Pictures of the running car

I realized I had no pictures of the car since it became my daily driver. All of the essential things are hooked up to keep it running reliably. However, there will be a list of loose ends I'll be tying up for awhile. For instance I have lots of wires and miscellaneous niceties that I need to hook up and tie out of the way. Also, I may end up overhauling the cooling system (can't hurt). I plan on getting air conditioning working, too.

Engine Videos

Engine Start:

E30 M50 Engine Start from kevdeno on Vimeo.

Engine Running:

E30 M50 Engine Running from kevdeno on Vimeo.

Engine Running 2:

E30 M50 Engine Running 2 from kevdeno on Vimeo.

Engine Start Troubleshooting

Once I got the car back from the exhaust shop, I got to work getting the final connections secured and double checked. I had already put fluids in before the exhaust shop trip, so it was really more of an electrical game at this point. When I finally was ready, I can honestly say I only hooked the battery up for 5 to 10 seconds. I wanted to see if smoke would come billowing out of somewhere. Luckily none did.


This is the picture of the power block in the engine bay before it got organized. I took this picture to share with some forum friends to see if they could help me. My car wasn't starting. Check out my thread to read about it. I finally isolated the problem to the fuel injectors. All 6 of them were bad. I can only guess that they gummed up from sitting for over two years.





I got a set of 6 used injectors off ebay for $90. Once I had them installed I did another test start. It fired up immediately! It started so easily that it startled me. I had become conditioned to expect nothing for so many attempts that to hear it growl at me was terrifying (no muffler, mind you). You've not seen a grin as big as mine was at that moment.

Moving and Exhaust

At this point it is January 2008, the car isn't running yet, and I'm moving into the Hadley house. I have to get my car out of the Hedgelane house where I've been living. The car has no exhaust system, and needs to go to the shop to get one custom built. So I incorporate a coworker and his truck as well as a Uhaul tow dolly. By the way, my experience at Uhaul was abysmal. But I got the car to the shop.

I had two things done at the BMW shop:
- Bleed the hydraulic clutch system.
- Check and reclaim refrigerant from the air conditioner. (Turns out there was no refrigerant)

The muffler shop is next door to the BMW shop (how convenient):
- I had custom exhaust built only through the catalytic converter. We decided to leave picking the muffler until after it was running.

A note about the drive shaft: I had heard a lot of options were possible. That I could use an E30 M3 drive shaft or even an E30 318 drive shaft. What I found is that the E36 drive shaft from the donor car had 3 of the four things I needed. So I didn't have to bother trying M3 or 318 drive shafts.
1. It's front mounted to the ZF transmission.
2. It's length worked in the E30
3. It's rear mounted to my differential.
4. It's guibo had to be replaced with one from an E30 drive shaft.
If you look at the picture, you'll notice that the drive shaft is actually two parts. You cannot use half E30 and half E36. The E30 one is opposite the E36 one.

Left is E36. Right is E30. Notice how the E30 one is more robust. Much of the rest of the E30 is like this, too. More robust.

Gauge Cluster Replacement

I had to replace the gauge cluster with one out of a 325i or 325is E30 because the redline on the tachometer was at 6250. The one original to the car was at 4800. I found one off ebay for $50. I've heard if you start with a 318 E30 for your car the redline is the same or close enough but you have to replace a chip inside the cluster because of the difference in the number of cylinders, but I didn't have to deal with this.