The 318is

[Jorge]

Haha oh fuck, this is one sweet E30. Never seen one sitting so low, but look so good at the same time. You've hit the wheel and tyre combo perfectly on this.

[Zic]

shipping will be about 200 to 300 bucks. ouch.
tho i might wanna keep it, I've heard of a e30 that is stored in a garage, taken apart to 1000bits and is headed to the crusher. i think im gonna go and take a look at it. before it goes away.

[skrapez]

I approve of this build thread <3

[ImAwesome]

this build thread is going to have an interesting/unfortunate update....

[skrapez]

Lol yes. Yes it will.

[Raarasutra]

I don't like hearing 'unfortunate update'... Reminds me of Rusty

[skrapez]

I don't like hearing 'unfortunate update'... Reminds me of Rusty

Not nearly THAT unfortunate. Byron will post once he's back from SOWO tomorrow.

[Sterling_Archer]

i pooed myself.

[Byron]

Or I'll post today and say that I toasted the rod bearings somewhere in NC

[skrapez]

That works too lol

[Byron]

Ok, where did we leave off.

Got my upper pan back. Not the prettiest welds but they're strong.



Much mo clearance



Got more gas for the welder and finished the lower pan



Stock pan. It's had a hard life. I had to drive the car a few times last winter so all the rust used to be bare metal.



This area was taking the hardest hits and was actually worn through a small amount. You can also see all the old oil from my leaking upper pan. The mounts were so dead that the upper pan was held up by the steering rack and it had a hairline crack. I guess we could call this my first cracked oil pan?



My custom poly mounts made by Revshift. These guys ae awesome, I called them up a week before I left for Sowo and gave them the dimensions and they had them to me in 6 days. If you need poly anything, contact them.




Then bam, everything found its way onto the car. The new pan and mounts allowed me to put the spacers on the bottom of my rack so it's almost completely out of the way now. Unfortunately, the old e36 M3 rack and tie rods were toast, so I got an e46 M3 rack and new tie rods to go in. The e46 rack is a huge upgrade from the e36, 50mm per 360 degrees as opposed to 39mm, plus its linear rather than progressive like the old one.



The lower pan was painted with "high heat flat black primer", but it looks pretty blue to these colorblind eyes lol

Everything tucked up all nice and high. You can see the un-smashed corner of the new rack just barely, the same height as the lower pan and subframe.



Another shot



So the car was battle ready. I finished at 9:30pm, cleaned the shop and went home and took a shower, packed, drank a Redbull and was on the road to Georgia by 11. Got pulled over at 11:05 for throwing sparks but got let go, then continued on to try to meet up with the Cruise. I never did catch them, and somewhere in North Carolina the engine started knocking. Mike let me use one of his many AAA accounts to make it the 150 miles I had left to Sowo, and I arrived at the show at midnight the next day. My dad drove down with a trailer and towed me home, and the car has been sitting since. Rather than rebuild the M60, I'm going to swap a 60,000 mile M62 that my friend has in. It's a 4.4 instead of a 4.0, and they tend to dyno at chat the 4.0 makes at the crank.

Unfortunately, I now have no car at all, so I'm going to fix my 540i first since it's an overall more reliable car. This build will hopefully recommence sometime around July.

[E30Jim]

Epic story ! I'd like to ride my E30 as low as yours but with the M50 I think it's impossible without heavy mods.

[trickydik_1]

outstanding build thread, in for more in july...........

[E30Jim]

[MikeG]

quit pickin yer nose