E30 325i Rag-Top

Not sure if I've got any that thick, I will have a look through what I have got spare and let you know. IIRC you had to order a whole "kit" the last time I looked at buying some specific sizes, so I ended up swapping some with a dealership.

The steel outer halves of the inner guards have now turned up, just in time for my week off next week - so will be back to cutting and grinding in anger. Fingers crossed I should make some good progress with these if I get a good solid run at it!

Not sure if my measurements are 100% as the battery was flat in my vernier so I had to measure the gap with a tape measure! Also not 100% sure what all the thickness variations are for an E30 ARB. One I have is probably an 18.5mm, I also have an E30 M3 one which seemed to come out about 19 - 19.5mm and the one on the race car seems to be a 20mm.. If you pm me what any of them would be worth to you, we can discuss. i'll try and find a battery and get proper measurements.

If Ray / HellBM team put the second engine in then there's nothing to be worried about there, which I believe they did but would have to double check with them to be 100%. Probably almost a positive selling point, because things would have been done properly and any issues found whilst in there would have been sorted - plus all the other work that was done when it was converted over to the V8.

Cool base for a BMW Race Series 2 Litre car..

i've got a few in the cupboard, I will have a measure up of what sizes they are. Are you only interested in the 20mm?

As per my above post, this ISN'T Nardo Grey, yes it's similar, but not the same shade of grey as this one. Two of the cars in this series are 'Nardo Grey' but this one is Medio Grigio. 50 different shades of grey in the BMW colour pallette.

Very similar, the CS colour is "Lime Rock Grey" which is a little lighter than this one - Medio Grigio, which I think means "middle grey" in Italian? There are also a couple of these limited Indivudual Edition M3s in Nardo Grey which is also nice. I can see that it wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea, and yes it does look like they only put the primer on and forgot the top coat (do they still even use primer now..??) over it, but they do stand out a bit more than some of the more common colours. My choice would be one of the two of these that are in the E36 M3 metallic Daytona Violet.

Would certainly be an awesome car... fast and practical! Given the sales success of the Audi RS4 and RS6 as wagons you would have thought that there would be a justification to try and get some of that market share.

Another good AutoCar rumour!

For the price you can buy the panels it's not really worth it tbh. I did order a number of spares, originally to make up another full set of front, rear, F Guards, Rear Guards and side skirts so I would have a whole set to on-sell, but after the cock up with the steel rear panels I am now short a set of those so will probably just keep the rest as spares. sanding and filling FRP is bad enough, but working with the resins is total brain damage. Want to keep as far away from that stuff as possible so not even thinking of making any parts or splashes off of these parts.

Carbon Black with red leather is a great colour combo, but yeah Tom's modded E46 M3 would be a more "fun" car to own and drive. If it wasn't for the yellow exterior colour I would have been seriously interested in Tom's car. Not sure I can live with Pheonix Yellow even on a weekend car.

Spent a couple of days this week on a farm playing with some new G05 X5s, in their (un)natural environment. Not hard-core off-roading but even with 22" rims with very wide sports tyres (315 wide on the rear) they were still pretty capable. The new air-suspension making a big difference to the ride, on and off-road. Up hill... And down dale. 3Pedals would not approve, none of them were manuals, and there is no manual option for most of the range now.

The best way to describe the fit and finish for the parts is probably "variable", some parts are pretty good, some are average and some like the C-pillar extension are pretty poor. As with most things in life, I think you get what you pay for. The main thing for me is that they are fairly accuratedly detailed to the originals and they are light. No point changing to FRP panels if they are 3mm thick and weigh the same as steel panels. The edge profile of the M3 inner guard is pretty different to that of the standard E30, not just a case of cutting it off and moving it out 20mm as I was hoping. So rather than try to fabricate a modification I have ordered a pair of outer-inner guards for an M3 which should be pretty easy to fit up, and then give a more accurate position to fit the outer guard up against. So whilst I am waiting for those to arrive, I have started fiddling around with other bits and pieces, including the front lip spoiler / splitter. The supplied part was just a single upper skin that was far too flexible to be any use, so I added a bottom skin from a sheet of aluminium composite and used some expanding polyurethane foam to fill the gap between the two and bond it all together. A bit of old carbon-fibre look wrap on the top and it almost looks like a bought one!! Worked out a slotting fixing system so it can be moved in or out as required for more or less front grip similar to the M3 Sport Evolution. As it has a reasonable thickness I was able to shape the front to act like a proper splitter and should have some proper aero effect, rather than just looks. Here it is in the fully extended position.. One part finished, just fifteen to go..

If it all turns out as you hope, that could be the best $150 you ever spend on a car! Fingers crossed for you.

However, those two identical vehicles very rarely exist, and there are many, many more important things that NZ new in determining the value. The majority of "NZ New" cars I have seen have been either poorly optioned and / or badly serviced with badly stone chipped bumpers and bonnets.

Doesn't affect the import laws. The logic being that cars coming into the country should be cleaner than those already here. Even though you can buy a used NZ new EU3 E46, it has to be EU4 to bring it in as an import.

Yes, there are many variants of BMW produced with lower levels of emission controls for certain markets. These will always show the EU emissions level on the options list, for example EU5 is option 161. From memory I have seen EU2 on a couple of M3s I checked out. The controls and equipment to meet the emissions cost money to include on the cars, so nearly all makers have lower EU level versions for countries that don't demand it.

Are you referring to the import / compliance rules or the SIV rules?

Yup, people keep trotting out the same stories - all UK cars are rusty because of salt, all Singapore have electrical issues, all Japanese have been stuck in traffic all their life, etc. etc. Treat every car on it's merits, check for known issues, every car / owner / history is different. Take the car for how it actually is, not how all the sooth sayers on the Internets suggest it will be. As for NZ New being a bonus hmm, not so sure on that one.

It would do, the VIN decoder will only show how it was built by BMW, not how it ends up as an Alpina. Carjam has got a VIN and a chassis which would also be right - one for BMW & one for Alpina. interesting, very interesting...!

Only if it's a genuine Alpina, and not another Japanese badges and stickers special. The fact that it has not even got the Alpina rims on it would make me very sceptical of it being the real deal. Even if it is, putting the right wheels back on it would cost big $$$. Pretty sure Alpina wouldn't use an armoured protection vehicle as the basis of a "sports limo", easy enough to tell if it is from the weight of the vehicle. Will clean up to a pretty cool car with or without the provenance.

Got it from Pesch Motorsport in Czhek Republic. I thought from their web-site they were a big outfit, but from dealing with them I get the feeling they are a one man band. After previous experiences I was just happy that 1) it turned up and 2) it was all there and 3) it wasn't smashed to bits.

Yeahup, already started. Now remembering how much I hate working on fibreglass. Late nights are a bit restricted as apparently attacking an E30 with angle grinder doesn't help the kids get to sleep... whoda thunk it? So in typical Tyler fashion I have started on fiddling / mucking-about with every single bit at once rather than focus on one thing and get it finished. Also with a lot of beating around the bush and time wasting.. fingers crossed it will all start to come together at some point..maybe?

Resurrecting this post from the dead... as there are the shoots of progress starting to come out of the garage. Decided against putting it all back together to race this season, it was really hard watching the 1 Hour Enduro at Hampton Downs on the long track, but there will be a next time I hope. It would have needed quite a bit of tidying and paint etc. even after I had screwed everything back together from the state it was in. Good news was that after months of waiting my shipment of panels for the E30 M3 kit finally arrived from Europe. I was a bit concerned about how well it would travel, being as the panels are fibreglass, so a bit on the delicate side. Thankfully, they were very well packaged, with lots of protection which was just as well as there were signs of some rough treatment on the way as I expected. After finally getting everything unwrapped and un-packed which was a bit of a mission, mainly due to running out of space to put the parts in the garage and space in the wheelie bin to put all the packaging, I had chance to check the parts over for damage and quality. There was only one small impression on one part which should come out with a bit of heat and pressure. Parts are nice and light, which is good for a race car - will see how well the measure up and fit as I go. Couldn't resist a quick tape them up on the car to see what they look like... If only they were that easy to fix on the car properly... now into all the cutting and grinding on the rear end to get the guards and c-pillar extension to fit onto the body. This will be the most complicated part of the whole thing, plus once that's done I can start prepping the shell for painting.