ducatiss

The waterpump is one of those items on the e30 that is best replaced if showing any signs of problems. It would be false economy to just replace a seal as the pumps themselves are not that expensive and once replaced will give you piece of mind. While you or your mechanic are doing it, replace the cam belt at the same time.

Peter Baker Transport should be able to do it. Count yourself lucky that NZ Post wont carry it - those tards lost my brand new radiator a couple of weeks ago!

Cheers for that - will take some pics and get back to you.

Looks like my heater core and or valve is leaking. At the moment I have the bigger air con unit in there and am wondering whether I should just remove the lot and install just the basic heater components from another e30. The rest of the air-con has already been removed. Are new heater core's an expensive item or is it ok to go second hand here? Ditto with the valve?

Anyone got a pre-facelift throttle body from a 325i and maybe also the rubber boot surplus to requirements they want to sell? PM me with the details. Cheers. NB Just looked at the ETK and there doesnt seem to be any difference between pre fl and fl throttle bodies. Both the same Part no

Cheers for that - a good read. Love the comment on the negatives..."Easy to make them look shockingly bad"

A further entry in the saga... Pulled the new radiator out and compared to the original one, the outlet location to the bottom hose is different. The original being offset to the left by about three cm which accounts for why there is so little clearance between the bottom hose and the PS pump pulley with the new one installed. I may be able to take up that difference a little by a shorter PS pump belt but it is the correct one for the car so best I think to sort the problem out properly rather than bodge a fix. The garage had my old one to compare and take part nos off so there should be no reason why it is different. Back to the garage in the morning!!

I have PM's you with my details. Quite happy to pay for one. Cheers.

Its the one with the rev limiter - where did you get your estimate of 10 bucks from?

I have been looking for ages for a cover for the diagnostic connector for a pre faceligt e30 (see pic) Cant seem to track one down in the ETK. If someone either has one they wish to sell or can point me in the right direction with a part no I would be grateful. They are a smaller size than the post facelift ones.

This isnt a great shot but will show where I am talking about. There is about a cm of clearance there. I think you might be right on the money with the belt adjustment as the pump looks to be the end of its adjustment so will remove the belt and look for a slightly shorter one and see how I go. Might also replace that bottom hose for good measure.

If yours is the pre-facelift engine (the distibutor is down the left side of the engine block) then a new cap wont be expensive. I was also quoted something stupid by repco but being generous to them, most repco staff are not trained in sufficient depth to know which cap you should have for your particular model. A genuine BMW on is the way to go here and from my own experience pretty cheap.

Well done - You might now need to replace the rotor and distributor cap if it worn. Will make a big difference if it is.

What is the normal amount of clearance between the power steering belt and the bottom radiator hose? 1cm (maybe even a bit less) does not seem like a lot.

Thanks for that - mission accomplished. One more question though - The clearance is fairly tight between the the bottom hose and the power steering pump. Id say at the moment there is about 1cm. The radiator has also been replaced with a non genuine BMW one though it is a replacement BMW one if you know what I mean.

Cheers for your quick reply - thought as much but never hurts to ask.

Thought I'd spend an hour in the garage today replacing my engine mounts on my E30. Replaced the right hand one easy enough. Simple job I thought until I found that some gorilla had torqued up the left hand top nut to somewhere over 500 foot pounds and I cant budge it. I can see the nut is now just starting to round off so my question is before I completly round it off... Is is permissable to remove the bracket holding the mount to the engine block (that way I can attack that nut with something more substantial or cut the old mount off)

yes probably - when I did mine I had to crank for prob 10 sec (seemed longer) so that fuel could build up pressure. If somehow you have fitted it the wrong way round and your injectors have been filled with crap, then the short answer is that the fuel rail and all injectors are removed and cleaned. From memory (could be wrong here) the injectors have their own little filters in them which may now be blocked. I think that botanymotorworx raises a very good point re your filter - the right way is to buy a new filter.

Unlikely - crap fuel may cause it to run bad but not so much that it shouldnt fire. Suggest you pull and clean up your plugs. Check spark etc while you are at it, and try again.

Yeah, I have also heard horror stories of large bills for the many repairs that come up. I would like to buy a 911 but after talking with a couple of owners and reading up as much as I could was appalled at the chronic early failures of engines and the repair bills that were well just beyond my budget. However I would still be interested in learning what other owners think about their 911's and even the 944 S2.

Maybe we should have a useful links page as I have dozens or BMW links in my favourites that have proved to me very handy. Here's one U.S forum that has a heap of info - check out the photo guide on removing the sump on the E30 (while leaving everything else in place!) http://www.e30tech.com/forum/

Yup - and I bet the wage rates in Germany compared with NZ are quite high so its all relative. What is needed is some sort of idea of the cost of a litre of fuel as a percentage of the average wage to give a true idea of the cost when comparing various countries. I don't think NZer's would cope at 2.90 a litre.

I have also seen that on occasion - comes on, goes out, no problems as of yet.

You might be able to find some good panels off a wrecker or the likes of trademe - depends on where the dents are I guess - do you have some pics? I have said this before but good and cheap rarely go together - especially in the case of repairing BMW's

I would fill your braking system and bleed it first, then if there is still a problem, tackle it from there. Is your brake pedal fully up when your lights on on?