328FTW

Perfectly fine, just PM me when you are ready.

UPDATE: The car has been scraped, only have what is listed. Mostly sold out now If I get any details incorrect sorry, I'm doing my best with my yet limited knowledge on these cars. If this breaks rules then mod can affix or delete however I did read the rules and think we're all good. E30 325i 4 door sh*t brown pre facelift Interior is pretty beaten All prices minus shipping Bonnet $40 Steering wheel old 4 spoke style $10 ECU motronic 1.0 (will grab part number later) $30 Injectors $30 the set Painted intake $40 Air flow meter $40 Rear diff with axles/rear subframe $150 Rear window $20 Windscreen with couple chips, no large cracks $10 325i m20b25 shortblock, 300,000km but no knocking and no appearance of bore lip etc $50 325i m20b25 facelift motor camshaft $20 (I'm not sure but I think it's an upgrade on the 2.7 motors, possibly the 2.0 as well) Radio ariel, manual (not electric) $5 Front brake calipers + rotors (will paint them up pretty if you want <3) $40 PICS Can post more pictures of items on request, thanks for viewing. I've cleared a bit of stuff in a short time and everyone has been good to deal with so cheers guys. Will try continue to be prompt and informative with updates via this thread.

There shouldn't be outstanding fines, total reaches say 3k, car gets taken, sold. You get the balance back when you do a course or alternatively it's a piece of sh*t and it's sold and you're held liable for the rest, arrested if you're caught 3 times with outstanding money. More than enough chances, doesn't piss around. Even if you're loaded it's inconvenient to have the car taken. I find a lot of things in cars, not much surprises me anymore. It's onwards to a better life now <3

Glovebox was stuck shut; so today I drive a screwdriver through the latch and break it open hoping to find a pot of gold. Instead I found this. I added up the fines quickly. $31,085 gross. The balance maxxed at 14k. I also found some more parking fines for failure to display rego etc which were council issued and it seems left off the list so over the years this guy has probably had over $35,000 in fines. It's almost hilarious they just kept fining him like it was effective in the slightest. There isn't money against the car, it's just staggering how long this went on. I'm rating this up there as one of my most interesting finds in a car I've bought.

What you after for the box? I'm pending purchase on a automatic car I lowballed for. In which case I'll be pulling the low mile motor for my car and parting the rest out cheap, so I might be posting parts for sale soon and will consider lowball offers on them. Car is complete and running, dereg though. Will be picking that up next week. Pre facelift though :| If things go well I'll edit the thread to say sorted cause I'll have what I require. Till then anything could still happen though so it pays not to shut the door and say I'm no longer interested but it will hinge on if things go ahead with my purchase.

Engine is an M20B20, depends on if you do just the gasket or do a full regrind set with stem seals, intake, exhaust gasket etc. I'd say about 150, if someone else is doing the work then add labour. Guessing a bit, they are simple to do though

Anyone here done it? I've done a full interior recovering of seats and parcel tray before but not a dash. Mine has a couple cracks, wouldn't mind a leather clone or some kind of suede done cleanly. Search just brings up people asking about companies, I'm talking in my garage by myself with lots of swearing.

Do you need rails on the seats?

PM'd, I'm quite keen

Sorted, no need to bump

Dirty big crack between the exhaust seat and water gallery on no.3. Took me an age to find it to, I cleaned the sh*t out of that head. Pricing out M50 swaps and the like, however I'd rather not piss around and just an M20B25 longblock or head would suit me best right now. I found a lower km's shortblock for 2 hundy that would probably work out cheaper than doing anything with my engine, just part it out cheap. If anyone has a head (or cheap longblock) spare then feel free to PM me a price. I'm also fine with pulling the head off a partout motor myself if the price is right and you don't mind some random guy at your place for a couple hours. I'll slap up a wanted ad and troll trademe for partouts tonight. Joy of joys.

All the ports look kinda dirty, valves don't look pitted or burned. In fact everything looks really good. Just it had milky shitty oil and was overheating. Although I do know I replaced one engine hose with a new one after the old one had gone to sh*t which probably helped alot. One thing though is I dunno how cowboy the headgasket when it was last replaced was done. No machine marks from planing, a few rough sand marks from cleaning the gasket off, headbolts look like the same 300,000km ones that came out of it half rounded off. It may of been twisting/lifting and only showing up under load. It didn't fail long after that was done, head could be soft to so should probably do a hardness test. To machine it and do stem seals it really needs to come apart anyway so I can pull all the valves out, give it a hell clean and see around the seats and sh*t better. You can just feel the joy emanating from me, I just LOVE chasing non-obvious problems.

Alright I'll check those areas carefully. I was hoping to see an area of the headgasket with signs of failure. The fact that I don't see that makes me worry a bit. I hate dealing with cracked heads. Even though it was steaming like hell out the exhaust the pistons are all relitively dirty to. Makes me also wonder if the steam was in fact only noticed after it was overheated and was/is actually just the exhaust full of condensation from sitting. As a side note the intake valves are pretty hefty sized things.

I pulled the top today, bores look ok, no big marks, can't really feel any lip. However the headgasket looks good, don't see any obvious cracks in the head. I'll see about crack testing then planing the head after I inspect the block for cracks. Is there anywhere specific I should look that's weak on the e30 325i motor? I'm unsure how else water would get in the oil.

I haven't actually opened my motor yet but it's done a few k's and it's probably easiest if I pull it out so I can plastiguage things, check bores, measure this and that. I assume it drops out the bottom? Also it appears BMW uses the same system as many other manufacturers to select bearing size based on rod size, crank size, clearance etc. Is there a guide to selection? the factory manual seems kinda piss poor to be honest, the layout in the PDFs I've found is shocking. Also been plucking around for suppliers; am I correct in assuming Euro - Italian Car Parts is where I should be making my first stop for enquires? Hopefully it's not too shagged when I get it open but I want to have my sh*t straight for assessing if it's viable to actually fix. I've got all that neat stuff like micrometers and runout gauges, might as well use them.

I was afraid of the anti abortionists beating my door down. Didn't know there was a nicer wheel, I'll have to go look for a shitty one now to see how much more superior I can feel. He's my mate but he is a messy c**t, I think he cultivates mold on old chicken wings as a pastime. Nothing new, all of my cars are never ending projects, mostly cause I try to take on crazy sh*t. Yeah he said something about that and it had a few extra dodads on it, just too bad it's autotragic. Kills the whole "driver's car" thing Where do you hail from? If you're from the MR2 world lots of people know me and my old beater dirt track car although I don't go to the NZ site anymore after a shitfight via PM with one of the mods who was a cocky c**t. The honda guys I kinda go on there and stir sh*t, don't actually really post anything useful ever. Kiwibiker I haven't been around that long however they're an awesome bunch, and justcommodores I don't own a commodore anymore. Can't remember where else but toyspeed but I haven't been there for a while, they need to bring the forums into this century IMO. Actually for those that don't know me this is the perfect time to whore it up. If anyone did the 2011 cannonball run we were this car. I want to do it again in my V6 mr2 I have a couple never ending projects, the prelude is really close now but I need to do the headgasket and waterpump for a bad leak however I'm at the end of my rope for pulling the head off again. To avoid the stupid question I always get no that's not a radiator, it's an intercooler. The new TIG is going to help me heaps Does anyone know if I can fit the e30 engine in the back over the axles? The shed is my dad's but I fix all his sh*t so it works out. I am capable of doing really tidy work when I feel like it and the TIG is actually part of trying to tidy up some of the fabrication I do as well as expand my capabilities. I've got to price up paint and a few other things for this e30 then decide what I do from there. An acrylic pearl white would look minter on it and save doing the door jams etc I can actually do upholstery fairly decent to so might look at recovering the interior, I have some new seats for it I'll look at if they fit. I've also been plucking over motor options and what limitations there are on the 2.5 which I can overcome with the motor on the floor or if it's buggered what is involved in an M50 swap. I'm open to whatever depending on what pops up. For now I just want to fix it as is then it can be driven and if I find a manual box with all the bizzos then do that to.

So here is what we'll call the baseline. I found humour in pulling it to bits today, needs work, lots of it but I recently acquired a new toy. A big ass miller tig welder, while I was picking that up I dropped off some big oxy bottles to be tested n filled, picked up the welder then went to get the car to haul back up the country. I've basically either gotta get the engine out onto the stand or find another one, it's blowing water into the cylinders and exhaust gases into the water etc. Not a good look however dat straight 6 rumble. From what I know it's got the front lip, the later "smiley" lights and was owned by BMW shop mechanics for a good portion of its life. It's the other portion of it that has done the damage. Gave it shot with degreaser all over, let it soak then blasted with the waterblaster with some suds in it. Came up much better. My phone is sub par at showing Full of crap To list what I found Car cover Snap lock bags (handy for pulling the motor apart) shell 15w-40 rust converter and primer sandwich press upholstry cleaner box full of satay chicken noodle sachets bleach 3 bottles of ajax jiff that had exploded all over the boot 3 cans of tuna a new FM shower radio full shaving gel a pack of shaving razors various spanners which oddly enough completed my set in the shop glovebox handle some shoes, several ties, some shorts and some dirty underwear new roll of rubbish bags which was handy some new buckets The world according to clarkson volume 2 and "the art of war" some brand new work gloves (thank you, will take that) pack of zipties which I threw in the racecar a billion drink bottles several bank statements a birthday bag with long dead flowers in it a few bags of popcorn which I microwaved and ate some flysprays several drinking cups couple unopened heineken (drank) brand new tube puncture repair kit a shaker with oregano in it Some rope some rolls of electrical tape couple cresents for my toolbox genuine zippo lighter that works new bottle of seal up, optimistic at best especially when it's still in the bottle And to finish up it's former broken life and give it one last run before pulling it to bits. If it can't crack a skid it needs to either GTFO the shop or be made capable of doing one. The idea now is to make it better and not break it from here on in. There is a small part of me that wants to just do it in BMW colours with the Red and Blue stripe deal taking up the entire rear 1/3 of the car. Could use some paint there anyway but the grown up thing to do would be to just leave it boring er I mean white. So that was my first day of owning a beamer, I think this makes 10 cars I own right now. Should just stop but I can't.

All stuff I've mulled over myself. I'm just unfamiliar with how easy parts are to get in this new world. The only other euro I've had decent experience with is my dad's 560SEC merc. Looks the tits and goes like hell but when it breaks run away, run fast and run far. I've got other pressing issues though like the blown headgasket. Depending on how bad the motor is when I start measuring bores and checking clearances I either redo the motor or buy another. But if I'm buying another a wrecked car might be best or cutting a deal with someone for a box, engine combo. Really to be found out later down the line. Just trying to familiarise myself with the diffs, boxes, shafts and whatnot I might need. Google can be a bit vague on some of the finer details.

See that's the thing, I dunno if the 240 and 260 shafts are different or if I should bother piecing together stuff or just outright find a complete kit. Turns out this one is a getrag 260 I believe so that's good. Other than that I just need the pedal box and stuff but I'll find out from him. EDIT: I realise you can modify shafts, I've built them myself before but I'd rather not do that

So I landed up buying an e30 cheap. I've been offered a cheap gearbox, does a 320i manual fit on a 325? I'm unsure of the differences of the getrag boxes like the 240 vs the 260. They bolt up the same with the same flywheel and driveshaft (I know the manual and auto driveshaft is different but the 260 and 240?) Oh would help if I put model, e30 1988 or something. I also don't know how thin on the ground e30 manual driveshafts etc are, if I find his "kit" is incomplete even if it's cheap is it worth bothering or will I never find the odd bits to make it complete at a price that makes it viable vs buying a known complete kit? Didn't really fit in any of the tech sections properly, move if appropriate. Ta

I did wonder that. I was watching different ones and it's hard to get a handle on things because they're all broken in some way. Literally every single one, shot wheelbearings, blown struts. I guess most are just older and beat to hell now. Ah well, leaves me with more to figure out what motorbike I wanna buy now

Because it has taken me 2 years to type this. Greetings and salutations from my wonderful world of hacking things to bits for the hell of it. More to the point I'm thinking of hacking apart an e30, or at least fixing it up nice. It's a 325iSE with about 300,000km on it. Has a few issues and I was thinking of pulling the head and giving it a tickle up because that's what I do. Maybe even paint it if needed, 2 tone black/white acrylic. It's being offered to me at 1k, has an overheating issue. Could be anything from a bad waterpump to warped/soft heat or whatever but I guess that's why it hasn't been fixed cause if it was that easy to just magic better it would be back on the road. White, original wheels, couple little rust bubbles, couple little dents a dolly would probably knock out. Automatic but can convert if I find bits at the right price, otherwise it's tidy despite high kms. When I can be bothered I'm a decent painter and detailer, plus engine builder. It would be another project and I'd probably be looking to flip it with the price difference for my troubles, that or use it as a daily for a short time and sell my VN SS commodore. Worth bothering, yes, no, maybe? I know it didn't get too too hot cause I know the guy and when it happened I trailered it for him back into town. I know they are quite easy to work on, I've worked on it before. I just dunno what it's worth. At worst I'm looking for a shortblock or longblock which wouldn't be that much I'm sure then just new gaskets etc all around. I know the e30s have a following, just has to translate into not taking a huge hit cause I could buy any old uninteresting shitbox instead, however that's no fun is it?