E30 325i Rag-Top

Testing, testing.. Failed dismally, will see if I can find out what the issue is.

A bit more aggressive and edgy than the X1, but unfortunately not close enough to the original X2 Concept that was shown previously for my liking.

When you said open slather I thought you were talking about the lights fitted to cars on the roads in NZ Hotwire.. I see all sorts of crap when I am driving around town, blacked out lights, blue headlights, red heahlights, bongo vans lit up like Christmas trees, etc. Just buy any old cheap sh*t of TradeMe and slap it on your car, don't worry about the rules. Probably all still get a WoF though.. Back the original post, I can't see anything immediately obvious to make the lights illegal, the blacked out backing is legal from the factory I think so you should be Ok, used to need to be made to meet certain standards. Your average WoF inspector would probably not notice as long as they are correctly aligned and have the right beam pattern.

Managed the "grand slam" over the week-end, got to drive all of my Bimmers, a very rare feat as they are hardly ever all running / legal at the same time. F30 company car - poodling about town, etc. Took the wife's E46 wagon to tow the E30 race car to Hampton Downs and back, then pulled the E30 'vert out of the garage to blow the cobwebs out as it was such a nice day on Sunday. Overall quite happy, a few little niggles to look at, but nothing too major.

Totally agree, the early stuff is so much better, Love Song is a great track, plus The American and my favourite New Gold Dream. i don't think they would have been so popular if they stuck with their original name - Johny & The Self-abusers!!

Yup, 490 is the code for the fully individual paint colours, where you have to specify exactly what colour you want so it doesn't have a standard paint code. It was a BMW NZ fleet car at the start of it's life, which is strange as it is well outside the usual company colour scheme! Very nice looking E46, but not $17k nice.

Sounds like i've been sleeping on the job and missed something...

There is one, but it doesn't appear to be automatic, so has to be enforced by Admin, which is a bit of a pain in the arse. If you have details of a particular scammer please pm them through.

Festivals used to be good for seeing lots of diverse bands, but usually you never got the same sort of experience as most of the crowd were not "big" fans of the bands but there to listen and chill. Biggest exception to that had to be Reading in '88 (or was it '89) when Half Man Half Biscuit reformed after about six years and were scheduled to play the Melody Maker Tent (a big marquee for those who don't know..) late afternoon / early evening. There were hundreds of people waiting to get in before the previous band had finshed, as soon as they were off, everyone poured in and it was rammed. As it was a good weather year for Reading it was absolutely steaming (literally) inside a tent with no air conditioning before the set even started! The band were brilliant and ripped through a high energy set list almost without a pause, to a bouncing, heaving, total mosh-pit of a crowd. A totally surreal moment when a guy emerged through the crowd to offer up a 6ft tall pot-plant to Nigel during the middle of "I hate Nerys Hughes". Only downside was nealy losing my boy parts on the poles holding up the roof of the tent during a particulally strong and sustained surge in the crowd. A level of energy, and noise, and euphoria harldy ever matched for the rest of my life.

Fixed that for you.. Mainstream / pop music these days is just noise to me, back in the day even the popular stuff had meaning, a point and was well crafted and played music. Stock, Aitken and Waterman ruined all that in the late 80s unfortunately when any talentless dick with the "right look" could become a "star". I never got into the Cure, only came across them late on when they started going all happy and mainstream, their earlier stuff is worth a listen though. The Damned though, now there was a band.. I was very fortunate to see the full original line-up reform for a gig and go through the back catalogue. Shame the crowd was mostly uni art students. i would almost argue that "New Rose" was the first punk tune - before The Pistols. Talking of crowds, one of the best ever atmoshperes at a gig was The Pogues in Frindsbury Town hall, but it might have been because it was St Paddys Day, Shane McGowan was so drunk he could hardly sing, luckily the crowd knew every single word to every song!!

Yeah, they were unimpressed to put it mildly. To start with they were thinking there had been an accident due to the traffic building up (even in the middle of the night) then they were confused as to why all the lanes were coned off and sending all cars off at the junction, after checking over their radios they then kind of twigged and started looking for who had done it. I know how frustrating cones can be for drivers stuck in traffic, but having spend a little bit of time working on the other side of the cones can see why there are so many of them and having looked at what is required for an NZ traffic control plan I totally understand why they put them all out and don't move them as the work progresses. You know those bloody great big trucks with the big flashing arrows and all the flouro signs, and stuff that they use to protect the guy putting the cones out - I saw a lady driver come within inches off driving straight into one of those at a closing speed of probably 50+Km/h, she only missed it by a last ditch swerve into another lane almost taking out two other cars. Amazing...

Bring it to Aucks with you, park it up and sleep inside!! Will be worth 10 times as much and go up in value.

Was it the dealer you bought it from that did (or organised) the service? Ask them what they used, and if you're not 100% satisfied, then yes, put some decent oil in it. It won't be cheap but worth it for peace of mind and better long term reliability.

Don't know too much about the old NZ indie stuff, due to my UK based heritage. Listened to and watched lots of alt / indie stuff during my youth from post-punk and new wave onwards. From The Jam through Joy Division into New Order and Happy Mondays via James, Inspiral Carpets, Stone Roses and The Wedding Present. Plus a thousand other bands through uni (changing every day or so who was "in" and who was "out"). Now I listen to all sorts of "old" stuff and hardly any recent music. Can't miss Half Man Half Biscuit off the list, still crazy after all these years - literally!

Try the UK if you think cones are bad in NZ. When I was at uni a mate and I coned off the M40 by moving them late one night, funny until cops turned up and we had to scarper.

Yeah, I was going to suggest maybe it was the direct injection, much noisier - almost diesel like in sound. Not sure about wastegate rattle, M135i would be F20 not E82 and I think that's a different turbo configuration? service interval is "condition" based, not purely Kms travelled, so lots of short cold trips and it drops much quicker. Long trips of hot running could work the other way, if it was shorter trips before you bought it.

I got mine off TradeMe, got the mid-price stuff, seems Ok. Lots of sizes and shapes available from what I recall.

Alfa have priced the QV well below the M3 for NZ. Deliberately.

Not content with spending lots of money on die-cast models of cars I dream of owning, I am now getting hooked into paying far too much for the tools and bits and pieces to complete a plastic model kit of the E30 M3 that I stumbled across on t'internet. Going to go broke or be killed by a pile of models before I get near to owning the real thing at this rate!!

I look forward to hearing your opinions on this. in a few weeks I will finally get to evaluate the QV, if it doesn't break first...

Agreed, the level of detail in the die cast models has come a very long way since I was a kid playing with corgi models. There are still the smaller scale and cheaper Hot Wheels type models, but the larger scale collectors types are really finely detailed now - but not cheap. If I could stop buying die cast model E30 M3s then I might have a chance of saving up and buying the real thing!! The latest Scalextric cars are also much much better in terms of the details on the model, but the downside of that is that they are very easily broken when racing - so most of mine have never been out of the box and on the track to race just in case!!

I would say that is a great price for that car looking at the kit it has on it / in it and the pedigree it clearly has. I just wish I could love the E36 the same way I love the E30, so much more bang for buck...

The whole "genuine" M-Sport thing does get over-played (see the multiple threads on here for example) and as you say for a 20 year old E36 it is a moot point, particularly on a car that is no longer original. Unless it is a car where being a genuine M-Sport can affect the value of the car - a collectable early car like an E30 M-sport, E28, etc. in which case i think it is important and often sellers are trying to "over sell" their car because it has an M badge and some wheels. Typed a whole load of other stuff, but was going off on a tangent, so deleted it, meh.

The fit out of a genuine M-Sport does not vary that much - the only thing that can be changed is the suspension, M sport can be swapped out for std shocks and springs. However, some M-sport options such as the suspension can be added to non-M-Sport cars, such as this one, which is why it has 704 in the build sheet. A genuine factory M-Sport will have option code 337 M-Sport Pack, or on older cars 336. This is a "package" of options all bundled into one number, like 704, 710 Steering wheel, body kit, anthracite headliner, 481 Sports seats, plus the trims and badges. This car has obviously had some parts swapped into it during it's life as those look like M3 Vaders which were not an option from factory on non-M3s, plus the rims which could be genuine. Overall it looks good, the swaps are in-keeping with the car and it is tidy overall.

Shame, it is such a great looking car, and such a historic car make that it would be great for it to be a great success. The odd issue here and there and it could be overlooked, but such widespread issues will be very, very, hard for the car to shrug offy/even if they are sorted very quickly.