project #2. bmw e21 build thread

[1badg35]

Wow just saw your thread and it looks damn good.

I really wish we could have a pair of euro bumpers sitting in the garage to put on her. But we will figure something out for the time being

[1badg35]

so, lots lately. pics to come soon.

trying to get this thing done for staggered, and so far not too bad. the air build is about 50% done, and we started sunday morning. during the week is literally 8pm-10pm, so not a ton of time to work, but we will see what happens.

lets see how low we can get this....

[E21uro]

in for pics!>!>!>!

[1badg35]

oh man

[E21uro]

finally id been waiting for updates haha. car looks amazing more pics

[1badg35]

more crappy cell pics for now. dont mind how fllthy the car is, and its also not all the way down. the front is sitting on wood and the rear diff is also on a piece of wood. probably another 3/4" to 1" lower when bottomed out

[jlaffo91]

noticed that those wheels are 5 stud. how did you convert from 4 to 5? looking at doing for my e21 and just getting a range of ideas.

[chriskbmx]

Wow just saw your thread and it looks damn good.

I really wish we could have a pair of euro bumpers sitting in the garage to put on her. But we will figure something out for the time being

i kno a guy that has the rear for like 75 buck. its not in great condition but its all there if your interested

[chriskbmx]

noticed that those wheels are 5 stud. how did you convert from 4 to 5? looking at doing for my e21 and just getting a range of ideas.

there is a few ways to do the 5 lug swap. you can use e12 hubs front or back. or do what i plan on doing and useing an e28 rear beam in the e21 and use e12 front hubs. the reason im going with the e28 rear is so i can use the bigger diff and i get bigger disk brakes and more wheel selection the only down side to doing the e28 is it takes so fab. u have to narrow each side 20mm and its still 20mm a side wider that stock. u also run into exhaust routing problems but it can be done

[1badg35]

Sent a pm about the rear bumper.

In this case we are using adapters, but there are lots of ways to make it a 5 lug car.
Adapters helped here as we needed to make this set a bit more aggressive anyway. They don't make larger lips for this particular set, and I wasnt in the mood to have them produced

[zxert]

Old BMW love. Very excited for this.

I'd love to have one of these turbo'd running on E85. That would be nuts.

[TheNeek]

Rad


Me 3 on the air ride.

[SOURCEB5]

So finally I'll start taking over the thread, slowly but surely. As you can see the suspension is and the car is sitting perfectly in the rear... more pictures to come. The front however needs to more work. Currently the rear almost touches frame... About half inch shy due to the fact that the rear wheels are hitting the fenders and bag assembly when aired out... 1/2 inch tho is okay in my book.

As for the fronts, the lower control arm is getting hung up on the crossmember. I will be drawing up some ideas to extend the crossmember to remount the lower control arm. This will take some time. I will post some good shots from this weekend... Now to finish up the rest of the wiring and front end head lights. I pulled the whole front setup to fix some things up, change some colors and rewire the whole front end. While the headlights were off I almost fell in love with how aggressive it looked, but of course we kinda need head lights....

More pictures of that to come.

[cruiserboy]

Rad


Me 3 on the air ride.

Is your car on air in the rolling shot in the FB page of S|W ?

By the way, glad to know that you are on air Nick! (please update your topic, I want to see some pics, your car is just amazing !)

Too bad, we can't have a photoshoot of both the 3 E21 on air.
(to my knowledge, there are also 2 others on Air : a lime green from Belgium on 17" RS and green one but dark from a nordic country but which is not so beautiful)

[1badg35]

If I am correct, Nics car is in process with regard to being on air. All of the previous pictures were coilovers.

All is good with the air, checking for leaks at this point and putting back the interior. Joey will likely post up some pictures I took on Saturday of it. A little quick video too.

now to figure out how to get the front lower. a few of us have been discussing it, and we will come up with something son enough. What we do know now is that the steering rack is not an issue, but the lower control arm in the culprit.. need to look into notching techniques or possibly spacing the inner portion of the control arm so that it allows the car to go lower before binding on the frame