Mmmmm... Shiny............

This week has seen some nice advancements! With the 1.8 lifted out and the cambelt and tensioner done on the 2.5, all we are waiting for is the clutch to get the lump in. Otherwise, we have added a clutch pedal, clutch master cylinder and springs in the pedal box, as well as partially fitting the shift lever bar, ball and lever. We also added a nice shiny knob to the lever for kicks.

A short shift kit is being picked to be fitted as the engine is prepped with it's new clutch. Very much a rainy day job like the remaining cleaning, retrofitting and paint surface prepping. On top of that, loads of blackening and cosmetics are in order and thats all before MOT, insurance and taxation come in!

Check out these new shots-

Finally a new update!

After several weeks of assignments and other assorted time wasting activities, we have finally gotten to sink our teeth into the project again. Since our last update, we have installed:
-Sparco racing bucket
-Sparco 4-point harness
-Painted and fitted quick release bonnet (black)
-Painted and fitted wingmirrors (black)
-Painted and fitted front fog light blanks (Black as well)
-partially completed painting the OE 14 inch alloys (again black)

You can see it has really been more about the aesthetics just recently, with mechanical upgrades in the planning and preparation stages.

The engine has arrived, and is pallatised ready to be dropped in. While we were waiting for it to arrive, we dropped the exhaust, the seemingly new autobox driveshaft, disconnected the ancilliaries (bar the steering fluid pump. This saved having to open the steering hydraulic circuit.

While we were there, I started cleaning the bay out and Aitor tidied up the undercarriage heat shielding and inspected the gearbox mount for when we lower the box to remove the engine and box as a unit. Lastly, we need to disengage the autobox control lever linkage, and remove the interior molded fittings ready for the swap to manual.

The remainder of our parts, as well as the engine, all came from Ed at A1 BMW Spares in Woolmer Green. We still need a few goodies before the swap can be completed. Since we are going from Auto to Manual, we need:
-Pedal Box
-Clutch cylinder
-Gear Selector linkages
-Coolant Expansion tank
-Radiator/oil cooler mounts
-Exhaust
-Tachometer Pod

Later we will be receiving our ad pack from A1 BMW (http://www.a1bmwspares.co.uk/), with our stickers and hopefully some other ads to spice up the exterior, motor sport style.

Within two weeks, our new clutch will arrive. It is a stage two carbon kevlar setup from F1 Racing Clutches. At 125 pound delivered, it really is not all that different in price to a standard unit, is good to 258 hp and 250 lb/ft. Along with these parts will come a new timing belt and tensioner, too. Can never be too careful when buying and using a second hand car/engine..!

As a final note, if you know of someone with a suitable engine crane, we would offer our first born to use it for a week to get this swap in and out... we are still looking for one to borrow! Please, anyone?

-Alden

New Pictures

Just a picture update, I am sure you can tell the difference in between the old and new pictures!











Cheers Aitor

Engine Considerations

As you would imagine we don’t plan on keeping the weedy 1.8 engine and automatic transmission. The first thing that was decided was that we would keep it a BMW engined car. BMWs are famous for their smooth and sporty engines and we weren’t about to go against this conventional wisdom, and stick some gutless engine in it. There also isn’t any commonly available high performance engine that is designed for a RWD layout, is cheap and would provide the power we want in our part of the world (England). If we were in the states we would have gone to the nearest junkyard for the biggest V8, and we would have figured something out! So we started thinking about BMW engines, now sadly every engine under the sun has already been put into an E30, with the possible exception of the new 35 diesel and gas engine (the twin turbo ones) and a couple of other which are way out of our price league, so its hard to be original.
We then decided that we wanted a strait six, not only because this is BMW trademark engine but also because they are so smooth (all the primary and secondary forces balance out) and sound beautiful. Then there were several options, the E30 came with a 20i and 25i in our part of the world, now they both are 12 valvers the first with 2 litres of displacement and the second with 2.5. However they had a significant difference in power output, the 20i put out around 125hp and the 25i about 170hp, our 18i has 114hp. So the choice of the 20i fell rather sharply, not only does it only have about 10hp more than the 18i it has a fuel consumption that is nearer to that of the 25i than the 18i. Basically it was the runt of the litter when it comes to engine options in the E30.
We then also thought about the E36s 24 valve inline sixes, these deliver more power up to 200hp depending on the model, are smother and have better driveability. However we decided not to go down this route, as it is too expensive for us. After some initial research we found that we would need, a list as long as your arm of OEM BMW parts for the conversion, a custom made exhaust manifold to clear the steering column (only a problem on RHD cars), and a new brake servo and matching cylinder would be needed as well as the stock one does not clear the 24 valve engine These are only some of the problems we would have to solve, as well as creating a new wiring loom. Now most of this has been documented on various forums so it wouldn’t cause too much of a problem, it’s just that the money involved would be quite high. This and the fact that with a good exhaust manifold, cold air intake a boost in fuel pressure and a remap we could probably gain the same amount of power if not a little more from a 25i for much less, means that this option was dropped.
So for now we have decided that we want a 25i from an E30. Although we have thought of turbo or supercharging our current 18i engine, we did drop this idea rather quickly after we saw the state the engine was in after running it for a bit though. So for now we want the 25i engine and manual transmission, and in the future we are thinking of turbo or supercharging it!

The Suspension

As you have probably noticed by now the car has been lowered. We wanted to do something to the suspension, but we didn’t have that much money. Since the car is old the dampers are shot and the springs are a little saggy. We decided to look for a suspension kit that came with dampers and springs so that we could replace them all in one go. We have a limited budget so coilovers were not an option, after asking around on forums we decided on a kit from JAMEX with four dampers and springs. This kit lowered the car by 60mm at the front and 55mm at the rear. As you can see in the pictures the rear looks nice and low, but the front still looks a little high. This is due to the fact we got the kit for the inline 6 engine and we still have the 4 cylinder in there. Once we swap the engines it should sit right at the front. Changing the suspension is a pretty easy job, except as is always the case on an old car that is covered in dirt and rust, nothing ever works the way you want it. The rear suspension is easy; you just need to remove the damper and the link to the anti-roll bar before trying to compress the spring. The first corner took us 3 hours the other one took us 1, since we already knew how we were going to go about it. The front was a different matter, we removed the strut with the spring and damper in it as this is the easiest way to go about it. After getting a ball joint splitter this was very easy to do. We then quickly disassembled the top of the strut and got the old spring off. At this point we ran into a bit of a problem, we didn’t have the tool to unscrew the top of the strut. We tried using the clamps on the plate and then hammering the clamps but it wouldn’t budge. We tried holding it a vice and using a big adjustable wrench on the plate but it just kept slipping. We also went to our local car parts dealer to see if they might have the strut top removal tool which they sadly didn’t have, however they were mighty helpful and they lent us a wire brush and some really thin penetrating oil to clean up the top and lube it up. By this time we decided to call it quits as it was getting late. A couple of days latter we decided to try again, I had come up with some ideas of what we could do, but Alden came up with the idea we finally used which worked. We ended up taking two clamps which we used to clamp a wrench down onto the strut top. Then we used a massive scaffolding poll which we put onto the wrench and a shorter pole which we fixed to the strut, then as Alden stood on the strut to hold it in place I pulled on the pole… We heard a groan and then a creak, so we looked and we saw we had shifted the top, this had broken the rust, and the top spun out freely!

So quick as a flash we rebuilt the strut and fit it too the car, sadly it was late and we had to leave the other side for the next day. The next day we did the other side in exactly the same fashion which went off without a hitch. Well that was the car lowered then, we have very limited resources qua tools and money but we always manage to come up with ingenious solutions. As you can see from the pictures the car is starting to take shape, as a sneak peak, next time I will talk about the most recent improvements to the interior.

Cheers Aitor

Das Boot

The first thing that we finished (although when you do a project like this nothing is ever finished) was the boot. When we got the car there were no gas struts on the rear boot, and every time we lifted it we almost broke our back. We wanted to try and loose as much weight from the boot as possible. In the vein of that we lost all the trim plastic on the interior, the rear windshield wiper assembly, the exterior plastic trim under the licence plate and the badge ; ) The only things left are the things that are needed to keep the car road legal. We thought about the possibilities of removing the rear screen as that is where most of the weight is, but firstly the shape is to complex to mould in plastic by ourselves (it curves in two axis) and secondly it would not be heated and therefore a little dangerous for everyday use on chilly days. Then as you have probably noticed we painted the boot black. Personally I love it, and I think once it has all the black details on it, it will look pimp.




As you would imagine once the wiper was removed there was a hole left in the glass. Funnily enough one of the bits of the interior fit right into the hole and looked factory fresh.

Light Weight Stage 1

The first thing we did to the car was to reduce its weight. Weight is a key issue with any moving object, lower weight means it is easier to accelerate (F=ma, if the force stays the same and the mass comes down then the acceleration must go up) the car, and it also means that the car will handle better

We started with this is because you can do it for free ;) and because we did not have to wait for any parts to arrive. We started on this immediately, removing as many items which were unnecessary for our purpose. The idea was to keep the car comfortable enough to go down to the shops but not as plush as when BMW delivered it. The first decision we took was to turn it into a 2 seater, when we bought the car it only came with one front driver’s seat. We switched this over to the other side converting it into the co-pilots seat, we have also already sourced a bucket seat and harness for the driver, which still need to be delivered. The only things left in the car now are the upper dash, the front seat and belt, the front door cards, the interior A pillar trim, the steering wheel, the steering column surround and the panel under the steering wheel. The most notable things that are gone are the rear seats, all the carpet, the rear seatbelts, the boot trim, rear door cards, the B and C pillar trim, and anything that was not welded to the car or deemed important. I think that we probably pulled out about 75 kilos worth of stuff.

We did encounter some problems though; we initially did not see how we could remove the upper half of the rear seats. So a, TOP TIP what you have to do is insert a screw driver into the slots on the metal bar that holds the sears to the car. Which will un-hook the seats from the car, and then you can just lift them strait out. Another problem that we encountered was rust in the driver’s foot well, now our car is pretty solid and has very little rust except for this point which is rather annoying because its also a jacking point, so we will have to get this sorted at some point (as it is a possible MOT failure). Another thing we had to do was modify the interior loom ever so slightly, since we got rid of the trim around the gearlever there was no where to put the front electric window switches. We then came up with the idea of relocating them to the dash, we tried fitting one of the buttons into one of the pre-made holes in the dash and it fit! But we ran into a problem the wiring loom as it was too short! So we decided to extend the cables, we used some wires that came from house hold electrical cable and some bullet connectors to extend them. We then had to cut the old loom open lengthen the cable and then re-tape and reroute the loom. You can see the result in the pictures. I will post a picture of the dash as soon as I can get one.

Currently this is all we will do to make the car lighter; the next step will be to remove the black stuff that is glued to the interior of the car (sound deadening?). Another thing that we want to do is replace the passenger’s windows and the windows behind those with Plexiglas or acrylic. We also want to remove the sound deadening material from under the bonnet.
Some pictures of the interior







Cheers Aitor