The Adventures of Golden Boy, my Rebound E30

[C2_mad]

to get the arches flat like that, did you have to make some "relief" cuts at all?

[CubbyChowder]

Nice work, I love doing a ton of stuff all at once like that, it's a good feeling. It's gonna feel like a brand new car.

Thanks man I do too, makes a huge difference

to get the arches flat like that, did you have to make some "relief" cuts at all?

I didn't, but I've seen people do that before.

[CubbyChowder]

Got a nice update on Golden Boy.

After rolling the fenders last week, I still had a lengthy to-do list before the car was ready to drive. I was waiting for some parts to arrive in the mail before I could make any more progress since it all had to happen in a specific sequence.

Long story short, the parts ended up taking a couple extra days to arrive and finally showed up at 6:30pm on the day that I had to planned to install everything, so I went straight to the shop and worked until about midnight.

I ordered a new offset E30 CSB and assembled my driveshaft. The front half of a manual driveshaft I had laying around had an E36 CSB installed, and I reused the rear half from the automatic driveshaft. I was a bit nervous about this because I know how touchy driveshafts are, and this one was pieced together from separate cars. I figured it'd be worth it to try it out before shelling out $350 on a new driveshaft.



Once the driveshaft was in, I could install all the heat shields and exhaust system. I painted the Bosal catback with black exhaust paint a few days prior which I think hides it decently. I had to build a new muffler strap hanger thing since my original ones were totally toast. I also put fresh Redline MTL in the Getrag 260 and replaced the diff fluid as well.



Once all of that was buttoned up, all that was really left to do was install the new battery and bleed the brakes/clutch. I had to adjust a few little things here and there in the pedal assembly, slapped the wheels on and lowered it down for the first time. Moment of truth, will it move? I was able to reverse it out of my shop with no problems completely covered in sawdust:




Quickly installed the driver's seat and gave her the ol' 30 second hose down (I was too anxious to test drive it to spend any more time cleaning it). Then came time for the real moment of truth: to see if it drives smoothly through all the gears with no crazy vibrations or rattles and if the brakes work properly. I was all smiles when I went through the gears for the first time and didn't notice any problems, got it up to highway speed and felt zero vibrations from the driveshaft. That was a huge relief. Everything actually felt super solid! So happy.

I drove it around for a little bit and decided to take it down to my dad's house so that we could pressure wash the engine bay from top to bottom. My dad loves to help me work on my cars, and unfortunately he was out of town for the past two weeks while I did all this work on the E30, otherwise he probably would've been there with me nearly every day. He was super excited that everything was working properly and took it for a little test drive. His golden locks were blowing in the wind:



We brought it back and started prepping it for a deep clean:





Then my dad changed his shirt, threw on some Crocs and started getting down to business:



I offered several times to take his spot, he was getting all soaked and greasy from laying down on the ground, I felt bad haha but he really wanted to do it. He's the best. I ended up just snapchatting videos of him the entire time.

It made a huge difference, hard to tell in photos but it is SO much cleaner in there now. Really wish I could've done this before I started this big project, I would've come home way cleaner every night. You can actually see aluminum now, everything was caked in black oil/grease/dirt before:




The intake manifold and valve cover look hideous, but at least they're clean. I'll be doing a big round of maintenance next, so I'll probably take care of that then.

After that I took the long way home, through all the back roads and just thoroughly enjoyed the car. It feels fantastic! Truly, I am so excited on this thing right now.

The CAtuned coil overs feel amazing, very nice and comfortable ride quality. All new OEM rubber bushings provide the fresh and tight feeling I was after and the IE sway bars keep this thing very planted. I think it's the perfect combination of daily drivability and performance for me. I still need to dial in the coil overs after they settle for a bit and take it to get an alignment.

Took it to my favorite park to snap some pics:






Have an appointment to get it smogged later today, so hopefully that goes good.

I'm only having a few small issues to look into, the main one being that one of the brakes seems to whine pretty loud during moderate to hard braking. They all feel like they're working properly, but could it be the drilled and slotted rotor that's creating some noise? It's the rear driver's side.

I need to do some maintenance on this thing now. I want to do a cooling system overhaul, timing belt service and valve adjustment, it needs it badly. The car feels great but I think I'm slightly missing out on some lower end power with this M20, hopefully my tune up will take care of that (I'm open to suggestions/input as well). The plugs, wires, cap/rotor all look new, the previous owner did a lot of maintenance. I'll do a compression test before anything just to see where I'm at.

Thanks for looking!

[cblock406]

Congrats on getting it back on the road...I've been loving this thread! Car is looking great.

[BuFFyZA]

Looking excellent, I hope the smog test works out and all is cool!

[readfrost]

Awesome work on the brakes and manual swap, glad it all came together nicely. Also really loving the fifteen52's on it, something totally different but looks oh so good. Keep it up! This thread has me itching to get back into my bimmer after school finishes in a week.

[C2_mad]

great work...cant wait to see more...

[CubbyChowder]

Thanks everyone. Unfortunately Golden Boy failed miserably at smog today, so that sucked. The tech said it was misfiring. I'll be looking into it sometime later this week, gonna pull the plugs and do a compression test, hoping for the best!

[fackinsteve]

Congratulations on the completed swap! I just did the same to my truck and its an awesome feeling putting it into gear for the first time

[crazylegs]

i love the attention to detail in your builds!

[CubbyChowder]

^^Thanks guys!

Not a lot to report at the moment, Golden Boy has been sitting ever since I adjusted the valves and regapped the spark plugs a few weeks ago. The M20 actually seemed to run worse after adjusting everything to spec. Compression was solid across the board though so that's a good sign.

I got busy with other projects at the shop and was waiting for parts to come in the mail. They finally showed up yesterday, the contents being:



Mostly preventative maintenance that I had planned to do anyways, but a few other odds and ends.
- Timing belt and tensioner (as well as tensioner pin and spring)
- Water pump
- Thermostat
- Both Coolant Temperature Sensors
- 2 Gallons BMW Coolant
- Fuel Filter
- Front Camshaft Seal
- NGK ZGR5A Spark Plugs
- Accelerator Cable

I'm hoping the car will run better after installing everything. If anything, I think the new NGK plugs, coolant temp sensor, thermostat and fuel filter will improve some things. I noticed the car never fully got up to operating temperature, it would always sit well below the halfway mark so that could be a reason why it didn't pass smog.

I would be installing everything today but I'm stuck at home with a pinched nerve in my back, happened a few days ago lifting a new toolbox into my truck. Couldn't have happened at a worse time as I'm scheduled to start a huge 6-8 week project at the shop on Monday, building cabinets and tables out of heavy plywood, yikes. Curious to see how all of this pans out, gonna have to just power through it.

Hopefully I'll have a more positive update next time! Stay tuned.

[DER E30]

I would be installing everything today but I'm stuck at home with a pinched nerve in my back, happened a few days ago lifting a new toolbox into my truck.

Damn man that sucks!!! Get better!

[alexandermjoyce]

This is too fun to read.

[parttimeprojectionist]

awesome work on the rear subframe, really well done!

i can almost guarantee you that the cleaning of the engine is what made you fail smog.
those distributor caps **** water. but also another idea is the you mentioned it wasnt up to temp, definitely need to get it to runnning temp before smog. fix that for sure tstat and pump are a great place to start.
my plan of attack for smog has been this.

1.run a can of seafoam thru the top of the motor-i mean like T a vacuum line in and suck it into the intake while its up to running temp and then run it til it stops smoking. you run a can thru the gas tank as well to try and clean the injectors but run the tank to almost empty and refiil before resmog.

2.change oil. and plugs, the old oil can get contaminated with gasoline from the cold start injectors and the fumes fuck with emissions

3. schedule smog-do not just show up! drive the ever living piss out of it to get the cat as hot as possible and drop it off right when your appt time is.

4. pray to the flying spaghetti monster that shit passes.

-ramen

[CubbyChowder]

Just realized I haven't been updating this thread so I'll pull all my progress from my R3vlimited thread in one post.

Long story short, the motor wasn't running right and I tried troubleshooting and replacing a few different things to no avail. Turns out my camshaft is totally shot and is the reason my car was misfiring and not passing smog. I wish I would've checked the cam before I did all that extra work (new timing belt, water pump, coolant temp sensors, new injectors, fuel filters etc) but I guess it's all part of the learning process. It's not a total waste though, I'll be able to reuse all that stuff on my new motor, which brings me to my next point.

After considering my options and pricing things out, I decided against rebuilding the cylinder head and instead chose to swap in a new motor altogether. I started browsing around the day I discovered the cam damage and happened to land upon a complete M20 and g260 with 140k pulled from an '87 325is. A fellow r3vlimited member had it posted in the classifieds, he is up in Yuba City which is about 6 hours north of me. I contacted him and he was very detailed with his responses and took a ton of pictures and gave me a lot of info regarding the setup, which was very much appreciated. He pulled it to S50 swap his E30. I felt comfortable with it and decided to take the plunge. He even offered to meet me an hour south of him in Sacramento to help shave a few hours off of my drive, which was awesome.

I left SLO at 5am since I had a long day of driving ahead of me. A smart person would take their daily driver work truck to pick up a greasy engine/trans. I, on the other hand, decided to leave my truck at home and take my girlfriend's gold Camry that we call Dale. Dale only has 40k original miles and is being put up for sale very soon, so it was the smart thing to do. All about that sweet comfort baby.

We met up and stuffed the M20 in Dale's trunk in a Starbucks parking lot:



After a long but productive 13 hour day on the road, I arrived back at my shop and had no way of removing the M20 out of Dale, so I took my truck to my buddy's house to borrow his hoist and stand, and before long had it out.



After this, several weeks went by with no progress, but I was getting super eager to work on the car and recently set some time apart and began disassembling the new M20 in prep for Golden Boy's heart transplant.



As expected, everything was covered in years of grime and needed a thorough cleaning. Upon removing the intake manifold, I noticed that all the intake valves and valve guides seemed to be very clean, which leads me to believe that this head has been rebuilt in the past at some point.



When I removed the water pump there was all kinds of flaky and chunky stuff in there, I think someone in the past used a stop leak of some sort. I'm gonna do a serious coolant flush once the motor is in the car and running.



After some time with a pressure washer, the M20 is looking much cleaner. I still want to clean a few areas more thoroughly but this is a huge improvement so far:



Ordered a bunch of gaskets and stuff so that I can start reassembling things.

Also last week I was getting super anxious to work on Golden Boy so on a whim one day I tackled my non functional central locking issue, which ended up being a failed solder in the control unit (common problem). Fixed that and everything works as it should again. Small victory :

That's all for now. My goal is to have the new motor in and have Golden Boy smogged and registered before I leave for Switzerland in late December. Stay tuned!