leichtbau

God I miss being a mod. I would just ban this moron and his previous accounts.

Funnily enough, just before I hit submit reply I thought about mentioning the obvious about the service life of tensioners and guides, but I thought I'd entertain myself and see how long it took someone to jump on it.

The N47S seems to have avoided the timing chain issue, and Alpina used it in their D3 E90's. I'm inclined to agree with @balancerider wrt N47 chain issues being magnified by the internet. Yes, there are noisy chains out there, and yes, there was a recall, and yes, some failed, but as always, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. In my experience if it hasn't let go before 100xxx km, it's not going to.

I hear David Clarke is keen on testing the range next lockdown.

https://cdn.recaro-automotive.com/fileadmin/00-corporate-website/pdf/en/downloads/recaro-classic-ls-lx-en.pdf?v=1621256416 Pricing down the bottom… They’re quite a bit more expensive than I thought they’d be.

CLK63 is porn! Was that the one on TM recently with the video of it slithering all over Hampton Downs? M113K / M156 / M157 which made the best noise? Three of the all time great AMG engines.

M30 would have struggled with cambelt failure I think...

Done 125xxx km so far between an E350 and now the E500. Great cars. That s211 E55K on TM was mighty tempting but towing the oil refinery behind to keep refueling it would have got old pretty quick. Wouldn't mind an s211 E63 if there are any in the country though!

Fishnets are a good look in E30's, they're also identical to Recaro LS aside from the headrest (obviously). Plenty of places stock bolster foam, so you've got the option of rebuilding some shagged seats to your perfect spec with new cloth etc, ooooor you could buy some brand new LS / LX straight from Recaro, who are now making them again. I know which option I'd be going for.

You, I like you 😂

Nothing says the E30 market has jumped the shark like publicly admitting to a charge of conversion. Why oh why would you do this instead of spending $450 on a cert to get the 318i shell legal with a 2.5 - Further to this; the M20 and M40 airbox mounts in the engine bay are located differently, did anyone save a photo of the engine bay? At least the guy who did it was up front about it, otherwise you can add fraud charges to that as well. https://motoringmessageboard.com/topic/71613/page-2/swapping-vin-plates-and-tags seems this might not be super uncommon with E30's in NZ...

I'm phoning a friend, but 11 years off the road and no engine lines up nicely with a friends burgundy 13B PP T68 mt1 that is to this day the fastest car I've ever been in.

Regarding the E30 M3, almost all of those rust repairs are a piece of piss (aside from the horror story that is the sunroof panel, hooooo boy, just buy a new panel from BMW NZ like I'm about to do), the real challenge would be finding a body guy that can hide the welds. Easy enough to coin the new panels in, but burnishing to invisible will be the challenge. The rust around the front aerial would quantify any other E30 as terminal, but omg E30 M3. The real question should be why that car is rusting in areas that aren't the usual E30 spots...

Of all the things to buy on aliexpress... This is one of them.

@Harper might have skimmed over it, but what's the plan for running non folding PP's up front? Rear belts removed and a seat delete? Further to that, I'd be interested to find how the CSL got around this - are the CSL seats a Recaro model and how did their tilting mechanism work? Edit: have to laugh at that video, the rebound in the suspension it was running is woeful. You'd have to wonder if that factored into its demise.