The E30

I’m going to try and keep this short, but the E30 was and is a long project that has a lot of work in it.

When I got the car I just needed a car, and I was looking for just about anything. I was hanging out with my good friend at Recycled Toyotas, and he was helping me check on Copart for wrecked cars and anything that I could use to get around. But then he brought up his “little BMW in his junk yard” and I thought “no way HaHa”.

But he took me to see it anyways, and it was kinda cute. He lives on a dirt road, and at some point the oil pan had been ran into a rock, which was followed by a rebuild. The rebuild didn’t go quite as it should have and eventually one of the camshafts broke, so in the junkyard it went as he was tired of working on it.

I called some friends that worked on BMW’s and asked what they thought I should do, and ultimately decided to get it. He gave me an extra camshaft and oil pan so all I really had to do was get a head gasket and some rebuild parts, and I was on my way. She started up the first try 😀

And so it began…

The car was so much fun, and even if it was a little four cylinder, it took a beating. And for the next 3 years I wanted to go Faster! Some BMW friends told me to put an M50 in it and have a good time, but I just wanted to be different (as usual) I did lots of research on turbos, stroker kits, and other upgrades to make the M42 a little more exciting. The most I ever got was an old single mass flywheel that I put on the lathe and took a few pounds off of to make a lightweight flywheel, and then never put on (It’s now in a friends car, which is pretty cool :D).
Eventually I really just gave up and decided I wasn’t going to mess with it. It was my daily driver and I didn’t want to deal with having it be apart long enough to do the work. I did still have to keep my job after all. So I would get another car. What did I do?
Haha I got a motor for another car. Oopsies

1-5-3-6-2-4!

So I picked up an M50 from a friend, and took it apart in the evenings. It was largely, and unexpectedly, rusted shut. So I got it all apart and just pondered what I was going to do next.
Had some recommendations to bore it out and use some other components. And then it was “well if you’re going to that, you should do this”
Yup you guessed it. I got another motor. Add a little S52 to the mix:

So now I had the rotating assembly from an S52, and the cams, and a block ready to be bored out. So I got crazy with it, and got coated bearings, bolts, studs, head studs, new rings. The whole nine yards.
I spent the better part of the next two years collecting parts and slowly working on the motor. I visited my friends at Achilles Motorsports, and they helped walk me through a motor rebuild they were doing at the time. This gave me what I needed to get mine together, and there were some long nights spent at a good friends house who let me use his shop to build this Frankenstein project.

A brief story on building motors while living in an apartment:

I kept all the parts in my apartment in Tower District, and eventually (after a few tries xD) got it together and looking fresh.
I took a week of vacation during 4th of July weekend, and put my head together with a friend that owned a maintenance shop. He had a few lifts, and made this process so much easier. The first night it took me less than two hours to get the M42 drivetrain out. I may have cut a few corners, but we got it done!

I spent some time cutting old mounts off, and painting the engine bay with color matched paint. I would later discover this was a big mistake, some generic paint wouldn’t have taken so long to dry :face_palm:.
And just like that, the motor was in.

Check out those freeze plugs, each one about to spew coolant

The shock of not knowing what to do next took me a little by surprise. But we put our heads together and just kept chipping away at it. We had a problem with the fuel pump fuse being blown, but somehow didn’t find it for a couple of hours.
Little did I know I misunderstood my friends description of the freeze plug install, and they were all about to leak. Oh yeah and one was just completely missing as well. So I ended up in the parking lot during business hours finishing it up.

After a few more glitches she was running and driving. Couple of engine codes took me a few weeks to figure out, but it went by.

I took it to get an alignment, and on my way home, homeboy turned right on a red and right into me.

I was pretty low that week. The guy tried to tell me he would pay under the table, then dipped on me and I was so tired of the car at that point, I didn’t feel like fixing it. I got the suspension put back straight, aligned the car, beat the fender out, and just kept driving it.

After a little diff swap, I drove it to Portland Oregon. The car has had zero issues, and starts every time (outside of a couple electrical issues xD).

I’ve gotten to drift it a little bit, and it gets down pretty well. It needs a lot of work still to really button it up. But it sure does put a smile on my face sometimes <3