So, I was irritated that I had been down this path for a few months with not a plan in sight.

I was buying stuff. I was modifying stuff. I had no order to anything. Of course one project led to something else. As seen in my previous post; swapping out carpet led to cutting and welding.

I had a couple of magazines knocking around while I was waiting for my son to be born a few months back. I actually think I was most inspired by a tub that a guy in Scottland bought for 500 english pounds drove for years and then finally got in and tore the thing apart. We had similar goals, he has a lot more money than me in terms of the build.

I am a build not buy person for two reasons: I like to have as much budget as possible for parts, and second my job makes me nuts. I like to design and build things that actually see the light of day. I used to work on projects with a lot of physical design (think TiVo, or Zip Disks, or semiconductor fab equipment, things you design that get produced. Then the item exists in the world), along the way I started designing software interfaces…you get the point. I needed a project to prevent me from pulling the plug…on myself. Cheaper than therapy? Maybe.

Oh, and there is absolutely no judgments about people who buy. Keep doing that. Someday, I hope to be someone you buy from.

I had studied articles for hours while we were in hospital waiting for Alex to show up. I pulled that out and made some notes:

Custom gauges – Smiths (racetech)

ITBs with Weber alpha management

5 speed

Massive flares (probably not for me)

Custom interior touches

Mesh style wheels with a nice step for the hoop (again, probably not for me to that level of “done”)

I found another article in bmw car, same Chamonix white, rally set up.

More notes:

Custom made factory looking steelies

Brake biasing valve

Rear cage (maybe)

Full 318i fi swap (again, probably not for me)

Then I grabbed a fresh sheet of paper and sketched out my plan:

TWM ITbs

MegaSquirt for fueling and spark v3 – which also meant getting the ignighters

Trigger wheel and hall sensor

MSD coil for EDIS or some equivalent

Electric fuel pump

Battery relocation to trunk

Sway bars

Lowering springs and new shocks

BBS RM wheels (check, got those)

New Fuel tank – mine is leaking petrol at the seams

Brakes? Possibly a VW mk4 conversion at the back, Volvos at the front?

Seats – I’ve got the e30s (fauxcaros)

Carpet (check)

Steering wheel – Momo (again, got it check)

Guages – like the racetechs (but not yet sure how I want to make the speedo work)

Misc things that make the car different and interesting

Beyond that, I had made the decision to continue to blend touches from other German marques that I liked and respected. I had grown up with Porsche, VW, and few Audis. I also wanted to have a few touches that were pure mods for the purpose of making it more civil to drive…I suspected that to get my sig other on a long drive there would need to be some things in car that made her feel okay with coming along. Possible tie downs to put the kid recaro in?

A plan. Finally.

It lasted about a week, and it took a number of turns.

The first was tossing the e30 Fauxcaros. We’ll get to that next. For the time being…this was the plan.

Timeline shift: I had breakfast today with the bay area (south bay) with a number of people from 60ish miles around. Great group of people. A lot of very active characters on FAQ, I now have a framework for who they are and what they have all done or not done to their cars. Unfortunately being mid build was garaged but it was great to meet folks.