BMW e30 325i from Ukraine

[Nemesius]

Hi all. I really want to tell the story of my car here, but English is not my first language, so I'll try to do this as good as I can

I want to start the story of my car from the beginning.
It was 2013 and I was 22. I didn't know anything about cars but I wanted to know all about them.
I was quite young and really wanted a car but I had a very limited budget at that time (FYI: The price for E30 in 2013 in Ukraine starts from 2000-2500$ for really crappy and creepy car). And the E30 was and is my dream-car.

So one day I went to secondhand cars sell park and find some crappy Bmw e30 325i.
It costed about 2500$ and I got it.

Would you like to know what I got for this price?

— BMW e30 325i, august 88 production. Delphin Metallic was its color in 1988 .
— This car was in a lot of crashes. Front panel was welded from something like trash.
— The m20b25 Euro engine. Really strange that it started and could work. The whole engine was overheated, 5 and 6 cylinders didn't work at all. 4 liter of oil each 1000 km (600 miles) went into exhaust. This is not the whole list...
— There was no suspension at all.
— Half of the body was rusty

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This is not the full list of crap that I bought. But I had a lot of enthusiasm and I wanted to repair this car. I wanted to give this car a second life.

I think this is just a start of a long story, but it's enough for today. I really hope that this story will be interesting.
Thanks for reading! I'll continue the story later.

[bobdavisnpf]

Wow that is quite the tie-down job on that radiator

Good on you for wanting to give this car another life. Looks to be quite a project. Thanks for the pics

[Nemesius]

Hi all. Lets continue the story.
I did not understand what to do with all of these. First month I just drove the car. The engine was overheated (before me) and 2 or 3 rods knocked. Engine's life was over in a month, 1000 km and 4 liters of new oil. I put it away (some parts I have put to the garage. Maybe one day they will be needed).

First of all I tried to see what damage was done to the car by previous owner. After 2 days of dismantling I saw a really bad body. Right engine support was bent upwards.

These photos don't show all the terrible things.

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Engine bay

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Engine bay

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Left Headlight shelf

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Right Headlight shelf

As you can see, it's a big piece if sh*t.

I was sad but I decided to fix this! Unfortunately 1 post can't contain more than 5 pics, so I continue this story in next post =)

Thanks for reading!

[Nemesius]

Next step was rebuild of all engine bay.
I didn't have photos of parts that I used but I have photos of complete result!
All details was fixed and painted! This engine bay was pretty good.

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After this I fixed part of wires inside the car.
It was very hard to do

Before:
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After:
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All wires was packed to insulating tape but I haven't photos =(
I know that this wasn't to accurate, but at that time it was enough for me.

I'd like to remind you that it was 2013 =)

[323i E30]

Whew, I'm getting pretty curious about how it's looking nowadays, but I assume that we'll get there later on
Quite a project!

[Uturn540]

It is amazing what some care, dedication, and patience will do.

[Nemesius]

After repairing the engine bay I bought m50b25 engine with 150k miles and put it into E30. This engine had only one problem - cylinder head gasket, that I changed.

This was low cost solution at that moment. I didn't want to repair the whole car's body because I didn't have enough money for this.

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Set up E36 power steering

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New springs with 60mm lowering and new Brake pads. It was considered a great tuning for me in 2013. I didn't do anything like this before =))


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The car changed mechanically. New engine gave me a lot of emotions.
Then I bought:
16" wheels with 205/55 tires
New stock exhaust - e30 325i
New fuel pump Bosch
And many other little things


The next 2 years the car looked like this

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2015 was a year for grand changes, but this will be in next posts.
Thanks for reading and watching my little story =))

[Nemesius]

At the beginning of 2015 I bought new wheels. It was BBS RM R15 from VW golf 2

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They looked awful and were too thin for E30 (6,5j and ET33), so I purchased new polished Stainless lips (from Germany) and rebuilt them.

There is a new lip
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First wheel completed
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Before and after
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New parameters (front - 8.5j ET7, rear - 9j ET0) were good for car with standard clearance so I changed springs into 15 lowering and set them up =)
Left car is mine =)
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Next half of the year I didn't do anything with the car. New wheels did a great job for car's style, but bad painting and problems with body had appeared after 2 years... I had to do something with this...

[aaverhulst]

Around here that car would have been crushed a long time ago. It's amazing to see what you did and are doing. Will power goes a long way. Looking forward to seeing more.

[Nemesius]

Ok then. In the mid of 2015 I did the final chose to restore this car. Got some money for this and started disassembling the car.

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By the way. I bought used Mtech2 steering wheel. It is from e34 (380mm diameter) but had a good condition and fitted well
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I saw a lot of rusty parts
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This was the battery shelf in the trunk
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I was determined to fix all of these!

[Nemesius]

With help of my friend we started to cut off dead parts from front of the car.

Right rear side panel, tail trim, and part of trunk's floor were cut. There were a lot of rust =)

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Longeron (I hope this is right word =)) ) was not in bad condition and we treated it from the inside with a zinc spray. (We did this with all parts to give a lot of protection)

to be continued =)

[Nemesius]

We did all metal work ourselves
Produced part of trunk's floor and battery shelf

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Add another inner wheelhouse (from donor 94 touring e30)

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Unfortunately, I couldn't buy new parts so I used parts from donor car.
And of course I think that all you can do by yourself is better than anything else

to be continued...

[Nemesius]

To complete this part we needed to remove gasoline lines and fix spring's bearing part (I hope this is a correct name. If no, please correct me =)) )

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The inner wheelhouse was completed =))

I hope there aren't a lot of photos =)

To be continued...

[Nemesius]

Finally all parts of this side were together

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Unfortunately I couldn't find new side panel, so I did small cheat.

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I hope one day I'll find new side panels, and replace this 'Frankenstein'

to be continued =)

[Nemesius]

Hi all.
Let's continue

After completing the right side I did the same with left. All rusted parts were deleted and replaced by good ones
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It was a really great result for me. But I didn't know back then, how much work it was going to be =)

[Nemesius]

New part of the trunk's floor and another parts of trunk were also made

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This little fellow was changed too =)

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We made several attempts to strengthen the rear side members

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And finally completed the trunk

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[1843lamp]

Around here that car would have been crushed a long time ago. It's amazing to see what you did and are doing. Will power goes a long way. Looking forward to seeing more.

Wow,I have never made a comment on any thread like this .Your dedication and persistence is beyond what I have seen before,your workmanship looks very good as well even better if you have never attempted this type of work in the past.IT is almost shaming to see some of the cars over here that have been scrapped with minimal to no damage at all ,an excess of riches is our burden .

[Nemesius]

Wow,I have never made a comment on any thread like this .Your dedication and persistence is beyond what I have seen before,your workmanship looks very good as well even better if you have never attempted this type of work in the past.IT is almost shaming to see some of the cars over here that have been scrapped with minimal to no damage at all ,an excess of riches is our burden .

I did this with my friend. I have never attempted this type of work but my friend has a lot of experience in this. I think it's his credit that I managed to do it so well =)

[1843lamp]

I did this with my friend. I have never attempted this type of work but my friend has a lot of experience in this. I think it's his credit that I managed to do it so well =)

Humble too...

[Nemesius]

Hi all.

After completing the trunk I decided to move the reinforcement frame from the touring to my car.

First of all I moved side parts




Then I cut off trunk partition and made the reinforced frame for shelf





And finally set up main beam to it's place




This was a final thing that I wanted to do with the trunk and rear parts of the car! It was completed.

But there was a lot of work at the front.... =)

[Nemesius]

There was a lot of changes at the front of the car.

We made a new part of front column and wheelhouse.

From left:




From right:


The battery's place is in the trunk so we changed battery shelf at the engine bay.



Added a little reinforcement




And made double wheelhouse strut

Left:




Right:




Made something like cabrio column
Left:


Right:


Finally all holes were patched up =)
Left:




And Right:






All these parts were made by us. We worked at nights to complete car's body of my dream =)

Thanks for reading!

[Nemesius]

Sorry for long pause. Let's continue my story =)

After completing of front and rear of the car I did changes with car's floor, side covering and side members

Old floor wasn't bad but we did new one oursalves











And this is final looking for left side





Left side member was upgraded =)








The same thing we did with right side



And with the right side member







In this case we did a lot of job. But some little changes with front members was done too and this will be in the next post =)