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The MAP sensor adapter printed in CF-reinforced Nylon arrived today. Minimum order value applied so I'm now the proud owner of 12 of these. I'll try to install in the next couple of days. HDT is significantly higher than the CF-PETG I used previously.

Thanks mate! For sure, would be happy to help with the E30.

Excellent stuff, be interested to hear what it sounds like once you’re finished. Might need to get you to give me a hand with the audio/headunit situation on my e30, previous ownr made a right mess of the wiring, and I don’t know the first thing about car audio

HES A HOSS. GOBBLESS.

Probably about time for a part two on the audio upgrades. The E91 isn't the largest chassis around, so options for mounting amps are few and far between, however I discovered enough room in the boot under the second hatch. Looks to be just enough space for two amps with easy wire access up to go up and over the strut towers going forward as well as a channel to run power from the battery. The only little annoyance is one of the comfort access antenna is mounted in here so will have to come up with a solution to remount that. Main power for the amps is 4 AWG and comes off one of the power studs in the battery compartment and goes through a 100amp fuse to the power stud I mounted in this new space. The 4 channel amp uses 6 AWG and the sub amp uses 4 AWG. Behind the black plastic support brace is an M8 stud built into the car, perfect for grounding, paint removed and all! There are two things still to do here, the continuous power for the headunit comes from this power stud and runs all the way up the car, I want to change this so it is running from the fuse box but I have yet to figure out the terminals etc to do so. I also need to fuse each amp individually. I made some RCA cables out of some Proel instrument cable and some metal rcas I found on Ali, much nicer being able to make these custom length instead of being stuck to generic lengths. The 4 channel amp shares a set of RCAs and the sub amp gets its own RCAs. Back to doing things properly and not butchering stock wiring, the speaker wires were definitely more involved than I would normally have opted for. For the front door speakers I used 18 AWG and made my own twisted pair with a vice and a drill. They go from the amp to the door connector where they use two empty pin slots, they then carry on up to the speaker. This means I can completely revert back to the stock setup in future, not that I would ever want to but nice to have the flexibility. As for the underseats I used some 12 AWG wire, this is well and truly overkill but its a match of the stock wire. Time for some speaker upgrades. I found a set of HK doors, tweeters and underseats on facebook from a 7 series for $200. While these are pretty old in 2025 they will still be much better than stock and it allows me to add tweeters. The underseat install is straightforward, seatbolts out, lean seat back, remove grill, remove speaker and reverse to put everything back in. Something which was a total surprise to me is that the stock underseat is actually a 6.5" not an 8". This alone would make a decent difference. The doors has slightly more going on, unfortunately the bolt pattern didn't line up, not sure why. I printed some adapter brackets to sort this out. The tweeters had a bit more going on again. I popped the tweeters out of their original housings and printed a housing instead. It was then just a matter of cutting a hole in the sail panel, gluing the housing in place with the tweeter and cutting the foam sound insulation behind it to fit. These plug straight into the back of the door speakers with an inline cap for passive filtering, as some point I would like to build some passive crossovers for the front doors to do a better job of crossing the door and tweet. I'll also print some grills to go over these as I don't want any fingers ending up in there. Now all that needs to happen is some tuning!

Absolutely not! haha Its got some weird parts i need and I'm confident i could park the rest out and get my 4k back.

🚩 for a 60k listing (to save the $50 listing fee apparently)

Assuming you going to cert it then doing adjustable toe\camber brackets could be a good idea while everything is out,. Bit of a hassle but could well pay off if the arms arent perfect and you are lowering it.

Great format and content, reminds me of garage 4AGE, need more of this.

Least desirable E30 to me. I guess there are some fans out there though. Way more cabs produced than baur convertibles. So they have the rarity thing going for them.

The towbar saga. One feature that the car came with was a folding electric towbar which seems a bit excessive and sure has some 'wank factor'. However, being able to fold the towbar away at the click of a button is quite handy. It tucks away completely and has no impact on the look of the car when not in use. The only gripe I have with the towbar is the complete lack of a feature we use quite commonly in NZ, a 1-5/8" towball. Quite infuriating because you only ever find that out as you go to hook up a trailer. I should've thought about it really, being a euro of course its going to have a 50mm towball. Eitherway it needs to be fixed. I had two options to start with, either take a grinder to it, using a whole bunch of templates, measuring and loads of patience. Or, pay someone to machine it down for me. The first option really is a sh*t idea, however this appealed to the side of me that really doesn't like paying for the services of other people when I know I could have a go at it myself. The cost of machining is around ~$500, which isn't too bad in the scheme of things, still hurts though. The other issue with these two options is that I would still be stuck with only one of the two towball options (although 50mm is uncommon it still pops up just enough to be annoyed you don't have both options). I removed the towbar from the car and had a good clean behind the bumper while I was there, this car used to live up a gravel driveway so everything has a dusty coating. I removed the electric actuator and unbolted the ball and arm from the bar. I knew this was going to be a longer process so I put the bumper back on and left it for a few weeks, which I'm glad I did. I was yarning away to my mate Tony who came up with the idea of using a "convert a ball" style setup. Its essentially a 1" spigot which the balls slot onto and a pin slides across to lock it into place. This is the perfect solution as it is much easier to create a cylinder with a grinder than it is to make a sphere, and it also means I'll have both towball options. I borrowed Tony's towball setup off his Audi and I got to work modifying mine. My plan of attack was as follows: mark a centreline on the ball and slice off a plane parallel to that, with a flat surface I then create an opposing plane on the otherside of the ball. With some flat surfaces to work with I can chop it back into a square section. At this point it would be wise to drill the cross pin hole. Chopping off the corners until a 32 sided shape remains gives an approximate cylinder with hopefully a diameter of ~25.60mm. Then rounding it out would make it into a circle and taking just slightly more off would bring it down to 25.40mm in diameter. To get all this done I used a hacksaw, angle grinder with a 60grit sanding disk, some emery cloth and a file to remove material, for measurement: a digital caliper, ruler, various markers and a decent eye. After a solid few afternoons slaving away I ended up with a pretty decent result. The fit is better than the "convert a ball" spigot so pretty stoked with that. The next three afternoons involved me absolutely wasting my time while I tried to figure out why the mechanism wouldn't release when clicking the button. Turns out you have to reset the actuator by holding down the button for 5 seconds. Got there in the end. While I was at it I lubed up the swing mechanism with some fresh grease and replaced the grade 8.8 mounting bolts for peace of mind. Overall a successful project, glad to have it sorted.