Worlds ugliest sedan: my next build

**128keaton** · 12-22-2021, 02:45 PM

69B1F713-130E-40E2-AAE9-817669499318_1_105_c by keaton.burleson, on Flickr

Bought this beauty a few days ago. A 1987 BMW 325i sedan. Engine runs fine, starts up great and sounds surprisingly good. Sat for a year and immediately fired up. Brakes are shot (master bad), leaks oil (as it should), and has a whole host of electrical issues, but I only paid $1000 and it came with a title and a ton of parts.

96E1DAB1-D820-49A8-ABE2-87930BC048D4_1_105_c by keaton.burleson, on Flickr

The seats that are in it were from my wrecked coupe

CED73B13-2A55-4A9F-A953-B780109ED439_1_105_c by keaton.burleson, on Flickr

Plus, it was Laschillber metallic, just like the coupe was.

Also has a 5speed and 3.73LSD rear end. Premium sound package (lol) Perfect for tooling around town in something that I don't care too much about. My vert is too nice now:

A320BFE2-8432-4424-BDAE-F1D2BDEF744E_1_105_c by keaton.burleson, on Flickr

I'm still working out next steps, but first thing would be to clean the whole car, top to bottom, remove all the crap from it, and then focus on drive-ability.
I have a new master in the mail, coming soon.

I think I want to tear down the engine and reseal it. Drop the transmission and reseal the rear main. I was told it leaks oil like a sieve. The rack is also toast, so Z3 rack is a likely upgrade candidate for me, since its so cheap and a huge upgrade.

Like none of the window motors work, so thats gonna be fun to spend on.

Here is my list so far. I already have the TB kit, that'll be one of the first things I do.

Screen Shot 2021-12-22 at 12.44.52 PM by keaton.burleson, on Flickr

Any thoughts? Welcome to the new sedan haha

**328 Power 04** · 12-22-2021, 03:06 PM

*giubo

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But on a more serious note, very cool project! I'm curious what it will look like when completed.

**128keaton** · 12-22-2021, 03:22 PM

Originally Posted by 328 Power 04

*giubo

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But on a more serious note, very cool project! I'm curious what it will look like when completed.

I'll fix that immediately haha. Thanks, I took the vert from near scrap to 9.5/10 in a year, but I'm not focusing on appearances this build. The vert was supposed to be a daily, but I hate driving it around where I live. Too many people driving without brains.

**tomstin** · 12-23-2021, 08:30 AM

Originally Posted by 128keaton

Too many people driving without brains.

It's not just Memphis! Too many distractions in cars today, add in the holidays, and the roads are CRAZY! BEAUTIFUL vert!

**128keaton** · 12-23-2021, 12:41 PM

Originally Posted by tomstin

It's not just Memphis! Too many distractions in cars today, add in the holidays, and the roads are CRAZY! BEAUTIFUL vert!

That’s a good point. Yes I’ve definitely noticed an uptick in frustration due to folks coming home for the holidays. Roads feel extra full. Thank you! I have a build thread in my signature if you’re curious about it

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**OMGE30** · 12-23-2021, 02:50 PM

The distraction world is crazy these days, it hit me the other day. I was passing someone on the highway and glanced to my right... saw a grey-haired lady traveling on her own... with a giant phone on her windshield. But it wasn't displaying GPS, it was some kind of movie. I kinda laughed and sped up to get away from her. At least she was hands-free, I guess.

So I love M20s and don't crave crazy HP, but it would be really funny to leave the paint as-is and throw in an M50 or something. The ultimate sleeper

Great job on your vert, funny how you did such a good job you don't want to DD it

**82eye** · 12-24-2021, 09:30 AM

good project. they tell you where the rest of the front went ? it's gotta be a story.

**aaverhulst** · 12-24-2021, 10:35 AM

Regards your oil leak. My m20 leaked really bad, I thought is was the rear main. When getting in to fix it. discovered loose oil pan gasket. Easy fix - does not leak anymore.

**82eye** · 12-24-2021, 08:15 PM

Originally Posted by aaverhulst

Regards your oil leak. My m20 leaked really bad, I thought is was the rear main. When getting in to fix it. discovered loose oil pan gasket. Easy fix - does not leak anymore.

definitely check that. unfortunately i had a bad gasket, and my rear main seal also tore.

**128keaton** · 01-31-2022, 03:10 AM

Little update, I’m in the middle of buying a house so my life’s been busy but I had some time to tinker with it. This is an early car with early doors and thus early window regulators. Every single one was stripped, I hate window regulators and the sedan doors are so cramped. Made a deal with a e30 buddy for some parts, scooped up some late doors, a late valence, a complete beige interior, some headlights and misc components.

Spent Friday evening stripping the doors and seats from the car.

Then spent the better part of Saturday stripping the parts sedan out. Poor thing had been chewed apart by rats.

Had enough time today to put the doors on the car and check for fitment issues.

Gonna go nuts with some SEM paint and dye on some of the components, really makes a huge difference with the fit and finish. Having all your black things the same shade is just really nice.

I’m tempted to Shadowline the rest of the chrome since it just never cleans up as well as I’d like it to, I did grab the Shadowline trim pieces off the front fenders of the parts car.

Can’t wait to throw the front valence on this.

Gonna pull the carpet soon and dye it black again since it’s mostly black but sun faded.

Also going to disassemble, clean, repair, and reassemble the seats since the mechanisms are worn and dirty. 99% of seat issues can be resolved by cleaning out the rotating bits and greasing everything. Plus throwing new paint on the brackets and plastic pieces, along with gluing the adjustment handle to the rod, goes a long way to make the seats useful.

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**128keaton** · 01-31-2022, 09:47 PM

Finally setting up the shop space, excited for more room!

Organized my parts here and setup the shelves. Also cleaned the seat bottom real quick to see how clean I can get them:

I think these seats are gonna come back nicely!

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**128keaton** · 03-07-2022, 02:03 PM

Ok, lots of updates here. I've been filming everything this time around since just having photos kinda sucks if you wanna make a neat video later. Anyhoo, we dropped the engine + transmission out the bottom and started taking things apart and cleaning them.

Since I was filming the removal, I don't have very many great "before" shots of the engine, but the video illustrates pretty well how grimy it is. I just ordered everything needed to reseal this engine, replace the clutch, replace the HG, etc. Probably missing a few things, but definitely headed in the right direction. You can see the removal at around 1:20 in the video below.

**128keaton** · 03-12-2022, 05:51 PM

Finally putting the engine back together:

When disassembled, the crank was two teeth off from the TDC mark on the crank/timing cover, correcting now just waiting for water pump.

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**82eye** · 03-13-2022, 01:12 AM

nice.

edit : you're gonna wanna replace that stamped oil pump gear for a solid one. the stamped ones are known to shear off destroying the engine.

timing_belt_gears.jpg

**128keaton** · 03-13-2022, 01:41 AM

Originally Posted by 82eye

nice.

edit : you're gonna wanna replace that stamped oil pump gear for a solid one. the stamped ones are known to shear off destroying the engine.

timing_belt_gears.jpg

Haha crap, well I guess I’ll order and tear back down

Thank you for the heads up!

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**82eye** · 03-13-2022, 08:57 AM

that's the second stamped lower gear we've seen here in the past couple months.

**128keaton** · 03-29-2022, 11:04 PM

Originally Posted by 82eye

that's the second stamped lower gear we've seen here in the past couple months.

Got it replaced! Waiting for the head to come back from machine shop since I decided to go ahead and take care of that.

Got the car all prepped for sandblasting:

Removed everything:

This is what an e30 disassembled and organized looks like:

Getting blasted on Saturday and primed on Sunday, then it’s down the bodywork rabbit hole. Gotta weld in a whole new battery box in the trunk.

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**82eye** · 03-30-2022, 10:01 AM

nice progress.

**clarkitect** · 03-31-2022, 09:11 AM

Cool project! Seems like this could quickly become something too nice to tool around town in haha!

**128keaton** · 04-02-2022, 10:20 PM

Originally Posted by clarkitect

Cool project! Seems like this could quickly become something too nice to tool around town in haha!

Yeah “oops”

We’ll see, it’s got a really nice and clean carfax on it, just an early sedan though. I think it lends itself to being a more visible car, especially with the crazy lazerblau color.

I blasted the shell today along with the trunk and hood. The doors will need to be sanded with the orbital, blaster wasn’t really good at not hitting the important bits on the doors.

I’ll have to run the orbital over some more areas anyway. I really didn’t want to disturb the seam sealer much, so some areas aren’t entirely down to bare metal.

I probably should’ve figured out a good way to get the rear door strikers off, no idea what the striker metal is going to do exposed since I’m assuming it’s not steel. I found a tiny rust hole in the windshield frame and some minor perforation on the taillight mounting hole on the passenger rear. Nothing major, will probably not even touch the rust hole in the windshield frame since it’s blasted/killed.

I did use zinc in the media and sprayed it over the car after blasting and cleaning.

Overall I’m pretty pleased, just wish I had a way to easily remove the foam and sunroof cassette to get the entire sunroof area blasted. That I’ll just sand by hand. And tape. And sand. Not looking forward to paint prep.

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**128keaton** · 04-03-2022, 07:50 PM

Got the shell primed, still need to sand the doors, trunk, and hood more before priming. Got the front fenders done though!

Very minimal body damage found:

Should never ever rust again. All sprayed with epoxy primer. Lots of sanding and more priming to do, this was just to get the base coat down so the bare metal doesn’t start rusting. Last time some of these spots were painted was the factory.

I did get the foam off the sunroof cassette so I was able to get in there and inspect the cassette. No rust! I got lucky there

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**128keaton** · 04-08-2022, 11:17 PM

Dropped the head off yesterday finally. Decking the head surface, replacing valve seals, and finally grinding the valves. Should run really nice!

Progress on the body is moving slow, but my friend welded the corner up as best as he/we could. The body sheet metal is so thin!

Doesn’t look fantastic but some seam sealer and paint will make it look “factory” (seriously who’d they have running seam sealer? It’s all over the place on this car).

I used my spray cans to get the engine bay headed in the right direction. The goal is to get the engine bay done, drop the engine in, and just tape off the bay when it’s time to paint. This is just so we aren’t waiting on paint to continue progress.

After wet sanding smooth:

I ran out of paint so I’m waiting on that to arrive. I did remove those fuel and brake lines after taking this pic.

In the mean time, probably going to focus on rebuilding the rear subframe which means new diff seals and bushings as well as new clutch packs in the diff. Already pressed out the old subframe bushings, need to order new ones and press in. Will replace the trailing arm bushings too since it’s easy enough. Need to replace the parking brake pads and clean the internals real good. Also have to do the fun job of swapping rear hub bearings.

All in good time

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**OMGE30** · 04-08-2022, 11:27 PM

You're a saint amongst the devout men and women of the E30 world! Looking forward to seeing the continued progress

"Doesn’t look fantastic but some seam sealer and paint will make it look “factory” (seriously who’d they have running seam sealer? It’s all over the place on this car)."

Interesting... Positive it's not a previous hackjob? Probably hard to say, but also extremely unlikely.

**128keaton** · 04-08-2022, 11:40 PM

Originally Posted by OMGE30

You're a saint amongst the devout men and women of the E30 world! Looking forward to seeing the continued progress

"Doesn’t look fantastic but some seam sealer and paint will make it look “factory” (seriously who’d they have running seam sealer? It’s all over the place on this car)."

Interesting... Positive it's not a previous hackjob? Probably hard to say, but also extremely unlikely.

100 percent. Every one of my E30s I've torn apart always looks like seam sealer was sprayed out of a firehose. This one is just either a Monday car or a Friday car, just gobs of it in places.