Glacial Pace

Thanks. I'll price them up for the parts I need imminently and make sure I don't go over $1000, that was actually the decider to go with OEM rod bolts, not ARP. The kit with ARP was more than $1000 so I knew I would get pinged.

Lovely looking car. Not sure about the wheels but that's a personal preference and easy to change. E30s are such a classy design, perfect classic car imo.

Nice one. I'll call some of the NZ places mentioned and see if anyone can provide the towing eye cover. I'm currently putting together an order for the other parts I require for the rod bearings job. Anyone have an opinion on replacing the oil pan and sub frame bolts? Seems like BMW recommend replacing them but nobody who had done videos on it seems to bother. I can see the subframe bolts, but oil pan seems a bit overkill to me, assuming the bolts aren't corroded or anything.

Thank you!

Thanks. Looks like buying from over seas is the way to go. What about NZ based wreakers for bid of trim etc, is there any decent ones?

This will be my first bottom end refresh, but I have done multiple other jobs on various engines, and am confident that I can carry out the repair. Honestly some of the videos I have seen on yt of professionals doing this job have made me cringe, idk, maybe it's fine but I watched one a few days ago and the mechanic was removing the old roof bolts with an impact wrench, seems a bit rough to me. I also have a friend who can lend me a high end torque wrench for the rod bolts. My torque wrenches are fine for most stuff, but I want that to be dead on.

I need a few things for my soon to arrive M3, I'm going to do the rod bearings and have ordered bearings and bolts already, but I thought it might be better to get the bulky, cheaper stuff, engine mounts, gaskets, o rings, locally. Where would you go for this sort of stuff? It's also missing the front towing eye cover, hopefully this is something I can pick up used, who is good for this sort of thing? The colour is Space Grey Metallic so not exactly uncommon. Also does anyone know if this is M bumper specific or will any E9x one do the trick.

Will oil analysis show much? I was under the impression that the newer bearings couldn't be picked up on it anyway. The owner did a bunch of their own maintenance, so I think they were saying that all the oil changes they had done were Castrol edge (is that the super car one or do they make 10w60 edge and supercar?) New rod bearings have been purchased, I went with Mahle ones. BE are out of stock until October and I want to get the job done, Mahle seemed like a good option, I also went for OEM bolts, the torque sequence seems tedious but not hard, and they were $400 less than ARP. So that's $400 that can be put towards a suspension refresh. Now I need to buy tools. Dunno how many times in going to need to use and engine support bar but I guess I need to buy one for this job.

They also put 225k km on the car so I think they got their money's worth haha.

Yes, zcp is the option code for the competition pack. Which as far as I can tell is different wheels, 10mm lower, some different software for the gear box and the traction control maybe, possibly some other minor stuff. No engine change like the m2 comp.

Only 4 zcp sedans? That seems wild to me. I guess NZ is a small market and sedans were less popular. I was pretty ambivalent on sedan vs coup tbh, just happy to get an M3.

So wheel sure sensors and spark plugs were wildly over priced, or just the good stuff? I'm sure there will be ups and downs while working on the car, I have a decent list of things I would like to do eventually, and I'm sure there will be more to add. Rod bearings will be done first, but I also have concerns over the rocker covers, vanos covers, oil pump maybe, idk, 280k km seems like a lot and a broken oil pump could be catastrophic, maybe I take it out and have a look when I'm in there doing the bearings. On top of that I'm sure it needs a suspension refresh, bushes and ball joints (seems like the way to go is just new arms) and the shocks must be worn, new EDC is pretty spendy though. Not sure what I'll do there. Maybe keep my eyes open for second hand low milage ones.

I have realised that Yakima also makes roof bars, and I can get a nice price in Yakima that will make them not that much more than 2nd hand, so I'll probably go that way.

Looking to buy roof bars for me E90 M3, though I think they are standard fitment across all E9x cars.

I paid $17500 for it, which if it's even half decent I think it's a great price. I think I'll do rod bearings anyway for peace of mind, this one will eventually get roof racks with bike racks, so should be quite easy to spot.

The worst? Let's not talk about that ok? Haha. It was this one of anyone is interested. I checked the vin and it is actually a ZCP car. Not many sedan ZCPs around I don't think. https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/m3/listing/4762936988?archive=1

I have just purchased a pretty high km E90 M3. Pretty sure I'll be on here quite a bit getting advice on fixing it up. Rod bearings will be ordered soon, I'm going to diy the job at home.

Its been listed for at least 2 or 3 months, and its well over prices for the mileage.

Saw this one yesterday, was considering going and viewing but it just seemed like it was going to need a lot of work done to it in the near future. Still waiting for a cheap e92 that's not to horrendous to come along.

I dunno what E90/92 M3 values were at 6 months ago but I just missed one at $26.5k, if another one comes along at that price that isn't a complete disaster I may well be very tempted. I just had to buy a new family car as my wife wrote the old one off, I seem to have done ok. I was looking for a 3.0t Audi A6, exactly what we had before and by the looks of some of the pricing the exact same car had gone up by around $2k over when I bought the last one 2 years ago. Same car, slightly higher km, 2 years older about $2k more. Luckily I found somebody who must have wanted to get rid and sold for what I think was a good price (I think they were a bit salty about it afterwards but there you go)

Haha. Indeed. Unfortunately that's not what I'm in to!

I was closing in on making an offer on this one, but it's been sold. Dammit. Ah well, who knows what will happen with the financial climate, maybe something else will come along.

Yeah I know, like I said, it has history, but not fantastic history!

It's also been listed over a month, so if it was a great price and in decent condition I'd have thought it would have sold already.

I fully understand that an m3 is going to cost in maintenence, but this one seems to have OK service history (not fantastic, but it could be far worse) and almost certainly needs the rod bearings replaced, but even still, it seems to be priced below the rest on the market. I was wondering if anyone had actually been to look at the car, maybe it has a fault that is obvious when you hear it running or something.