Alpine e30 progress/build thread

[Jdesign]

Nice scoop on the wheels. whats your plans on refinishing? OEM silver and a polished lip?

[m42b32]

Jdesign said:

Nice scoop on the wheels. whats your plans on refinishing? OEM silver and a polished lip?

Thanks! For now I'm going to run them as is, but whenever I do re-do them I'll be going with either gold or silver centers and polished lips/bolts.

[Boris3]

m42b32 said:

I just looked it up, they are "FTE" brand bleeder screws that I bought from AutohausAZ. I'll have to get the length measurements next time I am at my garage, but I replaced them with the original bleeders from my e30's old calipers as the threads were about 1/4" longer,

Dredging this back up re bleeder screws. Turns out that bleeder screws differ for ATE and Girling calipers, taper seals/seats in the calipers are supposedly different? Maybe that explains the thread length difference 

Girling fronts: #34111121206 (FTE R0086)

ATE Rears/Fronts: 34111153197  (FTE)

That said most vendors don't make any distinction (and many don't carry the Girling bleed screw), through the difference does show up on Real OEM. I replaced the bleeders on my Girling fronts with the ATE bleeders which have been fine. Maybe the Girling bleeders don't seat well on the ATE front calipers?

Another BMW mystery...

[m42b32]

Boris3 said:

Dredging this back up re bleeder screws. Turns out that bleeder screws differ for ATE and Girling calipers, taper seals/seats in the calipers are supposedly different? Maybe that explains the thread length difference 

Girling fronts: #34111121206 (FTE R0086)

ATE Rears/Fronts: 34111153197  (FTE)

That said most vendors don't make any distinction (and many don't carry the Girling bleed screw), through the difference does show up on Real OEM. I replaced the bleeders on my Girling fronts with the ATE bleeders which have been fine. Maybe the Girling bleeders don't seat well on the ATE front calipers?

Another BMW mystery...  

Thanks for the info! Definitely good to know because I want to put new ones in that actually work. Right now I have the bleeders from the old girling calipers in the M3 ATE calipers, they seem to have stopped leaking after swapping those in but who knows...

[m42b32]

Still having oil leaks at the profile gasket and the only way to fix them at this point is to pull the head, so I did the only logical thing I could think of and sold the LSD...

(Thanks again Andy) So back into immobile mode until I put the original open diff back in, probably next week, so I can finish out the summer. The real reason, in case you hadn't seen my parts wanted post: I'm going to swap in an M54B30 over the winter. 

Link to parts wanted ad because I still need stuff: 

My ultimate goal is the same as it was when I was planning to turbo the m42: maintain the 318 balance while making n/a s52 power. And based on some simple googling, it looks like the m54 can deliver this with more reliability than a boosted m42:

M42 with g240 trans (source, vorshlag): 427lbs. Add in 25ish(?) for turbo stuff and you're at 453lbs. 

M54, per BMW's official weight: 375lbs. Add in 77 for the zf 5-speed and you're at 452lbs. 

Obviously this doesn't take into account a bunch of things that could be missing from the weights like a flywheel on the m54, and the CG of the two (m54 is longer and will be farther forward), but for the most part it looks like the best option for my goals with a reasonably well documented swap process and support. Should be a fun winter project!

[B C]

The cost of an S52 swap is high enough that you may as well pay a little more and do an S54 swap and an S54 swap costs so much that you may as well pay a little less and do an LS swap [emoji14]

The M54 is going to be great! I really wish thats what I was swapping into my car but I have a good thing going (i hope)

[m42b32]

Did some more things on the car on Friday:

Installed a super beefy Mason Engineering strut brace I got from r3vlimited. Since I have new engine mounts and spaced the engine upwards with the reinforcement plates it didn't clear the intake so I had to space it upwards about 1/8" to clear, thankfully my camber plates have really long studs so I still have full thread engagement on everything. I can get a piece of paper in between the two but not a credit card, so hopefully the mounts are stiff enough to prevent it from whacking the intake. It also interferes with the wiring cover but since I'd rather have the performance improvement and this car doesn't really see rain it should be fine for now. Once the new engine is in I can take out the spacers and modify the harness cover to fit. 

Installed the euro clock I've had sitting around forever. It was simple as my car came with a 6-button OBC so I didn't need to change the mounting bracket and whipped up a simple adapter harness made from a power mirror plug to avoid cutting wires so it will be easily reversible. I also installed a voltmeter screen that I got from a seller on R3vlimited. It replaces a switch blank and looks pretty nice in there. I have it piggy backing off the switched 12v line of rear defrost switch and measuring the voltage at that point, which should directly reflect the battery voltage. (car is off in this pic, hadn't been run in two weeks so the battery is a little low). My only complaint is that the bezel material is a little thicker than the switch blank and causes it to sit proud of the surrounding surface, so I'll have to pull it back out and shave it down at some point. 

I also swapped in a Z3 antenna base to replace the antenna delete plug I had in there as I wanted my radio back. Install was simple and I made a harness adapter that attaches the power wire to the switched power lead so it wouldn't drain the battery and keeps things reversible. Haven't gotten a stubby antenna yet so its just sitting like this for the time being. With the antenna swapped in I installed all the trunk liner stuff from the parts car to have a complete trunk again. 

Hoping to get the old diff back in this afternoon so I can take this to BMW/MINI night at Brew City Cruise Night on Tuesday this week.

[B C]

Mason Engineering is good stuff! I have one of their rear braces. My front brace was mighty close to the M20 manifold but the engine didnt rock much at all with the mounts I had. Which member did you get a voltmeter from? I was thinking of adding one

[m42b32]

Snap said:

Mason Engineering is good stuff! I have one of their rear braces. My front brace was mighty close to the M20 manifold but the engine didnt rock much at all with the mounts I had. Which member did you get a voltmeter from? I was thinking of adding one

Here is the thread I got it from: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=281134&highlight=voltmeter

So far I'm happy with it. Its brighter than the rest of the dash at night but its not blinding, I'd say its on the same level as the headunit. It did take a really long time to ship (about a month) with no word from the seller, I actually opened a paypal dispute because I thought he disappeared but that got his attention and it was sent out within two days.  

Side note: the old diff is back in the car as of tonight and its back on the road!

[Jdesign]

m42b32 said:

Here is the thread I got it from: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=281134&highlight=voltmeter

So far I'm happy with it. Its brighter than the rest of the dash at night but its not blinding, I'd say its on the same level as the headunit. It did take a really long time to ship (about a month) with no word from the seller, I actually opened a paypal dispute because I thought he disappeared but that got his attention and it was sent out within two days.  

Side note: the old diff is back in the car as of tonight and its back on the road!

Really dig that voltmeter, sucks it took so long to get.

[m42b32]

Jdesign said:

Really dig that voltmeter, sucks it took so long to get. 

Yeah its a nice place to put one, that way you don't need to waste a spot for a proper gauge. It sounded like the seller had something come up and got behind, seems like he is back on track now so it wouldn't stop me from ordering again.

[m42b32]

RS's are now mounted (Thanks Andy/Kummrow!) and the width and offset are spot on. I can't run the center caps because the studs I currently have are too long, but for now I don't mind the look. I'm going to clean it up today after work and will get some pictures up soon! I like the Weds better but the offset in the front was going to trash my fenders if I went any lower/cornered hard enough...

Speaking of cornering, I registered for my first first autocross (WAI event #4 at Miller Park) on Sunday!

[m42b32]

Cleaned up the car:

And then immediately got it dirty again:

Pretty much the most fun I've ever had in this car and I can't wait to do it again! Really need an LSD back in this as I was peg-legging it coming out of a number of the corners, so I'll be throwing in a small case 4.10 lsd for the time being. Other than that, it handled everything really well with no real mechanical issues and took everything I could throw at it!

[B C]

Looks great!

[m42b32]

I did a z3 antenna swap a while back and never got a stubby antenna, then I found out BMW makes a 'sport' stubby antenna for the z3/z4/etc and my inner (and a lot of times outer) OEM BMW nerd had to have it. It looks nice, and now I can get more radio stations! 

More importantly, collecting swap parts is going well. Still looking for a few large items (including a motor...) but I am setting the goal of having a running car for the 2018 picnic again this year. We'll see how that goes

[straight6pwr]

m42b32 said:

I did a z3 antenna swap a while back and never got a stubby antenna, then I found out BMW makes a 'sport' stubby antenna for the z3/z4/etc and my inner (and a lot of times outer) OEM BMW nerd had to have it. It looks nice, and now I can get more radio stations! 

More importantly, collecting swap parts is going well. Still looking for a few large items (including a motor...) but I am setting the goal of having a running car for the 2018 picnic again this year. We'll see how that goes 

part number/s?

[m42b32]

straight6pwr said:

part number/s?

65202296761

[Jdesign]

That antenna is cool!

[m42b32]

Had a blast at the Road America autocross today. Did some experimenting with tire pressures to get more grip and see how it affects the handling, smoothed out my driving a bit over the 8 runs too. Getting faster! The car handled it really well and ran great/cool all day, despite it being hot as hell

[B C]

Glad to see you get to be out enjoying your car! If your car handled this weekends heat then its in good shape

Fun fact: I put 2 miles on my e30 this year [emoji16]

I'll get there eventually