Leaderboard

These 635s are like buses - Wait for ages and three come at once!

218,xxx km this week marks 1 year with the touring. probably close to spending double what I was intending to spend but that’s old cars for you. Passed it’s WOF with no notes last week. First WOF in my ownership so I’m very happy. thanks to @Sammo for spotting this steering wheel on FB. It arrived yesterday and with a bit of a clean up it’s come up a lot better than the initial photos of it. Still will need to be wrapped again down the track as there is some deterioration on right hand side, but good enough to use now. installation wasn’t quite as straight forward as the bracket the airbag clicks into had a sticky spring and was also missing a couple of springs that fit underneath it meaning the airbag stuck out horribly. 3 torx 30 screws and it was easily swapped over. Iv also swapped my original airbag out as it supposedly had been updated with the Takata recall, however I noted it’s still a Takata bag that’s in there? I’ll have to do a bit more research. The govt website is saying no recall required for my plate, however previous owner insisted it had multiple airbag recalls done. Now I will look at getting the old one fixed up, it’s got some stitching coming undone. Turned the car on and it didn’t explode, no airbag light either. It’s quite a bit thicker than the original wheel so am looking forward to a test drive.

Its like the universe is trying to talk me out of an E30 and into an E24: https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/3328522439?bof=O1LBIznl https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/3331187718?bof=WAO790Nu Both oldies though (1979 / E12 based) but that second one is amazingly clean - wonder what the reserve is 🤔 A bit big and old for me, but I really love the look!

Decided I like em. ET38 18x8.5 definitely about the sane limit with these tyres (235/40), maybe et35 and 225s would work if wanted to try push it. Gave it the mandatory B road blat, kinda scary not knowing where the limit actually is on the Falken RT615k+, particularly as the initial turn in grip on them is insane. Bit more noisey than RE003s but not night and day, but OMG does it feel like it wants to change directions quick, going to be fun tyres.

Clearly another victim of Global Warming !!!! I predict sun umbrellas will be the next big thing Cheers...

"Due for a service" no sh*t...

I remember the 200k houses, with a 50k car on the driveway.

Simple, re-mortgage the house to utilise the increased equity and spend that on an E30..!! Reminds me of the early ‘00s in the UK when lots of people were doing that to buy new cars, great investment - not!!

The best time to buy an E30 or House in Auckland is "Two years ago" You can't drive a house but you can kind of sleep in an E30.

I've just re-read the first post on this thread, from all the way back in July 2019, a whole two years and three months ago, where @Blackie had linked it for a new member. A FL manual 325i coupe with M-Tech bodykit (can't remember if a genuine M325i) for a whopping $15k. If one were listed for that price now then the seller would get trampled in the rush of buyers. Market price would be near double that now I would suggest, (or waaaay above if was an M325i) pretty good returns for anyone that bought an E30 as an investment back then. Conflicted views on that as I'm not keen on "our" cars being turned into investment items that drive the enthusiasts out of the market, but on the other hand makes mine worth more - not that I would ever sell them.

Overwhelming urge to go hang a wheel off a sharp cliff edge whilst all crossed up.

I wasn't really concerned with your comment, I was just checking, hoping to avoid conflict.

A little sobering to think 12 months later my budget for this has more than doubled... At least my house has 'gone up' $300K

Did you take a Grumpy Cat meme seriously? 😂

Not amazing I suspect, few reviews saying they aquaplane in heavy downpours, although are DOT approved.

Depends on the E30 Would need to put a mattress down in the touring, as there is a rear bar right where my back curves, which doesn't make for a comfortable sleep.

These might be even more polarizing than ACS Type IVs Flow formed, 900kg rated, right offsets and most importantly - available. Also some sticky rubber to suit. Will weigh them and compare

How the car was used in Japan will also factor into how the trans fares. I suspect my first E36 was used in a lot of start stop traffic in Japan, as it had 80 odd thousand KM when it came into NZ, but the trans flared like a bitch between 1st and 2nd. Got to the point i couldnt trust it to change gears when I needed it to, so manual swapped it. I wish i did more research into Jatco jerk before i bought it, as i should have picked up on it on the test drive. Cars that were previously assembled in NZ (or Aus and sold new in NZ) had to have a certain amount of local content, so they usually differed from JDM models in things like seats and trim. My old Corolla was a good example; being late 90s NZ built the seats were rubbish with little to no bolstering and thin cheap fabric that split at the seams. The same car, of the same year was also sold NZ New, but built in Japan. Those had much better quality seats (to the point i bought some from Pick A Part and swapped them in).

you need e28 sport seat rails to fit to e30 sport seats to make that work

Finally an update for this one...! Have been to'ing and fro'ing on the next steps for this car, specifically whether or not to supercharge. After (literally) years of deliberation I have decided to keep it NA, and as such celebrated with a CSL intake from Geoff Steel 😁 Should be pretty similar to this one: I'm running a K&N 57 series currently, so that'll be up if anyone is interested (assuming of course I can get the CSL airbox and software working...).

Agreed - no sense in messing with the sparkly new cover. (it has frustrated me enormously) I've seen enough of a gap in the market to do it myself, but I'm six months away from you sending your old cover down to me to blast for you. There's a few places in Auckland that could vapour blast the cover, but the jury is out on how well the magnesium alloy reacts to the shot peening effect that vapour blasting imparts on the metals being cleaned. Ideal for grey cast iron surfaces, but there's potential for microscopic cracking on alloys, and not enough real world testing to give a definitive answer on whether it's a good idea or not.

Also finished the lower rear quarter so I could finally fit the rear bumper and battery in the boot. For the mess that it was it has come up really well. Glad I replaced the whole section. Post welding the section was sprayed with zinc etch primer and filled before having textured finish sprayed on to match factory.

Sooooo a long time ago (ahem, 8 months or so) I cut all the rust out of the car. This meant a rather large hole where the battery tray / well once was in the boot. As with all other areas of the car, someone had already had a go (see pic 1) which involved patching using some street signage! F****n awesome work there. So my fix would always be far better and more structural than how it was. After much procrastination I decided to tackle the hole over the weekend. Much measuring, trimming and cleaning of both the car's panels and the donor panel, before splitting the donor panel so I could actually weld the sections into the car nice and tightly starting on the inside. As with the other rust fixes on the car, before welding the panels were wire wheeled on the edges inside and out for good penetration, weld through primer used to ensure rust doesn't come back and after welds have been ground back, seam sealer and underbody will be re-applied to mirror the factory finish. Over 8 hours of prep meant under 2 hours of welding. Job is coming out much nicer than expected. I'll post some pics of the finished product next week.

Recaro's After 3x sets of fishnets which were all stuffed, I picked these up ages back out of an Evo 4 shape GSR. One is mint, the other needs bolster repair. I considered Evo4 SR's but they are usually grey / orange/maroon pattern which I didn't want. In the meantime for mockup I took my Evo1 Recaro office chair apart and used that to figure out things

This is my neighbour’s 70 series that he’s been slowly fixing up and loves. Stolen last night from Mt Albert, probably end up as parts or sold somewhere. If you see it, let me know, thanks, Scott.

Final update on the car - I’ll leave this thread up to assist others. After much frustration with wiring, expensive bills that seemed never ending, it actually passed a VTNZ wof (which it then needed to fail for the cert...) and had cert booked. However it wasn’t running well and struggling when VANOS kicked in. What I hadn’t realised was that this was due to the oil pickup gradually getting stuffed full of metal filings. Queue 2 big end bearings shot, one brand new oil pickup toast, non running engine and more bills to diagnose said engine I was over it. I sold it from the workshop, never even got it back home. Learnings? Rust is balls, and M52B28 engine would have been easier.