Olaf

PS - I see yellow poking out from underneath, perhaps you've lucked out and the shocks have been done front and rear, and they're *not* Monroes! Looks like Bilstein yellow, though if you're really lucky it's Koni Yellows and you're in bizzo. If they've been thorough the shock mounts, spring seats, bump stops, dust boots have all been done as well. PPS: Tyres. So many e30's enter the parts chain after the combination of wet road + short on RWD experience + cheap-ass tyres. Take the road less travelled, put the best rubber you can find on your e30. 195/65R14 is starting to get challenging; Hankook K415 is reasonable performance.

The only point that the cage will help you - unless you're harnessed-in and wearing a helmet - is if you turn it upside down**. Pretty much every other scenario where it goes remotely wrong sees your head impacting some very hard steel pipe. Couple that with momentum and you've got fractured skull, brain bleed, and concussion and/or damage. ** and you've probably still whacked your head against the roll cage on the way there. Drifting a car is all fine until something goes wrong. You get to figure out how far short your talent deficit was while you tell your insurance company, and hope they're sympathetic to your plight. I was lucky, I walked out from a rollover that wrote off the car I was a passenger in with just a scratch on my little finger. YMMV. Do you want to play the lottery?

now that is a tough call. I've driven the 135i msport, and it's a capable nasty exciting thing, but not one I can carry my teenage kids in the back of. I'd expect the 128Ti to be great fun to drive. OTOH the mk8 is aparrently great, and has a long legacy of GTi's backing it. I've owned MK2 GTi 16v, driven MK5 GTi & R32 in anger, and MK6 GTi's, I have some idea of just how good a mk8 will be, and no doubt I can stow my kids in a Golf. Haven't driven the MK8, (or the 128Ti), I think the MK8 is race favourite at the starting gate, would need to evaluate both. For my use case, most likely 3 series wins.

it all looks fixable! Though expect to fix a lot more than what the previous owner has neglected or butchered. Lightweight, a poor-man's CSL! A slicktop 316i coupe is the lightest e30, they have little sound deadening. In rude health and with good suspension, they're a quick car through the twisties and can hold their own with 325i's (and some much bigger cars too). Make no mistake, on a straight road with the chance to stretch it's legs, the torque and extra HP of the 325 will eat the 316i. Horses for courses! Air Filter: I doubt the cone/pod filter is going to give you any more HP, paper filter elements are cheap and the factory intake will be quieter and give colder air. Selling the pod might get you some dough for a rear muffler. Rubber: Essentially you'll find a 30+ year old e30 has probably been pretty well neglected, and you can expect to work your way through every rubber bush and mount in the car, once you've got it on the road. Engine and gearbox mounts will look okay, but that rubber has lost it's elasticity, and replacing them improves NVH. Same for rear subframe mounts, RATBs, diff bush. No need to go to Poly, the OE/OEM rubber solutions are proven, inexpensive, and reliable. Check your fuel hoses! easy to replace under the hood, you might as well replace the fuel filter while you're at it, it won't have been done in years, possibly decades. Be sure to use EFI high pressure rated hose. Lubricants: Time for gearbox oil and diff oil. I'm running Penrite Synthetic, don't mix them up (get the back oil into the middle and vice versa). One assumes you've already done the engine oil and filter with quality kit (I like the Mahle) Brakes: Slider pins - unless they're badly pitted - can be cleaned up in your battery drill with a scotch-brite pad and Brakekleen. I like the ATE silicone brake grease. Brake hoses are cheap, give the existing ones a good look over. ARB bushes and endlinks are cheap too. 316i has solid front rotors, you can get six cylinder calipers which allows you to upgrade to vented front discs, a little more meat. Two types of front calipers, both run the same pads. The racers prefer the ATE calipers which makes 'em more pricey (one can run brass bushings in place of rubber - though for street use not really a consideration); the Girlings are fine. You can take your time, recon a set of calipers (seals, bleed nipples, boots, sliders, paint) then install with new hoses, pads, rotors. Bear in mind the six cyl calipers/vented rotors are incompatible with the factory steel wheels if you ever wanted to go back there, once the pads are worn in. You could always extract some more cash to fund your brakes by selling those D-window steelies and stretched tyres and score some bottle caps for next to nothing, ride the coming fashion resurgence of bottle caps being uber-cool and authentic 80's e30. Stay cool: Give your cooling system attention, replace aging hoses, check thermostat bleed and flush it, replace with BMW Blue coolant and demineralised water. Check passenger side carpets for glycol, this is the age that those heater matrix are letting go. HTH

Got one in my parts stash waiting to go on, along with high pressure fuel hose. Mine's a Rein brand, I'm finding their stuff of good quality and durable.

try cleaning out your cookies etc, and go in from another IP address eg VPN. Should be fine.

I've been using mdecoder daily over the last couple of weeks while I look for a new car. Works well.

AA Batteries these days are rubbish, even maintained with a modern seven-stage calcium/AGM capable charger. I now buy KOBA, good quality for the money. @jom if you're not driving the e36 regularly, best to hook up the batty on maintenance cycle on your fancy new charger. HTH.

Totally! Welcome, @the_don46 😀 Hope to see you at a meet/tour/event soon. See links in our signatures of how to find the club.

A house I pass on my neighbourhood walks has been in the wars again, from the same storm you mentioned. It has northerly exposure on a hill above the harbour (though is only shrouded from Southerly by neighbouring houses). Those of you in the know will recognise that wind accelerates when it finds a hill. The house in question is around 20 or 25 years old, a former leaky home, having been sold off cheap about ten years ago, re-clad and remediated, and sold again. Now it's had the leading edge of it's second story - north-facing - curved roof peeled back like a sardine tin and folded over, about three metres worth. It's currently open to the moon, stars, and rain, with the peeled-back roof strapped down with large ratchet straps on both sides to prevent more roof being lost. Our house is pretty solid, though when that storm turned south, I has being shaken in my seat in our top story as the wind battered our house (we're exposed to the south, very close to Zone 5' design area. The winds swung around my solidly-mounted 6E Yagi FM antenna that's previously survived twenty years of storms of up to 170 km/h unscathed. It would not surprise me to learn we'd approached 200 during that recent storm.

I continue to pick away at my parts list in preparation for the engine swap. A water pump here; a serpentine belt, pulleys and tensioner there; seals, gaskets, hoses. Taking my time getting ready.

Update. PDR was done some time ago. I put air in the tyres last weekend, checked the oil (nil used), 98 in the tank (as usual), gave it a wash and removed the leaves that accumulate beneath the cabin filter shrouds [essential e60 maintenance]. Then enjoyed a club run to Raumati and back. It's a joy to drive; smooth, tight, great handling with light weight and 50/50 weight distribution, and awesome power train. Parts have arrived for the Valve Cover Gaskets (Elring), Serpentine Belt Tensioner & Pulley (INA)(and a new Conti belt for good measure), and the PCV bellows (Vaico). Now to get them sorted when we're out of the latest lockdown. I'll get the headlights polished up, give the car a thorough valet, and it may then be time to find it a new home next month. It's not getting as much use as we're not doing so many long distance trips. This car is a mile-muncher!

RE003's FTW!

too much meta discussion. where's your project thread?

Yes of course. Some may watch on as their friend prepared to toss a few thousand into the harbour because it may make them feel good, and recognise it. The rare few will encourage a more constructive alternative, such as a donation to Wellington Free Ambulance as an alternative to polluting the harbour.

@Mikan It doesn't have power increase to require hoops; is that down to change in driveshaft (from the auto-to-manual swap)? It is a rare e30 - it's tidy and not full of rust, and one assumes it's a tidy well-executed M42 swap.... it's not a half-finished, butchered car with the remains of "let's do some lows". I think you may be under-estimating how it differentiates from many on the market. Just look at the tat that Ghostchip has been looking at for more money. Tidy e30s are quickly becoming the rarity. If this gets the right owner now, to continue your mission trajectory and lavish good maintenance that continues to improve it, it'll be worth more than double in ten years IMHO. EDIT: or to put it another way, if @adro's is your benchmark, even at 50% (with a cert), you're well above the money you're currently thinking of.

It certainly will need a cert. And it should fly through. And with a cert, you should be netting well above what you're currently thinking.

The Hankooks I bought for my e60 were bought under the 'most tyres these days are pretty good'. The test results and reviews suggested they were the equal of the RE003s I ran on it beforehand. The tests and reviews were wrong, and I continue to be underwhelmed. Perhaps the Laufenns (I've heard good things), or better Hankooks would have been better. There's no replacement for experiencing the damned things. Perhaps more than anything else, YMMV. 😀

IMHO yours must be $25k and up, it's very well-sorted (whereas most of the other M5x conversions been up for sale recently are 'half finished'.). If yours is certed, and as tidy (as it surely is), why wouldn't you be looking for more than 325i manual pricing? You'd barely be able to build it for $20K.

RE-003s (as a great baseline tyre) are made somewhere in South East Asia. They're in fact very good on NZ roads, and inspire confidence in the wet.

But lord help them if they ask $17k5 to sell it eh? 😁

Bho and Vijay were excellent. They're long gone now, and I can't recommend the current mob - I stopped using them a few years ago.

I took a look on carjam and it has a new plate now. I'm picking he sold it, and it's still going.... unless someone hit a damp road on their cheng-shin tyres and lost it. Having had the love, I hope it's still going.

so @4DoorE30 what happened to this? You still got it, or sold it?

Yep, go and see the parts team at Continental Cars BMW Wellington. It's reasonably priced. Pick up some deionised water from REPCO/BNT/Supercheap, and you're sorted. HTH