E30 325i Rag-Top

Marty Irvine (well known BMW racer) runs Takapuna Panel beaters over in Wairau valley did the painting for me. He also had the full front Tech 1 bumper assembly tucked away that I grabbed off him. The sound deadening is the BMW part, the 3 pieces come as a kit. Still available to order. I have great expectations of the bumpers, have turned it into a major project! Will be too scared to drive it once they are on.

Got my bonnet back from being painted and swapped it back onto the ‘vert, and put all the bits back on it including new insulation panels. M-Tech 1 front bumper is about 90% complete, just waiting on a couple more fixings to come from Germany. And I got some shiny new badges for the boot, rather than try to replace the double sided sticky on the old ones (both in stock in NZ as well 🤣)

2 Series Active Tourer, often scorned by BMW enthusiasts as it’s not a very “sporty” model. However, very popular with the older customers. Avaialble as petrol, diesel or hybrid used or hybrid new. Comfortable, good interior space without being a massive car, good height to get in and out of. FWIW my 80+ year old folks have a 218d and mum is 5 foot nothing.

It’s also on BookFace where he states it’s getting a cert, and price of cert plus on roads will be on top of the. $25k

As well as physically changing the lights (aka the easy bit) there will be a host of programming and / or electrical changes also required (aka the hard bit). More details on the lights before and after the changes would help a lot.

Not sure how I’ve missed this for so long, Dolphin Tech 1 325i is perfection right there!’

“Rip off” is a bit of a strong and emotional term, especially when you are not comparing all the facts (one example out of how many millions of part numbers?) nor comparing apples with apples. It all comes down to economies of scale, and how costs are spread across the supply chain. FCP Euro would probably have a bigger parts turnover than BMW NZ, let alone BMW North America who would be the equivalent point. As mentioned above NZ parts can be reasonable for fast moving volume medium cost items. If it’s a larger, low volume item that has to be ordered in especially then unfortunately the costs won’t be comparable with the US who is still probably buying exponentially more per year. This then gets into a “chicken and egg” situation as more people buy on line from the bigger vendors. The issue then is supporting the local businesses in terms of time scales, yes most things can be sent over-night, but this then gets tricky for larger parts like bumpers for crashed cars, wheels, Lithium batteries (dangerous goods), etc. If the significantly increased freight costs (post Covid) are then passed on insurance companies will soon up the premiums to recover and more cars will get written off. Would that it was possible for FCP to be a supplier. However, you might want to ask Toyota Aussie and Toyota NZ how they ended up with fake parts in their supply chain and the $$$s it cost to sort that mess. Is there room for improvement..? Always. Will systems evolve over time..? Most definitely. Will people still claim “dealers charge 100% mark up” .? We shall wait and see. *Purely my personal opinions as an innocent bystander, any resemblance to persons dead or alive are purely coincidental.

@Petemw812 has your car had the airbag recall done? It affects most E46s. Give your local franchised BMW dealer a ring they will check your VIN. You MIGHT be able to get it all sorted at same time?

Yes, kind of, through BMW NZ. With a load of other fixings and fastenings to put the rear MTech 1 bumper on. Got the front bumper and associated parts back today, just going through to work out what is missing or needs replacing on there as well. Surprisingly these little labels are different on the front and rear (very UN-German) and one is NLA so I got two of the other. Whilst not 100% ideal this is closer than not having the labels. There are people around on the net that do reproductions of the most obscure stuff, and you could probably get them cheaper through there, but I am lucky enough to get a good discount.

Your figure is a mile out if you are suggesting that is the dealer margin on parts. They may “want to” but the reality of what is charged is a mere fraction of that. The costs of maintaining a spare parts supply where fixings for a 40+ year old Tech 1 kit are not only available, but in stock (in NZ no less) should not be underestimated either.

The Coombes DP does have a very mint red M325i but it’s not that one.

Yup, and the other potentially huge money pit is the customer coming back and blaming the workmanship when it’s the cheap part that’s failed (as M3AN mentioned above). From my experience customers that want to use cheap parts (as opposed to genuine parts sourced elsewhere) are also quick to throw blame around to get things fixed for free.

It’s the small details that make the difference..

I’ve got two sets of “super lows” but thinking I probably need to come up a bit to make the car more useable, hence looking for “lows” instead. What’s out there?

Can understand why they put that on TradeMe listings the place is full of timewasters. As long as they have other ways of contact and use it. Can’t avoid using TradeMe if you want to sell a car due to their monopoly.