Introducing our "New" BMW 318is 4 door

[jeff10049]

Yes it's a clean car 4 cyl I think it has a chain not belt could that be? but I'll check for him next time I see the car.

Jeff

[Jims5543]

Yes it's a clean car 4 cyl I think it has a chain not belt could that be? but I'll check for him next time I see the car.

Jeff

OH, it is a 318i  (is maybe) if it is a 318is that is called the poor mans M3.  Very lightweight great handling well balanced car just down on power about 110hp when new.

Those E30's make great first cars, tell your friend to look up the Tire Rack Street Survival Teen driving school best $75 I ever spent. 

[jeff10049]

318i

[Jims5543]

318i

Still a great fun well balanced car. Yes, is has a timing chain so win win there as well.

Great first car!! As I said my son had one as his first, then second and now third car and he has no interest in ever getting rid of it.

[Jims5543]

Just gonna bump this.

This 318is caught my eye, as it did my buddy Kevin, who has a 1991 BMW M3 in his garage that is pristine.

He decided he wanted it, I decided I did not want to deal with valve adjustments, I backed away.  Kevin bid and it stuck, we were both in shock no one challenged his bid.

So Kevin now owns a 1991 318is with a S14 swapped in. I should have mine back on the road in the fall, many road trips are planned. ;D

http://bringatrailer.com/listing/1991-bmw-318is-16/

[MiniDave]

Took a heck of a bump from $8K to $16K in one jump......I'm surprised, I didn't know these brought this kind of money even with the engine swap. Most of the posters thought it went cheap, looks like a really nice car.....was it a no reserve auction?

[Jims5543]

To buy a S14 engine and transmission alone will cost you 15K these days. Paying 17K for that car was an amazing deal.

I purchased mine for 12K, the seller paid 14K 5 years earlier and the paint started to peel, hence the price drop. Mine is about to get a new paint job done right and if I were to sell it, I would not take a penny less than 20K for it. Outside the paint, it is pristine. Pretty sure the last paint job was a Maco job.


This bone stock 318is went for 25K which is more than what it sold for new in 1991.

http://bringatrailer.com/listing/1991-bmw-318is-17/

[MiniDave]

Well, like our Minis, I'm often surprised at the prices some of these old cars are bringing now.

[Jims5543]

why I love my wife. She has a 2005 Mini Cooper S JCW to daily drive, so as to keep the miles off the E30.  She says to me over the weekend, Can you pull the E30 out of storage I miss it.

I may not have mentioned, I had the hood repainted and the bumpers as well, then had the shop do a paint correction on the rest of the car, the results were, well staggering.






I asked Mrs5543 this evening, does she want me to put it back and get to the Mini, "nope, I want to drive it a few more days" She then tells me she is getting lots of thumbs up from people at red lights and in traffic on the road.  You really do not see an E30 on the road often anymore.

So she gets to drive it another day, Hurricane Maria is pulling all the moisture away from here so we are not getting rain for the last couple of days or tomorrow.

Then it gets tucked away and the Mini gets back to work. ;D

[94touring]

It's looking really clean  77.gi

[Mudhen]

Beautiful!

4.gif

[Jims5543]

I guess I will put this here.

10 months ago my son was driving to work and had an accident, all of his own doing. Best I can tell after the fact is his drivers side rear tire was flat. He did not notice.

He beat cheeks to make a yellow left turn signal, upon tossing the car to the left, he realized he was in trouble.  The car oversteered so much it was hopeless. He had plenty of room (in hindsight) to just lock up the brakes and let it slide. The autocrosser (and kart racer) in him instinctively tried to save it. He countered, then hit a bump in the road with made the situation hopeless.

He countered into a inside curb. There is more to this story, I will eventually tell it. The story right now is about the car.

So he ran up a curb, no big deal in most modern cars, this is a lowered E30 with a S50 (E36 M3) engine swap. The oil pan in about 4" off the ground. Curbs are 6" tall..... you see where this is going.


He smashed the car up bad. I may have alluded to this in another thread.  Since he was a young lad starting out in life, I had made a pact with him. I told him in in April of the that year if he saved 6K by April the next year I would match it and open an 401K for him.

It was December when this happened 5 months prior to his goal of having 6K.  He already had it saved in 8 months.  I told him to keep his 6K in the bank and I would buy him a more modern car to DD and we would eventually work on the E30 and get it fixed. Deep down I feared it was totaled.  I tossed him the 6K that was supposed to start the 401K (that is coming next year instead)

He bought a 2006 Mini Cooper S which I am sure I shared here. It has been a fantastic DD for him and has served him well for the last 10 months.

There is a small indy body shop in my storage space, the owner is a semi-retired heavy collision guy who just does this for something to do.  Since Irma they have been slow so he asked if we were interested in fixing the E30 outside my space.  Yes! was the answer he put it on a lift and good news!! the damage is not as bad as we thought!

The lower control arm took the brunt of the hit. The rest looks OK, we are on a parts buying spree right now to get the car 100% in 2 weeks.

The car on the lift:



Lower control arm is supposed to be straight. Not anymore.





The oil pan took a hard hit along with the oil pickup and the engine mounts and the power steering rack. All parts are on the way.



We are both pretty excited to see this car back on the road soon. Hoping to negotiate an affordable paint job on her too.

[94touring]

I remember you posting about that incident. Glad the damage was minimal!

[Jims5543]

Gotta go pick up an engine support bar from HF tomorrow parts started arriving the shop is being super cool and letting us wrench as much as possible on the car ourselves to save money. Then they will do their magic.

If the remainder of the parts arrive, we hope to see it getting paint in 2 weeks.

[Jims5543]

Engine supported:



Got the power steering rack out and a plan made to have the rest out on Wed. evening.



We need to still drop the oil pan, then the passenger lower control arm then the sway will come right out.  I have a used spindle and we still need to replace all the rims.

I hope to have it ready for paint by early next week.

[Jims5543]

Been considering a new set of rims for the E30.  I would love a set of Ronal Turbo rims except they come in 15" diameter so they will not fit over the UUC Big brake kit.

I found these similar style rims and they are pretty affordable like $1190 shipped from UK to my door.  They are 17x8 which fits my car perfectly.

I was thinking of going gunmetal or silver. I kind of like the dark rims.

Thoughts?

[MiniDave]

I guess I'm too old school. bit I think dark rims just look like they haven't been cleaned forever, and black rims look like you can't afford alloy wheels and you took your hubcaps off. I don't mind a black center with a polished rim, those can look pretty good....

[Mudhen]

Whoa...time wharp.  I believe an update is needed on this car.  What's it's current status?

I like dark rims.  That car in the pic has a wicked stance to it...

[Jims5543]

Not my car, sample pics from rim company salesman.

There was an 318is on BAT yesterday with these rims on it. I like them they remind me of the turbo Ronal's that will not fit my car.

I am on the fence about the dark color, think I want to stick with silver.  Will mill this over, it is not happening until next year. Maybe Brexit will drop the exchange in my favor.   ;D

[Jims5543]

This BAT Auction is what lead me to the rims.

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/1991-bmw-318is-44/

[MiniDave]

I like those Ronal wheels, I'd either leave them silver or maybe paint them white to match the car - like Audi did with their IMSA racecars.

[Jims5543]

Whoa...time wharp.  I believe an update is needed on this car.  What's it's current status?

I like dark rims.  That car in the pic has a wicked stance to it...

This was the old girl 3 weeks ago or so.



She made a mess....



I took it out of storage to drive 15 miles to a job site to meet a Super.  I left it running with the AC on because  I thought I was only going to be talking 2-3 minutes, ended up shooting the shut for 20 minutes, mostly about local Breweries and beer. LMAO.

I was walking back to the car and got about 5 feet from it when it made a loud popping sound and anti-freeze blasted out from under it. I ran and opened the door, looked at the temp gauge and it read normal, I shit it down.

I could not see what the problem was, it was obviously a hose, just could not see what hose.

I called AAA, and then had to wait almost 2 hours, we had dinner guests coming to our house that evening so I was cutting it close.

AA tow truck comes I told him to take me to a Euro Indy shop near my storage unit.   They had to order 3 different hoses before the right one worked. Franken cars are fun!!

$200 later all was good.

I made it home in time to shower change and enjoy dinner guests.

Outside that mishap not much is going on with it. I chased down some electrical problems, the window switches were being difficult, I swapped them out with new switches and good as new.

The directional's were being wonky, I changed the relay with a $20 amazon knockoff, no dice.  I went to BMW and ordered a $80 OEM, no dice.

I checked all the bulbs, all fine, I changed them all anyway, no dice.

I ordered a new directional stalk.... success!!  Who would have thunk it?

The only issue now is the AC being weak, I am working on that. I may convert to HC-12a and ditch the R-134 that is in there.

[Jims5543]

Sit back, grab a beer and enjoy...

I was at the Hard Rock Hotel last month in Orlando, I treated my wife and kid and my son and his GF to a weekend at the parks with rooms in the hotel, rooms keys are speed passes. Win Win!!

I valet parked the car, I had to run to it the next day and get something out of it, the valet walked me over to it, I was surprised to see it parked up front, he told me they all thought it was the coolest car there and kept it up front to admire.  2 spaces away was a 130K G-Wagon.




This past weekend we took the old girl up to Dans hometown of Wilmington NC.  We decided about 2-3 weeks ago to go.. wait.. My wife and son decided, they had me at road trip.. Who passes on a 1500+ mile road trip in a 28  year old car... no one, that is who!!

They saw an episode of DDD (Diner Drive-ins and Dives) where he went to a place in Wilmington. They decided we needed to go try the place and see the town.

https://www.foodnetwork.com/restaurants/nc/restaurants-in-wilmington/copper-penny-restaurant

We have seen this before, there was a cool brewery in Tampa that was our little secret, the food was awesome and the place was quiet. Until Guy showed up, then 1 hour waits were the norm.

No different here, we arrived around 5:45 thinking we were beating the rush. Nope!! 1 hour wait.  Was it worth it? Not really, it was good but not 1 hour wait good.  No regrets, it was a fun experience.

This is the alley next to the Cooper Penny, I was board and snapped a pic.



Backing up a little, we strategically left Jensen Beach around 4PM so we would miss the Jacksonville Rush hour.  We stopped at a brewery around  6:30 for dinner and gas. I left with 1/2 a tank.

We were debating Chick-fil-a or a sit down, the Brewery had good reviews on Yelp so we went there. It was a mistake. We sat and waited over 1 hour for food to come out and when it arrived, it was horrid.  Their in house beer was great, their pretzel was fantastic, their food, sucked.

After spending 1.5 hours here we were now way behind schedule, we were shooting for Savannah Ga. for the night. While waiting over an hour for food, we got on my phone and and booked a room in Savannah on Hotels dot com. 

We drove straight to Savannah without stopping arriving at 11:30.. We prepaid for the room so we could check in faster, I had work to check that was being sent to me while I was driving.

Here I learned my app decided to not use the current date (I assumed again) it booked a room for April 4th, very random... so there was difficulties checking in, 30 minutes later I am on the phone with a cat from India (judging from the accent which was similar to my friend Ashok) he puts me on hold and calls the girl at the front desk in front of me. She tells him to just slide the reservation over to this evening and we are good.

He gets back on the line with me and tells me there is a $8 charge due to the price being more for Friday night, I say whatever, he asks for a CC number, I give it to him, he cannot get it to reun, it keeps declining. I lose my shit on him, tell him I have been awake for 18 hours and have easily 2 hours of work to do once I get in the room, I tell him to forget it, I am going to book a room with the hotel directly and hang up on him.

I book the room directly, while I am doing this he calls the hotel and cancels my April 4th reservation. FU Hotels.com I am never using you again. Why would you default a random date?

Driving in Jacksonville, yes the roads are empty, hence my strategic launch time:



I did not get to bed until 2 am waking again (naturally) at 6 am then getting up at 7 am. So we can hit the road.

The plan was to drive Coastal Route 17 all the way from Savannah to Wilmington, Google maps said it would take 5 hours, that was at 11 at night when I was checking, the daytime it was more like a 7 hour drive. Oops!!

We made the best of the slow progress, we found a cool little town called Georgetown, SC, an industrial town turned tourist / biker destination.





Wilmington was really cool, lots of cool restaurants, lots of cool bars, lots of neat shops.  We really enjoyed the vibe of this town.





We visited the Battleship North Carolina, I could have spent much longer than the 2.5 hours we were there, Mrs5543 and the spawn got bored.



After we got home I gave her a much needed bath.

[Mudhen]

Man, jealous of the adventure...thanks for taking the time to post it.   4.gif

I've also been porked by hotels.com a couple times...now I just use them for the list of hotels in the area and then I book direct.  Never again!

[MiniDave]

I've usually done better booking direct than using a "service"