Bastard Child: 318ti Daily Driver

[bwwaaaa]

So progress has been a lot slower then I had wanted. I was hoping to have this all done in a week, but this has very much been a case of "while I'm in there" and an issue of having time to get the work done. So here's another small update.

I pressed in all the bushings (subframe 12mm risers not pictured as I did those after paint and got lazy with the camera). The trailing arm bushings were the biggest pain in the ass, as we had to rig up a ridiculous device to get the old ones out. It required a 36mm socket, massive c clamp, welding on a nub so the socket didn't slip off, and blasting it with a torch. Other then that it all went in smoothly.





Ignore the nasty trailing arm, I cleaned it up after pressing in the bushings. If you look on the end of the bushing mount, you can see the nub we welded on to hold the socket.



I cleaned up the subframe as best as I could, and sprayed it with some paint that should keep it from rusting anymore. It's far from perfect, but I guess no one will really see it under the car.



Currently I'm waiting on a couple random bits to arrive, and with any luck I'll be able to pick up my coilovers and axles this week. After that I can reassemble the car, get an alignment and focus on some of the cosmetic bits I picked up. Plus I'm just excited to see how this all improves the car.

[bwwaaaa]

So the project took a frustrating turn and I stopped focusing on taking photos to figure out how to get this all done in a timely manner.

I got the whole rear subframe together. E28 LSD in place, with E30 axles. You have to make a small spacer for the ABS sensor. I lucked out in picking up my diff and axles from someone who was going to put them in a ti himself, so he just gave me the spacers.







After that, we put the subframe in the car. Took four of us to get it on, definitely an ordeal.

I managed to score a great deal on some K Sport coilovers (as seen lurking in the above image of the diff). Brand new, nearly half of what I'd pay elsewhere. The pillowball mount was torn on one of the front struts (front hanging on a car with no engine, so after replacing that it was as good as new. We installed new control arms, tie rods, sway bar end links and bolted on the new suspension.

Put it on the ground, and started trying to dial in the ride height. Front hasn't been touched yet, but I'll go lower. Definitely seeing the need for spacers as well.



I'm a little disappointed with how it sits in the rear. This is about as low as I can possible get it to sit. We'll see how it settles, but I'm not sold on the ride height yet.



This is when we ran into issues. We went to do the engine mounts and discovered the engine mount arm on the passenger side was cracked.



I ordered a new set of arms, and we cut out the old one. The bolts were frozen in the block and we needed space to get them out. One of them actually broke in the block and we somehow managed to luck out enough to to get it out by hand.



So now I have the engine mount arm in, go to put in the engine mount itself and discover I received the 6cyl mount instead of the 4cyl. Condor was super helpful and overnighted me the correct set, but it set me back another weekend of work.



In the downtime I've been driving my E30 around (mine is the significantly more beat up one on the right). Since I couldn't finish the ti up this weekend, I decided to scrub it down and go take some photos with my friends. Not strictly related to this thread, but worth sharing.



Today we're going to try to finish up the car. Bleed the brakes, put in the engine mounts and put together the interior. After that it's a matter of getting an alignment and seeing how it settles.

Also talked to the same guy I've been getting ti parts off of during this entire build. I'll be picking up a handful cosmetic parts. Finally I ordered a Magnaflow muffler last night. My stock one is rotten, so it's time to replace that as well.

So progress is coming along, we've been working in the evenings after work, school and so on. Can't wait to get this thing back on the road though.

[bwwaaaa]

So I'm bad at updating things, and I'm bad at remembering to take photos with anything other than my phone. That said progress has been made.



After getting the car back on the ground and adjusting the coilovers, I threw the interior back together. I decided to put some sound deadening in the trunk to help with road noise. It didn't do much to be honest.



Picked up some euro tail lights. Before and after in the shot. I wasn't sure if it was going to look good, but it really helps the car. Also lurking in this shot is the new Magnaflow muffler. Not so happy with that change, it drones way too much.



I then put in some depo glass headlights with yellow angel eyes. They are not wired up yet, as I want to run them on a separate harness.





While doing that I broke the tabs on one of my turn signals, so I figured I may as well swap them over to clear to match the rear of the car.





I changed the body trim to the M sport trim. It's a very subtle change, but there's the before and after. Debating getting rid of the M badge, I'm not particularly a fan of having it on non-M cars. I'll likely replace it with something that says "Touring International".



I then picked up most of a black interior. Still need a lot of the smaller plastic bits before I swap it all, but it's in good shape. The ti seats will go in my E30, as I'll keep the Vaders in my ti.



I also got a sport rear bumper, which needs some love. I do have the lower trim piece, it's just not pictured.



And again, not strictly related to this build but... I picked up another 318ti. This shell has a moulded AC Schnitzer wing in the rear, a shaved engine bay, a M roadster brake booster and some other goodies. Got it for a good price, and it'll be a long term project with some unique touches.

So not the most exciting update, things are finally slowing down with the car. At this point there's two major things left to be done. Black interior swap, and S52 swap. Both of which should happen before the end of the year.

[bwwaaaa]

It's been a while. Mostly because the car broke again, and I stopped taking pictures of fixing it because it wasn't interesting. But here's a short recap on what happened. There will be a wall of text, so I apologize in advance for that.

I did an "aggressive u turn" and suddenly heard a thumping coming from under my car. I stopped right away, and initially thought I broke a CV. I got it towed home from there.



Upon closer inspection, it turns out that the CSB on my driveshaft exploded rather dramatically. My driveshaft was basically swinging around like a jump rope. Initially I was just going to do the driveshaft, but a ZF transmission swap came up for sale cheap. It included the drive shaft, so I thought I may as well do the swap now as I'll need it for the S52 later.

BUT... The driveshaft that came with the ZF was as haggard as mine, and the clutch in the ZF was completely fried. I still bought the whole setup as I'll need it later and it was a screaming deal. But for now it sits in the corner of the shop waiting for some love.

So then naturally I just decided to swap the driveshaft for the time being. No one locally had a used one, and I couldn't repair the CSB as the u joints were destroyed on my original driveshaft. So I had to buy another one.

While taking the exhaust off to get to everything, we discovered someone had pressed in four studs into my header. Because the car originally lived it's life in Minnesota, all four of those studs snapped off. This left me with no other choice then to order a new header and replace it.

You can see my attempts at pushing out the studs. We tried drilling, we tried heating, we even tried an air hammer. They were stuck for good.



While I was waiting for the header to arrive, I decided to take care of some back logged stuff. Remember the mirrors? I sanded them back to color match them.



Had a friend who is a master with a rattle can hit them with a few coats. They are 100% color matched to the car via an Automotive Touchup spray can. It's a little pricey but well worth it.



And then he cleared over the whole thing.



The final product turned out pretty well for a rattle can job. Eventually I plan to have the whole car resprayed, but in the mean time these look just fine. You can also spy the ZF transmission in the back of this photo.



Before, which looked like a wolverine had been gnawing on them.



After, which looks like it belongs on the car.



For the interior, I ordered some M Cloth shift boots. I got these from 2Mshiftboots, and high recommend his work. Matt's a great guy, and I'll soon be ordering more M cloth from him to finish up my interior.



After pulling the old boot off the frame, I hot glued this one on.



Final product.



Rinse, wash, repeat for the ebrake boot.



I also finally got in clear repeaters to finish the amber delete. I never realized that the repeaters I had on the car were upside down. So I corrected that as well.



Here's the corrected product. Ignore the grime on the car, it had been sitting around the shop for a while.



After some struggling and swearing, I got the new header on the car. We bolted everything back together, and got it on the ground. I fired it up, and watched it burn all the PB blaster and oil lingering on the block.



Afterwards I ripped it around town for a while. It's back to where it should be, and I'm so happy to be driving it again. I'll be heading out to Bimmerfest next week, so I'll get some good pictures and such from that trip. After Bimmerfest the real work begins. I still have bodywork, paint, engine swap and more to accomplish. So there will be more updates as I go.

[bwwaaaa]

Small update.This information is a little dated, but I've been out trying to figure out what to do with the car. It is currently dead in the water, and I've exhausted my own resources trying to get it to run again.

Before that happened though... I did end up making out to Bimmerfest. Had a great time, met some cool people, but also spent a ton of time sleeping because I was running on three hours of sleep. I guess there are some trade offs haha.





On the way home from Phoenix my car suffered what may ultimately kill it. We took this photo about an hour before I had to slam on my brakes thanks to a minivan not really paying attention.



After that the car was misfiring really bad, the check engine light had come on and I had to limp the car the rest of the way home. Anything over 3500 rpm would cause the car to buck and and become undrivable.

Since then I have tried reading the OBD2 port, but it refuses to establish a link. We've checked the wiring, the fuses and a bunch of other things and nothing really helps. I replaced the cam position sensor, the brake booster check valve, and neither of those made a marked difference. I finally took it to a shop and they said they couldn't find any reason why I can't read the codes either.

I haven't really driven my car since Bimmerfest because of this. Basically I have two options at this point. Park the car for a while and start a swap later on, or bite the bullet and let BMW figure out what the hell happened to the wiring. This is beyond me at this point :

I'll post again when I have a significant update, but as it stands right now I'm leaning towards getting rid of this car. It's definitely not fun when I can't drive my car every other month due to some sort of failure. The other option is to source a daily and tear this bitch down to give it a proper swap and build. But that's all TBD...

[Benwalsh91]

Love the 2mshiftboots I have been contemplating getting myself a pair.

Think you just made up my mind.

Good work. But please loose the rally spot lights

[bwwaaaa]

Love the 2mshiftboots I have been contemplating getting myself a pair.

Think you just made up my mind.

Good work. But please loose the rally spot lights

Definitely a worth while buy. They took some time to properly install, but well worth the effort. At some point I'd like to go back and do other accents in the same cloth.

And sorry, the rally lights are staying. They're my absolute favorite modification I've done to the ti. Plus, they're functional. So if nothing else, they're useful too.

[bwwaaaa]

So things have been slow obviously. I've spent the last few months just trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with the compact. First it was electrical issues, then a vacuum leak. I just couldn't get ahead while fixing it. Even now it runs, but not as well as it should.

After debating what to do with the car, I've finally settled on getting it ready to swap. Originally the plan had always been to S52 swap the car, but I ran into a good deal on a donor car. I found this 97 328i for next to nothing. ZF trans, and a few other good parts still left in the car. But the important part is the M52B28. After parting it out I should be ahead on the whole thing.



This thing has had a very hard life, but all of the stuff I need is still there. The plan is to yank out the M52 and ZF trans, refresh everything and upgrade where need be.



After everything I need has been pulled off of this sedan, it's off to be scrapped. The good news is, this car is meeting the end of it's life so that three others can continue on. So I don't feel too bad about junking it.

[C2_mad]

love everything... except the rally lights...lol but hey, what ever floats your boat. cant wait for more updates.

[bwwaaaa]

love everything... except the rally lights...lol but hey, what ever floats your boat. cant wait for more updates.

Thanks, and no worries! I get that a lot. I like them from a uniqueness stand point, but I see where others come from when it comes to them. I just wanted to avoid doing something like a LED bar. I feel these work a lot better aesthetically, and still work well as aux lighting. Depending on future plans, they might come off of this car, and end up on a different project though.

[bwwaaaa]

I was waiting for some good news before I updated the thread, but I'll post what I have now.

I pulled the motor and trans for the sedan, as well as a few other parts that I could part out. I knew the thing had a hard life, but the deeper I dug into the car, the more I worried about the actual drivetrain.



The story the guy I bought the donor car from gave me, was he bought the car, it ran fine but it had a bad fuel pump and he couldn't work on it. There were signs that they had started the fuel pump, and a new one was sitting in the car. He also claimed he put in the battery backwards and fried a few things, something I was less encouraged about. I figured in the worst case scenario, I could still part out the car and make my money back. So out came the motor, I sold the ZF (as I already have one ready to go) and a bunch of small bits that I had no use for. I was in only $100 for the motor and harness at this point.



Sure enough though, the guy had lied to me, a leak down test revealed a blown head gasket and a failed exhaust valve on cylinder one. Opening up the motor, 3 of the cylinders were seriously scored, and one piston was pretty pitted. The oil that came out was chocolate milk. Not the best photo, but you get the idea. When I confronted the seller about this, he said (and I quote) "I said it ran, I never specified to what degree". :



This is definitely on me, I should have figured with the condition of the rest of the car, this was a likely possibility. I was so excited about the swap, I didn't think things through when picking up this car. If I didn't rush things I probably would have walked away from the sedan.

Luckily I'm not out any money after the part out, and I have some useful parts for the swap as well as my other ti shell (front subframe, steering rack, etc). I have calipers for a brake upgrade, and some other spare parts from the motor. Things still worked out for the better, just not for the swap.

Currently I'm searching for another M52, and this time I only need a longblock as I have a harness and all the accessories now. Hopefully I'll have some better news soon. Definitely a bummer, but just a temporary set back.

[Greasy63]

My wife and I love the adorable little Ti e36, the rally lights are kickass IMO. Maybe some Hella horns too? To annoy everyone on the road. I've thought about them for my Mopar. Anyway, good shit.