duvey

Excellent project Dave - watching with a keen interest. 

PMd @Ace Of Spades

After an E30 facelift tow bar, preferably genuine. 

Thanks!

1990 E32 735i

173298 miles

Bought as a runaround while I was working on my E30, but taking up room in the driveway at the moment that we need back.
A lot of guys here have seen or driven this car so can vouch for how well it goes. Needs a bit of TLC, or would also be a great donor car.

On the North Shore of Auckland.

Looking for $1500 but feel free to make an offer.

Any questions just shout.

Pros

• Has a cool rego no.
• Very solid M30B35 & ZF 4HP22
• Very straight solid body and good paint for its age. Originally a UK import.
• Nice black leather interior, no tears etc.
• Factory blacked out chrome trim option. 
• Runs & drives beautifully, looks like someone has given it a decent suspension overhaul recently, handles great.
• Recently changed oil  and filter and set valve lash.
• Towbar.

Cons

• No WOF, rego on hold.
• A/C & HVAC doesn’t really work.
• Bit of rust in the bottom of the drivers door, which is very common for these, but the rest of the body is totally solid.
• Couple of electrical gremlins - seems like there is a parasitic draw on the battery from somewhere.
• No stereo.

Image gallery here: https://imgur.com/a/5UcQu

Probaby with pulling the x-brace and selling it separately

Lots and lots of bits of progress over the last few months.

Another iteration of the exhaust! Added a magnaflow cat and another centre muffler. Took the unpleasant rasp out of it and dropped the drone right down. Still makes enough noise but nothing weird anymore. Very pleased. 

Then I moved house, E30 did the workhorse duties 

Got some very large exciting packages.

• New whiteline front and rear swaybars, new endlinks etc.
• A bunch of garagistic chassis reinforcement and chassis bracing stuff
• H&R Sport springs - to replace the spare parts bin lowering springs that were in there before

So far have installed all the chassis bracing stuff, and the new H&R springs. Big difference, mostly attributable to the springs and the transmission brace, I think. More compliant but everything feels a lot tighter.

Next up is to have the rear trailing arm sway bar tab reinforcement pieces welded in, then install the new whiteline sway bars. 

I have a ZF manual 328i e36 driveshaft and a getrag 260 with the corresponding larger output flange if you're interested - should make for a plug and play gearbox & driveshaft combo

More fiddling with exhaust stuff, still not quite right. Magnaflow rear muffler. Reduced the weird resonance a lot, but still a little too loud. Next step I think will be to merge into a single 3" central mid-muffler through a cat.

Awesome work! All looks very tidy.

Nice work!

Looking good Lucan! Watching with interest

Had some minor clunkyness coming from the front end.

New Lemforder control arms and tie rod ends installed this weekend. Seems to have solved the problem, feels much fresher too. 

On 20/01/2017 at 8:00 PM, C-130 Hercules said:

Did you drive up?

Who owns the red E28? Think I might've spotted it on the desert road going south. I was going north in an e30 and the driver waved.  

As per title, known working if possible.

I could get down to 7.2 from my 328i on the open road so that seems plausible.

Nice work. Love the stump-pulling.

Since my last post:

• New engine mounts from an e24 635i, new transmission mounts from an auto e21. Both beefier rubber but approx same dimensions.
• New rotors, EBC redstuff pads. Big improvement.
• New exhaust from downpipes. e46 M3 midsection and Audi S5 rear muffler.

Overall the new exhaust has improved drivability a lot - solved some funky vibrations due to the large stock midsection touching the driveshaft hoops, plus the removal of the restriction of a stock 2.5L M20 exhaust seems to have improved the pickup somewhat (obviously speaking subjectively). Unfortunately a nasty resonance about 2k RPM, but have a much larger Magnaflow dual>dual coming from the US which will hopefully help.

Love the new tips though.

13 hours ago, qube said:

https://www.turnermotorsport.com/p-25363-genuine-bmw-hood-insulation-foam-e30-325i-325is-325ic-325ix/

Hahahahah, yes, rather.

Went for a nice sporty drive today. No issues, did its thing very well. Next thing to look at is the brakes I think. Was getting a good bit of fade after a good thrash through the windies.

So next on the list: 

- keep trialling different engine mount setups to get the NVH just right

- new rotors, some performance oriented brake pads, sporty brake fluid

- 3.46 or 3.23 lsd

- beefier front sway bar - add rear sway bar

23 hours ago, Lucan said:

Nice, I happen to be making progress on my M30 swap too  Got my head back from re-conditioners today. This threads keeping me motivated haha

Awesome! Let me know if you have any questions or want to take a look at anything.

All legal - woo!

Glad you tracked one down - was always sad I didn't get to sell you mine. Best of luck with it.

P&S are the best. Only place I know of in Auckland you can trust to actually do a proper wheel alignment.

Not sure, realised just after I put it in that I should have weighed it. Nevermind.

Anyhow, finally the car is going again.

After spending a couple of hours on Sunday morning rolling around on the wet ground trying to get it done, I had it about 90% finished but couldn't get it done as the previous day a friend of mine was over and was kind enough to push the clutch pedal, dislodging the piston from the slave cylinder. I didn't realise this and spent a good 45 minutes in a lake trying to put it back in, with the rod not budging, only to realise what was going on. Luckily, my good friend Ben came to the rescue that night with a replacement one which I went to pick up. Yesterday afternoon I got back to it and got it back together. The improvement with this flywheel is drastic. I almost couldn't believe what a difference it made, but then it does make sense. The car takes off so much faster than it did before. Anybody with an M30, if you want your car to go faster, I seriously suggest you track down a single mass flywheel, no matter the cost. It's well worth it.

Over the next couple of days I have a few small jobs to do on it like replace the front bumper and some small engine related stuff. I'm just glad it's going.

Happy to help, sir. Glad it's back on the road.

That's been pretty significantly lightened