New M52 "Restomod" E30 Project - SPANNER RASH

[spannerrash]

I've been putting this job off for a while, but I've officially fixed the rotten rear battery box on the E30.

I'm actually bloody proud of the result here, it was difficult and time consuming, but well worth the effort.

In the end, cutting the patch to fit accurately turned out to be the hardest part, hours of back and forth, plus plenty of swearing.

Bit of a shaky start with the welding too, but once I'd got into the rythm of it, I ended up with some of my best welds so far, and they cleaned up just fine with tthe flap wheel when all was said and done. I might even be getting the hang of it. No more rusty rear battery box at least.

One thing is for sure though, I need repair panels for the rear wheel arches. There's absolutely no way I'm going to be able to shape my own!

Here's the vid:

[spannerrash]

Another E30 project update, I got that rusty drivers side rear wheel arch replaced with a patch panel I picked up on ebay. Worked out really nicely and the tricks I used to help me do it including the support panels and cutting through both skins at the same time work surprisingly well.



As that was the worst area on the car, I'm really starting to believe I'll get there in the end with the project now, which is a good feeling. Plenty left to do like, cutting that arch off revealed the jacking point in quite a sorry state, so that's next, then I'll do the inner arches on both sides too.

[spannerrash]

Another update, feel like I'm starting to truck along with this rusty rear end now and morale is high following my wheel arch outer skin success. So I went ahead and got that rusty rear jacking point repaired.

Here's the video for that:


I decided to wing it out of sheet steel rather than get some kind ogf replacement sill panel. Hopefully I dont find too much other rust on the sills and regret not doing the whole shebang, but they look pretty decent from what I can see.

The welding I did inside the body to extend that jacking point tower is bloody ugly in hindsight, but its solid, and the more important exterior welds ground down much nicer and I'm sure you'll never tell once all is said and done, especially with the factory stone chip reapplied!

Got the inner arch next and then this drivers side rear wheel arch is a done deal. Can't wait to be putting it back together, although I'm getting head of myself as I've got the other side to sort yet.

[AlexD911]

Nice job mate, im just at the tail end of all the welding on mine currently, sigh of relief to get it out of the way. I saw before you were debating stripping the underside of it, i did it on mine and was happy i did, there was multiple places rust was starting to develop under the sealer that you could not see was bubbled or come through yet. It is a PITA to do though and im glad i had mine on a rotisserie to do it. Im a new welder too, i found it easier to crank up the power & speed slightly so the welds penetrate in more, leaves it flatter and less to grind off, have to be much quicker on the trigger though.

Alex

[spannerrash]

Cheers Alex, I will definitely have a bit more of a go on the underside of the car before I get to the point of reassembly, but I'm still really reluctant to go ahead and strip it all off, not just because its a bloody awful job on the floor, but also I'm worried that disturbing the areas where it's solid might even shorten the cars life.

It doesnt help that I'm already seeing the some of the parts I ground down to bare metal and painted in epoxy primer start to get some orange speckles coming back through. I dont even know how thats possible when its just sat in the garage.. Bloody relentless rust!

I'll have a go at dialling the power up a bit on the welder to get those welds flatter, I've got a lot to learn, thanks for the tip on that. Way too easy to blow holes in this thin stuff though so I'll have to be quick like you say.

[onthames]

Cheers Alex, I will definitely have a bit more of a go on the underside of the car before I get to the point of reassembly, but I'm still really reluctant to go ahead and strip it all off, not just because its a bloody awful job on the floor, but also I'm worried that disturbing the areas where it's solid might even shorten the cars life.

It doesnt help that I'm already seeing the some of the parts I ground down to bare metal and painted in epoxy primer start to get some orange speckles coming back through. I dont even know how thats possible when its just sat in the garage.. Bloody relentless rust!

I'll have a go at dialling the power up a bit on the welder to get those welds flatter, I've got a lot to learn, thanks for the tip on that. Way too easy to blow holes in this thin stuff though so I'll have to be quick like you say.

Dial up the wire speed a tad and leave the corners till last, then for the corners dial it back to what you're using now

[spannerrash]

Nice idea, I'll definitely have a go at that. Cheers

[AlexD911]

Yeah stripping it is not easy, I decided to use an epoxy Primer with rust converter called RC900, totally sealed the underside and took care of any bits that had started but not gone totally rotten. Some pics of it in my build

[spannerrash]

Got the inner arch repair welded in now:


I can't say I was impressed with the inner arch repair panel I picked up on ebay, it was roughly the right shape, but nowhere near as detailed as the external arch repair panels were.. Wasn't quite big enough to cover everything I had to cut out so had to improvise a bit. All worked out in the end though, and it'll be hidden under thick underseal at the end of the day so pretty pleased with the repair.

[AlexD911]

I had the exact same inner arch lips and was equally as impressed as you haha

[ceige85]

They are a total bitch, i ended up cutting the whole inner arch out and doing it that way. Whole thing was a nightmare, still one to go

[BHadley]

The videos on yt are great, thanks for making them

[spannerrash]

The videos on yt are great, thanks for making them

Cheers mate, plenty more to come! Glad you're enjoying them.

[spannerrash]

I ended up finishing all my wheel arch repairs, the one on the passenger side ended up being pretty unpleasant to do simply because of how awkward it was to get in there. I'm glad I didnt damage the external skin in the end though as that's in great condition. It wouldn't have made a good video so I did that off camera.

After that I moved onto undersealing the E30's rear end, and putting cavity wax in too. I ended up using the Dinitrol 447 stuff, and that I did video, here it is:


Pretty happy with how that's come out tto be honest, can't wait to start putting things back together. Hopefully that'll be a pleasure now I've got everything refinished. We'll see!

[BHadley]

Nice, be good to see how they turned out, I have hit a dead end on mine because I wasn’t sure on how to go about it (long term slow burn project it seams!) at least now I can see a relevant video to the model I’m dealing with… I’ll view the vid shortly.. thanks

[spannerrash]

Take your time over it mate, you'll be glad you didn't cut corners in the end. Hope my vids give you some inspiration, even if some of it is more what not to do!

[spannerrash]

We're finally into the reassembly phase for this rear end, which I'm pretty excited about!

That leaky fuel tank which I repaired and refinished ages ago has finally gone back onto the car and looks great, if I do say so myself. I had a bit of a faff taking it on and off because I foolishly did the job in the wrong order. Best to fit the vapor expansion tank that lives in the wheel arch, and route the cables and pipes before fitting the tank up it turns out. Got there in the end.

Quite chuffed with my new filler neck to tank breather hose too, a tight fit but it appears to have worked well.

Anyway, here is the vid if you're following along:

[spannerrash]

Another update on the E30 project, I enlisted the help of the old man again and we got the rear subframe and rear arms back on the car. But it wasn't without it's challenges.

Unfortunately, past me had been a bit of a wally, and my substantial rear arm reinforcing bars were interfering with my fuel filler neck pipe, the soft one that connects between the tank and the neck itself. I had been warned about this much earlier in the project, so it wasn't a total shock, but still, I'd had my fingers crossed for a long time.

So no sooner did I get the parts on than I had to take them back off and get choppy with the angle grinder. I was fuming, but I think in hindsight my reinforcements were massively overkill, so I suppose it turned out to be a good opportunity to correct that. When I got the inspiration to do them, I must've been looking at peoples drift/track builds where they run a fuel cell in the boot, and probably run way more power than an M52 swap.

After I refinished those parts in 2k black yet again, I got them installed once and for all along with the differential, and I must say, its looking pretty damn sweet under the rear end of the car right now.

Anyway, here is the vid:

Up next should be my rear 5 lug swap where I will detail all of the parts I'm using to do it, I think the cheapest/easiest way. Cheers!

[martauto]

Spot on mate, really great work !!!
Do you have a "finish" date??

Mart.

[spannerrash]

Thank you Mart!

I think this is one of those projects thats never really finished, but I am really hoping to get the big stuff done by the end of the year. It'd be great to be enjoying the car properly next summer.

If I can keep up the current level of enthusiam, it might even happen!

[spannerrash]

Another bit of progress to share on the E30 project. Having been a bit unclear about how to do the 5 lug swap on the rear end of the E30, I decided to turn this part of my project into a more informational one, bringing all the info together I'd found out from various sources.

Luckily, everything I researched turned out to be correct and the rear 5 lug swap went together beautifully, as shown in the video:


Really satisfying to see so many different parts of the project come together, such as the brakes that I rebuilt/refinished going on, and the brake shields I modified forever ago going on.

Hopefully this will be useful for anyone looking to do the same conversion. The rear 5 lug conversion is pretty simple once you know the parts to use, and I'm hoping the front will be the same story when I get onto that soon.

One thing I'm not totally clear on is the difference between facelift and prefacelift rear wheel bearings. I read online that they differ, so the E90 hubs can't simply be pressed in to a prefacelift car. But does anyone know the facts on that?

Luckily mine is a facelift so plain sailing for me.

I also mentioned that I think theres an additional 3mm total track width, but thinking about it, that might actually be 6mm (3mm on each side) and I think its just the E90 hubs are a wider shape versus the E30 ones.

I should have measured really, Either way the E38 7 series style 5 wheels with IS23 offset look like they're going to be perfect once the ride height is set properly.

[martauto]

Great work mate, looking forward to the next issue

Mart.

[spannerrash]

Thanks Mart, got to go back and fit a new handbrake setup next which I'll hopefully get to soon. Fed up of using wheel chocks.

[AlexD911]

Some nice progress there, really good result on the rear hub offset and fitment of those wheels. Shame about having to modify the arms, one of my friends is building an M3 Shooting Brake and he mentioned his did not look like it was going to interfere - maybe a slightly touch at maximum travel.

[spannerrash]

Cheers Alex, I was pretty happy about the result after the frustration of discovering the reinforcement bar issue. That's just life I guess when you're doing custom things.

I'm 99.99% sure there's absolutely no way it can rub now, short of the spring falling out altogether anyway.

Your friends project sounds very interesting, you should get him to do a thread.

[spannerrash]

Another update on the E30 project. Those handbrake parts came in so I whipped the wheels/calipers/discs back off to get those fitted up along with new handbrake cables. So its a fully refreshed system which I'm pretty chuffed with. Hopefully the vid will be useful for anyone else refreshing their handbrake. I even used a good tip I got from the wiki (I think) where you can use Lockheed washers to make up for worn out brake shields.



Because I'd made good time I also bled up those new rear calipers with my old man which feel nice and firm, chucked a few litres of fuel in (and I'm pleased to report no leaks!) and fired up the mightly M40B16 4-pot. There was a bit of fiddling here as I was confused about the fuel pump not whirring into life on the key. Turns out the E30's fuel pump doesn't prime like you'd expect, so it only pumps when the engine is turning over. Either that or mine has a problem! Either way, once I'd cranked it over for a while to build pressure and push the air out it sparked into life. You wouldn't know it'd not ran for 18 months really.

I think now the e30 rolls around under it's own power again so is no longer hogging the garage, I'll take the opportunity to give my other car and my daily driver some over due attention. Following that, I'm torn between starting work on the floor pans in the middle of the car, or skipping past those and getting straight to the front wheel wells and front 5-lug swap. We'll see...

[martauto]

Great stuff again !!
Hurray then, get on with it ...............looking forward to the next one mate

Mart.

[spannerrash]

Haha all in good time mate, as they say, Rome wasn't built in a day.

[spannerrash]

I decided to crack on with the front 5-lug swap instead of waiting until I'd finished sorting out the underside. Felt pretty weird putting nice new parts in rusty wheel wells, but having heard a few contrary opinions on whether my plans with the front swap would work, I just had to find out!

Here's the vid:


Stripping the front suspension off was without doubt a pain in the arse, thanks to rust. As always, getting the ball joints out was an absolute mission which required plenty of persuading with the persuader. I also made a right old mess with brake fluid as for some reason I wasnt expecting the entire master cylinder to drain out on me.

The good news however is that the fitment with this method of front 5-lug conversion seems spot on. I actually couldn't ask for better I dont think! It's fender flush which is exactly what I'm going for. I'm resisting the urge to slam the car and drop it down further on its new coilovers, but ultimately I do want the car to blast down a B road brilliantly, it's not a show car, its a fun car! Although when the M52 engine is in I'll no doubt do plenty of experimenting with the HSD coilovers to get them set up spot on.

[AlexD911]

Always worth checking things fit i think mate, can always clean the parts when you get them off for final fitting. Do you know how your setup works in terms of Tie Rod Angle / Clearance. Im led to believe the traditional 5 stud swaps force the tie rods to point quite far forward having an adverse affect on steering at speed, and also with M5X Swaps there is an interference issue with the E34 Sump?

Thanks

[spannerrash]

Interesting point about the tie rod angle, I wasn't aware of this being a big issue. I do think the track rod ends will be further forward at the balljoint with these E36 knuckles installed compared to stock. They've definitely moved, hence the additional toe out I've ended up with having done a quick fit up of the conversion.

I'll definitely have to have a closer look at that. I'm planning to swap to a purple tag steering rack when it all goes back together for a final time, so this is when I'll next investigate what you mentioned with the angle.

And until the M52 is in, I can't be certain whether theres an issue with the E34 sump clearance either. I have heard reports of an issue with that though. I'm sure there will be plenty of problems to solve, but I'm confident I'll get it all figured out in the end, one step at a time.

[spannerrash]

This week I decided to strip off the front end of the E30 and have a closer look at some of the front end damage that I've been aware of but largely ignoring since I bought the car. Here is the vid:


I had no idea how bad it was going to be underneath these bent panels, but again I think I've been really lucky. The chassis looks solid and straight, only the exterior panels look ruined.

Check out the absolutely laughable repair done to that front valance though, what were they thinking?! Whoever did that seems to have made their own life difficult, it would have been easier to do a decent job.

The paint job is also horrendous. I'm no expert, but I'd say your average rattle can job is better. Everywhere that was painted appears to have had some kind of bad paint reaction. Either that or its just flaking off in spots everywhere because they couldn't be arsed to sand prior to paint.

I wonder what year this work was done on the car? Maybe a long time ago and it hasn't aged well.

Nevertheless, the next job to do is to start stripping out the engine bay ready to hoist that M40B16 out. I'll be sad to see it go, but I need to keep pushing forward on the M52 if it's ever going to happen!

[spannerrash]

Well, the big day of engine pulling came and the M40B16 is finally out of the car, along with the gearbox.

Probably the most major job I've ever done, as I've never pulled an engine and gearbox before, other than from a motorbike. A few hiccups along the way, but it really didn't go too badly in the end, although it tdid take hours on end to get done. Luckily the old man was on hand to help. I even included a checklist in the video description for anyone looking to remove their own engine, I didn't find an easy to read list like this when I was preparing to do the job.

Anyway, here's the vid:

I still can't believe those exhaust studs/nuts came off without the need for sawing.

[spannerrash]

Another update on the E30 build. I got time to take out most of the components from the engine bay, and finally removed the sound deadening and heat shielding which was obscuring my view of the fiirewall (bulkhead?).

Knowing that E30s are notorious for rotting around this area, for example where the heater matrix lines come through, or where the steering column comes through, I was dreading what I might find under there. I've generally been lucky with thiis E30 shell up to now, but I knew that could all change here, and what a surprise I had with it!

Here's the vid:


I was hoping to take out all of the electrics from the bay, but I can't for the life of me work out how to disconnect that fuse box, even looking from the other side behind the glove box there seems to be no obvious answer. Anyone know the trick to removing that?

[spannerrash]

I had a bloody awful time underneath the car cleaning 30 years of grime off the floor pan and out of the transmission tunnel, awful job, hated it just as much as when I did the rear! Cleaning the engine bay though was quite theraputic, although the paint is looking extremely tired iin there now the grease is removed.

Having got tthat done, I'm pleasantly surprised by the rust underneath the car, or lack thereof. There's some scabs but nothing that looks too intimidating. The worst part of the front end of this car is certaiinly those pesky front jacking points. They're pretty much falling off!

As you can see in the vid, I took the angle griinder wire brush to the drivers side one, and I'm now left with a huge hole into the cabin, which is pretty scary as I'm quite intimidated by the complexity of these jacking points and a bit worried about whether I'll be able to repair them myself. But I'll 100% have a go, that's what the project is all about!

Anyway, here is the vid:


Looks like the next job is to strip the interior and carpet out of the E30 so I don't set fire to it.