E30 325i Rag-Top

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.

On ‎11‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 7:58 AM, gjm said:

What is the fit like?

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.

On 5 November 2018 at 10:42 PM, 1M2GO said:

 the market does show nz new cars are worth more ..period !!

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.

4 minutes ago, M3AN said:

Not special vehicles, for example a standard e46 M3 with the same spec that was available new in NZ... 

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.

22 hours ago, Allanw said:

Possibly not relevant, but some VW models that were already EU4 for most of the world, were still produced in EU2 variants for S.A. and some other markets, like eastern europe and UAE etc. Potentially could apply to BMW models too, so it does pay to be very careful!

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?

5 hours ago, 1M2GO said:

when it comes to salted import uk roads it does matter, and say singapore imports with all that electrical killing humidity it matters, nz new cars will always be worth more in nz than imports

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...!

2 hours ago, Olaf said:

wow, that's a score!  one of just 332, according to https://www.alpina-archive.com/?page_id=201 

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.

Whoops, I accidentally bought another BMW!!

Luckily it was only a die cast model, so not too expensive.

It was supposed to be the new E30 M3 Warsteiner race car from the Lifestyle catalogue, but I got the last digit of the part number wrong so the M1 turned up instead. I thought it was pretty cool, especially with the car details, and it it being Piquet's car so decided to keep it.

M3 is on back order so waiting for that one to arrive.

If I could stop buying stuff like this then I might be able to afford to buy a REAL E30 M3... maybe not.

+1 waiting to be complied and registered.

On ‎9‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 9:44 AM, Golfboy666GTI said:

There are x2 NZ new, x3 UK imports in NZ.

 

Imports have gone up though. 7 x M5 Station Wagon from UK, 1 x M5 Station Wagon from Japan.

However, two of those are listed with 4,400cc engine with 2012 and 2014 build dates so looks like some clown can't tell the difference between a sedan and a station wagon. So realisically it is now 6 x M5 Wagon.

Still not that far from being rocking horse poo though.

These are the numbers I managed to find, unfortunately the live Sales information only goes back as far as 2004 and the registration data only as far back as 2002, so I can't find anything for 2001 M3s.

2 hours ago, gjm said:

And it smells. If you get it on your clothes, it doesn't come out.

Aka 'that nice LandRover-y smell.'    

I am a bit of an odd-ball here in that I love the smell of diff oil, for some strange reason. Maybe my sense of smell is completely buggered from working with diesel, heavy oils and chemicals for most of my adult life?

13 hours ago, Karter16 said:

Still interested to see actual sales numbers for NZ, but suspect that the below is about as close as I'll get.

A lot depends on how you want to measure "sales" in the murky world of new car sales there are a number of different ways of recording the sale of a vehicle. The most often, and probably most accurate, measure is the number of new car first registrations - as any given car can only be registered as new once.

I will see what I can dig out on the registrations of the E46 M3 - are you only interested in the coupe or Cabrio as well?

Used car information is much harder to interpret, as a lot of the information is an open text field, so they will enter whatever you write on the form into the MVR, so people import things like "318i M3" or my favourite the "320i AC Shitzer" finding the real M3s is always a bit of detective work there.

Got some of that expanding Gorilla foam to fill the void between the top and bottom pieces of my new race car splitter - to give it extra strength and rigidity without adding too much weight.

Well - F#$k me that stuff goes everywhere!! Over estimated how much I needed to put in by about 300% so nearly all of it came out when I squeezed the two halves together. Then proceeded to do some kind of old school comedy act of getting stuck to everything as I tried to tape the two halves together. I should have filmed it for YouTube to show how not to do it.

But now it has cured and hardened off I am pleased with the end result. Still nice and light, and much much stiffer. Just got to work out where to put the slots (to allow for adjustment) and then I can put the CF wrap over the top to make it look like a bought one!!

I have got a spare set of 325i down pipes and centre section, the proper twin pipe 325i ones if you are still looking, no rear muffler though.

Damn those are nice wheels, what are they worth for a set? And do they come with gold centres as an option....