** Acme [Akagi] bought a pink estate car - E30 325i project log! **

More rust pictures. The rear towing eye rot is pretty epic. Need to get the underpinnings of the car welded up first, but there are quite a few areas on the bodywork pictured here. Bonnet underside, tailgate corners, drivers door corner, arch, behind the offside headlight, etc...

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Pics:
Nearside rear passenger door, may scrub up.
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Don't think I'll be scrubbing this up! (near rear towing eye, very common)
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Nearside rear arch. I thought it was just surface blistering, but I gave it a forceful prod and oh... :p
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Near corners of rear lights under tailgate. Bit unusual! Need to take the lights out and see if it extends further.
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Bits of the tailgate
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Underside of bonnet
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Blister on drivers door corner, may scrub up.
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Behind headlight. Not too bad.
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Valve cover after scrubbing up with acid and cif and other random things, and smoothed off the raised bits to make them shiny. Need to do something with the intake manifold too, but as you can see from the above (and the pictures in post #1) there are important matters to attend to first. :)

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Lots of places for them to hold water.

Thankfully the plastic numberplate surround covers the entire lower section, so I could just have the corners chopped out and have little bits put in.
 
lsd is pretty vital in these. the e46 rack is a very good upgrade, makes it feel a lot tighter. and you need to get rid of that silly clock and get a computer in there, not that hard to retrofit. Had a few of these, pretty bullet proof apart from the rust, a few about over the 1m m miles in the dryer climates.
 
LSD's sadly are expensive luxuries when there is so much else to do. If I see one come up for a great price I'll snap it up, but if not I won't be actively looking. :)

Having an LSD will just encourage more childish behaviour anyway... And its not bad for that as is... :p
 
nah, works out cheaper with an lsd as without you have to spin the inside wheel, no choice, lsd is just a nice flick off the roundabout, actually better on tyres. Weld diff up then. M52 is by far the easiest way of adding power. Personally this is my next project, Merc om606

 
Cool project! I won't be swapping out the engine, but as I say, what is in there may get a tweak eventually.

I know what you are saying about chewing tyres, but an LSD can set you back £500+ for an E30 these days, and you have no idea if it works properly until you've already bought it and fitted it. I don't particularly want to weld it up because I don't drift everywhere and parking is already hard haha. :p
 
Acme said:
What is yours? Will be great once its done!
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It's a 1989 320I se, it was a bit of an impulse buy as it's pretty much the exact spec of my old e30 I had about 8 years ago, I can't wait to get it on the road!

It's got quite a list of work to do, water pump etc and a good tidy in the engine bay, I'm also considering a head refurb as they're pretty simple to take apart and I've stripped so much off in the bay that it isn't much of a job to go that bit further. Bodywork wise it seems a pretty similar condition to yours, although I put my hand through one of the rear inner arches while checking it over so that'll need replacing, yay.

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Re your welding comment, a Clarke welder is around £250-300 with all the parts and welding really isn't that difficult to learn, especially if you can bribe someone who knows what they're doing to help! That's my plan anyway.
 
Certainly sounds like a good plan. :)

Looks a nice car, and it already has the wheels which is a bonus. Got the caps?

Small changes today. Side repeaters and front lenses replaced with BMW genuine amber lenses, and pressed metal EU front plate with a black border fitted... I appreciate this won't be to everyone's taste, but I like it. It is also in the right place this time!

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Acme said:
Yep, very true. :)

I wish I could weld, would save me a lot of cash... :p
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Welding courses are fairly affordable and will give you a skill that will benefit you for ge rest of your life. You especially, someone who loves tinkering with cars would benefit immensely from it. Go do it.
 
I am planning on, to be quite honest. :) My friend (who has the other touring which is in some of my pics from time to time) wants to do one too, so we are looking to do one at the same time.

I don't think my own car is a good place to start practising though, especially as some of the rust is in tricky places. :D
 
Acme said:
LSD's sadly are expensive luxuries when there is so much else to do. If I see one come up for a great price I'll snap it up, but if not I won't be actively looking. :)

Having an LSD will just encourage more childish behaviour anyway... And its not bad for that as is... :p
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If there's one piece of advice I can give you, it would be never try to be a DK with an open diff, they are wildly unpredictable and tricky and it will definitely end in tears. If you want to do skids then get a good LSD then you'll have the level of control that you need.
 
Haha I am by no means trying to be a 'DK', I just occasionally give it a little blip on a 90 degree right or left, when there is loads of room. :p

My MX5 has an LSD and I don't try to be a DK in that either, because to be quite honest, I suck at it. :)
 
Finally an Acme thread I can get onboard with :D definitely keep it updated! I find fixing cars so rewarding, especially if you can do an excellent job on a budget. The only thing that isn't rewarding is rust. Rust can go to hell.
 
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