My 1992 318is, I guess you could call it a build thread
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I guess i'll introduce myself a bit first, I am a mechanical engineering student at school out in PA but have lived in WI all my life. I have always been into cars and for the past three years I have worked at a classic car shop in the Delafield area so I have a bit of experience (Still learning a ton of course). Ive been on this forum for a while but never really posted anything so I figured I'd start a thread on my never ending project/DD 318is.
I've had this car since I bought it in the winter of 2010/2011 (I guess you could call it my first car, the previous one was owned by my parents). It is a sterling silver 1992 318is, 5-speed, with 147k on it when I bought it. The only option is the leather steering wheel and shift knob, other than that it has a full gray cloth interior, 7 button OBC, and all the other base things. It had sparse service history so I had it inspected by European Auto House in Mequon and it looked to be very well maintained compared to most but it still needed work.
Here it is the day I bought it:
I went home, spent two days detailing the car, replaced all the fluids, put on the summer tires, painted the rockers in the correct color, and added a front plate delete to clean it up a bit.
over the next year I completed quite a bit of maintenance, almost all work done by me, on my shoe-string budget.
- guibo
- power steering return line
- shift shaft trans seal
- oil pan gasket
- clutch slave cylinder
- rear trailing arm bushings (replaced with poly)
- more stuff I can't rememberI also picked up a set of 17 inch Mille Miglia MM11's with some yokohoma 235/40/17's on them to sharpen up the handling. I also blacked out the grilles and stained the fog lenses yellow for a meaner look to match the wheels:
I also had a set of snow tires for the winter that made it quite fun in the snow
The interior was looking a bit shabby as the foam backed fabric of the headliner had seperated and the door panel fabric was sagging as well. So I stripped a good portion of the interior and reupholstered it with a bit of matching gray suede
The result:
I then went off to college and left the car in storage for the year and it sat until may. When I got back I did a lot more working bringing the car up to spec
- lower front control arms/inner outer ball joints
- Front control arm bushings (replaced with poly)
- water pump
- thermostat
- radiator
- fan clutch
- all coolant hoses and seals
- full coolant flush
- cabin air filter (probably one of the most frustrating jobs to date)
- differential output shaft bushings
- new tires (225/45/17's)
- polished the headlight lenses
- many other things slipping my mindHere is the car as it sits now:
I did have it listed for sale here a while back but I just couldn't bring myself to sell it, I love the darn thing too much and couldn't get myself to let go of it. It currently has 161,000 miles on it and runs like a dream. I hope to do some extensive work on it this summer once I start working again (read: have decent funds) and maybe in the future build and swap in an m50/52. Let me know what you think! I plan on keeping a running progress thread here
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Welcome! Those M42s will last forever, and your car looks clean enough to warrant sticking all that time and effort into it.
If its 5 speed, you should consider installing a single mass flywheel, really lets the motor spin up and throttle response is really nice.
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Awesome!
I like the look of the stained fogs better
Very clean looking bmw!!
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Thanks guys! Its definitely a ten foot car since I do have a few rust issues but given that its been a mid-western car all its life its doing pretty darn good. I hope to learn to do some of the bodywork to fix that before it becomes a problem. Any idea how hard it would be to match the paint color?
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Nice to see more e36's coming here. Your car looks very clean. Like 20x better then when i brought mine home the first day
Its easy to match paint colors. The napa in town here mixes paint and they do a good job color matching. Take care of the rust before it spreads like hurps.
1976 530i e12
1990 325ix e30
1992 325i e36
1995 740il e38
2001 330xi e46
^More to come
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someone said:
Welcome! What shop did you work at in delafield?
Its called An American Classic, it is a vintage corvette specialty shop but we do a lot of other 60's GM cars and there is usually something totally random as well, I am hoping to work there on the weekends when I can this summer still.
someone said:
Take care of the rust before it spreads like hurps.
Yeah thats one of the first things on my to do list. If anything I just want to slow it down. The bottoms of both fenders are pretty bad so I plan on doing what I can to stop it and I have a set of side skirts off a 98 that I am planning to cover it with.
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Just ordered some 6x9 adapters to mount my Memphis Audio 6x9's under the decklid, should sound much better combined with the alpine headunit and you'll never know they are there. I also ordered a set of parking brake springs so I can put the e-brake back in the car and have it functional again, rsm's and reinforcements as mine have a bit of up and down movement when I bounce the car, and a cluster backlight bulb so I can see the other half of my cluster at night haha. the parts should be here in a few days and I will update with pictures as I get things done!
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Nice! Keep us updated with pics too!
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Of course! I I'll snap pics whenever I have a hand available haha
Perfect!
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Got some parts in today and had a free hour between class so I replaced the intake bellows and it runs much better. Literally took about 30 minutes to do, and the majority of that time was looking for my exacto knife that I had misplaced to cut the clips for the wires out of the old one.
quite the hole if you ask me...
And a quick engine bay shot for those of you who care
More to come as I find more free time...
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I see a bike creepin' in the background!
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I see a bike creepin' in the background!
You do! It belongs to a friend of mine. its a Honda CBR600 I believe
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A little update, took a break from school work and decided to install the speakers that have been sitting in my room for months now that I had the proper adapters.
I replaced the stock 4" speakers and their enclosures with a pair of Memphis Audio 6x9 (PR-693) that I got a really good deal on.
I was originally planning to make adapters but then I found a set on ebay for about the same cost of the materials to make one so I just bought those.
It was nearly dark when I put them in so I didn't get many pictures of the install, but here is the final product!
You'd never know they were there! The sound is INCREDIBLE and I would recommend these to anyone who wants to upgrade their sound a bit. I only had about two hours of free time so I will be taking them out again this summer to properly seal everything up and make proper soldered connections for the wires instead of the crap I did due to minimal tools out here (It will do for now though as I have a nearly 1000 mile trip home after finals end in about two weeks and really wanted these in to keep me entertained haha)
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someone said:
Mind sharing the seller where you bought the adaptors from?
Sure! I was going to include it but I forgot, here it is:
Shipped really quickly and were the cheapest ones I could find. Probably not anywhere near the quality of the Bavarian Soundwerks ones but they get the job done just fine.
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