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Neil Payne

1989 E30 320i

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Hi all,

I bought this car just before Christmas last year as a project to restore/do up. I have given it a bit of a tickle up inside, dyed the carpets black to get rid of the dirty cream colour, replaced the door cards with dark blue ones and threw on a set of seat covers just to clean it up a bit inside. It had king super low springs in the back and dobi sports in the front so it didn't sit very flat, so have replaced the super lows with standard lows to even her out.

I got rid of the standard pipe, then made a 2" twin pipe straight through with coby mufflers, sounds beautiful but doesn't deafen you

Most recently I bought a second motor and did a full rebuild from the ground up on it and have just finished the swap plus a new clutch and a tidy up in the engine bay. Runs lovely, nice and tight and pulls like a train (instead of smoking like one like the old engine) :)

Next up is the body, couple of small pieces of rust on the rear valance to fix up and try get hold of a lower lip for the front valance, have bought the paint to respray the whole car in the original colour with a metal fleck. would also like to get either a set of bbs basket weaves or a dished DTM style wheel to pump out the stance a little.

thanks for reading my thread and ill keep adding pics and updates as I go :)

First day

c53O0Nb.jpg

Original interior

dyJinAT.jpg

Rebuilt block

71qpyyS.jpg

Rebuilt head

SgfLtuG.jpg

Completed rebuild

PM4HzIr.jpg

Finished engine swap

qlJD3oI.jpg

Stainless exhaust

rLLJDb4.jpg

Touched up Interior, still hoping to get hold of a set of leathers for it but they seem to be tricky to get hold of.

UAlfju9.jpg

Eye Lids

JmocUag.jpg

.

Edited by Neil Payne

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Nice work on the car it's looking good, E36 seat swap could make it easier to find leathers

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Nice work on the car it's looking good, E36 seat swap could make it easier to find leathers

Thanks man, have thought about doing exactly but I'm not sure what I'd do with the back seat.

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the e36 sedan rear seat will fit ive got one in coupe, it should be the same fit as the sedans as they share the same mountings

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Careful of the e36 coupe seats, the rears take a bit more playing around with to get them to fit, look much nicer but it's a bit of a mission

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No worries i went through all the options when i did mine, tried the coupe rear but because they are split and normally fold down it would mean making up all new mounts whereas the sedan share the same design mountings so you can use the originals

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I think ill try stick with the factory mounts, certainly sounds like a lot less of a fuss and the sedan rear seat looks just as good

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New wheels on today, just need a higher profile tyre and I'll be sorted :)

Will post pictures tonight

Edited by Neil Payne

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is that a M20B25 you rebuilt?

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JsN3uEw.jpg

Here she is sitting on the new wheels, getting a 55 profile tyre fitted tomorrow which should fill the arches a bit more.

is that a M20B25 you rebuilt?

I wish, sadly only a M20B20 though. Edited by Neil Payne
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Wowsers! 15's?

Edit: yep, just saw you're selling some 15" tyres. Where did you get these?

Edited by tidyverty
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Wowsers! 15's?

Edit: yep, just saw you're selling some 15" tyres. Where did you get these?

Yea 15x8 all round. i bought them off a guy who imported them for a civic of all things (hence 45 profiles) but blew it up before they arrived so i bought them off him as a wheels and tyres package brand new. just need a 55 profile which will hopefully get put on tomorrow morning to finish them off :)

Nice look cabriolet!!

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Looking good man, nice choice of wheels

thanks man, took a bit of hunting around and waiting to get them but was definitely worth it.

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Are they replicas? Can't tell from your pic if its 3 piece or not.

Still look good though

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

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Ive got a couple of lip options.

spare IS lip made by a member on here, ordered it, unpacked it then found a tech 2 kit so its unmarked.

Also have the OEM facelift lower lip of my '88 e30.

PM if interested. Items are in Tauranga.

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Are they replicas? Can't tell from your pic if its 3 piece or not.

Still look good though

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

yea they're replicas, didn't have the budget for originals. Not a bad rep though I don't think..

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They look good to me dude. How come you didn't consider 16"s? If you're going the replica route you have a pretty large range of sources so they're not impossible to find.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

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I was actually going to buy dtm sugoi's but these became available for the same price so they seemed a far better match. Considered importing 16's but these were already in nz

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