For $1000, can I turn this crusty BMW into a race car?

Award winning. Reliable. Running. Absolutely none of those words can be used to describe the car I recently purchased. I now have a rusty, old BMW in my possession–affectionately dubbed the 325ish–and I’ve only got $1000 left to turn it into a race car.

So now that I have a car for next year’s $2000 Challenge–technically the Grassroots Motorsports $2000 Challenge presented by Tire Rack and powered by AutoBidMaster–what in the world did I get myself into?

To start with, the 325ish doesn’t run. The Marketplace ad mentioned that they thought it had a grounding issue, but we got the car to fire momentarily when we went to look at it. Unless the grounding issue magically repaired itself, I don’t think that is our problem. But more on that later.

There are signs of previous rust repair on the rocker panels, but the car still makes unholy crunching noises when I try to lift it from the proper jack points. I don’t know how to weld, but I can only assume there are giant chunks of rotted metal masquerading as the bottom of the car, so I’ll probably need to learn. The car currently sports a full interior, so I cannot yet see the horrors that lie beneath the carpet.

Most of the suspension pieces don’t look too bad, aside from minor surface rust, but the rear shocks are where I notice our first major issue: Neither shock is connected to its corresponding knuckle.

I’m not sure exactly how, but in the process of loading the car onto the trailer, the rear shocks decided to separate themselves from their bushings. Tom–one of the lovely enablers I work with here at GRM–strapped the 325ish to the trailer, so I’ll just blame him for that one.

Our first goal for the car is to make it run. We previously got it to fire up on starting fluid, but we would like to be able to turn the key and have it start. After poking around the engine for a little while, we noticed a couple of issues. For one, the MAF intake boot is cracked in multiple places, so that has been replaced.

We also tested the injectors and found them to be clogged with debris, so we searched for a set of replacements. I was able to find a set of fuel injectors for just under $65, so I installed those and assumed the car would fire right up. I was wrong.

Tom and I were talking about the 325ish before I left for a work trip, and he asked why I hadn’t changed the fuel filter when I replaced the injectors.

To be honest, I don’t think I’ve ever owned a car that had an in-line fuel filter. I’ve changed fuel pumps on both my Nissan Titan and Nissan Versa in the last 15 months, and neither had an in-line fuel filter for me to change, so replacing a fuel filter never crossed my mind. This is the second E36 I’ve owned, but the first that I’ve owned for more than three days (it’s a long story), so I’m out of my depth with this car. But there’s no better time to learn than now!

I searched around for a good price on a fuel filter and eventually landed on one from BimmerWorld. They recommend changing out this fuel filter every 36,000 miles, and judging by how hard the old one was to remove, I think the 325ish might be a bit behind schedule on fuel filter changes.

While I waited for the fuel filter to arrive (definitely not because I ordered the wrong filter the first time), I decided I would rip out the interior to get an idea of what I’m working with.

The more pieces of the interior I removed, the more I started to realize how much unnecessary weight could be shed by stripping the car. Each front seat weighs over 50 pounds, so my plan is to swap out the driver seat for a lighter bucket seat and leave the passenger seat at home for the $2000 Challenge.

I’m not exactly sure what the sunroof assembly weighs, but it did hurt a lot when it fell on my head. I don’t think we’ll be able to add any power while still sticking to the $2000 Challenge budget, but we can certainly remove a lot of weight from the car.

After pulling just about everything else from the interior, it was time to remove the carpet. Including all of the foam and sound deadening attached to the carpet, we’re looking at another 40-plus pounds removed. But now that the carpet is gone, we have a bare floor to look at. And it is not pretty.

More Like This

Comments

Displaying 1-10 of 31 commentsView all comments on the GRM forums

You'll need to log in to post.

Sponsored by