MyE28.com

I bought this e12 about a year ago and have slowly been working on it. This is my progress during that time. I have it posted on first fives and bf.c but since mye28 is essentially an m30 based forum I thought it appropriate to assemble my journey here as well.



BBS rear spoiler




The old m30b28 528i engine. I have a later model 2.8 that will be going in. More on that later.


Rubinrot Metallic. I like this color, If I were to change it would be to black. Also the only rust I could find on this car is under that riveted plate, likewise on the other side.


Pulled off the front BBS valance for repairs. It was cracked about 3 times. Found a massive dent in the OEM valance. And in the front frame around the radiator. It will be fixed.




So off comes the valance. Dents were hammered out and smoothed with a bit of filler. Would have like to just find another, but that's not possible in my location.





Sneak peak of those wheels I mentioned earlier


The interior was the original cloth. Which was very rotten. And the front seats had sheepskin covers...Oh yes, its a 4 speed:buttrock haha.


Manual sunroof FTW


So a couple weeks later an advertisement came up for an e28 part out. Went to check it out and he had some good stuff. He didn't know it though. A full leather interior, a full vinyl interior with power seats and windows. It was an eta engine in the car, but he had a spare m30b28 on a stand! Annnnnd a 5 spd close ratio dogleg transmission with a short shift kit. Oh and a spare 5 spd transmission. I picked all that up plus a bunch more engine and exterior parts including a fill set of door for $250. Turns out however it was not a dogleg. Test fitted the rear leather right away:


The 5spd. Yea, Im not keeping that knob...




Alright alright, on to the wheels.




Yep a sweet set of 16x8 et11 Rial Mesh wheels from the 80's. Really nice look on this car. Picked em for $300. Onto the engine, Valve cover off, looks alright.




Carbon buildup. Looks like the entire engine was torn down before, because there is RTV on EVERYTHING. Literally every seam has copious amounts of


Oil pan off



Head on the shop table, ready for being torn down,


Time to dive in


There they are!


All apart, Ready for the parts cleaner!
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Update. Lots of Update. When I first had the e12, I found an e28(mentioned earlier) with parts I could use for the e12. One of those parts were power windows. Yup, thats right, the e12 has power windows from an e28 now. Pretty straight forward swap, pull e28 windows out and put them in the e12 door, the bolt holes are all the same, no worries. The door needed a bit of working because the electrical connection hole was too small to get the connector through. The other scary part is cutting the door panels for the switches. 1. The first scary part being the purist in me hated cutting 35 year old door panels. 2. If I messed up, good luck on finding door panels in as good a shape. So once that was done, I went ahead and decided to pull all the seats out.


That was relatively easy compared to some I have done. Also found an old Kenwood amp under the passenger seat. I think it was like 260 watts. It matched the after market tape deck. So once the seats were out, naturally the carpet had to come out.


Also wasn't hard. Id like to find a good condition carpet, this one sucks. So if anyone knows of one....PM me. The floor looked good a bit of water underneath, but overall impressive for the age of the car.




What do people think, should I pull up that foam? Is there a generic type I can cut to fit in if I do? No rust. This never happens here. Ever.


Pouring over the Bentley e28 Manual. Had to figure out where the power window harness should splice into.
http://s1241.beta.photobucket.com/user/ ... 1.jpg.html

Pulled out some more random bits and pieces of trim etc. The dash will be coming out so I can fix the cracks as well. The I decided it was time for the engine to come out. So I prepped it to come out. Some of these are meaningless photos to you I'm sure, but they are more for me to know how to put stuff back together.
http://s1241.beta.photobucket.com/user/ ... 2.jpg.html




Pulled this hulking mass out. Whats a good alternative to this stock pipe. Straight pipe, but I don't want that much noise...Suggestions?

I finally took it out last night. What a horrible pain in the ass. It has to be one of the worst BMW engines to pull out. It has to get about 7 feet in the air to clear the front rad support, you cant have the car on the ground and you cant lower the car down until the engine is almost all the way out, otherwise the car rests on the engine hoist. So the front of the engine is 7ft in the air and the transmission is down on the ground. We were leveling it with ratchet straps, which works 10x better than an engine leveler. Trust me. So it was all the way out, we pretty much had to lift the back end up and push it out. And the engine decide to roll upside down mid air. It was secured enough that it didn't fall on the ground or kill anyone, but it was damn scary. Oh there's no lifting hook on the front of the engine so we had to loop underneath.

Its as scary as it looks.

Horror movie style

Had to undo the shift lever to clear the tunnel

http://s1241.beta.photobucket.com/user/ ... 2.jpg.html
Oh this is my buddies euro e30 Sewing Machine coming out

We pulled that out before I also decided to let my friend have that m30b28 in the original updates and put in his e30...I'm going to rebuild the original and put it back in! (Update the e30 now has an m62 non vanos and 6 speed!)

Had the valve cover powder coated

And a bunch of other stuff... Rebuilt the TB




Had these made




So I have the front 4 pots apart and send off the the powder coater along with the front subframe and brake dust shields. I ended up splitting a brake piston pulling it out so I bought a second set of callipers on eBay to cannibalize. I tore down the steering box to replace the seals and get the casing powder coated, there is so much more to these boxes than you might think! I'm really going to have to study the parts diagrams to put it back together. Also front suspension is apart. Should be ordering new shock inserts soon. I am also going to be sending the block and head off to the machine shop soon. On to the pics;






To show the intricacies of the steering box; I'll be replacing the seals and perhaps the bearings if I can find them still.


This actually isn't even fully disassembled there's still perhaps 20 more parts to come apart.

Some parts back from the powdercoater:

Subframe


Brake dust shields




Brake Callipers




Still waiting in the motor should be back soon I hope. Had to bore everything out 60 thou over. Once custom forged pistons arrive then I'll get final bored since it's just rough right now. Waiting on stainless intake/exhaust steel valves from IE at the moment.

Pulled the trigger on a Good N Tight top mount turbo manifold. Pretty excited about that!

That is a lot of powder coating. Great work. Where are you located?

Awesome! Love it.

I pulled my M90 by pulling the transmission first. I had read about what people had to do to pull both at the same time out the top and I wasn't going to do it. It was still really tight pulling the motor straight out the top with just the clutch and pulleys on it. I used a load leveler on mine.

Very cool project. I like that color. Never seen it on an E12 before.

I'm on the east coast of Canada. The color is Rubinrot metallic which is really cool, I get the feeling it's a fairly rare color. Haven't noticed to many others with the same color except for an e24 I saw online.

A friend of mine does the Powdercoating and for really first cheap so I take advantage of that otherwise I would just leave it. Whenever I put the motor back in it'll be going in and then attach the trans from underneath.

Also have an MLS and ARP studs from TCD here as well.

Anyway cheers guys, thanks for looking!

Sweet build! I wouldn't change the color. You have a one of-a-kind & would be hard pressed to see another in rolling down the street. The TCD kit will be an easy bolt-on edition & work quite nice with the setup you're using.

As for me, I'm kinda partial to your intake.

I won't be changing the color, I actually really like it back when I first got it I didn't know anything about it!

Nice intake haha, now I see what mine will look like.

I have installed Todd's kit before and it's very nice for the money, but I'd like to piece one together on my own this time. Although I will probably buy various items from Todd.

**edit**
I think I'll PM you later to see what you did with your fuel rail setup as that's one of those things I'm unsure of yet!

Updates;

Engine still at machine shop, they first told me the guides were good just needed new valves. I bought new valves and then they said I need new guides. So that's where they are with that. I was told the block and crank are ready to go.

Walbro fuel pump is ordered as well as the 6an fittings and braided fuel line. I forgot to order a filter though. I think this week I'll drop the tank and seal it.

Front brakes are assembled and awesome looking.

jodystevens wrote:I bought this e12 about a year ago and Oh this is my buddies euro e30 Sewing Machine coming out

We pulled that out before I also decided to let my friend have that m30b28 in the original updates and put in his e30...I'm going to rebuild the original and put it back in! (Update the e30 now has an m62 non vanos and 6 speed!)

Now here is a engine we never saw in the U.S.?
A 4 cyl. with Motronic 1.3 two valve?
Or are there seprate throttles and 4 valves?

Jeff

Correct, that is a m40b18. SOHC 2valve per cyl. The e30 is an 87 imported from Germany a few years ago.

Picked these up today;


This is en route from G&T


Door panels dyed black, wood stripped, stained and coated in tung oil. Came out 10x better than I expected.

Just ordered forged CP pistons. Ouch.

Draining the gas tank this evening. I think every gas tank should have a drain plug like this. Except it would be easy to steal all your gas...oh well certainly makes it easy to drain

Dropped gas tank cleaning it up I found this writing:

Pistons arrive on thursday, its been 7 weeks

And here we are, looking excellent!

Painting some suspension parts;



Exhaust shield painted with VHT high heat;





My booster was rusting so I cleaned it up and started painting it. The bottom and middle section are painted in this photo. I painted the middle silver and either end is black. Clear coated and polished out;

Very good looking! I really like this tread! Looks like the tank has been send by german mail!

Stripped the top of the tank while the inside is soaking. The inside is full of tar from old gas. About half inch thick of crud. I coated it in por15 after I used the metal prep for bare metal. So far so good, it will be a few more hours before it's dry but it seems to have levelled out excellent. My only issue is that it does not like to stay on sharp edges. I should be able to touch it up though.

I have the engine back from the machine shop, everything came to about half of what I expected to pay which was nice!

Polished Crank:


Decked!


Bored out 1.5mm over. Now at 87.5mm.


Masking it off for paint!


I used the POR15 engine paint which came out quite nice and I'm happy with it. It's a bit hard to work with but the results are worth it.




Studs in and gasket test fitted. I wasn't sure if it would fit but it's perfect!


Test fit a piston. For science.


Test bolted up the oil filter to see how the color would look!

Very nice project! This is my favorite build on MyE28.com!

Fresh haul;



Throttle linkage



Blurry radius arms installed



I have a set of sway bars being powdercoated currently(28.5mm front and 23.5mm rear)

I dropped the rear subframe tonight, fairly easy. Everything looks good, I just wish it were easier to find a sideloader:( I don't want to swap to an e28 rear subframe for a variety of reasons. If anyone had a sideloader I'd love to buy it! I think I'll finish up the gas tank tomorrow, I've been putting it off because grinding all the old paint and rocker guard off of it sucks. And I also have a full set of gaskets on order. Picking up frost plugs tommorrow.

Here's an idea. Maybe install a petcock on the bottom of the oil filter housing? This would simulate the setup on the m106 & give the ability to drain off some excess oil prior to changing the filter. It might help keep that shiny motor clean.

Great thread, I really like where this is going.

Welp, gas tank is stripped, now for POR15 and some rubberized bedliner.



I thought I would show some pictures of the rest of the fleet;

E36 325i was daily driver, e30 iX auto just a toy.


A friends E30 v8(m62NV swap) my 2002 future project


Behind door number two is a dusty Canadian Spec m6 (1 of 135 or so)


Finally an 88 635Csi, 86 635Csi and way far right is a 1980 635Csi Euro/dogleg/e12 recaro seats etc. tuned by MK Motorsports in 1980. According to german documents it has 234kW. It may be more fun than the m6.

Hoarder.

Ha. Maybe.

POR15 treatment with bedliner over top!

Inside of gas tank is complete and it looks excellent. It formed a ridiculously hard layer. It's also flexible to alow for tank expansion etc. It's been a long few months preparing for the tank, soaking it in acid and washing out the quarter inch of solid dirt and old gas.
No pic of the inside yet because I was finishing up with the bed liner on top.


Frost/freeze/welch plugs are in. Had quite the runaround buying some 45mm ones from the local hardware store only to find out they are too small by about .5mm. So I called up Halifax BMW(where I live) and got a set brought in. They cost me a bit over $140. But at least I know they're the proper ones.


And these arrived. $65 in customs fees later. Hate UPS. I won't be using all of these. I'll go with genuine BMW for the important stuff.


Oh and I asked them (BMA auto parts) to draw a picture of a giraffe on a skateboard. They obliged.(top right of last pic)