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Car getting better step by step - this morning changed out my control arms and sway bar links for fresh Meyle HD, along with Revshift 80a poly CABs. Such an easy job with new lollipops and the poly bushes. Steering definitely feels sharper and tighter now, especially with the new Yokos which I’m in love with. In need of an alignment but will wait till I do the tierods in a few weeks (had planned on doing them today but realised I had not ordered the ‘locking plate’ washer thingees. Have a new rubber steering joint bushing but wonder if I should go poly here too or is it just a waste of time trying to turn a 35 year old car into a scalpel? No intention to change to a quicker rack due to cert.

Right, where are we up to... Still waiting on the engine back from the machine shop. Instead of the 3 weeks originally promised, it's now been two months and as far as I know, they still wouldn't have touched it either. Last I called them, was told they're still a couple of weeks away from getting to it, claiming covid sweeping through the shop as a justification/excuse. Not overly bothered by it though as I haven't made as much progress with any of the other missions as I'd hoped. Keep getting distracted and jumping from one thing to the next without addressing things in an orderly fashion. Luckily with tomorrow off, I'll sit down and make a proper priority list. First thing will be to finalise the list of needed parts and put a few orders in. Did tick off a couple of other items though with the help of some fellow Bimmersporters. Got a new clutch kit and flywheel, courtesy of @Eagle and a set of coils from @Kodachrome. Top guys, everything was as described and arrived quickly and securely. Also, got the first set of 193's sold and the other one wrapped in fresh new rubber. Still sitting in the garage, waiting to go onto the car at the moment. Got some Carpro DLUX (as well as some other goodies from Detail Depot) and want to try my hand at ceramic coating them before I subject them to road grime, will hopefully preserve the near-new look for a while longer. Apart from the flash stuff, the rusty old diff is cleaning up pretty nicely. Will still have a few more stabs at it with some brass brushes but looking noticeably less crusty already. Stripped the trailing arms down to the bare shell, will also get some brass brush treatment, a couple coats of black paint and then brand new bushes and bearings. Liberating the wheel hubs of all the bearing bits was a bit of a mission but got to try out the wee rotary tool I'd picked up from SCA. With help from @adro managed to figure out one of the reasons why my rear wipers don't work. The extended list of PO's botch jobs got another addition. He'd changed out the clock spring for some reason and of course replaced it with one off a sedan/coupe, the wiper lever on which you can only pull towards you to activate the front washers, but doesn't have the backwards push function that activates the rears. What it is vs. what it should be Turns out the trusty wee ti's also have a rear wiper (who'd have known) and have the same washer lever. Luckily there was one at the local Pick-A-Part so went an nabbed this crusty old thing. Gave it a good ol' clean, fitted it on, powered up aaaaand... a big fat nothing, with the added bonus of the front washers now also not working anymore 😄 Beautiful. I suspect it's still the sheared ground wire at the rear hatch. Really need to get that sorted already. But instead of doing that, I went out and bought this bloody thing... Shoot me.

You're not alone. Gain - for me, personally, grasping onto a bit of analog driving experience in an ever-increasingly automated world. Over the top cost - basic supply and demand. For whatever reason, manuals are a rather rare breed in NZ, unfortunately, hence people being able to ask silly money for something that's fairly abundant in the old world. I wouldn't be able to justify it to myself if I merely saw it as a mode of transportation. It's more of a hobby project at this point. That's why they call us enthusiasts I guess.

Finally got around to changing out the front coilover springs for some 7.5kg springs, previous ones were 12kg, far too stiff for anything other than extremely smooth surfaces. Put some helper springs in too to get correct preload. Much smoother ride now with better front and rear spring rates, still need to dial in ride heights etc but a very nice setup now, stiff but not excessively harsh. Next up guard roll, if anyone on here in auckland has a guard roller I could borrow for a box of beers or some cash that would be much appreciated, can't seem to find a decent shop to do it, auto stance said nah can't do much without even taking a glance at the car...

Last week I came across a couple of guys struggling to push one into a trailer in the middle of the street. I hoped they were stealing it so I stopped and gave them a hand but alas it was genuinely broken (quelle surprise).

Not strictly today, but took the vert to the cars & caffeine meet at Mount Smart, what an absolute cluster f**k on my part!! Was supposed to be going with the wife, but she wasn’t feeling well so bailed on Sunday morning. It was early start (for me) and roads were damp but looked like sun was coming out so I thought - yup go for it. Need to use the car more. Drive off, top down (as you must in a vert) realise five minutes up the road that I’ve forgotten to wear a hat (as you must in a vert). Now driving towards ominous rain cloud… keep positive thoughts… starts raining “only a few spots”.. more rain “it’ll stop soon”.. now really raining… bugger, stop to put hood up. Get to Greenlane Maccas for E30 pre-meet up, already a few E30s and lots of other cool cars there. Grab drive through beekkie and a coffee, start to feel human. Lots more E30s arrive, lots of new faces and a few familiar ones. Good chats, and smiles all round. Time to go to Mt Smart for main meeting, wagons roll, E30s driving off… mine won’t start. Realise I left my lights on while parked up, bugger. Find Good Samaritan with jump leads amongst group of old Skool American muscle group, and get a jump off the last remaining E30! Starts first pop with the leads, phew. Drive off realising I don’t know exactly where I’m going and no one to follow - hoping to see the lights of the stadium, but no… By watching the car behind and some last ditch lane changes manage to get there, but no chance to park with other E30s. Start to wander around looking a lots of cool cars and start to feel sub-optimal. Find a seat in cafe but still not coming right.. Decide to head off home before things get worse, but put hood down again, as sun is shining brightly. Do the crawl of shame through lots of people to get out and head home… a bit more rain.. but couldn’t be arsed to stop and put hood up. Why do I own a classic car again.. it’s fun they say… yeah right! And even better I now have the cold from the wife (nothing to do with getting wet in the rain, honest.).

Put a layer of the Turtle Wax Ceramic Black on the daily. Definitely made a big difference when I used the polishing machine on the bonnet. Early days, but I’d recommend on a black car. Would not recommend a black car as a daily 😒 Tempted to do another coat and apply a ceramic coat over it to help it last.

+1. Id say 5-6k if you doing in properly with ZF box, new shifter parts, driveshaft, cylinders and clutch\flywheel bits etc. Good portion of the converted ones are done on the cheap with Getrag box and old\sh*t parts used. Rarely see a properly converted ones for sale as id imagine people tend to keep them these days. Msport factory manuals are around ~15k if you can find one with standard spec manual being more common and cheaper at around ~10k. If that out of budget then id probably look at something else because buying these cars is the cheapest part (unless you buying one with all the work done and paying good money for it)

Depends if you're doing the work yourself or taking it to a shop. If the latter, then I suspect the labour will be the killer part in it. Parts wise, I've seen conversion kits sold locally for around $4.5k of late. That's with a ZF box. Personally, I got my kit shipped from the UK and came out to around $3.3k with the full driveshaft and a 2.93 diff (not strictly necessary). Add to that something like $750 for the certification if you want to do it properly and get it fully compliant. Plus all sorts of tools, consumables like oils and whatever bits you might want to replace preventatively (clutch, flywheel, slave cylinder etc.) whilst you're at it. Depends on how far you want to go. At a minimum I'd say you'd want to budget for $4-5k.

I'll stand by my statement having done a stint in that industry, yes it is painful because insurance continually and competently adjusts rates - but it is also a consistent income stream that you can run a shop on. @ctho GT Refinishers are also really good, close friend had a bare metal job done by them and it was stunning. But from memory they are always in demand and it took a while to get into the shop, if you are happy to wait then they are possibly worth investigating.

Long shot, but any c pillars ?

Best of luck finding a panel shop that wants anything but insurance work these days. It's been a long time since I had major work done, but Takapuna Panelbeaters have done a couple of full bare metal resprays for me and the work has always been fantastic - and they know how to properly fix things.

There are a few 318ti's that are 2000 registered. My one was a great wee runabout

As Nick said - the N4x engine happened. Up to model year 2001 you had (for example) the M43 engine. Not perhaps inspiring, but capable, competent and generally reliable. After that...

The 318i swapped to an n series motor.

What made you buy one?

Made a bit of progress this weekend. A couple of weeks ago I took the car for its WOF, which it failed for the first time in my ownership, due to the weeping high pressure power steering line. This was annoying but not unsurprising given it’s been weeping since 2017 and I’ve been intentionally avoiding it for as long as possible (given the new ones start to weep again fairly quickly anyway). Anyhow, needs must, so I placed an order with Schmiedmann for the power steering line and associated bits and new wiper blades (which also needed doing) as well as a bunch of other stuff that fit in the box without increasing shipping cost. That arrived this Friday just been: So on Saturday I took the car round to Dad’s to swap it over (Dad’s driveway is a more advantageous angle than mine, so with that as the excuse I snaffled a few hours of his time as well). I was thankful for a second pair of hands as although swapping the line is very straightforward, it was super annoying getting tools in to undo the vibration dampening brackets and put the new ones on. The offending item: It was good to actually do something on the car. Last time I really did any work on it was in 2019 before my son’s operation. It was pretty cool this time to have him helping me as well 😍 With the power steering fluid topped up and new wiper blades fitted the car is ready to pass it’s WOF recheck this coming week. The other items will remain on the shelf for now (except perhaps for the rear boot lid struts because the honking noise annoys me). The other thing I’ve been doing this week is setting up an old MacBook as my workshop PC (this involved barbaric things such as using a flash drive to install Windows 10 on it, manually installing drivers, and other such horrors that I thought belonged in the 2000’s). Anyway it’s all setup nicely now. Currently using it with my K+D CAN cable but will probably purchase an ICOM interface at some point so that I can hopefully retire my DIS VM for good! Will be making another order from Schmiedmann this week - I have a fairly lengthy list of parts to get through, so biting the list off in chunks for now. Till next time!

Replaced the low tone horn - embarrassing squeaky horn output now gone, with a big thanks to @Spinner99 who loaned his jack and expertise!

Took the mighty 116d for its warrant… …and it passed with flying colours not even an advisory! Finally, some good news with a vehicle in our household fleet, albeit the wife’s daily.. but I’ll take that for now.

Tried swapping coils and plugs from bank 1 to bank 2, but to no avail, still misfiring, eventually got code 29DC injector cutout so doesn't seem to be cylinder specific. Suspect fuel pressure issue. Looking through the MHD data logs of the misfire, the fuel low pressure sensor reading drops before the rail pressure crashes which led me to believe that the LPFP was failing. Bought a replacement (low km OEM from a fellow enthusiast) swapped it in which was a rather interesting procedure as my tank was full, so had to siphon it out first and ended up breathing in petrol for a god hour or so as some of the plugs/clips on the pump were very stubborn. Eventually got it all pieced back together but issue still persisted. Decided that maybe I need a workshop with ISTA to have a look at doing a test on the HPFP, in the meantime I replaced some vacuum lines, didn't do the wastgate ones as they are almost impossible to reach, seems like you would need to remove the heat shield but the back most bolt is blocked by the steering column... On my way to Michael at Euromotive workshop to try and help diagnose the misfire/injector cutout issue, it became quite evident what the issue is. I had MHD data log going while driving to keep an eye on things and try avoid any damage to the engine, going up the harbour bridge (very gently so it doesn't misfire) rail pressure dropped lower and lower eventually sub 100psi and the car went into limp mode, and just ran the rail pressure off the LPFP, so about 80psi. This time low pressure sensor readings remained unaffected so it was evident the HPFP was at fault. Got to the shop, scanned codes and it confirmed HPFP as the issue. Managed to find one out of a n55 5 series (newer version of HPFP) at a wrecker for fairly cheap compared to new prices so installed that and car drives well now, rail pressure responds much faster to throttle input than it ever has. Still need to roll my guards and put the proper wheels on... but at least the car runs properly again, quick drive down one of my favourite roads in the area.

I wonder where they are getting their inspiration... F'ing terrible.