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E30 318is

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318is bmw e30
60K views 99 replies 41 participants last post by  Magic 
#1 · (Edited)
About time I started this thread, I've had the car a couple of months now - still not driven it, but we'll get to that.

I'll start at the beginning. I had been toying of the idea of buying a new daily, I've never been that interested in Clios and with my 106 still not completed, I wanted something a bit cooler that I could work on whilst my 106 is being built.

I thought about buying a newer car, but that quickly faded and I decided to look for an E30. After doing some research I decided that I wanted something with facelift bumpers, sports interior and a manual gearbox. At this point I also realised I wasn't going be able to get a 325i for two reasons, price and MPG, neither I could live with.

After looking for a few months, all the cars I liked either sold before I even got to look or were priced outside of my budget. Then I spotted a 318is. I had actually wanted one of these from the outset, but I thought I would be hard pushed to find one in budget.

The car in question was this.







 
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#29 ·
Wow! great work there buddy. I had few of these motors in he past, easy to work with as there are a lot of guides online. But it seems you are quite experienced anyhow so keep it up. I was a member of E30zone where you can get lots of info and tips.:thumb:
 
#30 ·
Excellent thread for an excellent car. You may have been duped a little but the car still looks pretty solid all things considered.

It will be worth it in the end and you seem to be doing a fantastic job - Best of luck to you!
 
#32 ·
Stunning job so far and I eagerly await further updates......as a resident of the aforementioned N Ireland it jars somewhat that you werent told the full story by the seller as it tars a lot of folk with a negative image :(

I have sold a couple of cars into England and am actively still friends with the new keepers who keep me updated on their respective progress !

Best of luck, really enjoy seeing a car being properly attended to !!!
 
#34 ·
The next problem I tackled was the leaky oil sump and power steering pump. After having a quick look at the sump I realised that firstly, it'd had obviously been leaking for a while and also that both the fan and power steering belts needed replacing sooner rather than later.



I ordered the belts online and set about replacing them.



I started out by degreasing the front and sump of the engine as best I could. At some point I'm going to have to do this properly to satisfy my OCD.Anyway, I got the belts on, tensioned them up and the fan was a lot quieter surprisingly.



As you can see below, the old belts had a few issues.





Satisfied with belts, I decided to replace the sump gasket and generally clean it up before I service the car.

Photo below shows engine sporting a slightly cleaner look.



Sump off and it was pretty clear it's never been off before. For those concerned about the milky oil, the car hadn't been running for long.



After some degreaser and carb' cleaner, I got it looking a bit more presentable.



I then bolted it back on to the engine with a new sump gasket. Looks much fresher!



With the sump finished, I had a quick look at the power steering pump. I found the issue pretty quickly, someone hadn't replaced one of the crush washers on the banjo fittings. So I did what any car guy does, logged on to eBay and bought some new ones.

The old ones had definitely seen better days.



I actually ended up ordering copper washers instead of aluminium - mainly because they were a lot cheaper.



Nice arty shot with the banjos refitted.



I chucked some fresh fluid in the PAS reservoir, bled the system through and thankfully no leaks.
 
#35 · (Edited)
Seen 3 of these since reading this thread. I guess they've been around just not noticed and it took your thread to nudge my subconsiousnes.
My brother hD one back in the day... a lowly 318 ? Model.
Solid car but lacked powers steering it was like steering with flat tyres.

I still like the proportions .. they're just "right"

I note at the beginning of this thread you say you've had the car a couple of months... is it now your current daily driver ?
 
#38 · (Edited)
Following on from the oil leaks, I gave the car a service. The first part of that was to change the spark plugs, they'd obviously seen better days but they weren't too bad. That suggests the car might of been looked after, at least engine wise.





Then I changed the petrol filter, again not as bad as I imagined. Whilst I was there I degreased the bracket and put some fresh clips on the fuel lines.



Note the polished BMW jubilee clips!



After that, I swapped the air filter, degreased the air box inside out, before installing the new filter.









I forgot to take photos of the finished product. Anyway, once I finished that, I changed the oil filter and topped up the engine with fresh oil.

The engine sounded a lot nicer when I started it back up. The oil was pretty low before hand, mainly because most of was sitting on the wrong side of the sump.



Finally I started to tackle the front headlights. I removed the front grill and pulled out the headlight units, as per standard with this car they were completely broken and needed a rebuild.

Demotivated I decided to pull out the automatic adjusting hosing for the headlights, it didn't work and frankly there's enough to do without fixing that. On the plus side, it now looks a lot cleaner in the engine bay without the hoses running around it.

 
#41 ·
Haha thanks man. I'll show you some more progress at the weekend!

You're not alone waiting for Project Binky!

If you are using it as a daily through winter I'd consider Hids
Fitted some tona mate's E30 325i convertible, made a massive difference
Keep the updates coming
Interesting thought on the HIDs. I've considered them for it and in the past for my 106s, the only thing is finding a decent kit that can be easily hidden. I'm pretty fussy when it comes to wiring, in case you haven't noticed yet haha.
 
#47 ·
Up next on my list of jobs was replacing the lower arms. Both had split boots and generally not in great condition. Luckily at the time EuroCarParts was having a sale (don't they always?!) and I managed to get Lemforder OEM replacements for a decent price. Whilst I was there I also picked up some M3 offset lollipop bushes because it be rude not to.





As you can see above, pretty bad condition, it was the same the other side.



Those bushes put up fight when pushing them in, I ended up using a vice.





Whilst I was under the car, I also noticed the ARB bushing cup was hanging off, so I put a new bolt though and fitted that back up. The bushes are pretty shot, I'll be replacing them down the line.

I also noticed that the car had ABS sensors, I didn't even realise these cars came with the option. However both sensors were cut and so I decided to removed them both - easier said than done. I must spent over an hour removing both.



The next job on the list was to fit a new fuel pump. I began to notice the car was struggling to start and would sometimes not run smooth, after a bit of investigation the fuel pump was found to be the culprit.

I was debating whether to get an uprated fuel pump, but in the end decided to just get a Bosch unit. I'm not planing to upgrade the engine, so OEM will do just fine.

I pulled out the old fuel pump.



As I expected, it was the original pump. I de soldered the connections to keep as much wire as possible.



New fuel pump.



I had to cut off one of the tabs on the bottom as it didn't fit correctly.





I then fitted it back into the housing and installed it back on to the car.



Car started first time on the key.
 
#52 ·
Mostly maintenance, although wheels are going to make an appearance soon!

Coming on well! :thumb:
Keep up the good work!
Cheers man!

Really nice work. Had 318is myself when I met my wife. Probably my favourite shape BMW.
Cheers man! Definitely the best shape!

Very nice job you're doing,RIP 106 build though.
Thanks man. I have done a few bits on the 106, I'll update on that soon!
 
#53 ·
Took another day to do another not so pointless task, but pointless considering the current situation with the car.

I decided to clean the seats. The seats looked fairly clean considering the age of the car, but the drivers side definitely had some marks and dirt on.

Here's how the passenger seat started out.





With that in mind, I got some Brisk Extra in and borrowed a carpet cleaner.





Much better! Admittedly, they're not perfect, but I'll go over them in the future.

Then done the same for the drivers side. Before photos, not the greatest at showing the extent of dirt.





Then after.





Visible improvement on the drivers side. I used Brisk on my 106 a couple of years back, and by far the best feature of the product is the smell. The BMW no longer smells like an 90s ashtray!

The same was done for the rear bench, unfortunately no photos of this.

Obligatory photos on the water from the cleaner.





Not having much time left in the day, I tackled a quick job on the front of the car that had been bothering me.

As many have pointed out, the car has had a pretty ropey respray at some point. The extent of the bad paint job can be summed up with this photo.



At first I thought the paint was just peeling off, but no, it was actually black tape that had been painted over. I don't understand how the painter couldn't spare 5 minutes to remove it.

So I peeled it all off. Obviously it had to be in half a million pieces and not one long piece.



As bad as it looks now, I actually think it's better.

 
#56 ·
If you want rid of those furry bits on the drivers seat....if you wet shave, wait til you are about to change blades and use the old blade on those....works very well.

Just make sure if you have the blades with any gel etc on them that the gel is removed....or you'll get that on the seat ;)
 
#61 ·
Firstly, sorry to hear of your problems with the car.

A Huge well done & thank you for taking the time to document your project of sorting it all out. It warms my heart to see such a classic get the love it deserves & knowing she now has a well deserved owner.

I really love these threads & an E30 is the car world of Frank & Dawn for me :thumb:

I look forward to following this & wish you all the best.
 
#64 · (Edited)
I'll start this off with a quick job I tackled. The tool box in the boot was looking a little scruffy, so I removed it and cleaned it up. Unsurprisingly the tool box is missing all it's tools, I'll source some in the near future.





Looks much tidier now even with all tools missing. Those with keen eyes will notice the stainless screws.





That aside, I tackled some more wiring, this time in the boot. I had wanted to clean up the rear lights and replace all the bulbs, so whilst I was there it only seemed right to correct this mess.





As per standard procedure out came the soldering iron and heat shrink; this what I ended up with.



I put some cable ties around the wires until I buy some new wiring tape to wrap them back up to OEM spec'.

I carried on removing the rear lights after the wiring repair and found a car guys worst nightmare.



Yep - rust. I wasn't too overwhelmed with this however, I'll come back to this later on.







I gave the lights a good clean up, including the seals and replaced all the bulbs. They just need machining to remove the swirl marks.





I also cleaned up the light mounting area, thankfully I didn't find any rust this side.



I gave the boot lock and catch a quick degrease whilst I was there. They look so much fresher after just a quick clean.



All finished and mounted. I actually quite like the rear of the car without the number plate holder plastic. I'm debating whether to leave it like that.



Carrying on with the rear of the car, I decided to finally have a look at the diff' and driveshafts. Apart from the missing sensor plug, it looks pretty tidy. Obviously had to give it a quick clean whilst I was there.

Excuse the exhaust, that'll be covered in another update.









With that finished, I tackled another little job that's been annoying me every time I look at the car.

When the car was repainted someone must of applied fresh stone chip. Unfortunately Stevie Wonder was roped back in for the masking up and we ended up with this.



I didn't know if this would actually come off, however armed with tar remover and 2 hours I ended up with this.



Same story the other side.









With that done I finished up the day by removing the aerial. I had been thinking for a while what to do about this. Someone had replaced the OEM aerial with a terrible universal part.

So I had a few choices - replace with an OEM telescopic aerial, replace with a Z3 aerial or remove it completely.

I chose the later and ordered a nice grommet from the US to cover up the hole. As I actually enjoy the radio, I bought an internal antenna, I'll cover this later.

Before



After



That'll do for today!
 
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