Apollo 13(0i bmw)

[Flood]

According to google its just passing around the dark side of the moon, drifting through the frozen vacuum of space (I ll get round to fixing that) 1000 miles into its return trip.






Ancient history:
Had this for about 12-13 years now, got it at around 60k, after my beloved and equally leggy 172 cup went into the back of an Elgrand HARD thanks to its lack of ABS. Got an auto 330ci shortly after too, was lovely, but horrendously rusty and crap at fitting mountain bikes in (the main passion), so ended up giving that to a mechanic mate during lockdown, over a weekend it was repainted, stripped, converted to manual, welded diff and lived on as a drift school car at Teesside autodrome which was a pretty cool retirement. The second car got replaced with a series of not very interesting mpv mum buses, but far more practical for loading bikes in and nicer to drive than the ubiquitous transporter.
The 130 has lived a fairly easy life, it mostly just bimbles up and down the a19, it s not going to win any concours events, but it s looking pretty fresh and mechanically is pretty perfect too, it s on its original clutch. It is also triggers broom, however.

General stuff of note over the years:
Both front arches went rusty immediately, I think someone ham fisted pulled out the arch liners, or maybe the prev owner never cleaned them properly. New arches no.1.
Hit a deer, smashed the bumper, bumper no.1
The missus (now ex, for directly related reasons) crashed it into the side of a Citroen. New arches no.2, new bonnet, new bumper no.2, new HID headlight, which was a nightmare, front crash bar, etc, etc. That was about 2mths of my time to fix.
Water pump went outside an Halfords autocentre of all places, they pulled my pants down for nearly 4 figures.
A few niggling issues with the headlights, some sensors, etc, but otherwise it s been a pleasure to own and drive.

Present day (ish):
So lately I was torn between replacing it, or spending a load of time and money in updating it, looked at the 135/140i but wasn t wild about them, would love another clio, but couldn t bring myself to do it, too rattly. So ended up investing in the old girl, decision made later last year.
First big job was sorting out the oil leaks, it was pouring out onto my drive almost as quick as I could pour it back in again, oil filter gasket and then all the gaskets in the rocker cover.


Probably due to my incompetence, but the rocker cover was a horrendous job and a nightmare to get out, with the back end of cover fouling on the back of the engine bay, it was Dec, dark, freezing and generally miserable. Timing chain was nice and tight, not really any wear on the cams, all pretty clean, so regular oil changes were obviously worth it:


Broke pretty much all the plastic stuff in the process, so unplanned replacement of the entire crank case ventilation was in order. Probably 2 months off the road due to having limited time, sourcing parts, short attention span, etc, but it was back on the road and only pissing oil out of the bottom of the engine now:


Wing drama:
E87 looks crap without a wing, I spent absolutely ages looking for a genuine one, regardless of price they just weren t available. Got this one from ebay, came from Latvia I think, really nicely made and finished, but it was BIG, like 3-4in longer than the beemer one, was skeptical, but thought I d have a go at painting it in my garage, while it was below zero every night outside how hard can it be?


It took about 3 goes to get from absolutely terrible, to just a bad finish, mostly issues with the lacquer and the cold, me dropping it, etc. Good learning experience though. Test fitted it on the car and it looked fairly ridiculous, maybe if it had a full 1m kit on, it might work, but it stuck out miles and looked even sillier than it does in the pics. Also, the colour match was horrible:


Wing no.2, think this came from amazon, dirt cheap, came already painted black, I looked at it for a bit and decided it wasn t right, got left in a corner.


Wing no.3, not pictured, eastern European ebay purchase again, appeared to be a direct mould from a proper bmw wing, had all the mould timers and logos on, etc, but for whatever reason the front edge was really thick, so it didn t sit flush with the roof. After looking at a few legit spoilers, I think they re all like this to some degree, it would have annoyed me though. I tried to modify it, but it was a dead loss.

Wing no.2 went on as a temporary measure and I ve grown to like it, the black ties in with the B pillars. So that s how I spent about £700 in total to get a £35 wing:

Bimmec wheel spacers, 12 and 15mm


Massive improvement, wish I d done it years ago. Also had the wheels redone at Romax, great job.


A few other jobs, replacing some interior stuff, fitted cruise control + some slightly scary coding, a single din (its pre lci) carplay head unit, etc.

Rusty rear end/suspension:
Next big job, the subframe had been flagged up for non-structural corrosion in the past 2 MOTs, it didn t look great, so start of the summer I ordered a new one off ebay + all suspension. A lot of battling with rusty bolts, knuckle skinning, rust in eyes and all other orifices. It looked pretty grim from the bottom but didn t seem like the thickness of the steel was particularly reduced, different story on the top however, the thinner brackets for the trailing arms were paper thin around the welds, could break the leading edge away by hand.


Rust on the chassis was initially pretty alarming too and not something I was expecting, it looked terrible initially, no photos at this stage unfortunately, but if you ve seen the 130s that Autoalex and Jack Mcniel have done recently, was probably in line with that. Many days of wire brushing and fortunately none of it was all that bad, no holes, nothing thin, or weakened. This was after coating it with Jenolite rust converter:


Couple of coats of red oxide, did as far under the fuel tank as a could.


Diff oil changed, cleaned up and later painted.


This is where I should have pics of the whole underside of the fully assembled car, after the final coat of Bilt Hamber dynax ub, looking clean and black, but I was too impatient, so you ll have to imagine that until I m back under there.


All the suspension, mounts, etc, replaced, a couple of Bevinsee poly bushes for the trailing arms and arb, fancy HEL brake hoses all round and new lines from the chassis back. TRW oem spec dampers was tempted by decent coilovers, but the sport suspension always seemed pretty good and with everything fresh it felt a lot better I may end up changing it somewhere down the line though. About 2mths off the road with all this.

Sump gasket/rusty front end:
Chassis legs were looking a bit rough with the arch liners out and all the various bracketry for the brake hoses, etc were crusty, cue more rust removing, wire brushing. It wasn t all that bad, all cleaned up well, there was only surface crust and flaking paint which cleaned away, finished the inside and outside of the chassis legs and the inside of the arches.


Unimpressed supervision:


Lessons learned from doing the cam cover, etc: don t cut corners when you re not competent. The guides say this could be done with just lowering the subframe a little, so for the avoidance of the inevitable cock ups, the whole subframe and suspension came off.


Was hard enough even with the subframe removed, so no regrets there. Big end bearings still feel good, I think that s less of an issue with the N52 though? Elring gaskets all round, so hopefully will last. New spark plugs, engine mounts, forgot to plug the outside temperature sensor back in.


New suspension all round again, thought about m3 control arms, but given its use, figured it might be better to stick to standard, again might change this later also a few more Bevinsee bushes:


Minor tidy up under the bonnet, rust converter and painted, no after pics again, I was getting bored by this point, just shy of 2 more mths off the road:



To do list
So that s about where I am, drives much better now, maybe I should ve gone for coil overs and m3 control arms but it ll do for now. On the to do list:

• Later series M sport brakes. There are a million better things I could be spending my time and money on, but I want blue brakes, so that’s happening. Already bought the fitting kit from VYS garage.
• Rust treat the middle of the car, ideally I’d have done the whole lot at once, but the flange between the downpipes/cat and the main section of the exhaust has almost completely gone, had this problem with my 3 series, the pipes are stainless, the flanges are mild steel? Had a really nice repair done on the old car, welding in new flanges, so hopefully do the same on this. This will allow me to get the exhaust off and the prop shaft, which could do with new guibos and centre bearings and get full access to the underside. Probably pull the rear bumper and treat that area a bit more thoroughly too.
• Gearbox oil and power steering, have the stuff to do it, need to find the motivation.
• Interior creaks and rattles, kept on top of these over the years, but could do with pulling the whole dash and going through all fixings and connections.
• Some minor bodywork stuff, some lacquer peel from stone chips on the bumper I’ll try and use my painting skills to improve.
• Needs a new AC condenser, will probably replace the full rad pack though, after deer and ex partners it’s a bit battered.
• Plug in the external temp sensor.
• Slippy diff.
• Probably other stuff I’ve forgotten…

Edited by Flood on Monday 19th October 13:47

Edited by Flood on Monday 19th October 13:48

[Mr Tidy]

Lovely car, especially in Le Mans Blue. That's the E87 model I should have bought instead of the 123d I talked myself into on the basis of business mileage.

And that is some serious mileage, even for an N52. My current E90 330i has "only" done 131K!

ETA I love your feline helper, and assuming it's a manual get rid of the CDV if you haven't already.

Edited by Mr Tidy on Monday 19th October 23:06

[Flood]

Cheers! Good shout on the cdv, I think it's already been done by the previous owner, I'm not sure how pronounced the effect is, but it doesn't feel like there's any delay... definitely worth checking next time I'm under there though.

Fuel's not that bad really, I get 36-37mpg (it reckons) most days, A road bimbling.

[RS Grant]

Fair play working outside in those temperatures.

That's a solid mileage it's travelled and I think that the E-series cars (in my experience, I could be wrong!) seem to hold up relatively well on the underside.. for example yours looks much better than I'd have imagined given the miles on it.

[danb79]

Some brilliant work there and solid mileage!

I didn’t have my E81 130i LE long enough; but it was a superb car whilst I had it

Deffo check for the CDV being done; I also fitted a clutch stop and once I got it to the right height, it really improved the gear change feel; well worth doing IMO

[BenEK9]

RS Grant said:

Fair play working outside in those temperatures.

That's a solid mileage it's travelled and I think that the E-series cars (in my experience, I could be wrong!) seem to hold up relatively well on the underside.. for example yours looks much better than I'd have imagined given the miles on it.

Looks brilliant for the miles.
A lot of e9X's are hiding a horror under the plastics.

Really prefer these in 5 doors as the 2door coupe > the 3 door, in my opinion.

[Mr Tidy]

Flood said:

Cheers! Good shout on the cdv, I think it's already been done by the previous owner, I'm not sure how pronounced the effect is, but it doesn't feel like there's any delay... definitely worth checking next time I'm under there though.

Fuel's not that bad really, I get 36-37mpg (it reckons) most days, A road bimbling.

You aren't trying hard enough! My 2005 330i has only averaged about 33mpg over the 24K miles I've done in it. But you don't buy a 130i for economy.