Hello people of the GRM forum, my name is Ethan and I am a senior in high school. My brother (mgfoster) has been consumed by cars as long as I can remember, some of you may know him from the CHZ WGN adventure or the LS swapped van. As I've gotten older, I've been more interested in cars and whats going on in our garage but a project is just never quite as fun until its yours. I've mentioned multiple times that I want a project car but I feel like I don't have the money to put into it. Upon mentioning this to Matthew, we found ourselves an hour and a half from home with an E28 on a trailer behind us in less than 24 hours. What a wild ride. The car was $700 so our expectations were low but it runs, drives, and stops! the paint is a bit rough and there is plenty of fluid leaking from the car but this is what I asked for.
The following morning I woke up and saw the car in all its beauty off the trailer.
In the car were some goodies such as the front center caps that don't fit on because of the bearing dust caps, $2 each to fix that. In the trunk was the muffler, bumper trim, and a head as seen here.
Upon closer inspection, the head is actually a head from a 528i which is higher revving and lower compression. These heads will sell for anywhere from $500 to $1200 depending on condition. Considering the oil looks milky, I believe that the head is cracked hence why there is an extra one in the trunk. The plan as of now is to put the i head on and hope for the best.
Now it was time for some investigation into the problems that I was aware of.
-The windows, they all mysteriously stopped working and the previous owner could not solve the issue. After doing some forum reading, I read that there is a "breaker" on the right side of the steering column that is often pressed by a drivers knees. Although this was heavily corroded and very sticky, it did pop out and all the windows started working again, easy fix.
-The power headrest, I could hear the motor humming but the headrest didn't move. Apparently this is a very common problem because the cable housing stretches or shrinks over time. The solution was to take the back of the seat off, remove the motor, drop a 1/4 inch piece of a coat hanger into where the cable sits in the motor, reassemble everything. Sure enough, fixed the problem.
-The glove box latch was broken and most people rip or cut it out when this happens because of the difficulty of getting it open, I was set on saving the glove box so I spent about 4 hours finding a way to unlatch it. After some strategic cracks on the top of the glove box and wiggling it loose, I could see two gray clips that I was able to push in with a nail and it fell down, magic. The contents of the glove box was a bit odd, a bag of keys, two for this car and the rest not. Oh well, I never saw a thing.
-The most glaring issue was the fuel pump, the car would sputter if you tried to accelerate and it would "whirrrrr" pretty loud. There is a low pressure in-tank pump and a high pressure in-line pump, this system works and it seems that many people just replace the pumps but I opted for a more simple system with a single in-tank modern pump. This way, whatever modifications I make to the engine, I wont need to worry about a fuel shortage.
I will update this when the fuel pump is in and fluids are changed, hopefully I will be driving it next post.
