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Great combo, shame the M4 didn’t back in

This afternoon my new windscreen finally went in. Car had been without a windscreen for 2 months as the moulding was coming from Germany. The Smith and Smith tech said it was the hardest car he’s ever worked on. Everyone clapped when I left so seems like it was a team effort to get the new moulding on properly lol. Appears that a decent job has been done which I’m happy about. First stop with the new windscreen was the petrol station of course 🤣

Yeah, loving it - it looks totally at home in the dash works perfectly and sounds pretty good even with my unknown (stock??) front components and 20 year old 6x9s. Have amp pre-outs if I eventually run out of other things to spend money on too. Shipping and communication has been great too - he actually sent me a free microphone grill / plug that looks cool in the dash (it is a slightly different surface that makes it look a little lighter but not obvious in the flesh) and makes Bluetooth calls easy and clear too.

Few changes to the cars, and I'm planning on using this one a bit more - have only done around 500kms and 2 mild track open days in the past 3 years. Realistically I won't be tracking this car enough to justify the build and give it's on pretty low kms, NZ new and Individual it's not one I want to throw into a wall. As a result I have started converting back to 'street' spec (of sorts). Removed the decals and wing, and swapped in the standard seats (glad the electrics still all work..!). Next up I'll remove the new front splitter (it's very low) and canards leaving just the 1-piece CSL spoiler. It's also rubbing a little at the rear with the spacers on so I'll take em off rather than modify the bodywork or raise up the suspension. Stance on the rear CSL wheels is fine, the front hubs are different for the CSL to the normal M3 so the offset is weird without spacing. Wing mounts are ok on the bootlid but aren't exactly OEM+ spec so I'll likely grab a CSL boot to swap in as an option. I have a spare front bumper and bonnet, so not too worried about those parts (CSL intake noise is outrageous with holes in the bonnet). Cage and rear subframe support structures can stay for now as its homologated and I like it; easy enough to remove in the future if I want to convert fully stock. There's also an odd knock in the rear which is likely a diff mount or similar, so I'll get that sorted next week. I have new OEM kick panels and mats that I'll swap in at some stage too - in fact I have spares of most of the typical wear points for this car that I've saved for a rainy day.

I like the one on the left ♥️

Gee, nice pic. Interesting to note the size difference 35 years later in the BMW evolutionary cycle. Gimme the old school, any day.

@Kees They are amazing that's for sure and you are 100% right about no one wanting to let there's go, I know I don't plan on selling mine anytime soon. I love the E34 too, have way too many parts for them now. Here's mine, both manual 😁

Looks amazing! Love how it says E30 325i lol

dammit, came here to look at the W8 then got blessed with tidy as looking E34s. Im not sure if you guys saw but there was a manual 535is (i think from memory) in manual listed on tm a few weeks back and it was cheap. If I wasnt trying to sell my cars I would have grabbed it instantly. I miss my old 535i sedan so bad.. big six energy!

Thanks! She looks decently tidy in photos but up close its definitely an original car but hasn't done too bad for almost 400,000km, has tidied up pretty nice though. Yeah I was pretty lucky to score those wheels, I may be just a tad bias but I think they are the best looking wheels on e34s. Wow I don't think I could last that long without being able to drive my car, the two months my car was off the road was a struggle enough! Did you get a big haul of parts?

Yup - the guy is very responsive and customer focus - works through paypal and ships via DHL. Was $700 landed including shipping - not cheap, but a better looking option than the Blaupunkt SQR46 IMO.

Where can I get one of these radios??? Looks awesome. Just found the info further back in the thread ... cheers https://www.instagram.com/bmwradios/?hl=en https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/forum/e30-classified-forums/for-sale-wanted/parts-for-sale/9978890-original-bmw-radios-with-bluetooth-hands-free-and-button-control

Sorry to hear you are having to sell it on but this was/is an amazing car for sure if anyone is looking for a nice comfortable touring. Extra info for any potential buyers, during our ownership we did: Trans fluid service done at BM Workshop, engine mounts (left + right), trans mounts, oil pan gasket, drive belt idler pulley, belt tensioner, serpentine belt, valve cover gasket, valvetronic gasket, cam cover gasket Car market seems to be bone dry at the moment but GLWS!

buy new or modify get bmw part numbers for each part then google it to find a seller

Yeah looks so much better than my old moulding which had ugly holes in the rubbery-plastic material that runs between the metal part of the moulding and the car itself. All the stickers are peeling off which triggers my OCD a bit. Luckily the car is due a WOF as the windscreen crack was what it failed on a couple months ago. Hoping to have a fresh WOF tomorrow with a nicely applied sticker!! Fingers crossed they don't find anything else because I would like to have a legal car again.

Love the half peeling off WOF sticker. Ah Smith and Smith, they never change. That new trim does look real good though. makes such a difference.

S/h car market is a ridiculous thing at present and despite the Covid import issues, doesn't really make any sense. The vehicles you mention are right up there with other overpriced vehicles. I'd add a Hilux to the list! (Bl**dy horrible things to drive - what do people see in them?) What is your V6 wagon?

Be interesting to see the psychology behind the reactions to fuel prices... People selling their $10000 'gas guzzler' only to buy a more efficient $30k car that will take 15 years to break even on fuel costs before depreciation is factored in. My daily V6 wagon averages 8.2l/100km, takes 70ish litres to fill and I'll get around 900km on a trip. I usually do 700-800km/week. The increase in fuel price has seen me $40-50 out of pocket/week but I acknowledge I do more km than most. Not enough to break the bank and definitely not enough to make me loose my sh*t and sell my car in favour of a diesel or EV as a knee jerk reaction. I've been hankering for a decent V8 - Lexus LX570, 200 Series Land Cruiser or a Ram 1500, but simply refuse to pay the inflated prices for them (3 year old LX and Ram asking prices at or near their RRP, LC200 $20-40k more than RRP). Hopefully this increase in fuel prices hits the over inflated used car market and brings it back to what it should be.

Really not sure where all the negativity around cheap BMWs is coming from. Maybe it's an impact of Covid? I bought the 320d with fairly high mileage, and ran it for a few years, piling (by most standards) huge kms on. Without issue. Look after it, and all is typically good. (It has been sold, and a non-starting issue is puzzling the new owner.) 560000km. We bought a genuinely cheap E46 318i. It runs, and runs... And runs... Look after it, and.. well, you get the idea. Bodywork is pretty rough, but it's solid. Well over 250000km. The Merc 500SE cost me $2500 nearly 7 years ago. Paintwork was poor when we got it and is not really better now, but it's cost very little in the meantime, despite having extended periods of daily use (which probably did it a lot of good, actually). Only real expense has been replacing the shock absorbers. Heading to 500000km Japanese cars? My experience is entirely contrary to what appears normal. Nothing but trouble. Buy cheap, run for 12 moths, throw it away, rinse, and repeat. I see people doing this A LOT but still saying how great their cheap Japanese hatch is (and how expensive European cars are to maintain), but something goes wrong and they buy another one every 12 months or so. YMMV. And obviously does.

I decided to empty out my spastic car collection about a month ago, getting rid of my S8, S6 and GTB E-Tune. All three cars were interesting but the S8 was the only one I really liked, largely due to how insanely engineered it was, and of course the V10 thunder it produced. All three were automatics so were quite plain to drive. Since I have my E34 540i which is also automatic, the others had to go (insurance was also an absolute fortune, $6K a year for the three I sold which is rather unsustainable lol). My initial plan was to somewhat detox from the high power, yet largely mundane automatic sedans and get something quite the opposite that would complement my 540i. What I really wanted was a manual Z3, especially after coming across the photos of my Grandfather's manual 2.2 Z3 he had in the early 2000s. I was thinking; manual, light, roof down, straight six, hmmm that sounds like a-lot of fun. In the depths of Facebook marketplace I found a rougher manual 2.0L Z3 for sale about 15 minutes from my house. The car looked like it had solid bones and was just suffering from some cosmetic flaws like clear coat peel on the boot-lid, missing interior trim, typical Z3 split seats etc which are easily rectifiable. Went and looked at it and was pretty put off not only by its condition in person, but also the way it drove. To be fair, I think that car specifically was just a bit of an underpowered dog that really, really needed some decent mechanical work done. Even the alignment was horrific, and was one of many things the owner hadn't "bothered" to sort. Feeling a bit disappointed I returned to trademe. I randomly decided to do a random search of a minimum 3.5L engine capacity and a manual transmission. I scroll through the various clapped Commodores when I stumble across a W8 Passat. I roll my eyes, here's another clown who has listed their W8 Passat Auto as a manual. (It's important to note: when I was younger I was fanatical about the W8 Passats. I have no idea why. I would always have a look at them for sale every few months but had only ever seen one manual one) I open the listing expecting to see people grilling the seller in the comments for listing it incorrectly. The first comment read something along the lines of "Can I please come view, I have an Automatic one, have been looking for a manual". I immediately go look at the photos. I scroll through the 3 photos of the car and see it is in-fact the super rare 6 speed manual. That's very cool I thought. I texted the seller to ask some questions and for some more photos. I got a response but never got sent any photos. I then couldn't find it on trademe so just assumed someone else had snagged it. Fast forward 3 weeks and I get a random text one morning asking if I'm still interested in the Passat. I replied and the seller sent me a walk around video of the car. He then filmed a short video of him driving it. As soon as I heard the W8 rumble I was very, very interested. I texted him heaps of questions (as W8s are not quite known for their reliability) and after a couple days made him a sight un-seen offer I thought was fair. We made a deal and I flew down to Wellington yesterday to go get it. The day started out a little less than ideal. About 2 minutes into the test drive I go to put the car in neutral from 2nd gear as we pull up to some lights and it shifted funny. I then go to release the clutch and the clutch is still sitting on the floor. Oh sh#$. We push the car to the side of the road where we see it dripping some fluids. Without a clutch we weren't going far. The owner and I decided the best thing to do would be to try drive the car to his workshop as it seemed some kind of line or hose had popped off. We push the car down the street in neutral and then jam it in second and set off to Lower Hutt. We get the car on a hoist and indeed a hose connected to the clutch master cylinder had disconnected thanks to a clip that had somehow wiggled its way back. The seller got everything connected up and then we bled the clutch so we could do test drive attempt 2. Car did well on the test drive, and although my confidence wasn't particularly high, I knew I probably wouldn't find another car like it for the price, so I bought it anyway. I then began the journey home trying to make as few shifts as possible incase a similar thing happened again. I cruised mostly in 5th as I could go through towns and on the open road in the same gear. Everything was going smoothly until I realised I hadn't been listening to the GPS and was in Whanganui. I started driving State Highway 4 out of Whanganui which I found to be an amazing road that was nice and twisty! It's just not that enjoyable when you have no phone service and you are petrified you are going to have no clutch because of all the gear changes you are making to go around the hairpins! The car however continued to do really well and eventually I made it home. Was really impressed by how comfy and quiet it was at higher speeds, despite the car having some decent exhaust work done to it. The steering has a good weight to it and the car handles nicely. Not sure how many people will be interested in it but thought I would do a little write up and post a few photos. Its a car many people forget but I think its quite cool. Factory recaros, factory BBS wheels, unique engine and a 6 speed manual! From what I can find out online, I think my car may be 1 of 4 W8 Manuals left in NZ. It needs a really decent detail which I will hopefully start in the next few days. Only posting a few photos as the car is looking a bit grubby at the moment.

Any updates on the new radio Sam? How happy are you with it?

Yes you can. Buy a cheap BMW, any condition will do AND Buy another newer BMW as the reliable car I think most of ownership experience here is expensive AND reliable enough.

Bump - price updated to members here, $7500, wanting it gone, have new car arriving this week. Cheers

@Kees That's an amazing transformation even so for the km's, mines half that but has had a hard life with some previous owners. I do think they're a great wheel for the E34 and would be perfect for my touring (going for M5 look), but my pick will always be the style 5 RC035. It was a decent order, mostly out of stock so hence the long wait. But most of the delay was with the upholstery as I got the headliner and boot carpet re-covered.

@Kees Wow your car looks so clean! Love the colour and the wheels 😍, I keep missing out on throwing stars. (Good to see you have the covers the correct way haha) That will be good, mine has been off the road since mid last year and hopefully will get a wof soon. Parts orders have been a huge delay for sure, one order of mine didn't even ship for 2 months.

Haha I bet! That would be great! That's my 540i, has been off the road for a couple months waiting for a windscreen moulding to arrive from Germany. New glass hopefully goes in today which I'm very excited about.

Oh wow! Custom grunter people mover

@Kees Very cool indeed and I'm lucky to have them, don't worry lots of people say they're jealous and want to buy it including me before I brought it off my mate 😂. If you need any E34 parts for yours let me know as I have a lot stashed!

Pretty excited about this. Hard to say whether I'd rather one of these or a G21 B3 Touring.

use the correct parts for the swap

Ha sh*t, in my experience that means you are doomed. Some of the worst cars i've bought were from mechanics. Good luck, you may need it!

This is the key for the 30d/35d engines. They aren't amazingly frugal if you compare to something like the 1.4TSI in the VW Golf, but you can cane them in big cars and still see single figure L/100k figures, if you did that to a V8 you might be looking at double the consumption

My mate spotted my old coupe up in the North Island. I rather wish he hadn't... What the actual f**k are those wheels!?

There’s nothing more expensive than a cheap bimmer

Had a great little E30 meet in Drury yesterday - some wicked cars on display, especially the V8 Beast @WYZEUP Watching Magnus Walker rip on his vintage Porsches on Youtube motivated me to take her out for a spanking this morning and test out the new shocks and springs. Great fun blasting around the rural roads around Coatsville / Waimauku and Helensville - this old M20 just keeps pulling hard to the redline and loves it - has really been singing since @BMTHUG adjusted the valve clearances. New suspension is good too - firm enough for fun but not too crashy - its never going to ride as well as my E46, but no issues at all. Couldn't resist a little photo shoot of course.