E30 325i Rag-Top

Considering the, arguably, best E30 318iS has been recently valued and insured for not a considerable amount more than this is listed for I think it will struggle to sell as a replica.

Model designation changed when the new engine series was introduced, to reflect the higher power and torque of the new engines over the old. This was prior to the LCI, so there are a few pre-LCI 340i around, but not many.

From the listing it does look like there has been quite a bit more work to change the other bits over to the iS spec, but yeah, asking genuine money for a non- genuine car...

Not difficult - 52 year old car, from a time before rust prevention from factory was a thing. Also looks like it’s had a pretty poor attempt at a restoration / re-spray in the past from the way the paint is falling off the filler / primer. If the rust wasn’t properly treated at that point it would have made it worse by just blowing paint over the top.

Previous post was hidden as it didn’t meet the forum rules. This one does, hence not deleted.

Nice car… but, yeah, that’s optimistic.

Those are not the right gasket for an ‘87 E30, for the pre-facelift it’s a large cut foam gasket shaped to fit around the mounting bolts. Different lights on FL so I think those are the seal for the later lights.

Very nice! Great that you found what you wanted, and great that another E30 is going to be given some love. Imho Lachs is one of the very best E30 colours but then I’m biased! The seats look well worn, but pretty solid, so can be sorted - not sure if that cloth can still be found, I know some of the classic BMW stuff is still around. Is your Tech I steering wheel original, I thought all the FL M-Sports had the Tech II wheel? If you do change it out you should get a good amount of $$$ back selling the Tech I. Looking forward to your updates, and seeing in the flesh at a future meet.

Wow, gotta be quick around here!

My advice would be to change your user name from your email address, unless you want to get swamped with spam in your inbox.

Land Rover people are a different breed. End of.

E46 330i Coupe M-Sport FL still a wonderful looking car even today, with decent performance to boot. I would have ticked the E30 box but I think I’ve got enough of those to work on already!!

Nice... So when's that lovely E46 going up for sale then..?

Even worse, It’s actually a 35 year old car. Plus the gap in value will get wider over time, the joys of automotive depreciation. Not sure, I think the pricing is pretty much spot on for the market right now. The owner probably wouldn’t have dropped the $13k into the car if the sale price at the end wasn’t going to be worth it. It’s not like they’ve put the $13k into a 318i Auto 4 Door and now want $25k for it. That’s one side of the classic equation, supply being the other. Where it’s a mint E30 M325i or a Ponsonby villa, there are not enough to go around so prices rocket.

It’s a single injection event, however, there are multiple phases within that event, it’s not all one big squirt and done like it used to be. As I understand it The piezo injectors can control the amount of needle lift to vary the flow rate of the fuel entering the cylinder. As it says in the document, starts slow and ends quick, and has a few ups and downs in the middle. Noise is reduced by having the less violent start, plus the emissions (especially the NOx and particulates) are controlled by reducing the temperature of the flame front as it spreads through the cylinder.

And divide those stars by four when towing! A diesel version would be much better from that point of view.

I wondered what that was, hadn’t seen it before, thought it might be an anti-theft tag. Pretty hi-tech for NZTA! Always great to see a HellBM project update, was an awesome car before, now even more awesome-r!

Indeed, I’m not too sure how complex the injection timing is on an E53 diesel, but I do know the latest BMW diesels have seven stages to each injection, controlled electronically… Back in the day when I worked with diesel FIE we were working to control two stage injection, and the norm was one single injection phase. Lots to play with and adjust if you want, but the complexity means you can easily get it wrong. 4M40t… shudder..

Looks to be a great example, if I had the cash I would certainly be giving it to you. GLWS, and I hope your health stuff is sorted soon.

You’ve got it right in the first sentence, not sure about the rest of it. The over-riding factor in any factory engine tune is emissions, it’s easy to refine a tune to give more power and better economy (especially in a diesel) but one or other of the controlled emissions (NOx, CO2, HC, particulates, etc) will then go off the chart. So if you are an after market chip tuner that doesn’t have to submit to emissions test regimes then it’s easy to do, and this is the bit that really annoys me. Spend millions on development and testing to make it cleaner, and then someone can come along and re-tune and all that goes out the window, or exhaust in this case. Ask any tuner or chip supplier which EU emissions their new tune meets and you get silence.. A close second consideration is then warranty / product life, most factory engines are de-tuned to not push the limits of component life… in theory, not always in real life.

Strong price for a, potentially, nice 'vert @$35k https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/325i/listing/3355051968?bof=1GaIFTJM Hard to tell when there are pretty much no photos and the description is average at best. As you can imagine I am watching carefully to see how this goes...

Gomez, great song and very under-rated band imho. Now playing the Bring It On album (very loud - sorry neighbours) as I’ve got this song in my head.

It’s Ok, the survey was done in the UK so the results wouldn’t translate directly to NZ drivers. There are plenty of Psychopathic drivers around East Auckland, and (apart from me) the vast majority of them are definitely NOT in BMWs.

A strip of coroflute riveted on to that lip would be my go-to, I guess it depends how huckery you want it to look, or not.

I guess it all comes down to how hard you are going to drive the car as a week-ender. The lack of an LSD is mostly down to the electronic traction control being there to cover 99% of situations. If you are a regular at track days or the drags then you might be in that area where you would benefit from fitting the LSD.