kiwi328i

Got mine from Pelican parts. My have to duck now when I open it for fear of getting hit by it. It's awesome. Chances are your bonnet ones are history too.

Our sponsor is the obvious one we should be getting all of these sorts of things from. You have to use aluminum. E34's are soo fussy with anything in the front you cant really cheat anywhere. You HAVE to spend the extra.

I think I have one up in the attic. If you really want me to go have a look text me on 021795306 and I will try find it.

Nice link. Yeah, I am going to do it, I wouldn't have bothered if I wasn't keeping the car, but I definitely am.

Hey Jared, Let us all know how the 27mm bar pans out. I would be interested if the price is right. Adjustable front strut mounts could be further down the track too.

I took both covers off the donor M60b40. Both have small defects, not major, but I will wait to pull the ones off my M60b30, and I might do those if they are better. But yeah, I think powdercoating is the go. I have used HPC before and they are good, just not cheap. The blokes up in Henderson, didn't know what a valve cover was, but they are cheap.

Crikey you are right, that is cheap. I did some quick calculations and that 25mm bar can get to my door under $300.00.NZD. Cheaper than the 20mm rear whiteline from Oz, that's for sure. Like everything else I guess, it's a matter of weighing up whether it is justifiable. But I have spent more money on less beneficial crap that's for sure. I would be very surprised if any local BMW Vendor could beat that price. I would buy one on the spot out of respect.

I am running the standard front swaybar. I am running a pedders, I think 20mm rear swaybar, an adjustable one, which is the only one short of spending thousands on worth getting. I am happy with the way the front end turns in and the lack of body roll. I guess I could just keep going, but for a road car, I don't think I need to put in a meatier front sway. I have billies HD front and rear, HD strut mounts front and rear, poly rtabs, poly rear subframe bushes, spherical upper and lowers on the front, running 18's and its plenty stiff enough for me. In a lot of ways I miss my standard 525i which was much nicer over the crap roads we have, it was better 80% of the time tbf. There seems to be no limit to what you could spend on one of these things I am done with the suspension for now, and now I am going to put in a M60B40, which I will put up in the projects forum soon. Having said that...do you think maybe I should get a beefier front sway?

Hey Chris, thanks for the reply, but I was after more success stories I guess. I would hate to clean, and these things would require a crap load of cleaning oil not too mention the amount of flakey oem paint, so I want to do them once and do it so that I can forget about it for a long time.

What do you guys think? I would like the manky valve covers I have sorted, I could have go myself, but, nah I want them done properly, and with some assurance I wont have to do it again for some time, so I was thinking about getting them powdercoated. I have googled it, and as usual there is contradicting info, so please reply if you have actually had a valve cover powdercoated and what your thoughts are if you were to do it again. In any case, I am going to 'fix them up' because they are a bloody eyesore, whether it is with a can of cheap paint or whatever, they cant be any worse. Oh and of course, where do you go? I spoke to a bloke down at powdercoating Henderson and I wasn't totally convinced. If you have to explain what a valve cover is to someone, it does not impart a sense of confidence, but who knows? Cheers

When I worked out my quotes from here and then from there, even with shipping it was considerably cheaper there. The thing you need to watch is the customs, someone here might be better at explaining this, but if you go over $400.00nzd you pay, a duty or tax of sorts. I argued with them with one of my orders, but as they keep it from you till you cough it up, its pointless.ha. Keep it under $400.00nzd or cross your fingers they don't pick it up, or stagger your purchases. Lemforder is one of BMW's oem supplier, and I think they are for what you want. People swear by them, at least for the parts you want, just google hard out, and you wont get higher praise than lemforder for E34 centre and ends. Again, it's just my view, others may and probably will disagree? If parts for our cars were cheaper I would buy them here, because I would rather collect the item, see the owner of the store etc etc, but hey the parts for our cars are not cheap, it kind of forces you to shop overseas. Most E34 owners I think do not go to team McMillan or jerry clayton, unless absolutely necessary because the maintenance alone would be more than the full cost of our cars in no time soon and that's without even considering performance enhancements! Cheap to buy, not cheap to maintain.

Last year after much googling, I went with Lemforder centre, left and right from Pelican Parts. Pelican Parts is cool because many of their items have reviews and I found it cheaper via the states. Pelican used to be the cheapest, they aren't anymore for everything, but their variety is hard to beat. I also use FCPeuro and ECS tuning for stuff too. Cant remember the price, but I remember deciding that it was worth getting the good parts so I don't have to do it for...well as long as possible. In my opinion, get the best you can afford and literally replace everything that needs doing around whatever area you are focused on, not silly nilly, but it gives you good peace of mind when you are giving it the berries up your favorite mountain pass...or whatever. I have now replaced every suspension component on the front of my E34. It feels much better, I think its worth it, no one else does of course of course apart from aficionados here and that's cool by me.

It is now April and I just got my car back. Long story. I did do the rtabs, poly jobs from AKG Motorsport. I got the 1" bump steer plates for the front put in as well. Of course that was backed up by another wheel alignment. I am much happier with how the car drives now. Luckily for me, my hunch worked out for me. Doing the rear rtabs did go some way to correcting the discrepancy between the left and the right hand sides. So here is how it panned out for the rear. The front is much the same. total toe before: +2.90 total toe after: +4.00 Left toe before: +0.04 Right toe before: +2.50 Left toe after: +1.70 Right toe after: +2.30 Left camber before: -1.75 Right camber before: -2.00 Left camber after: -2.10 Right camber after: -2.15 I think this was a better way to go than go the whole pull the rear sub-frame weld in plates blah blah. And, I, well who cares, I am happy with the way the car drives now and that's the main thing. I thought I would say thanks to those who commented on the thread. I thought I better put down my findings as there is nothing worse following a thread and finding out "what happening", "did it work" Well it worked, well for me anyway. It aint race car perfect, but then I do not expect it to be. Cheers everyone.

Awesome. I will be following this closely. Could be good!

Hi Brent, That's interesting I remember the car. I might go this way: http://ttvracing.com/?s=bmw#prettyPhoto[iframes]/2/ It's single-mass and steel. its also hell expensive but hey? All solutions over oem are expensive. then I can go with an uprated or std M3 clutch pack and it should be ok. I think I go with sprung hub? I will sort it eventually I guess, but the op of this is also interesting. Cheers

Hi, Is there any further progress with this? I am wanting to do the E34 530i with M60b40 but keep the 5 original speed conversion. I have the uncommon M60b30 manual flywheel that I hope to replace with a single-mass, preferably steel one. I believe the 240mm flywheel is the same or spec'd the same as an E39 540i one. So that's one hurdle. These aftermarket single-mass flywheels are wicked expensive, but the 'fear' of keeping the dual mass is an honest one as my car has done nearly 300k miles and as I am pulling the motor I might as well go the whole hog. Secondly the clutch kit thereafter, if I use a 328i,528i 2.8 Z3 clutch I would like it to handle the M60b40 grunt. There is a crap load of aftermarket options, but again I could be sold anything as I don't know enough really. Your OP was about looking at a less expensive resolve and one I would like to know more about. I don't know enough about these things really and I am just an internet troll, but it sounds/looks like you know what you are doing. If you have any more news that would be awesome

Sorry everyone, When I went to post, it would give me a connection problem page, and every time I went back I had to start from scratch, as far as I could tell none of them were actually posted. My mobile is 0211503550 if you have any inquires. Cheers Lionel

Hi Guys, Last year my partner surprised me with these aftermarket headlights for the car. She saw me looking at them on Ebay. I guess it was a fair guess it would be something I would like to have as I was umming and argghing over them. Too bad I wasn't looking at the Vorshlag or UUC websites cause I could have ended up with a wildwood super performance brake kit, alas I ended up with these. Like probably everyone here, I was just looking at stuff, but for the record there are a few reasons I am selling them 1, I have a wide kidney E34, these are for the narrow kidney types. 2, They are silver/chrome and my car is black as night, and I don't think it suits the car colour wise. 3, I like the idea of having halos, kinda but not the one-piece look, which is why I don't really dig E39's, just my opinion on the front look there, not E39's in general. 4, I could make them fit, either go narrow kidney and bonnet, or just narrow kidneys, or faff with the wide kidneys so they fit nicely behind, but for the other reasons I don't think its worth it for me anyway. 5, My garage is looking like a...garage I guess, but with heaps of stuff I wont be using, which drives me a little mad. I appreciate some members on here love hatin on non oem parts and so forth and cant help but comment on everything, but just so you know, they are not my bag either. Just sgh and move on, to something you may actually want to purchase. These cost my partner over 400.00 landed but I see you could get them now for under 300.00 possibly, so I would like @200.00 or what have you. They are brand new, still in packaging, the film over the covers have not even been removed, they are plug and play. One piece. Halos. Please PM me with your offers, will go on TM in a few days or so if not gone, or I may hack them up and make something of them. Cheers

My tyres are sweet. Pressures are always looked at. I would like to get as many miles out of them as possible hence the fascination with my suspension. I hope I don't have a bent trailing arm, subframe or anything major, I will just use my eye-chrometer when I get the rear of it up in the air I guess. I have rtabs and some bump steer correction plates coming from AKG and I hope that might get the rear specs closer anywho. Will let everyone know, when its all done. It will be interesting if I can get the left and right rear toe figures closer to each other.

Oh hey, that's nice to know, well it's nice to know someone who has done it, and that you think it's not worth doing, as opposed to thinking I need it pronto! I have already done the subframe bushings on mine, pita. I have done those and I was thinking, if I replaced the rtabs, with new ones it might get the toe closer on both sides, or not be so out whack closer. That's my guess, and then just leave it as is, well be happy with it anyway. Cheers

Hi Ron, "The rear toe is not good and getting this adjusted will make a further improvement to the steering of your car" I agree, I am looking at options now in regards to adjusting the rear toe and I am reading all of the kmac vs bavauto/AKG etc arguments, basically 'to weld' or 'not to weld', both crappy options, but it seems like I will have to go with one of them in order to correct that rear toe. So both options expensive and one expensive and time consuming...yay Someone here must of gone through this with their E34?

Ok, Another conclusion. After having the car up at Burger's for 2 weeks or so, it seemed that there was nothing wrong with the car, not mechanically anyway. It was still wandering ever soo slightly however. Burger took the car to his alignment guy and as per usual, everything was up to spec, and as usual it still had this natural tendency to wander to the left. Burger noticed whilst under the car the markings on the column and the markings on the powersteering pump where not aligned. I haven't heard of this before myself but as he explained it to me at length, and even showed me on another car, these notched have to be in line before you can do a 'proper'alignment. If your steering wheel is out, i.e not straight ahead you WILL have problems, obviously someone has had this steering wheel off, and put it back on a spline or three out. Anyway, he aligned the 2 markings, pulled my steering wheel off and centred it, and had the alignment guys do there things as per norm. So there you go. So I learnt a few things. Burger is the man, which is backed up by the ridiculous amount of cars he has in and around the building, and the amount of merits he has on the wall. Come payment time, I thought I was going to have to down trousers and hold my ankles, but I was extremely surprised at the bill, he is obviously crap at maths? I probably wont go back to tyreworx, however Burger did say that now that the steeringwheel is straight anyone can do it, meh I guess. So I got a spare secondhand powersteering pump I will knock up on tardme soon, but it could have been a lot lot worse. The car handles, like it should now, meaty.

Agreed. Knowing that it had two valves unlike some of the single valve heater control units, I thought or hoped as much. To be fair both rubber thingmewotsits were buggered equally either side. in any case I think one thing to take away is that it's probably better to reco the unit than get another secondhand one! and that secondly! there are good kits out there to cater for tight assess like myself.

Just in case someone does a search and digs this up later. I hate looking at threads that interest me only to find they had no conclusions! So I googled the heck out of this and ended up buying a heater control valve kit from fleabay. I wrestled the heater control valve from the car, carefully pulled it apart, followed the emailed instructions, actually I didn't really it's pretty straight forward, replace the main parts, it had three o rings that didn't need replacing and I may have ended up damaging the unit doing so, they were only hose rings not any internal bits. A thoughtful and comprehensive kit I thought! especially with the instructions in minute detail. I think it was $120.00ish landed. after doing everything, whacked it back in and when I tested it! it was cold as he'll???and no hot! after checking everything proper like and pushing in the terminals all the way! I re-tested and it's sweet as! this is the way to go after had mucked around with 'good' secondhand units in previous bmws. Result!!!

Agreed. I have 18x8.5 all round but run staggered tyre sizes. I realise I could rotate them! but knowing I could align them better???I think is better! it's not like the factory setting is perfectly "square" so you need the ability to adjust I think. Rationally it is not worth it, then again just owning the car is not really worth it. It just hope someone chimes in with someone who can do it and go from there.