The can of worms 318i

[Miroteknik]

Long, slow journey to the new wheels.... man.... almost a 318 pace, man....

[Benwalsh91]

YESSSSSSSSSSSS! Love it man! Good work

[Asshole Bicycle]

Thank you for confirming that a beige car with color-matched centers looks awesome.

[JordonVW]

This is what I love about underpowered cars, tune and improve everything properly around them to make them better handling/looking and you'll end up going faster anyway, speed isn't all about power, and it looks great too!

[JRYE30]

Love this! So perfect in every way. Do you have an insta account?

[SaabIsLyfe]

WOW. buumpp

[Byron]

ByzaW is my instagram, it's mostly pictures of sunsets and me playing with animals.

[Byron]

Photobucket is back (for now), so guess it's time to update the thread! Using Flickr this time, lets hope yahoo doesn't die too.

So we left off with cool wheels on an ugly car, so next step was to make the car match the wheels. Step one: strip off the ugly





This exposed issues I knew were there but had been concealed by the ugly. Both corners of the rear valence had rust, and there was some bubbling underneath the trunk gasket. The rest of the car was rust free, so I couldn't have these blemishes tarnishing the rest of the car.









Found a spot behind the taillights too



Stripped back the undercoating and paint to see how bad it really is











Pretty bad. Also, I'm realizing now how much of a pain Flickr is. It uploaded all my photos in random order, so I have to go searching through ~140 photos to get these in chronological order. I'm only going to post major things because of it. I know! Blame Flickr (and photobucket), not me.

So I cut away all the roached metal and attempted to make new pieces to replace it, but quickly came to the conclusion that I'm not that good at metal forming yet, so I went on a hunt for some rust-free corners from junkyard cars. I got one for the passengers side from an 87 vert, but quickly realized that there is a difference between early and late diving board valences. The corner didn't match up perfect, and took quite a bit of work to get lined up. I luckily found another 84 car in a yard for the drivers side, which made work go much faster.













Got it pretty smooth, but not perfect. Nothing a little bit of body filler couldn't fix.

I had ordered some Euro bumpers from ECS Tuning back in February 2017, and they finally showed up around this time (September). I had a friend in the UK send me a new late-early front valence to match, and I was able to get the lip and foglight blanks here through the dealer. There are a bunch of holes left open when converting the rear end to euro, so I went about filling in the holes while I was back here. I think there were 13 total.







Then ground them all down smooth. I also ground and filled the body seam weld between the sides and back of the rear valence, as I wouldn't be using any undercoating after paint.





Then I dropped it off at the bodyshop. I asked them to strip off the rest of the undercoating on the rear valence and to smooth out any issues with the welds. I also had them strip the rocker panel undercoating and repaint it black, touch up a small spot in the passengers front fender, and paint the new front valence. I didn't get pictures, but I had them touch up the spot under the taillight and respray the trunk gutter too.



Dirtiest the car has ever been



Got it back with the front and rear valences done nicely, but the rockers painted tan. Told them they were supposed to be black and they argued with me but agreed to fix it. Left it over there for a few more weeks and nothing got done so I took the car back and did it myself. Once I got it back and into the air, I found that they had crushed the rocker panels in multiple areas and there was overspray over nearly the entire underside. It looked like they tried jacking it on the rocker, it folded, so they moved the jack and tried again, rinse and repeat. My rockers were in perfect shape before, so I was pretty pissed, but I wasn't about to bring it back to them to have them do more damage. I ended up getting them pretty straight again with a hammer and dolly, but if you get down there and look you can still tell.













Got the car all back together with new gaskets and seals and everything, threw the wheels on, and managed to make it to SoCal Vintage the next day







After the Vintage, I started addressing little things that were still wrong with the exterior. The power antenna was broken partway up, so I replaced it with a new Hirschmann. I also put a Continental headunit in at the same time, since my old one had been dead for about 2 years. It looks like an RC car now with the antenna up.







My front windshield trim had already started fading too, so why not use this opportunity to replace the whole windshield? I was able to get one of the last OEM windshields in the country.



need new wiper arms now :facepalm



My car still had the original windsheild, with the original break-in sticker still applied. I tried swapping the sticker onto the new windshield, but it came out like crap. Wouldn't you know, the sticker is still available new from BMW! As soon as I saw it I was like, I have to have it!



That was right after installing it, I managed to get it cleaned up a bit more and smoother.

Going out of order a bit here (thanks Flickr), but while I had the front end apart for the bumpers, I installed the oil cooler I've had sitting around for a while. Used an M3 oil filter housing and had new lines made for it.









Weighed the car to see if early 318's really were as light as I hoped they were



Verdict? Yeah, they're pretty light. I have full interior and 3/4 tank of gas for this.



I'm hoping to be able to get the car down under 2200lbs (1000 kilos) with the addition of some lightweight parts. It'll still have a full interior though.

And now I realize how late it's getting, so I'll leave you with these photos of the car until I can catch us fully up to speed.

[thirtynine]

Absolutely love the simplicity of this. Of course, the work that's gone into it is far from minimal or simple!

[Benwalsh91]

I love this car so much as soon as I decide I don't want an e30 I see a photo of your car and it makes me want an early model more than anything!!

I both love and dislove you for this.

[Byron]

Some of the new parts going in, originally tried out some EZ brand kidneys because I liked the venting inside, but they didn't fit great. First pic is original ones vs the EZ brand, second is EZ brand vs new OEM.





New license plate lights



The front turn signals for the euro bumpers use a 2 pin plug instead of the 3 pin that the US cars use. My kit didn't come with new pigtails, but I was able to modify the original plug to work.



New roundels, again





I had been on the lookout for an e30 M3 rear seat for over a year, but they're nearly impossible to find, and even harder to find one listed for sale that the owner actually wants to sell. I hit up multiple people with for sale ads that would respond with "yeah, I'm not 100% sure I really want to sell it". Finally found one in NY and had it shipped over here. Didn't care about the leather condition, as the interior will be getting redone soon.

Finally out with this hot trash





The early cars rear seats bolt down, as opposed to every other BMW ever that clip in. The M3 seat clips in, so I cut some of the tabs off an e38 parts car we have at work and welded them in.







The seatbelts are just clipped into the seat for now, there is no center mount to bolt them to, so I'll need to drop the subframe and add one in.

Trimmed the front plate mount to look more like a Gruppe A car, and to get more air to the oil cooler



Went to a couple of autocross with the car, was running equal times to a couple s2000 during an SCCA practice day, and got fastest overall at the Speedventures autocross at Bimmerfest



The car handles very neutral, but I feel like I'm losing some front grip due to how low it is. I'm going to try to fit the e36 roll center adjusters that Ground-Control makes.

More power has always been on my to do list, but the engine runs well now so I've been trying to get the rest of the car completely sorted before addressing it. I looked into m10 builds for a bit, and there are people out there making pretty respectable power with them, but I don't think it'll be enough to make for a fun e30, even if it only weighs 2300lbs. I don't like 24v swaps, and I didn't want to do an M60 again, because I like the light front end feeling of the car. S54's make the power I want, but they weigh a ton with their iron block, vanos, and ITB's. If BMW had ever made a 4 cylinder variation of the s54 it would be perfect, but since they didn't I started looking at other manufacturers 4 cylinder options. I was working at an evo shop at the time, so the 4b11t popped up at the top of my list, but as time went on and I kept thinking about it (and watching hours of European hillclimb videos), I decided I really didn't want a turbo engine. I had heard good things about Honda K series, so I started looking into them more and decided that was the engine for me. They're small, there's a ton of aftermarket, they rev high, and they can make crazy NA power. This was like 3 years ago, and I've been planning the swap out since.
Since the K series was only ever mounted transversely, the trans was one of the first things to figure out. I found Ballade Sports first, they make an adapter plate and flywheel to mount the engine to an S2000 6 speed, and they're pretty local. I kept looking up swaps into s2000's, then I found people are putting them into Miatas too. That lead me to Kmiata, who make an adapter plate and flywheel to mount the engine to BMW transmissions! A couple of months after I found them, they started a thread on r3vlimited where they were going to start working on an e30 kit. I had been planning this swap out for a few years, and now before I got off my ass and did it there was going to be an easy way for everyone else to do it. I like being first, so I decided that was the sign I needed to start doing it. The next day after they started their thread, I went out and bought my engine.



Its a k24a2 from a TSX. I chose this one because it's a 2.4l instead of the 2.0, and because the A2 has piston squirters. The k24 head doesn't flow as well as the k20 head though, so I found a k20z1 head on CL and bought that too. Had to disguise it so my boss wouldn't get suspicious.



Weighed the engine to compare it to the m10. A dude on r3v weighed his m10/transmission combo and it was just under 400lbs. Transmissions weigh between 80-100lbs, and the clutch and pressure plate should put the engine and trans combo within 50lbs of the m10.



To compare, I've found weights for the s54 listed at 470lbs without the transmission. I got a g420 from an e46 M3 I was planning on using, but I talked with Kmiata a bit and they said a ZHP 6 speed would be a better fit, so I'll be selling it and getting one of those. I'm still collecting parts for the swap, so I haven't taken the car apart or anything yet. I'll be building the engine a bit too before it goes in, goal is 9500+rpm, 300+whp, and roughly the same weight as before.

[honeybadger]

Thumbs up to you sir. I gave you a follow on instagram too, want to see where this goes...

[mk3f.t.w.]

this k swap is going to be rad

[Benwalsh91]

I land in California in September, I want this to be done so we can go for a tear in it!!

[Byron]

Haha September might be pushing it, I'm hoping for late October/early November to have it all done.