Meet "Blue Nose" by DIIRTY-30

10 minute(s) of a 417 minute read

Guess its about time to post some pictures since I've been a bit inactive. 2018s been an interesting one, been making more progress on the e31 above all, acquired an e38 from the original owner for an insane deal, putting that on the market to fund other projects. So with that being said, give a little peak & toss some much needed photos onto here. There's a few things I've left out, forgotten, didn't take pics of, so I'll just run down the line of photos haha.


I fixed my front spoiler, shot a rough coat of base & cleared it since I figured one of these days I'll run it over again. So instead of trying to perfect it and let my OCD take hold, I got it to the point where its acceptable to move forward onto the next.

I then got tired of looking at my dirt engine bay and for the first time actually decided to detail it, which didnt last very long. Perks of living on a property with primarily dirt.... nothing stays clean, so a big woop for that haha. Hindsight should have taken photos in the daytime but eh noone cares lol

Then one day I decided to take it out and really let it loose, its funny how addicting torque is. I was having a bit of fun, you know minding my own business, then next thing i know I'm limping. So I stick my head out the window thinking "wtf did I hit, did I get a flat?!" NOPE. wheels wobbling, so I managed to make it home since I wasn't too far away. I exit the car and noticed my wheel was a bit uh sideways. Closer inspection I find that I snapped two of four motorsports studs. Shoot Ryan a text, day later have a new set & swap them out. Luckily I still had a few extra lugs & the wheel lock lug wasn't apart of the damage.

So off the wheel, rotors and etc came... I was greeted by a nice little challenge that I was hoping to try but not in this fashion. So I took a small gamble and decided I'd try a new-to-me technique, worst case I'd have to source a new hub. Grabbed some nuts laying around and got to work. By no means am I a welder, but I've been considering taking a few classes just to get a better education behind it. Knowledge is power kids.

Then I went ahead, ran a tap through the hub to make sure the threads weren't all fubar'd and wasting my time. Luckily everything turned out properly, and went ahead and tossed some loctite back on and put it back on the road.

After a few more short drives followed by cleaning & organizing my misc parts in boxes. I came across my e36 brace that I never got around to installing prior to trading for the e31. At which point I kinda sat and thought to myself "hell why not give this a shot". I've seen a few people do it but wasn't sure how viable the outcome would be, some weld this, some bend that. So crawled under the car and held it in place and was like "whoa, it's almost a near perfect fit, why don't more people do this as an OEM-ish option as oppose to hundreds of dollars"

So I begun using rivnuts to secure the subframe position, couple of white out marks, and began drilling and installing the other rivnuts, took the brace down, bent the frame rail tabs, and boom, fits.

Well there you go, e36 oem X brace on an e30 easy as pie. Then I dropped a ridiculous amount of money on a bunch of v8 parts for both cars, and did the tensioners on both cars. I'm unsure if these photos were from the e30 or e31 since it's been some time, both looked very similar. I had a slight rattle coming from the e31, even after an oil change which this fixed, and in comparison, the e30 is a cakewalk to work on compared to the 8 haha.

Little while later, I decided to change the FPR, intake manifolds due to vac leaks, and I added an oem m62 breather tube into the m60 manifold on the e31. Which then gave me the idea of instead of spending $30+ on another tube for the e30, while im at it, i'll make my own. So with a check valve, some ally tubing, I cut, drilled, welded, and fit a DIY tube into the e30. At which point I had an extra m62 throttle body without the plate and swapped that out as well. Cause, you can never have too many upgrades right? I added slits on top, and drilled the bottom out in a few spots incase oil decided to pool in there, which hopefully wont be the case.

I'm sure theres a few shots side by side of these two but for anyone reading heres the major differences.


M60 w/ plates & M62 w/o plates

I'm waiting on the adapters for this, since the builder is moving shops currently, I'm hoping to have this on the car, functioning by years end. Fingers crossed, I originally bought this for the e31 since it yearns for more power for its weight but considering doing an s62 swap instead for obvious reasons. Which leaves me with this little gem. I met a very cool jaguar guy locally, told him what I'm doing and was able to get everything needed off his parts car. I've tossed around few ideas of how to route this and that, so far the plan is looking very solid. Car had 105k miles on it, lot of work already done, needs needle bearings but buying a kit for that, gave me most of the gaskets, insane what Jag charges.

Biggest hurtle I see, and if someone would like to toss a recommendation out I NEED A TUNER.... I have no faith at all in attempting to reprogram even with inpa/NCSExpert software. So if anyone can point me in a direction locally, I'm guessing RKtunes but haven't reached out and contacted them yet. Greatly appreciate any help in this field.

Gave everything a deep cleaning, made sure all the bolts were there & labeled. Going to pull the intake manifold off and see how to route some things, most likely going to get rid of the blower cover or make a new panel so that things fit haha. Meantime, some powder, new seals, rebuild the injectors, yadda yadda yadda, keep ya'll posted a bit more often once this comes to fruition.

OH and big shoutout to whomever did this at the junkyard. I thought this was so funny when I walked past and saw it! Good shit reppin r3v