Nice score man! I even like the wheels. You gonna b30 turbo swap it? 😂😂 Looking forward to the refresh, another one saved!

 

Funny you should mention the wheels, the first second part ordered is a wheel! The RR is cracked and doesn't hold air for even 24 hours. Was searching online and found a "scratch and dent" style 119 wheel at ECS Tuning for around $120! It is on it's way to me and Brittany. It's shame they are NLA from BMW.

Actually, I take that back...the first part(s) ordered were a set of Ebay "shorty" headers for her. I hadn't seen these before, they were a bit cheaper, and they eliminate the difference between the M52 cars and the M54 cars because they use extension pipes and look like you cut the flanges off the exhaust. Thought it may be a fun experiment. Planning to pair them with the Racing Dynamics equipped exhaust that came on Gertrude. Interestingly, no vibration isolator on the stock exhaust on Brittany. Going to have to revisit @Bryson's thread about what Hz he determined for the RPM he was experiencing drone and try to find one in that value to try.

 

Some pics of the state of the interior. Soft touch on the console and inserts is destroyed. I wish I knew what people did to break the hazard switch all the time. 3 tourings over a decade, driven probably 150k miles, and I've never broken one.

The filth on the driver's door panel. I'll check my stash, I may just swap this out.

And the driver's seat condition. I have my eye on Ebay for a used base cover with heat.

 

Sweet that you found a wheel! Those headers sound interesting, looking forward to seeing how they turn out.

That interior is off the charts! Some new parts and elbow grease definitely in order. Will be a sweet car.

 

Just ordered 2 used tires. The rears are Michelin Pilot Sport AS 3, the front AS 3+. The one on the cracked wheel has significant cracking, including on the sidewall from sitting on a flat tire. Found some used Pilot Sport All Season 4 on Ebay with 8/32 tread, no repairs, and free shipping for less than one new one! They're coming from different sellers, but I don't care. I hope she's starting to feel the love! A junkyard list has been started, as well. First junkyard stop is my basement!

Also casually looking for an Orient Blue LCI sedan/wagon hood within reasonable driving distance. This hood isn't even worth painting. The structure is delaminating, it's dinged to hell, and shows some impact cracking around the grille openings. my local yard looks to have a good grey hood. I may just snag that for $50 and paint it.

 

Well, things keep spiraling deeper. Was going to polish the headlights and noticed the R one looked really yellow. ZKW lights with a badly burned bowl on the R side. I gave them a quick machine sanding to see how they would look, and it's not worth wasting the clear coat wipe. So I've been shopping repairs. Looks like Retrofit Sour kit is the best way to go. Add on some new Amazon lenses and new OE gaskets and I'm looking at around $320 to fix the lights. Not awful, really, but it's starting to add up, here. I may pivot on the seats in an attempt to make everything else on the car as nice as I can to detract from the peeling clear coat.

 

 

But the wheel came today! Looks better than any other wheel on the car.

 

Fwiw I had really good success with sanding / polishing the lenses on Ramona. I applied nothing to the lenses as a finish, this was just a quick effort to see if I could get them better. Wetsanded with ascending grits of sandpaper and then compound and polish.

 

Fwiw I had really good success with sanding / polishing the lenses on Ramona. I applied nothing to the lenses as a finish, this was just a quick effort to see if I could get them better. Wetsanded with ascending grits of sandpaper and then compound and polish. View attachment 1020384 View attachment 1020385 View attachment 1020386

Nice! Big difference, good work. Gives me hope with my 330i

 

I've had good success, too. Where they are now a quick spray of water shows what they will look like. The clear just protects them from looking crappy again quickly. The right one is just cooked, like the bowl. It's discolored on the inside and beyond. The lenses aren't a big deal, really. And if I'm opening them up to replace the projectors I might as well replace the lenses.

 

Score! Found this in my stash last night. Actually, it was just sitting out on a table, calling to me.

 

Make sure to put it in backwards like someone did in Ramona 😂

 

Parts are arriving! Curious to see how this bling works out. No downstream O2 sensor bugs, so I'll have to add those.

 

Lol I love digging up a part that has been patiently waiting to be installed..

"It's been 84 years..."

 

Lol I love digging up a part that has been patiently waiting to be installed..

"It's been 84 years..."

Can looks great man! Those headers sure are shiny.

 

Used tires all arrived, wheel arrived last week, got them installed today. Threw some 12.5mm spacers I had kicking around on the rear. Looks to match the front about perfectly.

 

Worked on a little interior cleanup today. Swapped out the armrest and maintain console with nicer ones I had in my stash. Also gave the driver's door panel a quick wipe down so it's not quite so nasty.

 

Well, I've committed to doing something other than these seats. Yesterday I pulled the passenger seat and began the dissection. I had read about the heating mats being sewn into the cover, but couldn't find any in-process examples, so I dove in. Seeing it, I'm not sure there is an easy way to make this work. I'll share the reasons with the pics.

Here you can see the heating mat between the leather and the batting and retaining rod channels.

With a fresh and very sharp razor blade I began carefully separating the backseat cover center section from the outer bolsters.

That got me to this point of just having the center section of the cover.

Then more careful work with razor blade to separate the heating pad and batting from the leather. The rods that the hog rings attach the cover to the foam with go across the heating mat in 2 or 3 different places, as well as along the vertical edges.

And finally the heating mat and batting completely removed from the cover. The heating mat does go pretty much the whole way up the backrest. I was hoping I could simply spray glue the heating mat to the foam and reinstall the cover, but it wouldn't be that simple. You would have to install hog rings through the heating mat, and I'm worried about damaging the grid doing that.

 

Wow that looks crazy involved. Thanks for sharing detailed photos of how it goes together. Whats the plan, better used seats, new seat covers?

 

I have some minty black leatherette sport seats. I was hoping to be able to transfer the heating mats over to those, but I'm not hopeful for that working out, now. I also have all the bits to make some black/tan door panels. Just need a black back seat, then.

 

Ooo...shiny!

Overall the headers themselves fit pretty well. The bank 2 oxygen sensor is pretty tight to the trans, but it does fit and should be OK. The extension pipes are another thing. The bank 1 pipe hits the trans something fierce. I was out of time so I didn't take any pics, but I'll do my best to document the process of fixing it. Got to this point in about 2 hours because it was apart and reassembled with new hardware only about 4k miles ago. And because lift.

 

Great work so far!

 

Awesome work, I think I bought the same headers. Any luck deleting the Secondary air pump? I think you can also get rid of the second o2 sensor because it measures post cat gasses which isn’t needed anymore

 

Still fighting the header install. Had a moment this morning wondering if I installed them swapped. This setup came with zero instructions, and I installed them per the orientation that matched the pics in the listing, and what made sense vs the OE manifolds. I've had nothing but headaches getting bank 1 mated the rest of the exhaust. The connecting pipe doesn't clear the trans, and now I've figured out the one bolt for it is right up against the trans when trying to get it started, as well. I didn't take any pics last night, but I'll take some next time I work on the car.

As for deleting the SAP and downstream O2 sensors, the physical aspect isn't difficult. You just need a block-off plate for the SAP/combi valve. The tricky part comes with keeping the CEL out/functioning with the MS45.1 software from my research when I put headers on my b30 swapped Touring. Since I live in a state with emissions testing, I will be leaving both in place. I've had good luck with spacers in the downstream sensors keeping the CEL out for over 20k miles on my Touring.

 

Let me know how it goes with adding the downstream sensor! I also need to pass emissions and I was trying to figure out a way to do it with headers.

 

I see you got the Orient Blue as well!

You planning on repainting it?

I'm jealous. Have the sports package and heated seats but the seats are manual and not electric on my OB 325i. Good condition though so that's a plus for the seats I have for sure.

Seat maintenance seems pretty challenging. M539 Restorations on YouTube did a couple of seat restorations if you haven't seen them they are pretty good.