This car is an expression (or victim?) of my need to challenge myself with doing things I don't know how to do, not sure if I can, but that I find really cool.
Foreshadowing.
The car started out as an 87 eta. The summer of the year I met my wife, we decided to move from Toronto to Vancouver. At the time I had an E34 M5 and I was getting really tired of modifying a street car for dual duty because it was becoming not very good for the street and always being compromised on the track. I was going to bring it with me out West but I ended up selling it. For a few months, I was really happy to be free of it. We were living on the North shore, with Grouse Mountain out of one window, the Pacific ocean out of the other and driving to work through a rain forest (Stanley Park). I turned into an outdoor person for roughly 3 months. Then gradually, I started hurting for playing with cars and the other stuff was a pile of dirt, some water and trees again.
The trouble was that in Vancouver, everything car related was drastically more expensive than what I was used to. The only reasonably priced cars were Ontario immigrants and were well on their way to being fully recycled. I was never an E30 guy as I liked bigger cars but I figured for a toy car it should be small and RWD. I looked at 240sxes, E30s, front engined Porkers but there was nothing good that was affordable. The closest I came was a friend who knew a mechanic, who had a 928 automatic surrendered by a customer he would sell relatively cheap but it was still expensive and not since the 190hp 500 cube Caddy was there so much futility out of so much potential. Then I came across this car. The owner was a teenager who got the car as a handmedown from his father who was the original owner. But the car wouldn't move under its own power and they didn't care to fix it so it just sat in his driveway.
I talked him into a straight up trade for my 20D Canon and got a uhaul flat top to drag it home. Thankfully the driveway was fairly steep so we were able to get it up on the trailer fairly easily.
When I first rolled it down into our underground spot next to my 4Runner.
From a bit of diagnosing, it was clear that something was up with the clutch. The car ran fine but wouldn't go into gear when running, but would go fine when off.
I'd never done a clutch job before but how hard could it be? I bought some essential tools and picked a long weekend just in case.
The case turned out to be that I couldn't get the transmission off. I got as far as taking it off but the Bentley didn't mention anything about removing the starter so I figured it would slide off with the transmission. The transmission seemed loose and would move a little bit but it seemed like it was stuck on something spring-loaded. I started fearing that the clutch was somehow fused to the input shaft. The starter being a nut and bolt job was something I was happy to avoid removing but finally gave up and pulled it. And the transmission came free. It turned out that the starter was holding the transmission in place via the flywheel tin shield.
I got summoned by the super to explain myself. I said I was just changing the oil but being a BMW it required dropping the exhaust and having the car up on stands. I was basically told not to work on it anymore. It turns out that the reason I had such poor lighting while I was working is that the previous occupant of my parking space had wrenched on his car, which caught fire, burning among other things, the overhead lights. After I learned that I had more sympathy towards the concerns of the other residents.
Next step was track upgrades, doing the usual stuff with poly bushings, koni yellows + H&R race. Getting this stuff across the border was a major brown flag moment with the tax people but I shouldn't reveal any self-incriminating details. All's well that ends well.
The real difficulty was in the fact that I was no longer able to work on the car in the underground, even under the guise of an oil change. Plus I needed power for the compressor. Trouble is, in Vancouver, you have to be a millionaire to have a garage and even then, it's usually just a roof on 4 posts. I had to go up as far as the CFO of my company. She had a single car deal where she kept her 356 and agreed to let me have it for a weekend.
I was doing pretty well until I got to the subframe bushings. I'd never done those before and I knew people used fire to get them out but I didn't realize you literally had to melt them out, I thought it was more like heating a stuck fastener. They were going but slowly. My wife was holding the subframe for me but not quite at the right angle I needed and I was brewing a lot of bile inside, from being tired and running out of time. I finally boiled over and yelled HERE HOLD IT LIKE THIS, and grabbed the heated metal with my bare hand. Upon peeling the sizzling flesh off, my bile was gone, replaced with a bucket of humility with a sprinkle of shut the berkeley up. It was quite enjoyable because I kept a wet rag on the trunk of the car so when my hand would feel like it's on fire every minute or two, I could rest it on the rag and it would be pure bliss.
My wife got to daily the car for a while as she worked close to our house and I had just taught her how to drive manual with it and she wanted to practice.
Our first motorsport attempt with it was an autocross. I'd always hated them but I figured with an E30 it can't be so bad. Of course, it was the one snowfall day of the whole year... and holy E36 M3 Vancouver doesn't berkeley around with their snowfalls...
I'm happy to report I still hate autocrosses but at least my wife had a good time
Next was a track visit with Definitive Driving at Portland International. Pretty neat little track!
Found the S52. Prepping it in our livingroom. This is part of why I married my woman.
I got a lucrative contract offer back in Toronto so we decided we'll move back, I'll save every penny I can and we'll buy a house. Once we settled in I finished the swap. I honestly thought this was all the toy car I'd ever want. The problem was at this time, I didn't realize that it wasn't about the power or any other performance metric. I was doing this because I thought it was cool and wanted to see if I could meet the challenge.
Challenge met
Next challenge, chambered
I never did take it to MoSport but we played with it at the smaller Toronto area tracks, it's a great little car with an S52
Next step...
It's funny, I still have a copy of this post around because I was learning about EFI and turbocharging and guys asked me about my goals. In retrospect, literally NONE of this ended up being true.
E30 to MCoupe
Fuel upgrades:
............awesome build!!!
