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westy's 1985 BMW E30 "Alice"


westy

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  • 3 weeks later...
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  • 2 weeks later...

Was a bit bummed with it.

Anyway, was a nice day today, so thought I'd wash some of the pine pollen off that gathers this time of year. Cursed stuff. Dropped it on its wheels, towed it outside, washed it. Feel betterer.

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Aaaannd threw a battery in it to test some stuff. Decided to check out the fuel pump to see if I could find a reason why it wasn't triggering and no earth! Fixed that. Springs into life. Fuck it. Plug the missing coolant sensor in, throw some gas in it. Fuel pump works, builds pressure and stops just like it's supposed to. Flick key to start. Raaaaaa.

Fucking stoked. Idles smooth, revs nicely, sounds crisp (through no exhaust ha). Win.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 months later...

So, I may, or may not, have driven this thing from Hville to Silverdale the other day. And it may, or may not, be something of a hoot to drive.

Noisy (no sound deadning), smelly, bumpy (she must be pretty light, it's been some work getting the height down) and a bit twitchy (needs a wheel alignment).

All systems work! Plenty more fettling to do but these things are never really finished I guess.

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  • 2 months later...
Guest westy

Managed a trackday at Hampton on Good Friday.

Car ran well all day with no major problems save a leaking inputshaft seal in the gbox.

Bolted some slicks on and managed a 1.22.9.

Pretty slow, but awesome fun.

Quick vid from a mates E30.

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  • 3 months later...

So, boredom setting in waiting for the slow wheels of bureaucracy to move led me to construct this fake splitter from a piece of ply and a strip of stainless I had lying around ha.
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All ready for quick self removal at the first glance of a curb...

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Also, thinking about sticking a low blow turbo on it. Something to make around 350 fly-horses.
Anyone with any great ideas re std equipment turbos that might fit the bill? Evo or similar? Cause cheep-cheep.

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  • 1 month later...
  • 1 month later...

Drove down to Hampton for the Icebreaker last weekend and while there we set it up on the scales.
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No driver and about 1/3 tank of gas. Around 20 ltrs.
A bit more than I was expecting tbh. Also surprised at even weight split front to back.

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  • 7 months later...

So, while back I picked up another donor for this thing.

 

It's a V8 mate

 

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4.4 ltr M62 in an E39. 273000ks but seems to run sweet as  and was cheap as chips. Car is a f%$@ing mess but that's by the by...

 

 

And then

 

Managed to get out and make a start on this. First thing to do is reconfigure the car from an auto to a manual. Did this while it was still sitting in the car, which was easy enough, at least it seems that way, I've no idea what they actually do ha.

Upshot is that the DME no longer looks for the trans comp and wont send any error messages to the cluster. There is apparently also a software update to give us the correct file for the manual (apparently a slightly different tune/idle control) but we couldn't load it as the DME relates to a 840i not the 540i and they didn't have the correct software and so the DME wouldn't accept it. As I understand it anyway :dontknow: . So to start with we'll be wiring it to neutral. Will make very little difference to the way it runs anyway.

Geeks at work.
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Turns out this early girl from 2/96 is an oddball assortment of leftovers from previous models. Still has EWS 2, as mentioned a DME from an E31, analogue signals from the tach and coolant sensor and a distinct lack of CANBUS, of which only the DME and the EGS (trans comp) are connected on.
With the later E46 systems the E30 is running on, this means I'm looking at having to incorporate the older style EWS and most likely the older KOMBI cluster too as the current one is entirely digital/run from BUS.
A later donor car probably would have, more or less, plugged straight in but oh well...

 

//oldschool.co.nz/index.php?/topic/28233-westys-1985-bmw-e30-alice/

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  • 2 months later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

So, there was a couple of loose ends with the wiring to tidy up, namely the tach and the coolant gauge. Didn't really know how I was going to tackle them but I thought I'd shove the CAN up it and whattayaknow? Tach now works and looks as though the coolant does too, although I wont really know for sure till I heat her up.

Which I can now do with one of the those coolant tanks that fits in front of the left strut tower. So I'm wondering if I should try and pressurise it or let it overflow as an E30 would??

I also did this
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Been a busy weekend.

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