Henna Red 323i

[kdevitt]

Guys name is Michael Burke - website is vapourblast.ie

Tell him I sent you his way - he'll double the price for you

[kdevitt]

Nice to have a pretty major update today -

Few more parts ordered, thankfully most of the parts ordering is complete now. Needed a new temp sender for clocks - single pin as opposed to double pin used in E34.





Dave wasn't totally happy with the positioning of the gear lever -



So a bit of cutting and welding required - took about 15mm out -



Sitting much more central now -



Dave also shortened the rod to have the lever sitting in the right place in neutral



Had to wire up a plug for the reverse lights. Back to the wiring diagrams again -



Looks great now - and also means the new lever and gaiter are in place. Bought this from BMW a while back - its the single piece lever and gaiter.



Had a problem where my shell had no tangs for the back gear linkage mount. Dave cut a lump out of a shell he had -



Fitted in place with some rivets -





Powersteering pump fitted -



Got a clutch reservoir bracket



Cleaned up and painted -



New bottle in place -



Coil has been relocated now too



Servo vacuum pipes made up and fitted -



Ran a new cable in to power the relays which are normally in the engine bay in an E30 but I put them under the dash for tidiness





Not a whole lot left to do now - even turned over at the first attempt

[youtube][/youtube]

[kdevitt]

Pipe joiner arrived from eBay -



All the water pipes were made up and fitted -



Temperature switch for the electric fan was fitted -



Engine was then started up and run up to operating temperature - all gauges working fine now too



Angle torqued the head bolts -



New rocker cover fitted up -



Airbox back on then - Dave still needs to make up a bracket for this.



Turns out a brand new airbox from BMW is reasonable enough - so thats gone onto the shopping list.

[bss325i]

Nice progress.

[kdevitt]

Electric fan and some tidying done today -

There was a spare relay base in the fuse box so decided to use that instead of having an untidy relay in behind the headlights.



Got an old fuse box to rob the connectors for the relay and fuse 18 that is going to be used for fan power





Made up a loom to connect to fuse box,fan and temp switch in rad, this was wired into the fuse box.



Fan connection from loom



New relay in place, fuse 18 is for fan power





Reused some old engine connectors to keep it factory looking



Fan in place and is working fine. Used a 91 deg temp sensor though, so the temp gauge is at 3/4 before it kicks in, so am going to replace with an 80 deg one.



Made up a bracket for the airbox - will be tidied up when the car is in for its respray



Bit of cleaning done - not sure I need that new airbox after all.

[kdevitt]

Most of the big work is done now - so lots of small bits to do.

Dave flushed out the brake fluid and refilled. It appears someone had put Strongbow in there -



Extended the wiring to exp tank level sensor as mine was on the other side



New clutch pipe collected - its the small bits like this that drive the cost up. Small bits like this, and EUR500 oil pumps.



Finally, the engine wiring as tidied up and the diagnostics plug was mounted.

[ricey46]

Nice M30 build, looks fantastic in there. Nice work

[Speedtouch]

Fuse 21 (sixth one in from bottom left) appears to be blown.

http://www.e30zone.net/e30zonewiki/index.php/Fuse_Box

[kdevitt]

Fuse 21 (sixth one in from bottom left) appears to be blown.

http://www.e30zone.net/e30zonewiki/index.php/Fuse_Box

You have successfully passed my blown fuse test

[kdevitt]

Fitted up the ecu and tidied all the wiring under the dash



All back in place -



Centre console all back in - expecting a drive next week.

[Speedtouch]

Fuse 21 (sixth one in from bottom left) appears to be blown.

http://www.e30zone.net/e30zonewiki/index.php/Fuse_Box

You have successfully passed my blown fuse test

Why, thank you. Best of luck with the inaugural drive...

[kdevitt]

It really is becoming a case of tidying up some bits and wrapping the whole thing up now -

A new centre bearing and guibo arrived during the week - more expensive than expected but that's par for the course at this stage. I managed to get an E36 328i prop second hand a week or two back, as luck would have it, the seller lives close to Dave and was able to drop it in.

Centre bearing fitted to the prop -



New pilot bearing fitted. Shows you how things are with this build - have absolutely no recollection of buying that part.



Guibo in place - same part is used on a number of models. Exact same between E34 535i and E36 328i - works out nicely given the box / prop combo.



Prop was fitted up and is perfect. Dave also did some tidying on the headlight wiring - some of this is unfortunately my handywork. In my defence... ok theres no defence.



All soldered up and tesa taped -



Last bits now is to get an exhaust in place. I do plan on going for some BTB kit at a later stage, so the exhaust solution isn't a final one. Using a standard M20 downpipe to mate to the M30 bits, a scorpion stainless steel centre silence, and retaining my Eisenmann rear silencer.

Also need to pick up a medium case diff - preferably 3,46 although looks like a 3,25 is more common. Diff on it is rare enough - small case 3,25 LSD, but it won't last long with the M30 torque.

[kdevitt]

Getting very close now - needed to reduce a pipe down to allow the M20 exhaust my my car to sleeve snugly into the M30 downpipe section -



Exhaust was clamped and welded into place -



Turns out theres a blow from cylinder 4 at the manifold though. So it will all need to come off again to plane the manifold - we're hoping its just sightly warped.

Washer bottle in place. This is an OEM part from an E30 324td. Its secured over a grounding point on the offside turret - which most E30's have. Naturally it was missing on my car. Dave welded in a bolt to replicate the grounding point.



And voila - one washer bottle in place. This has dual pumps, so will allow the headlight washers to still work.

[kdevitt]

I was meant to pop down to see the car today, but had too many meetings on and couldn't. In the meantime, Dave sent me the money shot -



Naturally I haven't driven it - Dave seems happy though. Said gearbox is excellent, perfect throw on the shift, unbelievable torque in 5th too. And thankfully the brakes are working nicely.

He took it out for a spin - ended up meeting this at the dealers by pure chance



What are the odds!!

[kdevitt]

Few more updates from today - loom for the washer bottle -



All plugged in -



Also bought brand new hoses and clips for the headlight washer jets. The crowd who did the respray just cut them out.





Bit more tidying -





Headlight cover in place - needed some modification -



New pipe from radiator to expansion tank -





Other headlight cover in place -



Also needed to relocate the diagnostics plug once more -



And two last gratuitous engine bay shots before the bonnet went back on





And this is not a before picture. Car was out for 30 miles or so - sits pretty well with the new engine in place

[bmandy68]

Epic build chap great colour

[Speedtouch]

Good to see you now have it on the road after all that hard work.

You may as well remove that cambelt sticker from the driver's side suspension turret; chain drive FTW!

[kdevitt]

You may as well remove that cambelt sticker from the driver's side suspension turret; chain drive FTW!

Was just thinking that myself. Engine might be back out again at the turn of the tear for the respray, so will give me a chance to freshen the rest of the bay up.

Bigger problem now is that I'm starting window shopping for more bits and pieces. Must not let wife find out.

[kdevitt]

Finally got down to have a look at the finished result. Took it out to see how it felt -

Hadn't been started in a few days, but still started up straight away. Initial idle was slightly lumpy, but it settled into a nice smooth one pretty rapidly. Pretty strange having a clutch pedal in the car after all these years. Its definitely a heavy clutch - very similar to the E46 M3 I have. Dave told me to keep the revs below 4.5 k, which wasn't an issue.

So first up - the car is crazy quick. You could probably stick it in 5th gear and drive everywhere without switching cogs. At 30mph and 1k revs it produces enough torque to comfortably overtake without changing down a gear. It is ticking over at roughly 2.5k at 70mph, and a throttle blip took it from 60 to 80mph on the private road I was on . It definitely sounds meatier than the M20 which proceeded it, but its not over the top loud. Very happy with that, and bearing in mind that there's almost no interior in it, I'd expect it to be slightly quieter in the cabin once all is finalised.

Not completely sold on the short throw with the E46 M3 shifter in place, so will take a lot of convincing to stop me putting back in an E30 item. I know a lot of people aren't keen, but the long throw on BMW's is something I love.

Seeing the state of the paint job is dragging it all down for me though - so I think that needs action sooner rather than later.

[polsta]

Just awsome !!! Super looking car and build, can't help but also say that gold engine looked the tits and would look marvellous with the red car