Dlux BMW E23 build

[Erik D_lux]

Lets do this!

I am stoked to start working on my BMW E23. Its a 1982 733I. This is the first version of the 7 series ever made by BMW. This is the largest car they make. This will compliment my 320I, 3 series, the smallest car they made and the first 3 series they ever made.

I have actually been working on this for weeks now but I have been so busy in life that I have had to choose what to accomplish during the day. Posting a build just didnt fit in. I am not sure it does now but I will give it a shot and hopefully catch up on the build to where I am at.

I was looking for an E23 for quite awhile. The E21 I have is all about how it makes me feel when I am driving it. The E23 was all about looks to me. I love a E23 thats dropped low!

I am in the state of mind that I am sick of projects in life and overwhelmed so I was looking for an E23 that is in great shape that I can simply buy and drive and enjoy with minimal effort. I had been looking for over a year but I found one that was 5 miles away. I took a look at it, it drove, paint was good enough to get by, interior trashed but drove good. He was only asking $2500.... I couldnt do it so I passed. The next day, he called back and said it was really important that the car be passed on to someone who would build it and not just scrap it so he offered it to me for $1k. Well, I am a sucker for a good deal and I got sucked into another project! UGH! At least it will be the way I want in the end and thats important to me.

Plans now:
Full interior swap
Stereo - I have to fulfill the hearing senses
Air ride
New tires/wheels. These will be temporary until I can make my "real' ones
And to fix up all the other odds and ends to get this car up to par.

I hope this car runs and drives for awhile... Plans in the future are to swap out to a LS1 turbo and that should get this car to where I want it in the end.

So, here is a pic of my start. I got the 82 733i and I picked up a parts car 83 735i in Bend Oregon for just $100! I will try to make a legit car out of the two...

The build car:



The donor car:



Both with my E21:

[SLAMMED_C]

This should be interesting. Always enjoy classic BMW's.

[Erik D_lux]

Getting to work on this car, as I had mentioned, the biggest problem with this car was the interior. Seats were ripped up, carpet faded, not much going good other than the front seats.

I had the new parts car that I picked up and that had a good carpet. I got a rear seat from Steven Henricksen along with some other bits to make it nice inside.

Tore out the interior and found two minimal rust spots that needed to be fixed...

[DawsonLiri]

E21 build was epic, I can't wait to see what you're gonna do to this one!

[Erik D_lux]

The dash...

One of the most important parts of driving these cars is the interior and the feel of driving them. I need comfort and I need it to be nice.

One thing that they all have in common (unless youre super lucky) is that they all have a cracked dash. I cant stand it. Its all I see when I drive, its in plain view.

On my E21, I bought a dash cover. I expected it to be a pain in the ass but it turned out to be a 1hr job and the results are awesome so I expected nothing less than the same for this car. Well... not so fast. LOL. I put the dash cover in and found that nothing lined up. The dash cover was rasied/elevated off the original and worst yet, its as if the dash cover had shifted to the right. All my cut outs covered everything on the left and exposed too much on the right UGH!

I thought to myself... "what are my options?". I didnt come up with much. Put on a carpet (no), get a new dash (not that interested) or work this one out...

So, I got to work. After many, many hours I got it to fit pretty good. It took a long time because the dash cover is really thin and one small mistake and it means that you cut too much and youre not going to put more material back on... It was a careful and tedious project. I would not suggest it to anybody who does not do consistent fab work.

I used the silicone that came with it and it worked for the most part. Its pretty stressed though so in those stressed parts that still wanted to raise, I used shoe goo. I hope it holds. LOL

In the end, I think it looks great, I would not want to do it again but I would because of the way it turns out. I would give it 1 star for fitment but 5 stars because I am grateful that they even make it as an option. Without that option, I would have a cracked dash, way more work and money or a dash carpet that I dont like.


Before:













During/bad fitment:












After:

[Erik D_lux]

Thanks man!

Not near as much to this one, especially right now... Just some cosmetic and suspension..

[gnmzl]

Same feelings here, knowing what the e21 build was, super excited to see this one evolve. Good work on fitting the dash cover, hopefully it does stays the way you glued it in.

[Erik D_lux]

Right here in the build, I am having a hard time with my interior that I have chosen to install... I like the tan parts that I have but my real problem is that I am not sure on the front seats. They are not that comfortable to me. I am getting old and as much as I abuse my body, I need a comfortable seat. I figured I could swap them out to Corbeaus like my E21 but the E23 demands a classic look IMO, plus the Corbeau only comes in black and I dont know if I could deal with a mostly tan interior with just black front seats...

So, I was looking on Craigs list and saw a E23 locally. It didnt run and the interior looked good. Only problem was that he was asking $2000... Typically, a non running E23 in its condition will go for $500 or so. I decided to go look at it and throw a hail mary. When I went to look at it, I was shocked. The interior was all black and the passenger and rear seats looked like they have never been sat in! I told him that cars like this usually have a hard time going for $300. He countered at $500 and stuck there. I gave him the $500 and towed it home.

So now I have 3- E23's in the driveway. LOL. This new parts car will be awesome. Everything is in really great shape except the paint and motor does not run. Now I will have my all black interior which has electric seats and lots of other little gadgets that my car did not come with.














One thing I am sad about is that I had a small pile of door cards and I took some tan backs off and tossed them on black plastic parts and I thought it looked awesome. I will stick with the all black though.

[Erik D_lux]

When was the last time a BMW E23 guy heard.... here is a new product that is coming out for the E23? Decades? Well, I have two today!

First is super simple. I wanted to have a BMW specific key chain. I love my E21 carbon fiber key chain so it was obvious what I would do for this one, the same thing...

If you want a key chain for your E23, E36, 2002, E21 etc,. check out my store that is growing with BMW parts...

https://dluxfab.com/#!/BMW/c/31217002

I am not too sure the first one is anything ground breaking but the next one will hopefully at least be helpful to someone more than me.

When I pulled out my interior and exposed the floor, I was a bit shocked to see some rust holes. This car is rust free with the factory paint in pretty good condition. On top of that, its just the driver side, nothing on the passenger side and how does a car rust from underneath the floor board but not in the wheel wells or somewhere that dirt and water sits for a long period of time and not on the passenger side also?

After finding these rust holes, I looked at the parts car E23s. Neither of them had rust but what I did find was surprising... One of the E23's I had sitting here had close to 2" of standing water in the back floor board while being dry on the passenger side! The parts car also had moisture AND my E21 floor boards were wet too! I had no idea!

This is all hidden because of the thick carpet pad that BMW uses. The foam soaks it up and hides it but the foam holds the water for a really long time and just wears at the sheet metal.

Where is all this water coming from? Well, I had a great hint because the car I am working on had garbage bags sealing the fresh air vents behind the hood on the cowl. I sprayed just a bit of water over the vents and sure enough, water came trickling in on the drivers side floor board.

The E23 does have vents blocks for this that are supposed to close, looks like none of the cars I have here actually have a vent that closes though. I am not too interested in fixing them as they are somewhat complex and problematic. On top of that, the area that catches water and supposed to drain it before it gets to the fan/heater core has drain holes. All mine are clear but I guess the volume of rain we get here is just too much?

So, I made some ABS vent covers. Maybe these will help some others that might have these issues in wet regions of the World? Obviously they will block off your fresh air. There are options for that. You can take them off when there is no rain (2 screws) or in my case, I am not going to use AC anyway so fresh air all comes thru my windows. I wont be missing the "fresh cold air" that runs thru my heater core and is not truly "fresh cold air" LOL. I think the covers make the car look much better too. My vent covers were cracked and faded and looked bad.

Check this out, I am not sure you can see the depth but there is 2" of standing water in there when you pull back the foam!



Here is the previous owners fix... garbage bags and duct tape.



I got a long drill bit and drilled a hole from the vent area into the engine bay just in case my vent covers still leak a bit of water.



The ABS vent covers I made that contour perfectly to the cowl





All installed, not noticeable but look better if you look and should keep all the moisture out.

[stubs179]

Your going to need more property in no time. haha

Is this car getting coilovers?

[Erik D_lux]

Now that I feel like I have figured out where all the rust is coming from, I replaced the parts of the floor pan where there was rust. Glad I had my two spare parts cars to cut the parts from.

[Erik D_lux]

Your going to need more property in no time. haha

Is this car getting coilovers?

LOL. I am trying to figure out a good spot where I can just dump these cars on my property and not see them. Just hold a big junk yard for myself.

Bagging this car. Not really going so much for performance on this car as I am a fun cruiser and an actual place to put my kids in the back seat. The E21 was out of space the day I finished it.

Just dragged home another BMW! More on that later.

[ahmadreese2]

thanks for sharing guys!

[Erik D_lux]

Starting to work on the interior while other parts are being situated...

As I said before, I got another E23 parts car. The main reason I got it was for the black interior. The back seats are near perfect, the passenger front is in great shape and the front driver just needs some small bolster repair but I am not sure if I will keep the seats. I need some seat time to decide between the stock seats and some Corbeaus. Corbeaus have the seat heaters which is a huge pull for me...

On my E21, I put in E24 back seats. I was really worried about the leather cracking since they are so hard to find for the E24 in good shape. I found that Obenaufs leather oil is perfect for this leather. I buy it by the half gallon and just pour it all over the leather in the sun and it soaks it up. It made my E24 seats nice, soft and plush and also helps the thread that holds the leather together not dry up and crack. If you have leather seats, you should try it out.

[Erik D_lux]

How about we move on to the fun stuff?! Suspension time!

After doing a ton of research, there was not much to research about the E23 and air bags. I had seen it done by a handful but only found 1 forum post about it and it was pretty vague. No part numbers, no real info on how to do it etc,. So, off to do my own research and see what I could find.

Again, I have been a bit behind on posting this build so its going to look like I slapped this together really quickly but it has taken me close to a month to get everything right. I cant tell you how many times I had to pull the shocks, how many top plates I made, how many modifications to the camber plates were made. They should be perfect now though and the build thread is close to being updated...

I am going to offer a kit for the E23 so you could have either the parts to do it yourself correctly or I can set you up with a bolt on suspension. After doing it all myself, I can tell you that youre going to be saving a ton of time and money and actually be able to have a proper air bag setup with little effort. There was quite a bit to figure out and make right. I could be wrong and I dont want to upset anybody but from all the E23's I have seen, and probably a lot of air suspensions in general, they have not been done correctly. IMO, you need to have a camber plate for the front and all the parts need to fit correctly for proper alignment and strength. The bummer about some of our not so popular cars is that we dont have pre fabbed kits so we have to use a "builders" kit and sometimes thats too much for some of us to put together.

On the rear, it was pretty straight forward. I didnt want to paint myself into a corner on ride height, I had seen some info that some people were not getting enough height out of their bags in the back. This concerned me as I didnt want to simply weld it together and have regrets later. I came up with a plan to add a rod end to the bottom of the shock. This will allow me approx 1.5" more height if I so choose, not to look over the flexibility, strength and strength that it also gives. Adjustability is just too nice to pass it up.

It worked out perfectly as my rear with this setup is pretty low. My muffler is about 1/8" off the ground when fully aired out. Granted, the muffler setup could be refined to give me more clearance...

So, I am happy with the way the rear turned out. If I wanted, I could make this setup lower by modifying the rod end to be shorter. I will give it some time and see how I like it. Going higher or lower should be really easy if I choose to in the future.

As for the kit I will sell for the rear, it would include the top mounting plate and weld on bottom rod end setup. I can also send just the parts for you to weld on or I can weld everything together and you can simply bolt it on.

Rear shock top plates and bottom rod end setup.



Muffler 1/8" off the ground...



Rear shocks complete and ready to bolt in



I had to drill thru the shock towers and run my air line in the trunk. I used Butyl Sealant Tape to seal the holes.



The front was more complicated...

First problem that I had not seen addressed was that nobody had come up with a camber plate setup. If you just roll with the amount of camber you get, its probably going to be neutral or positive camber. This is going to introduce a lot of under steer.
If youre not too concerned with the performance of your car, thats fine but if are, there is a better way to do it. So, I set off to develop one and came up with what I hope is a great setup.

At first, I thought this would just be a nice feature but now that I have it all installed, I feel its necessary.

When installed and the camber plate adjusted all the way in for maximum camber, I am at approx 2.5*, which isnt bad and close to where I want to be in the end. (The rears aired out are close to 5*!) I will have to measure how much camber there is on the front with the strut centered (same as stock but I am guessing you would have positive camber or if youre lucky, no camber at all. Not good, loads and loads of under steer should be present.

Addressing the camber plate was #1 and I thought it would be the only situation to address on the front shocks but there was one other. Air lift gives you a random tube that slides over their shock that youre supposed to weld to their shock and then slide it over the now cut strut tube on the stock side or spindle side. This doesnt really work. The tube I.D. they provide is too big. I am guessing people have just been welding it anyway and calling it good but the problem here is that since its so sloppy, your camber could be off and its just not a strong good fit. So, I machined a tube that makes up for the fitment between the strut tube and also the shock that gives a good slip fit and makes everything stronger and aligns everything well.

I am planning to sell a couple different versions of kits for the front.

The first kit would be what I am running. You would get a camber plate and a sleeve for the strut tube.

The second kit would be a top plate that has mounting holes and just a standard mounted shock.

The first kit with the camber plate is ideal for getting correct wheel geometry. The compromise is that it raises the front of the car approx 1" more and makes it so its not possible to lay the motor subframe on the ground.

The second kit is going to be much cheaper since its just a simple top plate, does not allow for adjustment of camber but allows the car to be 1" lower.

FYI, air lift sends you blank top plates. They are huge in diameter and have no holes drilled in them for the mounting plates. Again, more room for error and not getting the camber right. This is a lot of work and hard to get perfect.

Edit: I just had the thought that on the non adjustable plates, I can simply move the center hole in as far as possible for maximum camber... if there is interest in this setup, I will adjust the parts. It still wont be adjustable and I dont think its going to give as much camber as the plate but it could be close.

Front shock top plates and camber plates (sleeve for strut tube not shown).



Motor subframe approx 5/8" off the ground...



Front shocks complete and ready to bolt in



I am running a 17x8 et 20 wheel and 235/45 tires. You can see that this is going to be the maximum allowed setup for this. It couldnt be more tight!



Shock installed showing the camber plates...



All aired out...