My 1998 328i sedan restoration

[sjbic54]

So i’ll start, I found this ad for a $2400 100k mile Hellrot 328i sedan out in the sticks around my area. Low price was due to a blown clutch fan, how bad can a cooling issue be with these right? Well I buy the car, swap the new repro fan clutch in, take off and the car immediately pegs the temp and the the coolant/oil become one, and then evacs itself. The guy takes off with my money. And because of agreement, there’s no law against private sale of a lemon, and yes i’m a moron for not doing a leakdown. The car idled for 20 mins just fine, I was in such a hurry to get home before dark, no test drive.
Another smart move. So I get it home, with my freshly repainted, 100k mile yard ornament. So as it sits for the next 6 months, I start pulling it apart, sourcing parts, and cleaning, sandblasting, degreasing and repainting every damn bolt on the car. So all said and done, it started it’s life as an automatic, open diff car. Now has the getrag 250 with an m3 3.91 backing it up. Not my ideal ratios and trans, but hey I just wanna get it rippin’.

First. Waiting for the tow truck. Pure joy.



Got it home, engine out. Pretty sure this thing had leaked out of every seal since it left the dealership.

Then...I found some better stuff. Oh and the head had cracked every single chamber. So, “new” donor engine to cannabalize was found as well.

From here, just a ton of sandblasting, walnut blasting, painting, degreasing. Also had to pull the shortblock apart and dingleball the cylinders, clean up the carbon on the piston tops





I had learned to cerakote from my other expensive hobby, so I decided to use it on the manifold/exhaust only the guy under the lift and I would ever see. From there, it was ready. Girlfriend helped seeing as she never saw me anymore, wanted me to come inside some day.



I had to leave for california 2 weeks ago, and the night before I had to drive 1300 miles from seattle to an hour past LA, my BMW brain made me stay up and try to finish the wiring, and get fluids in the car. My goal was to at least crank it over, but that quickly downgraded to “get it off the jackstands by 7 am”. I succeeded in that glory.






Well I’ve been home for a week, and i had a snafu.



Went to hook the battery, and HEY that’s alot of smoke out of the hood. I must have had the relays mixed up. So now I’m going to rewire those few. And there’s still a hardline missing from the ABS unit that i’m a little confused about, since i switched to a manual, but in my sleepless stupor kept the original unit in because each brake had a hardline, and the new unit that came with my pedal and booster for the manual only had 3 lines, so it was T’d at the back brakes. Hrm. Any solutions? Would that 5th outlet go to the original auto trans? Or a cooler? Much confuse.


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[mystreba]

My God. Your girlfriend is a saint.

This is what I want to do to my car, even though it runs like a dream. Hats off.

[sjbic54]

I owe her some sort of mansion and extravagant vacations...we ended up setting a tv up for her in the garage so I could multi task being a “present boyfriend”. The car kind of forced my hand, and it took so long to source the parts I was looking for, i just started taking things apart and cleaning and painting as much as I could. And oh yeah, multiple cars. I used to try this on my daily drivers, but the ease of just leaving a car totally unfinished for months and no real deadline made it easy. This was going to be my daily driver to save money on gas from my truck. Hah.


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[Eric93se]

What a journey huh!? It's going to be worth it. I always tell people to pull one relay at a time but they don't always listen. Always take a pic for reference.

Member shogun has a link for year specific electrical diagrams. The relay box is not the same across the years. I printed out the relay diagram for my car and put it in the fuse box.

[sjbic54]

What a journey huh!? It's going to be worth it. I always tell people to pull one relay at a time but they don't always listen. Always take a pic for reference.

Member shogun has a link for year specific electrical diagrams. The relay box is not the same across the years. I printed out the relay diagram for my car and put it in the fuse box.

I feel like i’ll never be able to sell this car for the unbelievable amount of hours put in, i didn’t listen to my rule of “let the guy before you do it all”. I think my mistake was looking through tons and tons of internet diagrams, and having the entire engine out and harness balled up, and taking the engine out a year before with fairly minimal pics it was like finishing a swap with Alzheimers. I rushed to get it started and took a couple steps back, but hey that’s the name of the game right?


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[mystreba]

My 99 manual has ony four hard lines.

[sjbic54]

My 99 manual has ony four hard lines.

I have no idea where the 5th line would go. 4 brakes to the abs unit, abs unit to the master, master to the clutch master, master to the trans slave cyl. Am I correct? For some stupid reason was there a hardline to the auto trans? Ive argued with two people over it, i have both style units, and i’m v confused.


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[mystreba]

I have no idea where the 5th line would go. 4 brakes to the abs unit, abs unit to the master, master to the clutch master, master to the trans slave cyl. Am I correct? For some stupid reason was there a hardline to the auto trans? Ive argued with two people over it, i have both style units, and i’m v confused.


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Is it capped off? Or are you needing to figure it out before you can use the car?

[328isblack]

At least you know a lot about your determination now. Very impressive. I think in the end it'll be something you can drive with pride. You turned your lemon into lemonade my friend.

[sjbic54]

Wasn’t capped, so I had clearly removed it at one time haha. It just doesn’t have a home if the 4 outlets go to each individual brake, the two opposing outlets towards the cabin of the car make some bends and go back up to the resevoir. And I have the older style unit, where there’s only 3 on the one side because they used a T fitting to split the back brakes.

[sjbic54]

At least you know a lot about your determination now. Very impressive. I think in the end it'll be something you can drive with pride. You turned your lemon into lemonade my friend.

At one point it just became funny how much this car fought me. It just became a thing of pride where I wouldn’t let this 22 year old fucker beat me.

[328isblack]

At one point it just became funny how much this car fought me. It just became a thing of pride where I wouldn’t let this 22 year old fucker beat me.

Sometimes you have to be stubborn and it pays off. The car keeps breaking, you keep fixing and eventually there's nothing left to break. It's funny what people think working on cars is like. They see a 2019 Golf R or BRZ getting a tune, intake and exhaust installed and think, hey I can do that. Try doing that on a car built when Nirvana was a new band and every single bolt or screw you touch is either completely seized, stripped or broken. I like doing somethings myself but for the most part if I had Jay Leno money you bet i'd be wearing double denim and paying a master tech to restore my fleet!

[sjbic54]

Sometimes you have to be stubborn and it pays off. The car keeps breaking, you keep fixing and eventually there's nothing left to break. It's funny what people think working on cars is like. They see a 2019 Golf R or BRZ getting a tune, intake and exhaust installed and think, hey I can do that. Try doing that on a car built when Nirvana was a new band and every single bolt or screw you touch is either completely seized, stripped or broken. I like doing somethings myself but for the most part if I had Jay Leno money you bet i'd be wearing double denim and paying a master tech to restore my fleet!

Hahhahahah no kidding. When I was a tech in my young days, we always used to say “it’s one thing to be a guy who puts on new parts, its another to diagnose and rebuild”. I like the thrill of working with the least money possible, i rebuilt this out of one engine with a cracked head and another someone left out in the rain with the intake off. So walnut blasted the heads, dingle balled the cylinders and slapped it all back. I grew up on old american trucks, where you rarely bought NEW parts, just rebuilt everything out an amalgamation of used parts. As I get older though, i see the glory in dropping a car off and boom it’s fixed for $1800 rather than a week of me laying on the ground yelling.


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[Jacksone30]

What a nightmare !

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[328isblack]

Hahhahahah no kidding. When I was a tech in my young days, we always used to say “it’s one thing to be a guy who puts on new parts, its another to diagnose and rebuild”. I like the thrill of working with the least money possible, i rebuilt this out of one engine with a cracked head and another someone left out in the rain with the intake off. So walnut blasted the heads, dingle balled the cylinders and slapped it all back. I grew up on old american trucks, where you rarely bought NEW parts, just rebuilt everything out an amalgamation of used parts. As I get older though, i see the glory in dropping a car off and boom it’s fixed for $1800 rather than a week of me laying on the ground yelling.

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I think it will definitely pay off. Especially with these cars. They have been extremely popular, even with our generation. Glad to see another one saved from the wrecker!