gjm

Scored for the E30. New tenants in the unit on the front of where we are renting have temporarily moved down from their farm which sold to a developer, who then decided he wanted them out sooner rather than the agreed time. Talking to them while doing some work and the lad says "there's one of them up on the farm" while pointing at the white E30. "Rusty as hell but if you want anything off it you can help yourself." Got to be worth a look, right? Yup - it's a mess. No glass, no rego, one door, no engine or 'box (apparently it was a manual) but... It does - did! - have 51mm struts. And springs which I don't recognise but which are most definitely not Jamex superlows. And vented discs... Rear shocks were Monroes and looked to be leaking so they stayed where they were. Apparently the poor car had been used as a farm hack for several years.

I think he's using the brakes on his ex-shopping trolley project.

If either of you (or anyone else!) does find a an E46 M3, I'd be keen on the front brake calipers and carriers (and discs and pads if they're any good).

That's why I cited the engine originally... My original thinking being along the lines of considering what are the requirements of, from or for a performance engine, rather than what contributes to a good power-to-weight ratio or a performance vehicle. (My wife's first car, an Opel Kadett C2 coupe with the 12S engine - 44kW, 1196cc - was sporty and great fun, but hardly performance.)

Do some hunting, find an early E46 with the M43TU engine.

200 horses is ample power for a fun car, especially a first car! Dry sump cost... How long is a piece of string? A lot depends on how much you do yourself, before you get to pumps and accumulators and oil lines and... Definitely worthwhile though.

Under 4G92 - " Power output raised as high as 168 hp "

Good call. 168bhp from 1597cc in 1993.

For me, the best TG episode was and is January 24th 2010 when Stig 'stole' Jeremy's SL55 AMG keys and gave his car a hiding 'round the track. That was the pinnacle. Bit downhill since then. With some Koenigsegg highlights.

I was doing some research on oil pumps. An interesting topic, for many reasons, and it crosses over into dry sumps, scavenging, aeration, emulsifying, reservoirs, multi-staging, and so much more. One of discussion points was about when to use a better-than-stock oil pump, and the consensus was that the huge majority of stock, or mild performance engines, were fine with a stock oil pump under normal conditions. It went on to qualify 'mild performance' as "up to 550hp". I suspect that as this was a US-based site I was reading at the time, that the writer was talking about 305ci (5.0 litre) V8 engines. (Or larger.) By extension, this suggests that anything producing less than 100hp per litre is little more than a 'mild' performance engine, and there's perhaps some truth in that - high performance NA engines typically do have higher specific power outputs. That said, it is only relatively recently that a NA engine producing over 100hp per litre has been sold in a production car. (I think BMW may have been the first to do this? In mass production, anyway.) What thoughts do folks have? When does an engine become a performance engine? Is the absolute power produced (or torque) make any engine a performance one, or is it the case that specific power output - hp per litre - is the yardstick? Does forced induction move the line?

Just flicking through Facebook while having a coffee and saw a couple of For Sales come up. One was for a 2000/1 E46 325Ci with a manual 'box. Business Edition, leather seats, multi-CD changer and added BMW Bluetooth and USB functions, and all the rest. One was for a 2001 320i saloon with a Tiptronic box, cloth interior and M3 badges. The difference? One was £750, one was $6500. Guess which was which?

I've gone overkill. Or plan to, at least. E46 M3 front brakes and E46 325i rear. In an E30.

OK... May have found a cheaper way to do a 5-stud conversion. Of course, there have been lots of those! E36 front hubs, Z4 rear hubs. Retain other E30 parts. Bit more to it than that of course, but that's the gist. Keeps stock geometry, too.

Would have done this already but having ridiculous problems at work. Apologies. It's a July 1985 318i coupe.

I'm sure they could, and it's probably not worth buying just the gears from them. Get some polybushes or something else useful, and add the gears to the order. The VDO gearkit is USD17, the Motometer one is $30. Worldwide shipping is USD 13.95.

There's a small market for these. I've wondered about stocking some things like this. The odd bits that the other guys tend not to keep. On a related note - how do I test a cluster when it's out of the car?

I have mechanisms from a coupe, but I'll need to do some research to check they'd suite a Touring. (I think they do...)

Same here. This was certainly true in the UK back in the 80s (at least). Standard spec was virtually nothing. Radio? *Just* a radio - no cassette player - was an option. Don't tick it, and don't get any in-car sounds. Cheap cloth seats were standard as were steel wheels. The 'standard' car was more reminiscent of something from the eastern side of the Berlin wall. Just better built.

Not the BMW, but two days ago fitted the new plugs, leads, dizzy cap and rotor arm to the 500SE. This seems to have fixed the misfire issue - the dizzy cap appears to have been the culprit as no matter what I did (new plugs, leads) no.6 was showing corrosion on the spark plug pin where it contacts the lead. Then yesterday I finally fitted the new exhaust rubber hangar. Looks like someone has had problems with the exhaust in the past as it appears to have been welded, and is now nearly a half-inch longer than it used to be. Which means the exhaust rubbers no longer line up correctly, are under additional strain (have you felt the weight of a Mercedes V8 exhaust? ) and are likely to break more often than is at all necessary. I am so looking forward to dropping the exhaust system to fix someone else's mess.

And today it has arrived. One week from order to delivery - very good service.

This. Definitely. Not replacing both is at best a false economy; in the worst case it could be dangerous.

Which next week?

Typically, this (too). Bear in mind also the benefits of shopping locally for the support you get, and the ability to pick up the phone and speak to someone without having to calculate which of many time zones you're calling.

@qube - Kyu, you must have something to help here?

Agreed.