the list goes on!
Still trying to grasp just how much car I was getting I had no problem handing over the £600 asking price (and still felt asif I had stolen it)
He was happy enough with the price and needed it gone, so I guess we were both winners
After what seemed the shortest 20 mile drive i've ever been on I was home and finding myself trying to come up with any excuse to go out and drive this thing!
I kept the car Basically the way I bought her for a good 3 or 4 months using it daily even for work occasionally, until It really started growing on me, I loved the smooth drive and how the dash curled to face the driver! and even though it was only the 100bhp m40 engine I got my first taste of Rwd car in the wet! I was sold! admittedly the poor little m40 was a bit abused in the process.. haha
Once I decided I was keeping her I started to refurbish the 14' rz's as they were a bit corroded in places, and at the time the cars paint wasn't bothering me so I was looking for something to suit the Weinroot red Bimmer! Eventually decided on a subaru wrx type of gold! I did quite like the idea of gold but mainly I could get the paint cheap!
I started hand sanding the lips on them through about 5 layers of paint :/ to then polish the lips , while I rubbed down the spoked centres until smooth ready for paint. (about 9 hours work went into 1 wheel)
/\/\The 14' rz once the lip was sanded, against my 18" passat Lm Reps/\/\
This was the end result of the first wheel offered up to the old
Also if you look above the N/S High beam you can see the nasty folded dent in the front of bonnet!
I spent a good 5 or 6 nights after work on the wheels only getting two finished, when i bolted them back on the car i decided I didn't like them.. A lovely way to smooth out your finger prints and give yourself arthritis for nothing ey!
With all this being said In the long winter months I actually slid into a curb at low speed and destroyed all my hard work anyway..
/\/\ February this year /\/\
After all the hassle over the wheels I took them off to rethink my idea's as a friend of mine sold me some cheap as chips alloys with legal tyres to slide about on..
The next thing to strike me was an irritating little exhaust rattle, I decided to go against previous thoughts of standard oem rear section and found a nice rolled tip cherry bomb for cheaper than the oem part, as soon as it arrived I got to work replacing a section of rotted exhaust and welded the back box on with my own custom made mounts...
everything went to plan and i cured the rattle, I think.. You see I couldnt actually hear anything over the exhaust when the car was started, a combination of no cat, one mid box and a straight through resonating back box..
Lets just say a month or so of head aches and a £30 fixed penalty fine and I had ripped the bloody thing off for good! (blame it on my age I'm only 20 remember!)
What followed was a nightmare of trying to remake the old mounts I had cut up and re attach the old back box! A hard lesson i've now learnt is not to be a gary boy!
Also bearing in mind I was making do with parts on the bmw as at this time I was still toying with my passat!
I spent the remainder of this year (2012) working on the passat with just a few alterations to the bmw, I took off the old headlight wipers and washer jets, they had never worked for the previous owner so i saw no point in them being there, also decided to take the number plate off which i did quite like! (had it in the window for a month or two)
One day soon after I detected a leaky drum, which resulted in two new cylinders and shoes + painted drums.
I gave it a days prep for winter checking the antifreeze , and sanding off the surface rust from under the boot, with a quick prime to prevent anything getting any worse! (I knew at this point if I kept the car I was going to sort the body work out)
Then Winter hit, after what seemed a really mild wet autumn we were faced with constant days of temperatures reaching -9 and colder!
In which time nothing really happened except ALOT of sliding about everywhere!
I tried to keep the snow and ice off her but it fell every night and I didn't want to risk damaging the paint just to get some icicles off!
This went on for a few months in which the m40 went from bad to worse, the idle was very rough and upon start up with would rev all over the place until warmed up (from 500rpm all the way up to 5000)
Finally the snow cleared but the problems didn't! I replaced numerous vaccum pipes, cleaned the inectors and throttle body, I checked the Throttle position sensor and replaced the Idle control valve but nothing would cure it!
Eventually it developed a misfire and after i purchasing a pressure tester I realised number 4 was down 30 psi, This really was the turning point in the cars life.. It was either sell the car on, scrap it (ford loving dads opinion) or give it a new heart!
Thankfully I chose number 3!
After mix and matching the wheels to stay legal (after the winter destroyed my rear tyres) ;) I still drove the car daily after this, knowing that i was going to replace the engine i saw no harm in doing so! Must have been a rare old site, odd wheels and the idle of a harley! ha ha
Eventually as the weather picked up so did the car! not brilliant, but what i would consider healthy enough to drive daily! and thats exactly what I did! The whole project was put on the back boiler again and simply just enjoyed
Then on one random day after talking to a mate about it, I decided to remove the rear spoiler, to see what it'd look like..
After mixed comments off mates I decided it would look alot better in the original look! (as it only had standard bumper/valance.
/\/\ A mates MINT! E30 m50'd cabby /\/\
Within a day or two the Four Holes from The cheap reproduction tech2 were welded up and in need of some primer! and with this the project had officially started!
I went round the whole car marking out imperfections, sanding down and filling the big ones and smoothing out the boot/surface rust damaged metal under the boot.
Then after a day of rain i got her in the garage and gave her a quick blast of primer to keep everything safe from the elements.
Whilst I was doing this I was on the e30 parts for sale topic during the evenings and soon found a Non Vanos e36 m50 lump for sale from the helpful chap tomae335
After a bit of saving up and a few pm's we set off to yorkshire (a 300 mile round trip) to pick up the e30's new heart.
And just about managed to get the bloody thing in the back of the van!
..to be continued!
Finding a place for all the interior+doors was a nightmare!! 
