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I think one of the most important aspects to owning an old car, is: You have to like it. It's going to cost you time, sweat, money. It's more likely that it'll cost you more than you get back for it. The main return is enjoynent and memories, So, if you don't really like it to start with, you've started way in the negatives and may never break even given the true cost of owning an old car.

M The Cats and post cat sensors all all about emissions compliance and serve no function beyond that so no surprise its running okay. The pre-cat sensors do all the real work. So I've seen two scenarios here, bad cats (rare)...bad sensors (more common)...i've had multiple O2 sensors fail close together (often due to vibration). If you're otherwise happy with your data , fuel trims etc...then consider just programming/flashing out these fault code as there is nothing to gain by chasing this problem down (unless you want to be sure you're not contributing to NOx pollution!)

There’s another thread going, sold it for $40k

I do like the R129. If you've not already seen it, Harry's Garage review of his R129 SL600 is epic. I'd love one, and considered an SL500 as daily on a one year contract with an 60km commute. I was saved by taking a different gig. Odd, isn't it. The W124 should be the nostalgic car of choice. Look at the value comparison now between your average e30 six, and an E280 or E320. No it's not apples-with-apples, we'd need an e34 for that. But now for $10-15k you'll get a lot more car in a W124 than an e30 eh? Not as chuckable, but awesomely engineered and a great drive. Hmmm. Few aspire to driving Grandad's car... which brings us to image. 🙂 That's undoubtedly a significant contributing factor to the e30 mistique and helping to boost the prices. And without a famous movie star dying (notably) in one.

Highly agree with this. The market dictates the price. inflation plus e30 tax is a real thing

Hi All . I have invested in cars and spent lots of time looking at markets an looking for trends . At the moment E30 have been moving the rarer the model the higher the price . E30 M3 have always been sought after but also have considerable range in prices as well. But fully documented low mileage couple of owner car unrestored in good condition will always be king With collectors. Even though these cars have moved in price . They Will become a investment grade Car once they pass there original purchase price in today’s money . E30 still have a bit to go but are still well price get them while you can at these prices as collector have not really moved into E30 yet . Most of the price will have been driven by brand enthusiasm by current BMW owners. The rarer the car the more sought after the current sales reflect how well sought after these cars are and also how well they drive . I would only expect these M Tech 1 and 2 to catchup with lower grade E30 M3 they made a lot more M3 than RHD M Tech 1 cars for example . You might have been able to buy one 10 years ago for 10k and think they are not a 50k cars but the market is telling you something else .

Saw a couple Mtech 2s go for far more than 50k.. that 64k one on trademe and another at 65k

I am starting to feel this way a bit too. $50k = E46 M3/Z4M coupe money. But I feel an E30 M3 is not worth $80k or that houses in Manurewa are not worth $1m but the demand is there and that’s what counts at the end of the day.

Hi E30 and BMW Members . I have been trying to find out more information about the New Zealand E30 M325i M Tech 1 . If Possible I would like to know how many of these model where sold in New Zealand . I have some information which I have from other Web Site which Read as follows . In New Zealand, where the M3 was never officially sold, the local importer created a sporting version of the sedan called M325i. About 100 such cars were imported beginning in late 1986 until at least 1990. Fitted with the standard non-catalyzed 171 PS (126 kW) 2.5 litre engine they benefitted from a Motorsport fettled suspension, the M-Technic body package, 15-inch BBS cross-spoke wheels with wide, low profile (225/50) tyres, and a limited-slip differential. The M325i is quite similar to the British market 325i Sport, also developed as a response to the absence of a right-hand-drive M3. Is this Accurate for the Total number including M Tech 2 . I have found other Information which says "I have been told that only 298 models of the 1987 right hand drive M-tech 1 were ever made before they switched to the M-tech 2 making it a seriously rare beast indeed, and after the M-tech 2 which sold a lot more was done the next M3 was produced in right hand drive too making it pointless carrying on the M-tech line " Is this Accurate for the Total number of M Tech 1 Made and if so how many M-Tech 1 are in New Zealand. Thanks in Advance

@NZ00Z3 Murray these are brilliant, thanks! I'll be buying some pronto. https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_&SearchText=RCNUN

Yeah mine has the same, pops up more when I have to revert to 95/96 octane gas rather than its usual 98. The solution is equal length headers and a tune

I have recently got a couple of dash cam's for the cars after nearly getting cleanup up by a young driver on a back country road. Remember that the dash cam is recording, so its a two way street. The footage can be used for your insurance purposes after an incident and the police can use it to look at your driving infractions. GPS - Shows speed and location. Very good evidence if you are within the speed limit. - Shows the Police how much spirited driving you do and if you were speeding. Camera Angle of View - Get as wide as you can. 110 degrees is not really wide enough. You want to be able to see and prove that other car did not stop at the stop sign on the side street. Memory card size - Loop recording is a must have - A 4GB card gives about 20 minutes of recording time. G- Shock Recording - This is where the shock of the accident tells the dash cam to save and protect the most recent footage. It's a must have if you run a small memory card. Otherwise the camera keeps recording after the accident and records over the accident footage. You will likely to forget to pull the power lead on the camera after the accident. Super-Cap battery - Provides power for the camera to save the most recent footage when the power is turned off. So if your positive battery lead pyrotechnic goes off during the accident and cut the power, the Camera can still save the accident footage. Mounting - Good old rubber suctions cap mounts are sort of OK. They will fall off on hot days and be a pain to get to stick if the inside of the windscreen is dirty. - Sticky pad mounts are better. Just make sure you know what type they are for replacement, when you have your windscreen replaced. Power Supply - Needs to be hot in start and run. Not hot all the time. BMW cigarette lighter sockets are typically hot all the time and using an adapter in the socket puts too many wires around the gear lever. - A Separate USB power supply wired into a hot in start and run supply works well. I have this one in my Z3's and E46 from Aliexpress. It is mounted under the center console with the wire coming out from under the side of the console. The three 2A USB supplies allows for a GPS, Dash-cam and charging a phone all at the same time with the wires away from the gear lever. Plus no holes drilled or other cosmetic changes made. - Power supply wires can be run up the inside of the A pillar etc. to hide them or left exposed.

About a month ago I changed the plugs and coils. Paid less for a set of six sparks and Delphi coils from FCP euro including shipping that I would have paid here for one plug and one coil. Also lifetime warranty, it will be worth paying the shipping for free replacement parts! Massive difference to the idle. N54s are 'known' for a slightly rough idle at times but new plugs and coils have made nearly as much improvement as the walnut blast did (that improved low revs). Next thing on the hitlist for later in the year will be a new set of injectors. I'll stump for a set of Index 12s from FCP Euro and be done with it with their lifetime warranty.

Thats the spoiler i managed to snag 😁

Having had an old Blackvue in my car for years now, the biggest piece of advice I can give is to look into your options for getting the video off the camera. My only option is to remove the microsd card and use an adaptor to plug it into a computer. Its a real PITA so I don't bother getting video off it unless its pretty serious. If you can get one that you can transfer the video wirelessly to your phone or something, you'd find that way more useful.

That seems to be a right of passage for owning an e46! i did that on my old one, hopefully wont be doing it on my new one! i'll have to do some cruises and photo shoots with you once my one i'm restoring now is done, twin blue coupes!

Expensive to live with? No more than anything else. 🙂 The biggest expense for my 500SE is fuel. I've replaced brake discs and pads, and serviced regularly, but no other significant costs. There will be... I plan to renovate it which will mean many $$$ on paint. Again, that's true of any car. The E30 and 190E are different. The 190E is better on road, rides more comfortably, and feels like a bigger, better-built car. The E30 feels lighter and smaller, but more susceptible to imperfect surfaces, is less comfortable and feels smaller. 'Feels' - the actual numbers really aren't so different.

It's been for sale for quite a while. Good engine, good gearbox, should be lots of fun. $16k...? Hmm. Difficult to justify, but standard 190Es are appreciating. If you are keen on a 190E, I have two of them here which will be looking for new homes...

To follow up on this, the same people have listed another silver manual 130i with lower kms on trademe. They should be in the thread with that much 130i love https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/search?member_listing=1952262

So buy a nice one for 35k and keep 15k in the bank for a rainy day, sorted!!

it had a bid on it of $30k. So yes, I'd expect so.

damn thats annoying. I almost always reverse park because of this very reason

Those carpark blocks are out to get you @Sammo

Looking at it from this angle, it looks as though it may have been. From memory, ABC designed the windscreen surround to support the weight of the car in the event of a rollover.

That actually works really well. Wonder if the A pillar got reinforced.

I just re-used the factory screws to hold the cooler up... that's what I had at the time. Made sure they threaded back into the plastic without cutting a new thread and tightened them until the lugs on the cooler were hard against whatever they bear on, and snugged the screws down. Was careful not to over-tighten them as I notice that most of the screws on my car that screw into plastic have stripped threads from over-tightening (fkn power tools!!!). I have bought the Champion "hanger bolts" and was surprised to see that they don't look to have any more thread than the factory screws. So the only advantage they have is that once installed, the part that threads into the plastic does not have to be removed again, which will preserve the thread in the plastic. So long as the coarse thread is into the plastic far enough that it does not interfere with tightening a nut on the fine thread, I see no reason for a nut on top of the lug. From an engineering point of view it just makes it more likely that the cooler will move around. A flat washer between the nut and the lug on the cooler and a nyloc would be good. Don't overdo cranking on the nyloc though, as being a finer thread it will generate more clamping force than the coarse thread for the same tightening torque. And you don't want to strip the thread in the plastic as that would be a level 10 cursing event !!!! Cheers...

In the eternal competition to find the best mural / graffiti to backdrop your car pic... this guy found the best mural and took the best shot In New Plymouth apparently, and kudos to the artist for making such a great job... that's serious talent right there 👍 Cheers...

LED tails next, in case you're running out of ideas to spend money on 😂

If you can take ownership and leave it there with your brother for year you could avoid GST. Probably go up in value too.

Stunning Sunday for a drive so waxed the car and drove to Maraetai > Clevedon > Kawakawa Bay > Kaiaua and back to Kingsland. First time doing this drive, very scenic and not too much traffic. Anyway, more photo spam as per:

I was finding cars of similar age! The huge disparity in 'new' purchase price is remarkable given the (now) difference in s/h asking. Pagoda? ❤️ Lovely car to look at, terrible things to try to drive with any sort of enthusiasm. Hasn't stopped them becoming expensive beyond 'normal' pockets - there's one on TradeMe now for $380000. Sounds high... But so do asking prices for E30s. To me, at least. based on playing with them for 30-odd years. The R129 is one which will likely appreciate soon. The R107 which it replaced has already become expensive in some cases, but (like E30s) prices are all over the place. The Mercedes will probably take longer to appreciate in value as they are not regarded by many people as an economic car to own - the E30 is very much a people's car, and one which is fun, fairly simple, reasonably easy to maintain, and in (relatively) plentiful supply. The Mercedes had lower production numbers (although often longer production runs), cost a lot more when new, and has a reputation for being expensive to live with.

Worked through my entire vocabulary of swear words while removing the thermostat from the M5! Don't think I can face trying to install the new one on the same day!!!

Uk data is a lot more accurate as it is mostly UK new units (far fewer used imports) so model data comes from the manufacturer, not the random guff written on the MR2A at the AA shop. Only around 1,000 UK Sports left (would be Tech I and Tech 2 version), damn, “cash for clunkers” has a lot to answer for! Although prices probably wouldn’t have risen like they did if the numbers hadn’t dropped so dramatically.

100 total might be a good ball park figure if you factor attrition in, there's 60+ definitely still on the road, probably not too far from the truth! open source Mt1 data; of the cars not written off: 4 Polaris '86 cars as I've detailed previously (which didn't have the 333 option mtechnic package - just the relevant options individually) 9 085xxxx chassis number cars 5 286xxxx chassis number cars There's also at least 6 UK 325i Sport's here as well, all of which are 085xxxx cars - the crucial difference between them and the kiwi new cars is that they got the 206 option 260/5 close ratio gearbox with 3rd and 4th being different ratios to the standard 260. There's now more E30 M3's in NZ than there are mt1's. The early mt2 cars were also 286xxxx chassis numbers before they shifted to 358xxxx and AE5xxxx. South Africa and Australia didn't get the mt1 as an mtechnic car, and neither did Japan - it was really a New Zealand / Great Britain only car, so 298 RHD mt1 cars might not be too far from the truth. The UK has howmanyleft which lists models still registered or SORNed, but is susceptible to the foibles of how the registration data is entered, but some ballpark figures can be inferred from the below link https://www.howmanyleft.co.uk/vehicle/bmw_325_i_sport

Just because the ratchet part doesn't work you can still make good use of the stand... Cheers...

Agree! I test drove one just before last years lockdown. I told the sales person in all seriousness - the only car that I can compare it to, which I have previously owned is... E60 M5! it had heads up display, adjustable suspension, 'sport mode', seats, handling, ride comfort and its practicality was pretty much on par - which actually speaks a lot to the E60 M5! Only area the Stinger couldn't compare - the shear savageness and noise of the M5! oh and fuel economy 😎, but it only has a 50l tank so they probably have the same range haha How about a 6 series gran coupe: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/650i/listing/2962412947

Fitted new Lemforder Tierod's last weekend and got a fresh Alignment at RaceAlign on Monday. With Suspension now pretty sorted, decided to put in some 98, inflate the side bolsters up and give her a good, sustained spanking. Went for a blast out to the Manakau Heads Lighthouse which (after the hideous Southern Motorway traffic) was fantastic - brilliant views, no traffic and some pretty fun (if a little sketchy) roads. Car was great - really happy with it - didn't miss a beat, flat and direct, but compliant, heaps of feedback and with the 3.38 diff, plenty of power for me on these types of roads. A bit much tramlining for my liking, but a lot of that would have been the nature of the crappy roads. Only bummer was the speeding ticket and 20 demerits doing 98 in what I had assumed was a 100kph zone in Drury. Oh well, could have been worse 😜

Today mission. Customer from Auckland sent me their cas 3 module Lost all keys. No worries. Read data and program new key. Job done

I recently finished a little weekend job of putting a front and back dashcam, hardwired with ignition controlled parking mode (and flat battery protection) on my E82. If anybody is thinking of tacking something like this and wants any info on what I did or any pitfalls I found give me a shout. I failed to document the process fully with pics or anything but more than willing to share some findings. I hardwired into the fuse panel (junction box) and picked the overhead console 7.5 amp fused always on supply for the parking mode (via the PowerMagic Pro box) and the accessory/cigar lighter fuse (20 amp) for the ignition switching).

I broke it 😬 lucky I didn’t berate the wife for doing something g similar last year 🤔