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SOLD $7500 NZ new 330i sedan. All origional 132000km Excellent mechanical cond.

I remember reading about this car and people telling me about it as well. This is what I know. Was a genuine Alpina built from a 850csi - so it was a super rare Alpina B12 5.7- putting out 410 bhp; 30 more horses than a standard 850csi. Written off in a crash in the uk. A guy called Rice buys it and swaps what he can into a 850csi. Rice who owns a number of E31’s sells them all to Kiwi Alan Ferguson ( about 14 years ago). Alan sells off collection - and this car is sold to an Aussie. That gentleman is paralyzed in a racing accident around the same time in an E39 M5 - so the Alpina never actually leaves NZ shores. Car sold to a group associated with Alec Cartio who is LA based, and is one of the world’s flag- bearers of E31’s mainly 850csi’s. Car sold on BAT.

I decided to go the whole hog and change out the master cylinder to better suit the new setup. The new item is from a M3 with MK60 ABS pump which has a 25.4mm front and 22.2mm rear bore. Side benefit of the later model master is the ports for pressure sensors, will integrate them into my custom electronics for monitoring at some point. The swap out will change the (calculated) front bias from 63.4% to 60.5% and should firm up the pedal feel. It's all completed now and the brakes certainly have a very solid feel so pretty happy with the result for sure and was well worth the effort, seat of the pants test suggests braking performance is improved but could be related to how solid it feels. Now for the story in pictures ... first up was the booster and master sourced from Ebay / https://mpartsworldwide.com/ at a pretty reasonable cost even with the shipping. Removal of the 318 item and a side by side comparison reveals that the M3 uses two M12x1.0 ports and the 318 item is one M12 and one M10. I sourced an adapter from Ebay (and unfortunately their international shipping program ugghhh) which is USA made and adapts M12 to M10 bubble flare directly on the master. The other issue is the reservoir from the M3 was filthy and I could not remove the filter successfully to clean it. Ordered a replacement reservoir along with fresh grommets. My alternate plan was to use the reservoir from the 318 but it turns out the retaining screw on the M3 item inserts from the other side making this not possible without machining, who would have thought !! While having both units out I also compared all of the critical dimensions, and successfully confirmed they were a like for like fitment 👍 Disassembly of the M3 master for a full clean, based on what i saw in the reservoir. Can not source replacement seals unfortunately so re-assembled. That's really about it, reassembled everything and bled the system ... happy days !!

I also just bought on of these - (but the top spec/model), This eDrive20 was insane value (assuming you got that deal). I am super impressed with mine. Yeah the range isn't class leading, but once you get your head around an electric car, it's somewhat irrelevant. (Especially if you have a home fast charger). I don't mind Tesla, and I like Elon, but a BMW blows a Model Y out of the water

Pretty sure I've seen this done before......

Fresh shocks in front (rears a couple weeks ago - had to borrow some spring compressors for the fronts). Bilstein B4's. Pretty painless process. Hardest bit was getting the boot carpet back in!

Piecing together my M42/44 hybrid. Ended up ponying up for some valve springs so I can rev the nuts off it. Schrick cams are backordered and the exchange rate sucks so that will be phase two. The flywheel weighs nothing and everything's been balanced so it should be pretty zingy.