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Little budget nugget red little spaghetti arm celery boi nunchuck soup e30 build

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  • Little budget nugget red little spaghetti arm celery boi nunchuck soup e30 build

    G'day everyone.

    Haven't been on here in a while, been doing lots of offroad stuff but I finally picked up a car that I have always wanted and never owned for some reason. No idea why, had plenty of cars in between. Mostly JDM but I just stumbled upon this little E30 coupe which was 10 minutes from my house. $1200 bucks which is VERY cheap for me here in Australia. It's an 83 318i with the manual gearbox and the m10b18. Has a bit of rust here and there, an oil leak or two, soggy carpet, no power steering, a headlight full of water, mismatched seats and it's red basically it's going to be a near full resto/mod but I love it.

    Here is the zim zimma when I first bought it. Looking a little bit sad, hadn't been driven for a few weeks, had been sitting outside collecting leaves and filling up with rain water from a source that I have not yet located.




    So that first photo was from outside the previous owners house, it wasn't registered, so it couldn't be driven even the 10 minutes home without risking a $1000 fine and a loss of points on my licence. So I went back home, sat down and looked to organise a tow for the following day. Anyway, I got impatient that night, got the girlfriend to drive me back over there and I snuck it home under the cover of night in the rain with wipers that did jack shit.

    As soon as it was home I went shopping for coilovers, there's a company here in Sydney that import BC racing and for my price point and what I was after they were easily the best choice. A bit annoying that they have to be welded to the struts but I've got a welder and a recipro saw so fuck it. Why not. I went out the next day and brought home a new set of BC's. Not planning on having them fully installed for a couple of days. Naturally impatience reigned supreme and me and my mate had the old suspension out and the new coilovers welded up and in the car within the next few hours.

    Here's how she sat after the coilover install, the front tyres were sitting against the collars on the coils so it wasn't drivable but I had to just roll it out of the garage to have a look. I was stoked. Have a look closely at the front end, notice the headlight that could sustain Nemo and the front lip that's had a tupperware party with a pothole. Also the shit paint on the grill and numerous other shitty bits here and there. It's absolutely beautiful.



    YAY









    So the coilovers cost me more than the car did by about $200 bucks which made me laugh, what was I doing spending all this money on a sad little red nugget that still needed so much work? Obviously because I wanted to make it less practical, stiff and slightly uncomfortable. Staying with that train of thought, I decided to start shopping for some wheels. I found a set of Autostrada Modena's not too far away from my house, they were 17's which I was against at first, but after a bit of a slap on the old google I convinced myself I could make them work and set out on my journey to pick them up in my Patrol, ya'll from the states won't know what this is, but it's a 2004 Nissan patrol wagon, live axle front and rear, coil sprung all round. Similar to an 80 series just way better haha.. Here's the wheels in the back when I got home. They are missing a pair of wheel nut covers and hex nuts, and missing the centre caps all round but I got them CHEAP and I have some cool custom machining plans for all that later down the track anyway. My main aim here was to get cheap wheels that weren't fake, so at least they will be worth it if I spend some coin on them later on.



    So they are 17x8.5 +39 and 17x9.5 +39 if I recall correctly. Just enough lip on them to not look too shit until I bite the bullet and full refurbish them with new lips and barrels. They came with 235/40 and 255/40 which is just waaaay too much rubber for the little red nugget. So I put the 235/40's on the rear wheels and chucked some 205/40's on the front.





    I threw the wheels on the the front's didn't even come close to fitting without touching the coilovers, I knew that spacers were needed to get them to fit nicely anyway, so that didn't bother me. The rears were fouling on the control arm too so I needed spacers all round. I don't like the silly rear poke that you see on some e30's, looks weird from the back. Also my wheels were made of two different pairs both with a different centre bore, so I had custom spacers machined up to suit the centre bore of the e30 and also to suit the centre bore of each pair of wheels. Just by a bit of shitty eyeball measuring I decided on 35mm fronts and 20mm rears making the wheels effectively 17x8.5 +4 and 17x9.5 +19. Not bad, it will work for now until I rebuild the wheels. What WON'T work however, is fitting them without rolling the guards. So I bought this.



    I was supposed to get straight into it and get the guards rolled and throw the wheels straight on so I could roll the car around and see how it looked, maybe play with some camber etc and see what rubs and where. But me and a mate got carried away and I took my daily for a responsible drive in the bush.



    Anyway the next day I got the guard roller out, realised it was too tall to even touch the lip of the guards so I cut it in half with a grinder and went to town on the e30. Roll the guards, cracked some paint. Generally just had a good time fucking shit up and learning a new tool. No wavy guards, just a little cracked paint which I don't care about because panel and paint is coming down the track.



    At some point during all this I had ordered a steering hub so I could install my lovely genuine Nardi that I have had on a previous car. It turned up so I set to work getting that fitted, I removed the ring on the OEM steering wheel that carries the current for the horn and trimmed it down and dremeled out the inside of it to work with the new steering hub, bit of a switcheroo with the ground wire on my quick release and got it all buttoned up with the quick release and a working horn. Hooray.



    Around the same time of the steering wheel install, I changed the starter motor on the m10, I don't know how long this motor is gonna be in the car (probably not long) but I wanted to get the car at least driving (albeit poorly). If anybody has done this job, they will know it's a massive poke in the dick hole. It's like getting jabbed in the eye with a little sausage, like a chevapi. I don't know many other types of small meat log, but this seems about right. Basically removing and installing the starter is like simultaneously being poked in the hole of your dick, and copping a chevapi to the eye. All at once. All made worse by this 8mm allen head bolt, that just wanted to strip out.



    Anyway I got it done, got filthy cause the motor is covered in oil, chased some vacuum leaks, replaced the battery. All that fun stuff. Finally got it started and running OK... OK being the keyword. But it ran, so I got it registered, and threw the wheels and spacers on.

    That pretty much brings me to where I am at now. It's still kind of a turd, the rear tyres are rubbing a fair bit, just need to roll the rear a bit flatter. I have 3 things that I want to do all at once which are fix rust, swap the motor and sort out the crappy interior. The rust will probably be last, I'm moving house soon and I want to do the rust properly with all new sheet metal so I may wait until after the move for paint and panel. The carpet is soggy and shit, the motor is leaky and sad. Both things I want to do right away. But the car looks decent and I am pretty happy with how it's coming along. It's a bit ratty, but I fully dig it, rear drum brakes and all. I don't know why I didn't buy a crappy e30 earlier. I'm having a fucking spectacular time with it. Here she is in all her soggy ratty glory.









    I do want to go lower, maybe an inch or so all round. But I will drive it a bit, remove a little bit of the camber up front and see how I go first. It still looks good now so I'm happy. There is A LOT to come, I've only had the car for two weeks. So you can see that I am trying to get shit moving. I'm sick at the moment, hence why I am doing this little write up. Hopefully you guys will stay tuned for more. Let me know what you think. Cheers.
    Last edited by Cookie; 07-07-2017, 08:53 AM.

  • #2
    Great thread subscribed man...
    My BMW E36 318ti Steel Blue Compact build thread -
    http://www.stanceworks.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=88271

    Comment


    • #3
      Thanks man, won't be a big money build by any means but I like getting shit done and I've got a keen eye for a bargain haha.

      Comment


      • #4
        subbed for shenanigans
        99 GS 400
        85' 190d
        99 Q45 (slightly nicer)
        97' q45 (rip)
        ig: erik.docx

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        • #5
          oh there's definitely gonna be plenty of shenanigans

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          • #6
            I really like this model. And yours is looking good.

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            • #7


              One of my two nuggets together cause the bimmer looks tiny.
              Attached Files

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              • #8
                Thinking about changing the Modena's out for smaller wheels too. Maybe 16's. Not sure though, what do you guys reckon?

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