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Thread: Bullet Ride's E21 Restoration Project

  1. #76
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
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    Chicago
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    BMW 320i ('83), BMW 318ti ('98), BMW 3.0 CSi ('72)
    Great work on the dash. The final result looks amazing. Car is coming along very nicely. Looking forward to seeing you put it all back together.

  2. #77
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    Toronto, ON, Canada
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    1980 BMW 320i
    Nice job. I was wondering if I would see this car at Tedfest this weekend but it looks like the answer is no.

  3. #78
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    DFW TX USA
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    1983 320I, 1986 325E
    Can you post some up close pictures of that dashboard? I'd love to see the texture. Its the best refinish I've seen so far.

  4. #79
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    E30 325i, E21 320i
    Quote Originally Posted by EauRouge2002 View Post
    Nice job. I was wondering if I would see this car at Tedfest this weekend but it looks like the answer is no.
    I'll make sure to register for next year

  5. #80
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    Quote Originally Posted by Thecatmilton View Post
    Can you post some up close pictures of that dashboard? I'd love to see the texture. Its the best refinish I've seen so far.
    Yeah, I can try.
    You can see it on the picture where I showed the bleed through. You can see the texture on the shiny spot where the bondo is.
    It might look good now, but I haven't had this thing back out in the real world yet, I have no idea how it's going to hold up once it starts getting heat cycled in the sun and whatnot.

  6. #81
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    Nov 2007
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    Seattle, WA USA
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    '83 323i, '82 320i, '06 mazda5
    bravo on that dash work Bullet! and great choice using opalgrun

    E21_small.jpg

  7. #82
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    E30 325i, E21 320i
    Update from this weekend, spent some time Saturday buttoning up the rear sub-frame. I never took any pics but the gas tanks are back up. After bolting on my garagtastic poly subframe mounts and lifting the sub-frame back up into place I noticed that the diff hanger was too long. That's because the flange on the garagtastic mounts is welded in the middle of the bushing whereas the factory flange is offset, this caused the sub-frame to be raised about 3/4". So I sliced the hanger in half... trimmed some out and tacked it to test fit...



    Fitment was good, so I welded it up, painted and installed...



    After that the axles went back on along with the BC coils...



    Man those rear axle nuts are crazy... 295-347ft-lb torque spec! My torque wrench only goes to 150ft/lbs... just went by feel after that with a bigger breaker bar until the castle nut lined up with a pin hole.

    Gasser style haha


  8. #83
    Join Date
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    79 320/6 81320i 65malibu
    Looking GREAT!

    Nice work.

    Always FUN TO DRIVE - Build Thread & Tech info - 79 320/6 track car build thread -- Videos of track car -Adam in car Auto-x video - Start-up video - 4/2011 Adam's TOP BMW time San Diego BMWCCA - 4-5-15 Dyno break-in run new M20B25 - Exhaust Thread - Link

  9. #84
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    E30 325i, E21 320i
    Update on the coilovers...

    The gland nuts on the shock assembly were rusted good and tight... fortunately I didn't need that part anymore... it just meant that I couldn't pull the shock out before cutting the housing....



    That meant that I had to very carefully cut through the housing without cutting into the shock body... #TrustMeImAnEngineer...



    Success

    After that it was just a matter of wire wheeling and welding...









    And back on the car....



    I'm taking possession of my first house today... it needs some work... so updates might be far and few between for a few months

  10. #85
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    E30 325i, E21 320i
    It's been a while... because I bought a house and am knee deep in renovations... progress will be slow for the next few months...

    Recently on (Canadian) thanksgiving weekend, I gave thanks for the EFI M10 motor that I picked up for free a while back, because the one that I had bought before that one must have sat unused with no oil in it for a long time and had too much rust in the bores to use as-is.

    So I swapped engines on the stand and started basic tear down to inspect condition and clean things up...












    It looks like someone must have had this motor out for a refresh at some point because the block has good coat of black paint on it and some newer yellow zinc bolts on some brackets. I tried picking at the paint and it's on there good, not just a quick and dirty job over the old flaky rust that tends to accumulate on these old blocks.



    The valvetrain was also really clean, leading me to believe that the head had been off recently... hopefully not for any terrible reasons...



    The only thing I found so far was that the head has a hairline crack on one of the spark plug holes that had been sealed up.



    Since it's not structural and there is no evidence on the outside of the head or block that it had been leaking recently, I'm just going to leave it for now. My goal right now is to get the engine in the car and start working on the wiring harness for megasquirt. I have a spare head on the motor I'm not using that I'll clean up and have ready to go in the event that this one starts leaking.

    That's all for now.

  11. #86
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    Minor update:


    Had a few hours to spare this weekend so I continued working on cleaning up the motor.
    I'm pretty well done that task now. Next I'll have to give a few things a coat of paint, then I can re-seal it and drop it into the car so I can start working on the wiring harness.





  12. #87
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    Sep 2014
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    Minnesota
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    E21 323i, E36 M3
    Damn, engine looks great now


  13. #88
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    E30 325i, E21 320i
    Hello again... quick update...

    Over the Christmas holidays I had some time to crack open the MS3 that I bought 2nd hand. I installed the MS3X board and using a couple of gator clips with a 12V DC power supply and a piece of scrap wire I was able to power up the unit and load firmware to it. It should be good to go now when I need it...



    Today I took the hood off and got the engine dropped in temporarily...






    Now to find some time to start working on laying out the wiring harness!

    Stay tuned.

  14. #89
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    Quick update of what's happened in the last month or so...

    Took the engine harness off the original motor and labelled everything...



    After carefully cutting off the casing, I used the ETM and traced all the wires from the relays to the engine connectors and cut out everything that I wouldn't be needing to run megasquirt. The pile on the right is what I'm keeping...



    After that I pulled all the wiring out of the sheathing on the universal harnesses for the MS3 and MS3X, separated all of the wires I need and the ones I don't. Then combined the ones I need and stuff them back into a single sheathing. The pile on the left is all the wiring I don't need...



    Pulled it though the firewall and then peeled it back out of the sheathing...



    And then set about roughly running the wires to where they need to be and trying to keep everything tidy....



    After that I prepped the injector pig tails that I cut off the E30 M10 harness, the old sheathing was hard and cracked so I pulled it off along with the rubber boots, put some new heat shrink and reinstalled the boots





    That's about it for now, I'm planning on making the injector harness modular along with some other wiring possibly so I ordered an automotive connector kit that should be arriving this week.

  15. #90
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    E30 325i, E21 320i
    Sorry for the lack of updates. There hasn't been a ton of progress in the last couple months as I've been going crazy trying to get my house renovation done(ish) before the wedding. But since I also want to use the car in my wedding I guess I'll have to start going crazy on it sometime soon haha.

    Anyway, I got the wiring harness into what should be a functional state. I don't want to wrap it all up until I know it's good. No real pictures of that whole process, but it was tedious, and tricky to say the least. So I pulled the motor back out for final assembly...





    I wanted to mount the VW coil pack that I'm going to be using in the same spot as the distributor so that plug wires would be similar. In order to do this, I had these pieces made up... the young guy working on them messed up the hole pattern a couple times as you can see... third time's a charm lol...







    After that I tacked on my trigger wheel to check fitment on the motor.



    No pic on the motor right now, but it fit nicely. Now I need to make up a bracket to mount the crank sensor.

    After that I cleaned up the firewall and installed some automotive peel and stick heat shield... hopefully it holds up ok...



    Right now I'm just working on cleaning up the brake booster and reinstalling brake lines and everything else that should go back in before the motor.... like the wiper linkage. I needed to order new damper rings for the wipers.... $30 each for a couple rubber rings

    I also need a new hard line for the clutch slave because I went and cracked and cleaned up all the hydraulic fittings while they were out, but the fitting that went into the slave was too corroded and twisted the line.

    Motor should be going back in either this weekend or next weekend. Then it will be testing the wiring harness

    Does anyone here have a good timing map for an M10?

    If all goes well I should be trying to crank it over before the end of the month.
    Last edited by Bullet Ride; 04-08-2019 at 03:51 PM.

  16. #91
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    1978 323i
    Looking really good!

    I wonder though, will there be enough clearance between the coil pack and firewall? What about if you tip the engine back by detaching the rear trans mount like for removing the trans or servicing the shift tower?

  17. #92
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    Quote Originally Posted by cgifool View Post
    Looking really good!

    I wonder though, will there be enough clearance between the coil pack and firewall? What about if you tip the engine back by detaching the rear trans mount like for removing the trans or servicing the shift tower?
    When I held it in place by hand with the motor in the engine bay it looked like there would be enough room. I guess I'll find out when I put the motor back in lol...
    If need be, I can shift the hole pattern over a bit.

  18. #93
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    Sorry for the dead build thread. Between my house renovation, the car and my wedding I haven't had much time for anything else in the past couple months. Unfortunately the car did not make it to the wedding like I had planned but it is at least running now, so the end is near.


    Here's a rough update based on the few pics I do have on my phone...


    Before I put the motor back in I had to make a bracket for the E30 crank sensor. Time for some cardboard aided design #CAD










    Then I could put the motor back in and hook everything back up...





    I also ran a power cable and fusible link from an E46 so I could put the battery in the trunk.



  19. #94
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    Once I had the motor in I was double checking the timing and as I went to turn it over by hand it would get to a point and then bind like it was hitting a dead stop. I was shitting my pants thinking that something had fallen into an intake or exhaust port and was blocking a valve or something but also thought maybe I made a mistake installing the flywheel/clutch as well. So the first thing I did was crack apart the transmission as far as I could while still keeping the longer bolts engaged. Fortunately I saw this...





    The timing tooth that got added to the E30 M10 flywheel for the flywheel sensors was just barely hitting the bell housing of the E21 transmission, I could see with a light where it was contacting. So I just chamfered the edge of the tooth a couple mm and bolted the trans back up and it rotated freely.
    This is a case where RealOEM shows the part numbers are the same, but BMW obviously didn't check that it was backwards compatible.

    After that I went to mount up some 90's integra seats that I got from the wreckers for cheap. The material is roughly the same but the seats are much nicer than the stock E21 ones are. The procedure ended up being fairly simple. Remove the integra seat rails and the E21 seat rails. On the inside rail the E21 rail will bolt up with a simple bracket.
    Here you can see the rear mounting hole being used...



    Then a piece of flat bar to bridge...



    The outside rail is a bit more work. Need to drill out the spot welds on the integra rail to remove the brackets that bolt to the side of the seat...



    After that bolt the side brackets back up to the seat with the E21 rail (using the back bolt hole) and mark where the side brackets land on the E21 rail. Then remove, clamp together on the marks and weld. I don't have an after picture, but this is before welding...



    And then after install...



    After this point I ran into some issues with the megasquirt. I don't really want to go through it all...but the short of it is, either there was something wrong with the ms3x card, or I did something to it that damaged it, and after a week and a half of trying to troubleshoot it, I ended up ditching the ms3x and the coil pack and installing a high current driver to the main board and going back to the stock distributor and coil set-up and was able to get the car fired up.

    Now I just need to bleed brakes and clutch lines, slap the hood and fenders on and I should be able to start street tuning it.

    Here is how she currently sits...


  20. #95
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    79 320/6 81320i 65malibu
    So when you are done with yours will you do mine? I can let you have it for 3 months or so.







    Looking GREAT!!!

    Always FUN TO DRIVE - Build Thread & Tech info - 79 320/6 track car build thread -- Videos of track car -Adam in car Auto-x video - Start-up video - 4/2011 Adam's TOP BMW time San Diego BMWCCA - 4-5-15 Dyno break-in run new M20B25 - Exhaust Thread - Link

  21. #96
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    Quote Originally Posted by OLD MAN View Post
    So when you are done with yours will you do mine? I can let you have it for 3 months or so.




    Looking GREAT!!!
    If you want to ship it to Canuckistan... let me know what you want done

    Thanks!

  22. #97
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    76 BMW 320
    Looking great! If you still need MS files, I have a stock running M10 2.0 with EDIS, its for a Megasquirt2 though but i can only assume the tuning files are compatible. Let me know if you want them.

  23. #98
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    Quote Originally Posted by MikeH320 View Post
    Looking great! If you still need MS files, I have a stock running M10 2.0 with EDIS, its for a Megasquirt2 though but i can only assume the tuning files are compatible. Let me know if you want them.
    Cool, I'll send PM.

  24. #99
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    #ThreadsDeadLOL

    Long time no update... not much has happened since the last update to be honest.
    I had a crazy busy summer and I don't live where the car is being stored anymore so it's increasingly difficult to get time in on it.

    Most recently I finally borrowed a timing light from a friend to check the base timing. It was about 10 degrees retarded (1 tooth). So I probably had set the trigger in the software to the opposite of where I welded the trigger wheel to the crank pulley (i.e. rising edge vs falling edge trigger). Anyway, it was an easy fix, I just adjusted the tooth offset by 10 degrees in the software and the car runs way smoother now.... like actually drivable... before it pretty much could only idle at best.

    Unfortunately driving season is basically over for this year. I will hopefully get it out at least one day before snow so I can take it up and down the road a few times to do some initial drivability tuning, make sure the brakes are working, find out what isn't working or still loose lol... then just spend a few days this winter getting the interior finished up so it's ready to go for next spring.

    Here are a couple of pics from when I drove it out of the shop under it's own power for the first time in 4 years...



  25. #100
    Join Date
    Sep 2019
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    England
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    E21 316
    I bought my first E21 a few weeks ago, and am just embarking on its restoration. Your photos have been very useful for me. Thanks, and good luck with everything!

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