If you have similar miserable account balance, sorry, determination as me, and you don't want a stranger poking his dirty hands in your beloved car, this blog about my problem filled E30 may prove somewhat helpful, even though the intention is merely to put something about this specific project out into the world. I bought this car as a project car in a pretty bad condition. It has seen 7 owners and way more neglect than an iconic car like this deserves. Some previous owner decided to swap the indestructible M10 with an M42 engine from an E36 compact, converting the humble 316 into a flea market 318is. I decided that this one was a good enough platform for me to experience this classic car 35 years after it rolled out of the factory.
I decided to give this originally Cirrus Blue, Yugoslav poverty spec E30 a happy retirement. That meant mainly fixing up the relics of the 2000s styling craze that left its mark on this car, weird smells and rust... A lot of rust.
I'll just outline the main weird problems this car came with and the probable story behind them.
Exterior
The outside was pretty alright when I bought the car, aside from some paint damage and weird panel gaps that were there probably because of a past minor crash. These cars were notoriously driven by maniacs 20 years ago since they could be bought for 500 Euros and a 6 pack of beer. This is also the 4 door model which meant it was probably even cheaper at some point. Clear coat started peeling a year after I bought it and I decided to wrap it in Avery Satin Gray film after hearing the quoted price for a full paintjob.
Interior
This was by FAR the weirdest thing about this car. Front and rear seats were swapped from the E36 compact with adapter brackets. Front seats are a typical swap, seeing the prices of the original ones, but almost noone swaps the rear bench too, so that was really weird to me. The dashboard was also cut up and shaped to fit the E36 instrument cluster which is, pardon my french, a fucking idiotic thing to do, especially since the original cluster is really good looking. It's the best looking instrument swap of this sort I've seen but I still miss the iconic 80s angled dash. All of the interior trim was also wrapped in a beige, cigarette stained alcantara-like material, which I soon found out was black in places that were not exposed to sunlight.
Conclusion
My hypothesis is that some previous owner bought this when it was crashed and dented, fixed it up and decided to give it some personal twist while he was at it. He swapped in the M42 from a compact, and because it would be hard and expensive to find a complete electrical wiring system from an E30 318is, he swapped the whole thing over from the compact; engine, transmission, sensors, ECU, gauge cluster, steering column, driveshaft, diff and so on. He even went as far as to give it a 5 lug hub swap and Style 5 wheels (which were lost to the owner chain sadly). Afterwards he had all of the car upholstered in black alcantara, and because most of the car was not too rusty when I bought it, it was probably well taken care of for a time, presumably garage kept. He most likely sold it on after the upholstery and exterior plastics faded.
This was partially confirmed later, when one of my friends sent me screenshots of the car. They were made before the guy I bought it from got it. My friend said he went to take a look at it, and declined it right away because it was ugly as shit! He did confirm that it was a show car for a time though.
Now some neat things!
The guy I bought it from was quite the character and helped me explain some things I couldn't wrap my head around at the start. He used the car as a track toy frequently and it has seen some daily use too. He mounted the 300mm ventilated brake kit from the E46 328i with suitable adapters. It's a great set of brakes, pretty cheap too. He once overheated the engine (which I still didn't address fully), and to prevent that in the future, he installed the beefier E36 323i cooler in the front. He also gave me an OMP bucket seat and OMP Corsica steering wheel as package with the car and they have come in handy a couple of times.
Since this intro was so long, I will separate the problems and fixes into sections and list them here in reverse chronological order.