e30 316 rebuild from Finland

[Pazi88]

Last weekend plan was to finally drive the turbo e30. But of course I ran into some problems. The idle was quite rough and there was misfire in higher rpm's. I think that one coil finally broke because there was small problems before and one spark plug was totally black. So only option was to order new set of coils and wait for them to arrive

It also looked that it will be too hot for the coils, because exhaust is so close, so I made quick heat shield from them. And also to prevent valve cover gasket from melting.


And installed:


i also took some pictures with new headlights on and with new fatter rear tires. The rear end is still too high and there is ton of dust on the car.








The white ONE looks like this at the moment:










The rest of the drive shaft is now ready, made from e36 320I and e34 525IA sections:


Hopefully this will hold:


The brake booster is also ready now. made from VW mk3 golf booster with e30 master.

[Dutch]

Nothing better than saying "hopefully this will hold" for a driveshaft! Love both your cars! they are absolutely nuts! This stuff is awesome! And the brown one isn't really a 316 anymore is it really KEEP IT UP!

[Pazi88]

New coils fixed all other problems in engine, but idle is still bad. Or even worse. Otherwise everything works, so here's short test drive after some VE table tuning:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50QnbNE1KKY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50QnbNE1KKY[/ame]

I'm currently running at low boost (0,6 bar or about 9 psi). After I get the idle to work, I will use more boost.

[Shepherd]

Absolutely love these kinda build threads!
Keep up the good work!

[Rav335uk]

Sub'd!

[Pazi88]

Sorry for not posting anything for a while. But now it's finally time for update


I drove the turbo e30 for couple of hundred kilometers, but the engine problems got worse. I diagnosed the problem but everything looked ok, so the problem must be mechanic. I did the compression test and the result was:

1 - 14 bar
2 - 13,6 bar
3 - 14 bar
4 - 14 bar
5 - 9 bar
6 -14 bar

So the number five has lost compression for some reason The intake valves on number five looked quite bad, so we thought that the valves are leaking. So it was time to tear apart the engine again... I took the head of and pistons looked quite good. Only the number five is bit cleaner that the others:


Then I checked the valve leaks and one intake valve on number five was totally toasted and only 5 valves of 24 sealed properly:


It looks like the valve has been hitting the fire ring in the athena cooperring headgasket, and that's why it's leaking:


Here are the intake valves in cylinder number five:


The left one was leaking badly. I stopped working at this point and ordered new gasket for the cooperring (I reused the fire rings) and new head bolts. It was few weeks before summers main event, bimmerparty and I wasn't too worried to get the engine back together before that.

Only few days before the event, I got the parts and started working with the head. I lapped all the leaking valves so they will seal properly and changed new valve seals.


Everything went smoothly and just before I was about to put the head on, I noticed something funny on number five piston. I rotated engine so that pistons 2 and 5 are at highest and the piston 5 was few millimeters lower than piston 2. Blah Only few days to the start of the even and had to take apart the rest of engine also. And out came this:




The number five connecting rod had bent (maybe because of those misfires caused by bad coil). Luckily nothing else was broken and I had one spare set of identical connecting rods, so I just changed the bent one. It was 9 AM when I took that out and I assembled the engine such an hurry that at 4 PM I started the engine Everything worked fine and I just gave the car quick wash and headed to home. Next day I spent tuning the engine and surprisingly it stayed together. So next day I could head to bimmerparty. The charge pipe got loose on the way but I managed to get here and fix the problem before 1/4 mile:




And few pics with my e36:




At the 1/4 mile I had problems with the start because the rear tires were hopping quite badly. But I still managed to run 13,5s with 188 km/h speed:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFX41--JGVU"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFX41--JGVU[/ame]

For now everything has worked and I already need the change the rear tires next I need to raise the boost level and do something for the rear tire hopping:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAu3UntzdXg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAu3UntzdXg[/ame]

[Pazi88]

Then about the white ONE. We assembled rest of the brake system and did new brake lines that were missing. Also installed all the clutch components and modified the getrag gear selector parts to work with the ZF trans. Also added extra long sifter and lines for hydraulic e-brake.


That e-brake cost less than 40 dollars and even seems to work and doesn't leak. After bleeding the brakes and clutch, I started wiring the engine. It was super easy job because I just soldered the round engine harness connector from e34 t the e30 body harness. There was about 5 wires to connect to make everything work. I used the e30 318is cover to mount the connector.


Here is all the engine wires connected, but most of the other stuff is still missing:


For first start we will need fuel of course. So i just made quick and dirty fuel system installation with old exhaust clamps:


The pump is cheap knockoff of bosch 044 and the fuel filter is genuine bosch. The self made gas tank was leaking a bit, so i fixed the leaks and installed it. Also the battery was installed in the trunk.


Then we tackled few problems with leaking power steering. Also the cooler ws leaking and we tried to change the broken end of the cooler. After third try, it was still leaking, so we decided to order new one.


But even with leaking cooler, we tried to start the car. First start is KDFI ECU straight from the box. Only TPS is calibrated. The second is with few adjustments in tunerstudio:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbYayqCRQSs"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbYayqCRQSs[/ame]

After that we finished the engine compartment:


The filter is like that because it's easy to convert to turbo use:


I had old e36 exhaust laying around in our garage, because it didn't fit. So we decided to modify it to fit the e30 chassis:




Great quality from china, because it fitted better to e30 than e36 which it was meant to.

Then some primer to repaired areas:


And the real paint job will be done next winter, so we started putting back rest of the parts, so we could drive this summer:


This was the look, when we tuned the engine few days ago:


Unfortunately we forgot to put oil in the rear diff and it seized up during the engine tuning. Now we need to wait for the new diff to arrive. The new diff has LSD already inside, so it's ready to bolt on.

[m.butcher]

good job! awesome ;-)

[Pazi88]

Few more pictures, I found in the internet:

[Exami]

Oh you blew up both cars... keeps busy it seems..

First thing that popped in my mind when i saw that rod..

[Pazi88]

We got new rear diff with LSD already installed.


Sandblasted, painted, and installed with new oil.

[Nystad]

Good looking e30's!! Love what you did with the rims on the bronze e30, thats something i never seen on a e30! I don't comment much but i got this threat bookmarked, keep up the good work greetings from north Norway!

[Pazi88]

Good looking e30's!! Love what you did with the rims on the bronze e30, thats something i never seen on a e30! I don't comment much but i got this threat bookmarked, keep up the good work greetings from north Norway!

Thanks!

Last weekend we installed the fiberglass arches and did some other tweaks also. Everything is ready for the inspection aside from rear springs. I ordered them with totally wrong stiffness, so those can't handle the weight and rear end is laying on ground. But here is few pics of the "finished" product:






The new diff started leaking because the breather hole was shut:


As you can see nothing really fits and almost everything looks like shit. In addition, the rear wheels are too front in wheel arch and front wheels are too back. But at least we are not afraid to push this to limit, because we don' need to be afraid of damaging anything

On the test drive we got about half of the distance from last time. Now one coil broke and it started running on 5 cylinders. Luckily we had spares and continued tuning fuel maps. Here's short test video after quick tuning:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fst6_6vvEfk"]e30 the ONE test drive (m50b28) - YouTube[/ame]

[loekaaz]

Please don't paint it. It looks raw and awesome <3

[Mehowski]

Oh boy, just read this from start to finish. It took a very long time haha
Amazing build, I love it how subtle the brown one is, absolutely love the interior work too!
And the white one looks like a hell of a fun car to drive.