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Project Re-Introduction - February 7, 2025: Welcome back an old favorite - our little Gremlin E30! After Vorshlag sold our 1991 BMW 318is in January of 2009, it bounced around several hands and ended up back in our possession in August of 2024.
Left: Our little "Gremlin" racing with NASA at ECR in October 2008: Right: The 318is returns to Vorshlag in August 2024 - a bit worse for wear
We used this car from 2007-2009 as a Vorshlag & AST suspension development test mule, and then our friend Jason McCall and his wife owned it from 2010-12, during which time they upgraded a few items and primarily autocrossed it.
When we bought this E30 back we were already in the middle of a major restoration and race prep of a Hellrot red 1995 E36 M3 "barn find" that was in even worse shape - so we became buried in "old car problems" and restoration work at Vorshlag.
We owned this car back in a different time - where we had 3 regular race car projects we could drive, including our LS swapped 500 hp E36 "Alpha Car" and this EVO X shown above left at ECR in October 2008 - which means chasing power wasn't a huge concern for this E30. It was still an amazingly well behaved and good handling car, and we missed the low weight and simplicity of this 318is. I started an older build thread on this forum for this car in 2007 and then McCall made a for sale page on it in 2012, both linked below if you want to go back in time and see what we did with this E30 back then.Instead of just adding to the 2007 thread, we're going to start this a new "E30 development" thread here. We have already developed a number of new Vorshlag products for the E30 chassis using this car and we have a LOT more parts we're working on in 2025. But let's start with a look at the E30 the last time we saw it.
LAST TIME WE CHECKED IN ON THIS CAR...
The last pictures I have of this 318is were the "for sale" pics Jason McCall took of it in December 2012. He and his uncle had just done a garage paint job on the car, as the factory paint was starting to get sunburned. They got it remarkably clean for what we started with in 2007!
McCall had installed a long tube header, cold air induction system, and a 4-point Kirk Racing roll bar. He had the engine bay cleaned up and it was sitting on 15x7.5" ROTA wheels and 205mm width tires.
It still had the Kirkey aluminum seats and sliders that I had installed with some tubular welded seat brackets (not my best work). The AST 5200 remote reservoir rears and 4100 fronts were still holding Nitrogen and fluid at the time. It had an exhaust I had built for McCall that was legal for SCCA STS class and quieter than before.
WHAT WE HAVE IN 2024
After McCall sold it in early 2012, a few additional buyers and 12 more years had passed. There were numerous changes to the little car, some maintenance made, but mostly sat for at least 7 years outdoors, when we were notified about a possible purchase. The owners followed our build and wanted to offer it back to us at an attractive price - if we promised not to muck it up with nasty flares, an LS V8 swap, and a few other stipulations - which we agreed to.
Many years sitting in the Texas sun had baked off the paint that McCall and his uncle had shot in his garage all those years ago. A tree had also fallen on the right rear fender behind the back glass - don't worry, we will address all of this, in time. The paint looks glossy in the above left picture only because I had just hosed down the exterior and it was still wet!
After unloading this from our trailer I washed the engine bay and cleaned out all sorts of leaves and acorns, then looked inside. The carpet had a lot of stains from a leaking heater core. The car had picked up some fancy Recaro racing seats but both were old, had very worn fabrics, and so narrow that my hip bones wouldn't squeeze inside them (nor could Amy fit inside either seat).
Amy and I knew we wanted to restore this car to a standard better than even when we owned it, way back nearly at Vorshlag's beginning. We made a big list of parts needed to spruce up the inside and underhood areas. The glove box door had a busted latch and the dash cover was trashed. NO JUDGEMENT here, this is what happens with a 34 year old car stored outside nearly all its life.
The car wouldn't start nor even crank, so we got it onto a lift and started looking underneath. The prototype polyurethane engine mounts we made in 2008 were rotted away and two of the four AST dampers were leaking. The rotors were crusty and there was a bad wheel bearing.
We pushed the little E30 into the shop on August 5th, 2024, to get an initial weight (weight of fuel unknown here, due to dead electrical systems). It had gained a few pounds since we had last weighed it (2338 lbs), but that was before the Kirk Racing 4-point roll bar and these race seats were installed - weight we appreciate, for the safety they bring.
FIRE THE PARTS CANNON!
Early in the build we had noted a bunch of crusty parts, especially the brakes. The front wheel bearings also felt pretty worn, but the rears were good.
I went a little crazy on RockAuto and bought a bunch of stuff in August of 2024 for this car, shown above. The rotors all around are new and coated, new front hubs, new OEM engine and transmission mounts, new Centric pads, new door latch surrounds, new spark plugs, and a few other bits and pieces.
We will cover these parts being replaced in the various sections below.
BATTERY REPLACEMENT
When we picked up the car in Austin the previous owner had said it cranked and fired not too long ago, but we tried two jump boxes with no luck down there and just winched it into our trailer.
On August 8th we tried to charge the relatively new battery in the trunk hiwl in the trailer , but it kept coming back showing a bad cell. So it was time to fire the parts cannon. The original battery I put in the car in 2007 was a little go-kart Deka EXT18L battery, along with my Home Depot mount (hey, we've come a long way since). I have soured on the tiny batteries of late, after seeing a real decline in the lifespan of some brands - and the tiny battery's very small reserve capacity.
What was in the car now was a Group 26 wet cell battery from Wal-Mart. After a lot of battery replacements in 2020-24, I have favored the Group 26 wet cell, as it is easy to procure, has enough heft to store some real juice (reserve and cranking amps), and is small enough to only tip the scales at 27-28 pounds - only 10 pounds more than the tiny Deka we used way back when.
So I measured the dead Group 26 in the car and found a billet aluminum "import" battery hold down kit that perfectly fit this sized battery - with a 6.8" gap between the hold down edges. This worked perfectly and we have since used this in our E36 M3 for the same sized battery. And of course I bought a fresh Group 26 from a local parts store for $120, using this old one as the core. Now I've got a 5 year prorated warranty battery I can replace easily at the same O'Reillys store chain.
While at the same parts store I took the old negative cable assembly with me and found a replacement, which wasn't crusty and worn like the old one. The positive side cable was OEM and cleaned up well, and that all went back together nicely. Now we had juice! But.... the engine would still not crank.
LET'S GET THIS (ENGINE) PARTY STARTED - INJECTORS & FUEL TANK CLEAN
The four cylinder engine would not start nor crank when we picked it up, so we winched it into the trailer. The next step after replacing the battery was to try to get the little M44 1.9L BMW engine to fire up - yes, we swapped this in from an E36 for the busted M42 1.8L it had when we got it in 2007. Those low hanging front oil pans were prone to road damage, and sometimes people cracked that pan, then drove them without oil until the engine seized. Part of how we bought this car so cheap back in '07!
Under a previous owner's stewardship it blew a head gasket but was repaired, so we were told. There was a mechanical fan delete also done - which can work on these lower powered 4 cylinder BMWs, if you never street drive the car or let it run while idling for long. We plan to do some weekend driving + track events in this car, so we will need to add a proper electrical fan.
The fuel was OLD so we had to work on that, and the injectors were sent off to be cleaned and flowed at Injector Rx, along with a set from our E36 M3 in August 2024. They flow bench test each set before and after the ultrasonic cleaning, and as you could see 3 were not flowing well and 1 injector wasn't firing at all (of the 6 injectors from our Project #Hellrotten M3, 2 were not firing and we had to replace 1 of those with a new $29 replacement).
We got the E30 set back and installed them into the manifold. The fuel pump was pulled but the tank level was very low, so the pickup screen wasn't submerged in the funky old fuel. That fuel pump assembly was cleaned in our parts cleaner and the tank was drained and wiped out completely - it was very clean and ready for fresh fuel. We just needed some juice...
STARTER & IGNITION SWITCH - FIRST FIRE!
After we finally had a working battery and hold-down and fresh fuel and cleaned injectors, we could test more to get the engine started. We first threw a new starter at this little engine.
Which wasn't the actual problem, as further testing would show after it was installed. Hey so... yes, this was a rash "parts cannon" attempt at a repair, but it was 34 years old so a new starter wasn't a terrible place to start. And we had the upper plenum off already, waiting for the injectors to return. Turns out the problem was a busted ignition switch and wiring assembly - Christian found that after he started probing the starting circuit.
The old switch (above left) came apart in pieces as it was removed, and it wasn't fixable - the plastics that housed the rotating parts that the key would turn had just rotted apart. Just happened while it sat for so many years. A new E30 ignition switch assembly was hard to come by but the crew found that an E28 switch was available and could be used in its place - it just has 2 extra wires that weren't used. So I hopped on eBay and ordered one for "tens of dollars". It showed up "new" but had been sitting for decades.
It cleaned up well and Brad was able to install that. On August 27th, a few weeks after picking up this car after a 7+ year hibernation, the little M44 engine fired to life. It was even running on all 4 cylinders now, too, thanks to the clean injectors. We still had a lot of work ahead of us before the first test drive, but this was an early victory - WOO!
FLASH YOUR GRILL
I am sometimes too preoccupied with how a car LOOKS and the crusty original plastic front grills were bugging me. A quick look on eBay and Amazon turned up some new replacements for "tens of dollars", so I bought them.
Is this a "lipstick on a pig" sort of upgrade? Maybe but we WILL have this car painted (or wrapped) at some point and these won't look out of place then.
I also found some cheesy, blacked out, BMW "tri-color" striped center grill pieces also. I'm not proud of that one, but I do NOT like chrome. Don't hate the player, HATE THE GAME!
INTERIOR WORK: CARPET, DASH COVER, & GLOVE BOX DOOR LATCH FIX
Early on I also noticed how nasty the interior looked - the Texas sun had destroyed the dash, and a busted glove box door let that thing flop around. This hurts me to the core, because the dash was perfect the last time I saw it. Time is a brutal thing!
I ordered a new glove box door latch, which was a cheap and easy repair - another "tens of dollars" part that fixed the problem right away.
We had really good results from a Dashskins branded dash cover on my 2000 Silverado, but after looking I found nothing from that brand. I then looked at eBay and Amazon to see what else was out there, and found these upper dash caps from $50-180. After reading a bunch of reviews I threw the dice and ordered this $73 cap from "Karpal".
Surprisingly this low cost option was shipped well and fit perfectly on our early test fits. A very nice interior upgrade was about to happen!
Brad cleaned the old dash surface and the underside of the new dash cap with Acetone, to allow for a good seal. Then using black silicone (per the instructions) a good pattern of goo was laid down in the dash cap and it was placed over the old dash.
continued below
Left: Our little "Gremlin" racing with NASA at ECR in October 2008: Right: The 318is returns to Vorshlag in August 2024 - a bit worse for wear
We used this car from 2007-2009 as a Vorshlag & AST suspension development test mule, and then our friend Jason McCall and his wife owned it from 2010-12, during which time they upgraded a few items and primarily autocrossed it.
When we bought this E30 back we were already in the middle of a major restoration and race prep of a Hellrot red 1995 E36 M3 "barn find" that was in even worse shape - so we became buried in "old car problems" and restoration work at Vorshlag.
We owned this car back in a different time - where we had 3 regular race car projects we could drive, including our LS swapped 500 hp E36 "Alpha Car" and this EVO X shown above left at ECR in October 2008 - which means chasing power wasn't a huge concern for this E30. It was still an amazingly well behaved and good handling car, and we missed the low weight and simplicity of this 318is. I started an older build thread on this forum for this car in 2007 and then McCall made a for sale page on it in 2012, both linked below if you want to go back in time and see what we did with this E30 back then.Instead of just adding to the 2007 thread, we're going to start this a new "E30 development" thread here. We have already developed a number of new Vorshlag products for the E30 chassis using this car and we have a LOT more parts we're working on in 2025. But let's start with a look at the E30 the last time we saw it.
LAST TIME WE CHECKED IN ON THIS CAR...
The last pictures I have of this 318is were the "for sale" pics Jason McCall took of it in December 2012. He and his uncle had just done a garage paint job on the car, as the factory paint was starting to get sunburned. They got it remarkably clean for what we started with in 2007!
McCall had installed a long tube header, cold air induction system, and a 4-point Kirk Racing roll bar. He had the engine bay cleaned up and it was sitting on 15x7.5" ROTA wheels and 205mm width tires.
It still had the Kirkey aluminum seats and sliders that I had installed with some tubular welded seat brackets (not my best work). The AST 5200 remote reservoir rears and 4100 fronts were still holding Nitrogen and fluid at the time. It had an exhaust I had built for McCall that was legal for SCCA STS class and quieter than before.
WHAT WE HAVE IN 2024
After McCall sold it in early 2012, a few additional buyers and 12 more years had passed. There were numerous changes to the little car, some maintenance made, but mostly sat for at least 7 years outdoors, when we were notified about a possible purchase. The owners followed our build and wanted to offer it back to us at an attractive price - if we promised not to muck it up with nasty flares, an LS V8 swap, and a few other stipulations - which we agreed to.
Many years sitting in the Texas sun had baked off the paint that McCall and his uncle had shot in his garage all those years ago. A tree had also fallen on the right rear fender behind the back glass - don't worry, we will address all of this, in time. The paint looks glossy in the above left picture only because I had just hosed down the exterior and it was still wet!
After unloading this from our trailer I washed the engine bay and cleaned out all sorts of leaves and acorns, then looked inside. The carpet had a lot of stains from a leaking heater core. The car had picked up some fancy Recaro racing seats but both were old, had very worn fabrics, and so narrow that my hip bones wouldn't squeeze inside them (nor could Amy fit inside either seat).
Amy and I knew we wanted to restore this car to a standard better than even when we owned it, way back nearly at Vorshlag's beginning. We made a big list of parts needed to spruce up the inside and underhood areas. The glove box door had a busted latch and the dash cover was trashed. NO JUDGEMENT here, this is what happens with a 34 year old car stored outside nearly all its life.
The car wouldn't start nor even crank, so we got it onto a lift and started looking underneath. The prototype polyurethane engine mounts we made in 2008 were rotted away and two of the four AST dampers were leaking. The rotors were crusty and there was a bad wheel bearing.
We pushed the little E30 into the shop on August 5th, 2024, to get an initial weight (weight of fuel unknown here, due to dead electrical systems). It had gained a few pounds since we had last weighed it (2338 lbs), but that was before the Kirk Racing 4-point roll bar and these race seats were installed - weight we appreciate, for the safety they bring.
FIRE THE PARTS CANNON!
Early in the build we had noted a bunch of crusty parts, especially the brakes. The front wheel bearings also felt pretty worn, but the rears were good.
I went a little crazy on RockAuto and bought a bunch of stuff in August of 2024 for this car, shown above. The rotors all around are new and coated, new front hubs, new OEM engine and transmission mounts, new Centric pads, new door latch surrounds, new spark plugs, and a few other bits and pieces.
We will cover these parts being replaced in the various sections below.
BATTERY REPLACEMENT
When we picked up the car in Austin the previous owner had said it cranked and fired not too long ago, but we tried two jump boxes with no luck down there and just winched it into our trailer.
On August 8th we tried to charge the relatively new battery in the trunk hiwl in the trailer , but it kept coming back showing a bad cell. So it was time to fire the parts cannon. The original battery I put in the car in 2007 was a little go-kart Deka EXT18L battery, along with my Home Depot mount (hey, we've come a long way since). I have soured on the tiny batteries of late, after seeing a real decline in the lifespan of some brands - and the tiny battery's very small reserve capacity.
What was in the car now was a Group 26 wet cell battery from Wal-Mart. After a lot of battery replacements in 2020-24, I have favored the Group 26 wet cell, as it is easy to procure, has enough heft to store some real juice (reserve and cranking amps), and is small enough to only tip the scales at 27-28 pounds - only 10 pounds more than the tiny Deka we used way back when.
So I measured the dead Group 26 in the car and found a billet aluminum "import" battery hold down kit that perfectly fit this sized battery - with a 6.8" gap between the hold down edges. This worked perfectly and we have since used this in our E36 M3 for the same sized battery. And of course I bought a fresh Group 26 from a local parts store for $120, using this old one as the core. Now I've got a 5 year prorated warranty battery I can replace easily at the same O'Reillys store chain.
While at the same parts store I took the old negative cable assembly with me and found a replacement, which wasn't crusty and worn like the old one. The positive side cable was OEM and cleaned up well, and that all went back together nicely. Now we had juice! But.... the engine would still not crank.
LET'S GET THIS (ENGINE) PARTY STARTED - INJECTORS & FUEL TANK CLEAN
The four cylinder engine would not start nor crank when we picked it up, so we winched it into the trailer. The next step after replacing the battery was to try to get the little M44 1.9L BMW engine to fire up - yes, we swapped this in from an E36 for the busted M42 1.8L it had when we got it in 2007. Those low hanging front oil pans were prone to road damage, and sometimes people cracked that pan, then drove them without oil until the engine seized. Part of how we bought this car so cheap back in '07!
Under a previous owner's stewardship it blew a head gasket but was repaired, so we were told. There was a mechanical fan delete also done - which can work on these lower powered 4 cylinder BMWs, if you never street drive the car or let it run while idling for long. We plan to do some weekend driving + track events in this car, so we will need to add a proper electrical fan.
The fuel was OLD so we had to work on that, and the injectors were sent off to be cleaned and flowed at Injector Rx, along with a set from our E36 M3 in August 2024. They flow bench test each set before and after the ultrasonic cleaning, and as you could see 3 were not flowing well and 1 injector wasn't firing at all (of the 6 injectors from our Project #Hellrotten M3, 2 were not firing and we had to replace 1 of those with a new $29 replacement).
We got the E30 set back and installed them into the manifold. The fuel pump was pulled but the tank level was very low, so the pickup screen wasn't submerged in the funky old fuel. That fuel pump assembly was cleaned in our parts cleaner and the tank was drained and wiped out completely - it was very clean and ready for fresh fuel. We just needed some juice...
STARTER & IGNITION SWITCH - FIRST FIRE!
After we finally had a working battery and hold-down and fresh fuel and cleaned injectors, we could test more to get the engine started. We first threw a new starter at this little engine.
Which wasn't the actual problem, as further testing would show after it was installed. Hey so... yes, this was a rash "parts cannon" attempt at a repair, but it was 34 years old so a new starter wasn't a terrible place to start. And we had the upper plenum off already, waiting for the injectors to return. Turns out the problem was a busted ignition switch and wiring assembly - Christian found that after he started probing the starting circuit.
The old switch (above left) came apart in pieces as it was removed, and it wasn't fixable - the plastics that housed the rotating parts that the key would turn had just rotted apart. Just happened while it sat for so many years. A new E30 ignition switch assembly was hard to come by but the crew found that an E28 switch was available and could be used in its place - it just has 2 extra wires that weren't used. So I hopped on eBay and ordered one for "tens of dollars". It showed up "new" but had been sitting for decades.
It cleaned up well and Brad was able to install that. On August 27th, a few weeks after picking up this car after a 7+ year hibernation, the little M44 engine fired to life. It was even running on all 4 cylinders now, too, thanks to the clean injectors. We still had a lot of work ahead of us before the first test drive, but this was an early victory - WOO!
FLASH YOUR GRILL
I am sometimes too preoccupied with how a car LOOKS and the crusty original plastic front grills were bugging me. A quick look on eBay and Amazon turned up some new replacements for "tens of dollars", so I bought them.
Is this a "lipstick on a pig" sort of upgrade? Maybe but we WILL have this car painted (or wrapped) at some point and these won't look out of place then.
I also found some cheesy, blacked out, BMW "tri-color" striped center grill pieces also. I'm not proud of that one, but I do NOT like chrome. Don't hate the player, HATE THE GAME!
INTERIOR WORK: CARPET, DASH COVER, & GLOVE BOX DOOR LATCH FIX
Early on I also noticed how nasty the interior looked - the Texas sun had destroyed the dash, and a busted glove box door let that thing flop around. This hurts me to the core, because the dash was perfect the last time I saw it. Time is a brutal thing!
I ordered a new glove box door latch, which was a cheap and easy repair - another "tens of dollars" part that fixed the problem right away.
We had really good results from a Dashskins branded dash cover on my 2000 Silverado, but after looking I found nothing from that brand. I then looked at eBay and Amazon to see what else was out there, and found these upper dash caps from $50-180. After reading a bunch of reviews I threw the dice and ordered this $73 cap from "Karpal".
Surprisingly this low cost option was shipped well and fit perfectly on our early test fits. A very nice interior upgrade was about to happen!
Brad cleaned the old dash surface and the underside of the new dash cap with Acetone, to allow for a good seal. Then using black silicone (per the instructions) a good pattern of goo was laid down in the dash cap and it was placed over the old dash.
continued below
and installed between the probe the fins of the radiator on the "hot" side. After all of this was wired into the car the fan speeds were adjusted on the unit (small screwdriver) and by using IR gun on the radiator + looking at the stock temp gauge. Works like a champ!
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