Hack Engineering’s E30 316i Touring
Some of you reading this may remember this car from a couple of years ago, when it appeared in this very section. It was previously a shared project with contributor Ben Morley but with him having children left right and centre, I decided I’d buy it from him and take over the project.
In short, it’s a 316i Lux Touring, a completely standard one, with 90k miles on the clock. Though it hasn’t been on the road for a number of years, it’s all in surprisingly good nick! There’s a touch of rust on the tailgate and the rear arches need a mild bit of work to tidy them up, and there’s one small patch of rust on one of the rear inner arches and that really is it.
To recap our plans, there’s quite a pile of parts that come with the car including a Z3 steering rack, HiSpec brakes, a stack of suspension parts and, most importantly, a 4.4-litre M62 V8 supplied by Denmark’s BMW giant, Schmiedmann. It’s set to be a cracker.
There’s a long list of parts that we still need to source but work will begin soon on getting the chassis sorted so that it can be enjoyed out on the road as a 1.6-litre while we gather components for the V8 swap. First things first, though, the poor E30 was in need of a good scrub up. Thankfully the thick mould and moss all washed off, and the sunroof doesn’t leak either!
Tune in next month when we’ll be dropping the rear beam to get that all refurbished. There’s a lot of work to do but I cannot wait to get my teeth into this classic Touring.
