D.T. Stephenson

I acquired this car by trading an old 535i that I had purchased for parts, though at first I assumed I would be getting another 87 325e that would end up being parts as I had not seen the vehicle until I went to go pick it up.  Once I arrived I found that it seemed a little bit different from what I had anticipated to start with, The car did have a plain 325 badge with no sign of ever having anything else on there.  I started to look the vehicle over and found that it had face lift tails and once I opened the hood and much to my pleasure found a “I” motor instead of the expected 2.7. I looked inside the car and found the Mtech I steering wheel, and Recaro Sport seats covered by some severely faded blue seat covers.  After inspection I loaded it up on the tow dolly and headed home.

The car was in rather horrible shape and probably could have served the role of a parts car rather well but I just didn’t have the heart to part this one out.  The car was virtually rust free and had never been painted so there was no hidden body work waiting to show up in the future.  I feel that the car deserves another chance to be a respectable car once more.  True that it would take a lot of work but it is nothing that I can’t take care of.  I only took a few pictures of the car when I first acquired it just to spare it the shame of being shown in the condition that I found it.

I’ll start the list of bad and non nonsensical things I found here:

1. The previous owner had attempted to change the rear wheel bearing and decided they couldn’t do it after they had mangled up the hub while trying to get the axle nut off, therefore the wheel was just barely on there.

2.  The car had about three different sizes of tires on it, which two of them were something like a 215/70/14, the best part was the white walls.

3.  The floor mat had been glued down the the floor on the drivers side, not really sure what the goal of that was, if they were trying to protect the carpet the silicone coating it had somewhat defeated the purpose, at least in my opinion.

4. The original front valance was gone and it had been replaced with a bumper, valance, and bumper surrounds from a 84 318i.

5. It seemed as if the back seat was long gone as well, replaced with a faded blue cloth seat from the previously mentioned 318.

6. The dash had been coated with that truck bedliner stuff, again… I have to admit that was a great improvement, they took a cracked dash and well… ended up with a cracked dash covered in a grainy, slightly glossy black goo.

7. The auxiliary fan was wired to a switch that was powered, get this… by a piece of modified extension cord that ran from the front of the car to the trunk where it was wired into the trunk light for power.  That was just a brilliant idea, wish I could have thought of that one, next time my fan relay goes out that will be the first thing I try.

8. The guy said somebody had just stolen the catalytic converter a couple days before I came to pick it up. therefore it had no exhaust from near the engine back, not to mention the muffler which was of no use anyway.

That is the worst factors the car had going for it, disregarding some of the smaller technical details.

I immediately washed it up with a pressure washer and threw four matching wheels and tires that I had lying around, can’t say that I’m one for chrome wheels but having four tires that are the same size is a great improvement over three different sizes. I also removed the spray painted generic spoiler that was bolted down to the trunk lid.

Once it was washed up I could begin to replace some of the damaged and unusable parts such as the front bumper, bumper surrounds, fenders, and hood.  The original hood wasn’t in terrible shape but it did have a slight bend on one corner so I felt I would rather replace it than try to repair  it.  One fender had a little bit of rust on the bottom and the other was a bit too dented for my taste. Luckily I had all these parts lying around for the taking. The only thing that I didn’t have was the valance which would have to found on eBay. 

With the help of a block of wood and a hammer I straightened out the bends from improper lifting, though I couldn’t get it perfect I made a drastic improvement.

I cleaned up the carpet but it will be replaced as well

I mounted a set of 15″ euroweaves on it to give it a bit more appealing look for the moment.

All the previous photos were taken about a year ago from the time of this posting, Since then the car has sat dormant until now.  I had purchased a set of plastic bumpers and a face lift valance to get it looking a little more like it should. Those were installed a shortly before I ceased my progress on the car temporarily.

My current tasks at hand are repair of the drive shaft and replacement of the exhaust system, once these are taken care of I can move on to the suspension and brake systems.  I plan to get the car in good proper working stock condition prior to any modifications.

As for the body, I’m currently working on smoothing out the dings and getting the car in a coat of primer until I get the M-Tech Body kit once funding permits me to do so.   A coat of primer will serve as the paint job for now.  A solid coat of black primer is definitely going to look much better than the silver, bronzit, black and grey spotted color scheme that it sports at the moment.

Drive shaft ready to go back in…