New ride! 89 e30 vert

[jc43089]

This beast is fun!  I thought the rear shocks were shot but the mounts were just blown through.  It has KYB "gas-a-just" in the rear, they do not appear to be adjustable though.  I installed the relatively new RSMs from my e36.  The slave cylinder that came with the trans was leaking so I swapped that out as well yesterday with one that Mike had in his parts car trunk.  I just need to bleed it tonight.  At first I thought it felt kind of weak, but now that I have run a couple tanks of fresh fuel and seafoam through it, it is running very smoothly now.  It is a fun car for sure, but I just don't really care for it being a convertible.  I've never had one before so now I know.  In two weeks we are cruising it to Alabama so that will be the true stress test.

[jc43089]

There was no heat shield above the cat when I got the car.  Mike gave me the one from his parts e28.  With a bit of massaging it fit pretty good.  I just had to drill new holes (in the shield, not the car) for some of the mounting spots.

 

 

 

[Earl]

Will this be coming to the e30 picnic?

[jc43089]

Unfortunately I had to work, I only have Sunday and Monday off until the end of July.  Then either back to 12 hour, 4 on/4 off daytime, or Mon-Fri 1pm to 9:30pm.

[B C]

What do you do for work

[jc43089]

I am a controls and instrumentation tech for Hormel Foods.  PLC programming, panel building, and some control design work.  It's pretty fun.

[B C]

Hormel near Beloit?  I heard that someone who worked there will never eat the chili. I used to work with pumps for the food industry and things seem to be clean enough for me to not worry about it (except for when a pump crashes and sends undetectable stainless steel chunks through a batch), but maybe you have seen some other horror stories. 

Id like to learn PLC

[jc43089]

Dubuque, IA.  It is a pretty new plant, I have been there since 2009 before production started.

[jc43089]

Got to Alabama last night, the e30 drove awesome.  The sport seats are very comfortable.  Google maps said 934 miles by the highways, we cruised the back roads so It took longer but it was exactly 800 miles that way.  AAA maps and guidebooks are a great perk, we didn't bring our GPS because they ruin the fun!  Mileage wasn't the best, about 23 mpg.

 

Saw this widebody e36 in a tiny town in Illinois, I had to stop for a pic.

 

 

 

 

Train museum in Galesburg, Il is really cool.

 

 

Saw a Fram factory randomly as we were cruising along.

 

[RamRod E28]

Killer widebody glad to hear everyone made it ok, hope for a safe return for youz guyz

[bfinley]

Sounds like a great trip!

Sent from my SCH-R830 using Tapatalk

[RamRod E28]

Finally got that video on youtube (a little late I know lol)

[jc43089]

That video is going to my house from the storage unit with the bad auto transmission.  You can also observe the ride quality/comfort of the Land Cruiser first hand as well.

[RamRod E28]

That video is going to my house from the storage unit with the bad auto transmission.  You can also observe the ride quality/comfort of the Land Cruiser first hand as well.

What ride quality/comfort do you speak of??? LOL that Land Bruiser is beyond badass

[jc43089]

Made it to Alabama and back, 1662 miles round trip.  Just turned the key and drove, only issue to look at is the wipers only wipe if you vigorously wiggle the stalk.  Might need a new switch, a quick rain-x stop solved that.  Mileage wasn't the best with the 4.10 differential, about 22-23 when I could find ethanol free, and 20-21 with e10. 

 

Here are some pictures from Mid America Motorworks in Effingham IL, this place was really cool, some very rare Corvettes.  It's free too, if you are going through this area don't miss it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[B C]

Congrats on doing quality work and making a cross country trip in the car

[jc43089]

It was a fun trip, we took back roads for a lot of the way, We brought charcoal and food and stopped at small town city parks and grilled for meals.  It made for a fun cheap vacation.  Navigation was with AAA maps which are very nice, no GPS allowed.  More fun that way IMO.  I am thankful that this car has sport seats, they are very comfortable. 

 

Opinions on putting in a 3.25 dif?  I believe that this is what would be in mikes '88 e28 parts car.  I just swap output flanges and rear cover from the reading I have done?

 

This would bring my 70mph rpms down from 3157 to 2502.  Is this going too far?  My personal thoughts are that a vert is a cruising car anyway, and if you want to rev it up just drop a gear.

 

Very nice BMW specific gear calculator here.

http://www.endtuning.com/gearratios.html

[RamRod E28]

Those are the revs I sit at in my seta swapped car now and I only have to drop a gear if its a ginormous hill and im going 55 (which is rare for me to be going that slow) Im getting 25-27 mpg hwy in the e28 so i bet you could pull 30 out of the e30

[YoungCR]

Opinions on putting in a 3.25 dif? I believe that this is what would be in mikes '88 e28 parts car. I just swap output flanges and rear cover from the reading I have done?

Yes it should be a 3.25, run his vin to look at the options to verify or read the tag. Probably isn't a LSD.

As far as swapping the diff all you need to do is swap the flanges and rear cover. We did the same procedure putting a E28 LSD into Alex's ti which uses a e30 rear end.

[jc43089]

I was suspicious that the odometer was not reading correctly.  Sure enough, we drove to Wausau to visit family and the distance is exactly 200 miles, the odometer only counted 165.  The speedometer is correct though.  Doesn't this all come from the sensor in the differential?  Can the odometer gears partially fail?  On the bright side this means my fuel economy is better than I thought, 24-27 after correction.  My tires are 195-70R14 which is a little taller than the door sticker that calls for 195-65R14, but the speedometer is very close to correct.

 

Will a different differential ratio mess up my speedometer?

 

Can the OBC be changed to miles/gallons vs km/liters?  My e36 switches between but I couldn't figure out this one.

[jc43089]

Hormel near Beloit?  I heard that someone who worked there will never eat the chili. I used to work with pumps for the food industry and things seem to be clean enough for me to not worry about it (except for when a pump crashes and sends undetectable stainless steel chunks through a batch), but maybe you have seen some other horror stories. 

Id like to learn PLC

What pump company?  We have several x ray machines throughout the process to detect foreign materials.  It is clean, but the smell of the food goes from good to sickening after a while.  We cook and can all of the canned chicken that gets the Hormel, Valley Fresh and Great Value Walmart labels for the whole country.  Over 1,000,000 pounds of chicken a week.  We also make the Hormel Compleats, shelf stable microwave tray meals.

 

I have noticed that once in while the tach needle will flicker down and then pop right back up.  Some internet searching leads me to possibly the CPS (the plastic is cracked where the cable goes in) or a grounding issue.  I believe this may also be causing my slight surging while using cruise control.

[jc43089]

Also on my wiper issue, referencing page 6160-0 in the 88 vert ETM, it appears that it is either the switch on the column or the ground connection on the column, this is the only place that would affect all wiper settings, unless the problem is in the wiper unit itself.

[jc43089]

Swapped the dif yesterday, from the 4.10 open to a 3.25 open, it went good, both looked great inside, the 3.25 was cleaner.  It must have had fluid changed at some point with something decent.  It is a million times better to drive, I don't feel like it lost much for acceleration as you can hold gears much longer, it just barely hits 60mph in second gear, and cruises at 2500 rpm when at 71-72mph.  I will be rechecking fuel economy over the next week to see how that improved as well.  This would be a perfect gearing IMO for guys with more power too (Snap).

 

Old one out.

 

4.10 internals.

 

e30 to e28 flange comparison, e30 is on the left e28 on the right.

 

Outside of cover comparison, e30 is on the right.

 

Inside of cover comparison, e30 is on the right, notice the e28 dif is much cleaner.

 

3.25 internals.

 

 

Easy way to fill the fluid, with a full drain it was exactly 2 quarts.  Royal Purple 75-140.

[B C]

I drove a stock M20 5spd with a 2.93 once, I was very surprised that it wasn't more of a dog off the line. It was completely fine and driveable. I only noticed that it lacked the freeway acceleration I was used to. 

I was thinking more along the lines of a 3.46 but im probably more likely to find a 3.25. I will convert it to LSD if I need to. 

 

Glad you are liking it,  interested to find out the mpg difference

[jc43089]

I drove a stock M20 5spd with a 2.93 once, I was very surprised that it wasn't more of a dog off the line. It was completely fine and driveable. I only noticed that it lacked the freeway acceleration I was used to. 

I was thinking more along the lines of a 3.46 but im probably more likely to find a 3.25. I will convert it to LSD if I need to. 

 

Glad you are liking it,  interested to find out the mpg difference

 

Just a downshift away.  It seems that 3.25's are plentiful as every m30 e28 had them, some LSD and some not.  The m20 e28's had 2.93's except for the Seta/5spds had 3.25 open which is what mine came from.  Seta/auto had a different ratio but I don't remember what it is.