The Adventures of Golden Boy, my Rebound E30

[CubbyChowder]

^^^ Thanks guys!

Finally have some progress to report regarding Golden Boy!

Today was the big day, The '02 finally got trailered off to it's new home at CAtuned in Sacramento:





With the arrival of Igor and Landan also came the arrival of some goodies for the E30. First off is a new clutch kit for when I manual swap the car (still looking for an M20 flywheel if any of you happen be selling one):



A late model IS front lip (all the clips were included but not pictured), however I am not sure if I will be keeping this. While I plan on doing a plastic bumper swap front and rear, I think I'm going to run the early model IS front air dam, I just love that thing. We'll see what happens though, I'll make the final decision when I'm actually performing the swap:



A new set of IS side skirts. The driver's side fender portion was missing, so they're sending me one in a week or two. No big deal:



And last but not least, I have a set of these arriving in a week or two when they get their newest shipment in. Very excited about these!:




My next plan of action will be to get the E30 up on the lift and start the major suspension rehab. Can't wait!

[Grime]

Please let me know what you think of the coilovers once you've had them for a bit, I'm thinking of getting a set this summer, and I'd be stoked to get some feedback.

[CubbyChowder]

Please let me know what you think of the coilovers once you've had them for a bit, I'm thinking of getting a set this summer, and I'd be stoked to get some feedback.

Will do! I've talked to a few people who run them and so far I've heard nothing but great feedback.

[DUTCHswift]

This thread has turned into This Old House 2.0 and I'm not even mad about it.

[Fleetlin49]

Anything new going on?

[CubbyChowder]

This thread has turned into This Old House 2.0 and I'm not even mad about it.

haha yeah and it's not gonna slow down anytime soon

Anything new going on?

yes, I will have a good update soon!

[theseeker411]

Jesus Christ, I'm so late to the party...

Sad to see the '02 go, but I'm glad it went to the CA Tuned guys. Will you be at their open house this weekend?

Great stuff coming out of your shop man, you and your girlfriend have some serious talent!

[CubbyChowder]

Jesus Christ, I'm so late to the party...

Sad to see the '02 go, but I'm glad it went to the CA Tuned guys. Will you be at their open house this weekend?

Great stuff coming out of your shop man, you and your girlfriend have some serious talent!

Thanks man! Unfortunately I think there's a pretty slim chance that I'll be able to make it up there this weekend. I was kinda hoping to have the E30 farther along by the time the open house came so that I could drive it up but I'm getting a little bit of a late start on it. Still collecting parts for the big suspension rebuild. I do really want to go though, so maybe I'll pull some strings and make it happen even though I can't show up in the E30. You're in SoCal right? You passing through SLO on your way up by any chance?

[theseeker411]

Yup, in SoCal for now. Don't know if I'm coming up through SLO. Hope to see you there man!

[loekaaz]

I was already in an emotional state. This thread isn't helping...

[CubbyChowder]

Just a small update on the E30. It's been a few weeks since I've even sat in the thing and I've been getting really antsy/excited to get started on this build so I opened it up today and decided I was tired of seeing the loose and bulging HVAC panel, so I started taking it apart. This eventually led to me taking the whole center console area apart since I will be 5-speed swapping it very soon and I just wanted to clean it out anyways. It really wasn't all that bad, I've seen way worse. I'm very pleased with how clean this car actually is. I'm sorry for the terrible photos:



Once I had all that apart and organized, I was just starting to get into the swing of it and wanted to keep going, so I decided to take my driver's seat out since it's twisted and pretty torn up:



Regarding the "twist", if you're sitting in it your shoulders don't sit parallel with the steering wheel, the left side is pulled back and is really uncomfortable. You can kind of tell here, it looks more subtle in the photo, in real life it's very noticeable:



I started disassembling the seat trying to find where it was bent or broken, and eventually ended up here haha wasn't necessarily prepared for a full teardown:



Throughout the teardown, I found two culprits as to why the seat was twisting and sagging. One being a missing screw holding the back portion of the seat to the bottom portion. This made it move around a lot:



The next was a broken weld on the knee bolster frame. The whole bolster frame is bent outward and twisted so I'll need to straighten everything back out and weld it back up:




Hopefully those two issues will get the seat sitting straight again, however I feel like I may be missing something. I have a hunch that the backrest portion will still be slightly twisted.

I'm on the hunt for good condition shoulder and knee bolster foam for the driver's seat. The two pieces circled in red below, PM me if you have some!



Tonight I ordered a pair of new vinyl front sport seat skins in pearl beige which should arrive next week sometime, really excited to have new looking seats! Wasn't planning on addressing the seats so early into the build but it just sort of happened that way.

I also ordered new tires the other day and those should be in next week sometime as well.

This car is going to see some big changes in the near future!

[fackinsteve]

Cant wait to see you start going on the suspension man. Looks promising so far

[CubbyChowder]

Cant wait to see you start going on the suspension man. Looks promising so far

I can't wait either! Getting super anxious!

Small update:

Took the rest of the seats out and gave the carpet a quick vacuum. Pretty clean as is but I'll definitely be steam cleaning it before the reupholstered seats go in, which will be right after the suspension overhaul and 5-speed swap:

[pinkboxxjoshua]

Hey man!
Like a lot of other people, I was sad to see the 2002 go. Ive been building mine for about the same amount of time and your build gave me a lot of inspiration!
But I'm stoked to see you still have a presents on Stanceworks with your new E30 build and what you've got going on at your shop!
I hope to be doing something similar over here in the UK soon and its good to see that its going well for you.
Keep up the good work!

[CubbyChowder]

Hey man!
Like a lot of other people, I was sad to see the 2002 go. Ive been building mine for about the same amount of time and your build gave me a lot of inspiration!
But I'm stoked to see you still have a presents on Stanceworks with your new E30 build and what you've got going on at your shop!
I hope to be doing something similar over here in the UK soon and its good to see that its going well for you.
Keep up the good work!

Thanks a lot man!