Rekpoint

Nice! I was actually looking at that one too, lol. Great buy!!

Fantastic FB find. Wish I could have joined for the pickup!
Guess Ill have to buy one for a daily now aswell.

Man, we’re going to have to rename this site WIDiesels at this rate! Congrats on the pickup, I love the color combo!
Any plans for deleting or upgrading?

I decided I wanted a bigger daily driver to haul odds and ends + the dogs. The E90 is great but just doesn’t cut it size-wise.
Originally set out to find an E70 X5 35d with the beautiful M57. I’d been searching for a while when suddenly saw an F15 35d pup up at a similar price point. It’s a bit high mileage at 145k, but overall pretty good shape. Came with plenty of maintenance records and some nice extras: Yakima roof rack with Thule wind deflector, thule ski box, remote start, OEM hidden hitch.
Sadly not an M Sport, but I really think the Imperial Blue on Terra interior makes up for it. I’m equally pumped and nervous to dabble into the diesel engines!

 

Haven’t really done much with this other than drive it, which is good. Would like to change up the wheels at some point, but these fit the car so well and there’s not a lot of options for 4x100, or they’re $5,000.
 

Got some new wheels. Style 193's from a coworker who was moving and no longer needed them, got them for a good price. They came on Michelin Pilot Aplin winter tires. I am planning on keeping these off until winter, running them with the winter tires, and then next spring, swap the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S's I just got onto them to be my spring summer tires.
 

Finally picked up the new daily! After ruling out many of the other European SUVs, I kept coming back to the X5. After a lot of browsing I realized I wanted one with nicer wheels and either sport or comfort seats. The other features weren’t as important. 
 
There were some in Chicagoland, but driving down there with my wife and then driving two cars back through there with her by herself isn’t something I wanted to do. Fortunately, I found a strong contender to the north of me in Neenah. We went up there Saturday morning, checked it out, and bought it. 
 
2015 Xdrive35i with M-Sport package. The PO also has an e70 diesel with m sport, an M650, e46 M3, and a new X7. He was selling the X5’s to make room for his new M3 Comp. So it was coming from someone who knew the cars and I really liked that. 
 
Anyways, I’ve only been driving it for two days, but it is so awesome. All three kids fit comfortably with three across forward facing car seats. The storage in the boot is great. The car in Sport mode is quicker than I thought it would be and the paddle shifters are reallly good. 

116,4xx: 
Oil change and filter, used the oreilly’s house brand full synthetic because they had nothing else in 10w-40 and I figured that’d be better than running something lighter weight from Castrol or Mobil.
Replaced the two front tires with used takeoffs as a stopgap for when the 17’a go on, I’ve had approximately zero free time in the last month so that project has stalled. The fronts were down to the wear bars, rears are still okay for a little while, so just wanted to buy myself a few weeks before I can hopefully get the true summer set finished up. 
 
In other news, I bought another car! It’s crusty, non-running, and has more damage than I originally thought, but I paid less than $1k for it (and it’s a NC car, so really no rust underneath) so I figured that at worst it’ll get parted, and at best I’ll have a fun beater to use to keep miles off of the e34. 



Stats: 1988 535is, salmon silver over blue with a 5spd. All of the “is” specific parts are gone with the exception of the LSD. The only remaining seat part is the rear seat bottom, but I have a spare set of e30 sport fronts that I’ll be tossing in once I make some adapters. 
 
It appears to have been set up for track/DE work before it took the hit, it’s rocking bilstein sports all the way around with what I believe are racing dynamics lowering springs. I noted some new suspension bits like dogbones in my inspection of the car as well, so it appears to have been already at least partially gone through. Brake is still firm, and it has braided lines throughout. Interior is partially gutted, with no door cards or carpet and an electrical cutoff in the rear seat bulkhead. Overall, not bad for a car that’s been sitting for at least 5 years. 
 
Current plan is to try to get it running, then evaluate my costs and options from there once I can suss out the rest of the systems in the car. If anyone has e28 fenders, grilles and high beams/headlight assemblies they’d be willing to part with, I’m interested and on the lookout. 
 
I also picked up a set of 17x8.5 MOMO heritage 6’s the other day off their site, they’re holding a buy two-get two sale thru early September and I couldn’t resist. Hoping they show up quickly, at which point they’ll be installed on the e34 with some Pilot Sport A/S 3+’s. 

Come by, have a beer, help me move my ezup. 

Instead of sitting in an endless state of project car limbo, I actually got some work done and cranked out a new radiator, hoses, and intake boots for the E36. Peep the wonderful mess of oil, atf, and coolant it left all over my floor. Got the system all bled, refilled the trans with ATF, and now it drives better than ever and hasn't leaked a drop of coolant.

Also spent a little bit of time last night throwing in a new Bluetooth radio so I can listen to my own music (I cannot stand the radio) and also got some pics of the interior for everyone here to see. Still needs a detail, but overall in really good shape and is just about as comfortable as it gets.


As far as the future goes, I noticed the car has a pretty big oil leak by the bell housing (praying its not a rear main) and a minor gas leak from one of the hard lines. Hopefully gonna get that diagnosed and dealt with soon, but in the meantime I am just gonna enjoy the car and enjoy the gas mileage!
 
 

Looks awesome!

Tried my hand at making a splitter and side skirt extensions. First made some cardboard templates that I fitted to the car and spare front bumper.



Once I had it where I thought looked good, I went to a local sign shop in New Berlin and had them cut me some rough sized aluminum composite. Also know as poly-metal. It's two very thin sheets of aluminum with composite plastic sandwich led between them. Super lightweight yet strong and sturdy.
I traced out the templates and cut the pieces out of the poly-metal with an oscillating tool.



I used the stock mounting screw locations to also secure the splitter pieces which worked out well. Sanded them down and gave em a coat of semi gloss black paint and done. 


Paint isn't perfect as the coating on the poly-metal was still uneven even after sanding. Good part is I can always unbolt it, sand again and repaint down the road. 
I think it turned out nice. The subtle look goes well with the car I think. On to the next project, whatever that may be. 

Noticed a little spot of oil on my garage floor after not driving the car for a bit. At first I thought it was coming from the oil drain plug, but a closer look made me suspect the center oil pan gasket. Sucks I didn’t choose to replace it while the rod bearings were done recently - feels bad dropping fresh oil. Also deep cleaned my reinforcement plate while it was off and it looks pretty darn good!

 

Slow progress is still progress!
 
After some extensive measuring I decided on some Polk DB+ 6.5" component speakers for the front and 5x7" coaxial speakers for the rear. While I had the front all pulled apart for the amp I decided to start there with the speaker upgrades. My car originally came with the basic 4 speaker sound system so I did not have the tweeter housings in the doors. The Polk tweeters have a nice basic black grill but are an odd rounded shape on the outside so they wouldn't necessarily be an easy fit in stock e30 tweeter pods. I didn't want to just surface mount the tweeters on the stock blanks so I decided to design and print some mounts of my own. I started with a basic model of a tweeter blank I found online and modified it to be mounted with a screw and perfectly fit the Polk tweeter at an angle that matched the stock ones. After a bit of trial and error I printed the final parts in ASA. To finish them up I sanded them down, sprayed with filler primer and sanded again to completely smooth them out, then a coat of texture paint followed by a final pass with SEM trim black. I mounted the tweeters from the back with hot glue so that they wouldn't be impossible to remove if needed, we'll see how that holds up in a hot car. 



 
Good news for me is that cars with the base sound system still have the tweeter wiring going into the door, so these just plugged directly into that and fit perfectly! I'm super happy with how they turned out. 

 
I also got the 6.5" woofers mounted in the kick panels. The speakers have the normal 4 mounting holes as well as an inner circle of holes that turn out to line up perfectly with the 5.25" speaker pattern (which I would assume is intentional). Because they'll be tight under the kick panels I printed a ~3mm spacer to keep the mounting screw heads off the speaker surround as well as keep the kick panel from interfering with speaker cone movement. 

 
These Polk 6.5's are pretty shallow and also don't protrude too much beyond the mounting surface so zero modification to the chassis was required to fit them. I did however, have to modify the kick panel trim. I removed the sound insulation/speaker mesh and trimmed away the plastic ring around the speaker grill and the back side of the one screw hole. I also used a heat gun to flatten them out a bit as they had warped into a concave shape over time. The speaker sticks out maybe 5mm further than the original so these have to flex around them a little bit, but once installed they look completely stock and don't have any gaps. I may go back and replace the sound insulation at some point, but going to try without for now. 

I don't have a pic of the kick panels installed but it looks completely stock. No need to space out the hood release on the driver's side and zero clearance issues with anything there. I am still working on the passenger side but so far it looks like the glovebox will clear without issues as well. 
 
Next job is wiring in both crossovers and finding places to mount those!
 

Nice NAB. Dang I want it. 

After couple of weeks of engine bay paint prep. I am ready to paint it. I build a beautiful spray booth in my garage with two box fans and shoot some epoxy primer followed by some seam sealer and more epoxy. Today i will finish it with single stage urethane in original safari beige.
 
 
I got the intercooler figured out. Wiring is next on the list.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Last week I had a customer come into my work and they asked me if we worked on foreign vehicles. I said "Yeah, I dont think theres really anything were afraid to work on." After talking to him a little while longer I found out that he wanted to schedule getting a radiator replaced in his 96 318ti so he could list the car for sale. I told him that I might be interested and asked how much he'd be looking to get out of it as it sits with a bad radiator, and he told me he was looking to get $2750 for it as is. I then asked him to bring it by so I could take a peak.

The car shows up and it is pretty beautiful, one of the best condition 318ti's that I have seen. At only 120k miles, the boston green glistened, the dove leather interior was damn near spotless, and the A/C was ice cold. It was a southern car almost its an entire life, and was a one owner vehicle until the PO bought it a little over a year ago. It has a small rust spot on the rear quarter and one of the jack pad areas, but the rest of the car was extremely clean. I took it out for a spin and aside from the coolant leak the car drove phenomenal. We shook on $2700 (including a new radiator and hoses), and I drained my bank account and brought her home.

 

Drove the car around for a couple days and so far I have been pretty happy with it. The car is currently under the knife in my garage at the moment waiting on some new intake hoses that ripped during disassembly, and it turned out the radiator hoses he supplied were some cheap bright red ebay silicone hoses that fit horribly so I am also waiting on a set of all new OEM rubber hoses from FCP.

Current plans arent anything crazy, just want to get the car squared away so I can have a comfortable and quirky summer daily!

Like the title says, looking for manual dove sport seats for my 318ti. Good condition preferred. Thanks!

Ok, so I spoke too soon.  I'm not 100% sure what I hit but when I was driving home from Appleton last night I heard a loud flapping noise so I pulled over at a Kwik Trip and was surprised to find out most of my front lip was missing.  I'm not 100% sure but I'm fairly confident it was not another squirrel. I was right though, the spot that I just fixed held up! 🤣
I don't think I can fix this one so the car is naked for the time being.

Not exactly car related but I knocked out the first step of the garage build - insulating the walls. Such a pain in the ass removing the shelving system the previous owner had. Half was built with nails, at least 1000 of them. After getting all shelving removed, I went with R15 in the walls and eyeing up R38 for the ceiling. My plan is to just finish insulation and vapor barrier this summer and drywall / paint next.

Did a deep clean on the carpet Sunday because of the lack of humidity. Really wasn't dirty but wanted to just so I know that it's done.
Seats pulled out and then I used a drill with a brush attachment and some interior detailer to first agitate the carpet, then went over it with the carpet extractor. No after pictures, but have some before pictures. Usual crumb and change accumulation, but really not much else.
Under the rear seats had a pretty good accumulation of crud that was nice to clean out as well.
 


Pulled the subwoofer covers and cleaned those as well.

Also stripped, clay bared, and sealed my windshield. Used the following to do so.

No joke, I've hit at least 3 squirrels/chipmunks and my lip continues to take a beating but thankfully I've gotten pretty OK at fixing carbon pieces.  It's not perfect but it's a solid 5 footer.  I could have spent more time sanding the resin after it hardened to get it to conform to the curve upwards better but I figured if anything I just added some stiffness to an area that's bound to get hit again.
Here's how it started:

Here's how it went:


 

I haven't been. Just got back from San Diego nearly dying from a shootout 500 feet from me. Living the life.

I might be stuck in LA for the 4th so I feel your pain.
Well shit Glen how you gonna hold on?

Highly recommend the m18 mid torque as a beefier gun for suspension/driveline/brake work, I use it arguably more than the stubby. They’re great complements to one another, especially if you ever work on anything heavier.