Harper

It's a common failure point on the E46 compacts. I never use it and when I do it seems to just smear up the back window. But yeah mostly it just looks so much better without it.

Fun parts starting to pile up. Manual conversion stuff all ready to go. Brakes stripped down ready for some paint Factory 325ti specific exhaust and have the 6 cylinder compact specific front sway bar as well. Scored a facelift rear hatch in alpine white which looks much sportier than the prefacelift version imo, still need to find some facelift tail lights to go on. Will be doing a factory wiper delete as well convert to a RF key instead of the shitty IR key at the same time since the FZV module is in the hatch on the compacts. Ordered a manual cluster from Greece on ebay for 100NZD shipped, I'll steal the manual blank cluster panel from it and use the 330 cluster rings so the car so the car will essentially have a 330 manual cluster as it should. Haven't had time to pull the motor out of the 330 yet, I'm hoping either over the long weekend or the weekend after I'll get to it. Then I'll do a big parts order, refresh the motor and hopefully have the 330ti ready by Christmas. In the meantime, it's actually nice to have an economical daily for once...

I'm glad I sold mine when I did. The price on them seems to just get lower and lower every week. The 130 market is strange. But I'm not sure you can buy a better car for 8k. I loved the way mine drove.

My 130i sold, so the fun begins... All driveline stuff removed, exhaust, driveshaft etc Fluids drained and front end removed Few extra ancillaries removed and it's just about ready to get yanked out. Still have to disconnect the ECU and wiring stuff but that should be easy. Love how easy the E46 comes apart

Pretty much. Have to run an extra loom for the AC compressor, and some people say they need an extra wire from the cluster for the battery light but others didn't need that so we'll see. Other than that just the usual manual swap stuff which should be straight forward. Since I'll have the whole engine loom out I might as well modify/run the reverse wiring with the factory harness so it should all be pretty tidy.

Rear sway bar is compact specific. I have an oem 26.5mm front sway bar specific to the 325ti ready to go on when I do the swap. My car does have the sport suspension option S338, it's on factory sport springs and shocks. I'll put some Bilstein b6s in it eventually since the shocks are a bit tired. You do see manual ones come up every so often for pretty cheap but I imagine swapping an M44 is pretty involved, wiring is totally different. N42>M54 is pretty straight forward as long as it's ms43... I hope

I think it is the orange interior still, it's quite subtle, the rear seat definitely is. If it was in Auckland I would buy it and swap interiors. I don't know if I can bring myself to go get it since it's in Welly.

Curious to hear your opinion on the CMP bushes and bearings, have the same set ready to go in my M3 when I eventually get around to dropping the subframe.

They only got E36 320i's up to 95 in the states (different engine I believe but some of the parts will be the same. Search by part number, a lot of the same parts were used on other cars. Anything not carried by FCP you can probably get from the other usual suspects like schmiedmann, rockauto, pelican etc.

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/4334873286?archive=1&bof=uBQICzci Gutted I missed this. Would have loved to have taken the orange laser cloth alcantara interior out of it, super rare, especially in compact format.

Looks like a nice one. Love lemans blue. With that one for sale I kind of had to lower the price on mine, which tbf I was going to do anyway. I'm itching to start my compact project so I think I'll keep dropping the price until someone grabs it. I had an offer of 9500 subject to it passing wof which I accepted but 2 days later when it passed, radio silence from the buyer...

That's exactly what I did too. A few of them the plastic itself snapped so I 'unsoldered' the ones off my original and plastic welded them onto the new one.

@Vass you're 100% right I didn't look that closely just saw ATE and assumed they were. Just emailed to confirm and schmiedmann said they are made by NK for the ATE calipers. I'll probably still get them and see what they're like.

There is that, I've received genuine BMW parts that were utter sh*t. Had an E46 windshield cowl that didn't survive a single install before all the clips snapped off, every single one. My original 20 year old one came off with all clips intact...

Bummer, was hoping you had found something I hadn't. At least it's only the rears and the fronts will have fresh ATE seals. What caliper paint did you use? Looks exactly how I wanted mine to come out

FCP, slightly cheaper from schmiedmann but in the same realm. https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/bmw-caliper-repair-kit-rear-34216750163 The 325i with the smaller piston has the option of OE ATE seals for 10usd but the only option for 330i seems to be genuine: https://www.fcpeuro.com/products/bmw-caliper-repair-kit-rear-34211158578

Did you pony up the 60usd each for OEM rear caliper seals or source them somewhere else? Schmiedmann has the OE ATE front seals and dust boots for 10usd each but not the rears, and I refuse to pay 120 for some seals and dust boots for the rear. I was gonna do a similar rebuild to my calipers before I put them on the compact and atm it's looking like I'm just leaving the rear seals alone.

Jesus.. This might not be as exclusive of a club as I thought hahaha. I've been thinking about building one of these for ~2 years and when I finally start, 5 of them show up for sale Yeah sounds like a 325ti with the B30 dropped in, no 330 brakes and gretrag box. Still, probably a very quick fun car for 5K, they all seem a bit rough though. Looking forward to making mine into the tidiest example in the best spec

Gives me hope for mine, it does seem like a good recipe for a rapid daily-able shopping trolly.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/1704924903360560/ I saw this a few days ago, but this is a 330ti that Ray built, maybe there really is something in the air... Original sale thread here: If it sold for that asking that's a very good deal, if it wasn't in palmy and I didn't already have a donor car and trans on the way I probably would have got it myself just for the parts. Seems like the seller wasn't very clued in on what it was.

Not to mention if you did want to turn it into a 330ti at some point, very easy swap. Drop the engine in and flash the ECU with the 3.0 software and boom. Still left with the smaller brakes, driveshaft, axles and shitty getrag box though 😕 but at $5k it does seem like good buying.

Wow, that's a rare beast, NZ new too, can't be many factory manual 325ti's in NZ. But yep ugly as in stock trim. Last 325ti I saw for sale was an auto that was dereg and sold for 1k on fb marketplace a while back.

There's a slot at the top of them that you can fit a pry bar or big flat head screwdriver into and pry them out. They'll usually break on removal.

I'll be in the 12-15k range all said and done once mine is built, but I haven't really been penny pinching and don't mind paying a bit more for lower mileage/good condition/OE parts etc since I'm building the car to keep. Not to mention little details start to add up fast. Might be worth 15k to the right person if they didn't have the capability to build their own but very niche being a compact. I wonder how many 330ti's there are in NZ, I know Ray has built a couple. Must be <10, maybe even <5? In a way it is fairly cheap for a unique car you're unlikely to see another of on the road.

No, the RACP design is actually quite different given it is shortened and raised to accommodate the spare wheel well. My understanding is the front mounts can still see some cracking and are similar to that of the coupe/sedan. In the rear while all other E46 chassis dip up and down, the back half of the hatch is flat so there’s no stress concentrations as the cross section is almost constant between the chassis rails. But overall because of this the entire panel is a lot more rigidly mounted and RACP failure is much less common even with higher HP drivetrains so long as the subframe bushings aren't shot. All that info is from a conversation with Cayn at CMP Auto Engineering who IMO is one of the best informed when it comes to E46 RACP stuff I may still reinforce the front mounts at some point and put chassis rail plates in to bulletproof it, but given it'll be a stock power street driven car it should be fairly safe from total failure the way other E46s are prone to.