Peppe's Turbocharged '84 323i

Background:

I purchased this '84 323i the winter of 04/05. I found the car after searching the market for about 2 months, it was located in the middle of Sweden. Because of the pricing of the 325 I had big problems finding a car cheap enough, since I had turbo plans I didn't wish to spend a fortune on the car. So this M20B25 equipped 323i was the perfect victim.

Said and done, after talking to the guy over telephone several times we loaded my friends E36 325 and drove the whole way down to Sundsvall. Seeing the car for the first time was an experience - orange, BIG orange BMW boarder on the windshield and two black viper stripes across the car. Lovely.

I ended up buying the car and driving it home. I finally had my baby.

My Progess:

Since it was winter I wanted to use the car for a month or so before starting to work with the turbo installation. One day driving to school the engine overheated, that pretty much settled it. It was time to get this project on the road. With help from my friend Ecke we took the engine out and tore it down. What we found was a really nice mess:

3 main bearings was really damaged.
4 ram bearings was totaly destroyed.
The camshaft was so worn down that we could not figure out how the car actully could run as nice as it did.

Not much to do, the engine was going to get rebuilt anyway, and with a broken camshaft I could get a better one.

Since both me and Ecke where in school we worked pretty much every night with the engine. We did 99% of machining work aswell. So it was kinda slow moving. At the time the engine was complete, except the exhaust mainfold, we pulled the car in to the garage. It was now almost spring. One word: PANIC...

Confident as we where we thought the car was going to be ready for tuning in late May. That time schedule was not realistic, so we quickly realised that we had to work harder, said and done. 24/7 in the garage.
That 24/7 plan was busted aswell since 28th of May I started my new job. We were back to late nights.

At the time we where working on the car and trying to get all the pieces together we got the help of Mattias with installing the new engine management, keeping the stock Motronic was out of the question for the power level we wanted. The system we used is the VEMS Genboard.

We did manage to pull the car together to make the first test drive 23th of September, and that would not been possible without the help of Mattias, Nicke & Ecke. 23rd we did start the test & tune, Mattias did a great job, the car was boosting 0.5 bars and was behaving really nice. I was surprised by it's perfomance.
During the tuning we broke a driveshaft, so we only got a taste of the power. I did not have time to be sad or pissed, I was too excited about the car. That night we found a new driveshaft in a town up north. So we made a little road trip. The same night at 01:00 we mounted the new driveshaft.

On the 24th the car was out roaring across the roads in our little hometown. Mattias found more power at 0.5 bars of boost during that day. We decided to take a break and continue the tuning the next day.
But I was not finished and wanted to give my brother a ride before parking the car. And I did! In 1st gear the car accelerated well, I shifted to 2nd gear and then floored it. BOOM... Now the other driveshaft was history.

The following day Ecke changed the driveshaft and I was gonna adjust the valve clearance. To my supprise i found coolant fluid in the oil underneat the valve cover. The head was suffering of cracks. That's how that season ended. But, there will be a new season in 2006...

Known Performance: