Josh Cook's 320i

Facts:

Bmw series:	320i
Production date:	1 October 1980
Color:	Antrazitgrau-metallic
Owner:	Josh Cook
Country	USA

For me it all started with my dad's '73 2002. He bought it new, I came home from the hospital in '80 in that car and grew up always loving it. When I saw my e21 sitting in a lot I fell in love with it and bought it for $650. It was in rough shape with crumpled fenders, a 65mph top speed, rotted exhaust, shredded interior, and only 1 working brake caliper. I started with an Ansa muffler and getting the brakes sorted, then I moved on to pounding the dents out, removing the rust, body filler, and a rattle can to paint the damaged areas.

I pulled the motor for a rebuild after having the car for only 3 months which took me about 1 year to rebuild, partly due to my total inexperience, lack of tools, and going away to college in the middle of the project. I was by myself on my first engine rebuild with nothing but a haynes manual, so it turned out pretty good.

I installed a 2.0L crank with flat top pistons, ported/polished 1.8 head with 280 cam and stiffer valve springs, bosch red coil, Bav Auto 8mm plug wires, header, cold air intake, AC delete, fan delete and an electric cooling fan which all added up to quite a noticeable performance increase. The car got a Metric Mechanic getrag 240, bavauto short shift kit, eibachs, bilstien sports, a new interior, and a euro bumper conversion. I spent all my money on car parts but ran out before I could put tires on the car and I ended up fishtailing off the road in the rain, sliding backwards into a pole and sideways into a chain link fence. The driver's side shock tower was shoved in from the chain link fence post and the whole trunk floor was shifted over as well. I decided that I didn't want to try to have it fixed because I was worried it would never be the same, so I started searching for a donor car to swap all my parts into.

I found a polaris '81 on ebay for $900 and drove 1000 miles from Toledo, OH to Oklahoma City and back in one weekend to pick it up and the car was considerably worse than I had anticipated. I guess that's what you get when buying a 20 year old car on site unseen. It had over 200,000 miles on the ticker and burnt oil like it was going out of style, every panel was dented, hale damaged, or filled with bondo, and the factory springs had been heated to lower the car (the wrong way to do it). On the 1000 mile trip home, I had to add 2 quarts of oil every 2 hours on the highway, but it made it. The only thing I salvaged from the donor car was the H4 headlights.

I stripped the car down to a shell and started going to town on the rust with the angle grinder and sand blaster. I found enough rust holes I ended buying a welded and learning to weld. I replaced the fenders and hood, and swapped the doors and trunk lid from my wrecked '83 onto the donor body. I also discovered that the rear window sill was rusted through so I cut it out. I drilled the spot welds on my '83, removed the good window sill and welded it in place on the '81. Once the car was in the body shop I also had the body man weld in euro rear sheet metal.

While the car was in the body shop for a year and a half I was busy stripping the '83 down and collecting parts for upgrades. These included a set of 15x7 Binno B850 wheels, poly bushings, 25mm/19mm sway bars, lightened flywheel, 323i rear trailing arms, volvo 240 front calipers, and a 3.91 LSD.
Once I got the car back from the shop I started with assembly right away. I undercoated the underbelly and wheel wells, every suspension component was sand blasted and painted, and all the parts from my '83 plus many upgrades swapped over in about 4 months.

After a few years I started collecting parts for a turbo system. I started with a rough cast Dinan turbo manifold and a PVR v6 fuel distributor and air flow meter mounted to the lower half of a Porsche 931 air flow meter. After months of research and years of collecting parts, I started fabricating charge pipes and installing the system.

I also installed an 8 lb aluminum flywheel and 6 puc fiber-carbon clutch:

I also fabricated a 2.5" to dual 2 1/4" exhaust system:

The car is now running 14 lbs of boost, makes 250 hp and 250 ft-lbs of torque, and has run a best of 13.91@100.6 mph in the 1/4 mile. The car also sees the occasional track day and autocross.

This E21 is also registered on this website.