BMW e30 325i

**Ben J** · 01-04-2014, 07:37 PM

No real update as I've been to busy to do any more work to the car, but have worked on the tune some more and got a leaky tyre valve stem replaced so I don't have to pump it up every morning. Other than a cracked sump and a coolant hose which ripped, the car has been driving incredibly nicely, I've been finding reasons to take it out every day and have been hitting many mountains, it is finally pulling hard and cornering awesome. Also found out the seller lied about it having a Schrick 288 cam, so disregard that, have no idea what cam it actually has.

Still have many parts sitting in the shed waiting to go in, so have much more to do when I get some spare time

**eri_12** · 02-04-2014, 07:54 AM

Cool picture

**Ben J** · 13-07-2014, 08:53 PM

Over the last few weeks I've put some serious time into refurbishing the Azev's. Seem to have misplaced my memory card with the photos of the process, which is a shame, because a hell of a lot of work was done, and I don't think any of the photos I have up show how rough the wheels actually were (3/4 had extremely bad curb rash (previous owner), paint was absolutely rooted, etc etc).

Took them down to bare metal all over (many many hours of paint stripper, sanding, etc, wish I'd just had them blasted), fixed up rash/missing chunks in the lips of the wheels with filler, use a 2k primer specifically for bare aluminium, then a 2k primer filler, wetsanded, 2k colour, and then 2k clear. Turned out pretty nice

Tyre's going back on tomorrow hopefully. Still have to buff up the centre caps and stick them back on, but other than that they are pretty much done.

**Ben J** · 14-07-2014, 05:07 PM

Tyre's back on, and wheels back on the car today. So good to finally drive it again.

**Ben J** · 28-08-2014, 11:03 PM

So a while back fire extinguishers were on sale and I bought a couple. This led me to pulling out the passenger seat (not sure if I've posted the interior I picked up in here yet, but its from an M3 Evo 2, front seats are heated with armrests

), stripping the seat down and fixing everything mechanical in it (it wouldn't slide, recline, leg support adjuster was broken, etc) and welded on a couple of tabs to bolt the extinguisher to. I also mounted an extinguisher in the boot. Hopefully I'll never need them, but if I do, they will be there.

The seat still needs a good cleaning, along with the rest of the interior parts. This will happen soon hopefully.

Anyway with 1 seat out I decided to clean the interior up a little and got a little carried away... soon enough this is what I was looking at

I stripped all of the sound deadening (heat gun makes easy work of this) and found a nice surprise in the floors. Going to be fun repairing this.

With the interior out I figure I may as well sort out the numerous electrical issues with the car (basically nothing worked, and that isn't exaggerating).
For a while now the only thing working in my cluster was the speedo. No fuel gauge, tacho, temp, odometer, etc. So I pulled it apart, cleaned up some connections and resoldered a bunch of suspicious looking solder joints and now it works. Also replaced the odometer gears, 3 of 4 of which were broken, with some ones from jaycar, and now the odometer seems to work too (not that I have driven it yet).

I had been having problems with the power windows and mirrors as well, so pulled out and remade the door harnesses, removing a bunch of old now unused central locking wires.

Spent a lot of time fixing a bunch of other electrical issues throughout the inside of the car, and pulled out a huge pile of no longer used wires for things like stock central locking, abs, break wear sensors, stereo, etc. Rewired a lot of things, modified the megasquirt ecu to get the tacho output working properly and fan control, made a heated seat wire loom and spliced it in, rewrapped all of the interior harnesses and so on. Not really any pics of this, its just wires, nothing that exciting, I'm sure you can picture it. Many many hours were spent though.
Wiring sucks.

While I was at sorting out the interior wiring, I got a little more carried away... and decided to cut the 150 or so wires going to the fusebox to relocate it into the car and finish the wire tuck

And thats all I've got for now. Have made more progress, but no photos, so will save that for another time. Slowly getting there. Slowest fire extinguisher install ever.

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**GOLFBALLS** · 29-08-2014, 01:05 AM

Nice one man! It is such a bitch doing wiring and that looks gnarly. Even just repairing existing wires. I've been trying to think of a way to tidy mine up but i have no idea what i'm doing!

Get that rust sorted too!

**team_v** · 29-08-2014, 06:30 AM

Great job on getting it all back to working order.
The hole does look a bit daunting.

Those wiring photos, man that looks tough.
Best of luck getting it all sorted.

**sports racer** · 29-08-2014, 01:41 PM

It's a hard job but I bet it's so satisfying when things start working again. Well done.

**Ben J** · 30-08-2014, 11:04 AM

Cheers guys. Yeah electrical gremlins are definitely not my favourite thing to fix, can be very frustrating trying to diagnose, especially when previous owners have done some incredibly dodgy work.... It will be so nice to have everything working again though. Money has been the main thing slowing me down lately, I've landed a new job though so hopefully can get stuck back into it

After this wiring and interior is sorted I have some big things planned. Let's just say I'll be stepping it up a level. 400hp+ maybe?

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