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‘91 E30


KaiserRolls

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Over the last few months snap had been kicking around the idea of selling his car.

Occasionally he would text me and tell me he was serious, naturally I told him to go fly a kite there’s no way he could sell it. 

However as his texts kept getting more and more serious, so did my interest.

As some of you know I sold my first black e30 to stew and I text him basically yearly to buy it back. He always tells me to pound sand which is fair lol. For the last 5 years or so I have been on-and-off looking for a rust free e30, which is annoying. Don’t get me wrong I love my red car and it serves its purpose, but I can only get so many tetanus boosters before my eyes explode  

Anyways, In an effort to keep the car off the next BMW Facebook page of mouth breathers, I drove done to New Germany with Brooke on June 2 and made the decision to “diversify” my car collection. 

Upon arriving I was immediately sold. Snap has cared well for the car over the last 8 years and it shows. The paint may be worn and shows its age, but aren’t we all after so many years. What’s important to me is that pretty much every nut/bolt has been touched and mechanically the car is in awesome shape. 

We took it around for a quick test drive and that sealed the deal even further. Car pulls nicely and is geared fairly tall (for what I’m use to) and it cruises nicely. 

The drive back home went as expected, although I puckered a few times as the 3” exhaust was hanging fairly low

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Fast forward a week or so (from when I bought it) of driving and the honeymoon phase still hasn’t worn off. It’s refreshing to just hop in a car and drive wherever. However there were a few small things that needed to be buttoned up. The exhaust, while sounding awesome, wasn’t ideal for the post WWII german-esque roads that plague this entire state. 

So naturally I robbed the exhaust off the red car that I originally bought from leadballs. He described the sound as a “slightly lubed meat grinder” which I can confirm. It needed some minor work to fit and make perfect so I went to the local off road shop where a couple of my friends work and we got it sorted. Hangs up and out of the way and is secured with some new hangars 

With the car up on the lift I was able to get the full rust free experience I had been hoping for & cancelled my next tetanus booster appointment. 

Took the opportunity to replace the rear lock plates on the axle and re-torque the axle nuts

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Posting in the wrong order because I’m a scrub, but snap mentioned that the brakes were due soon. I ordered up some Zimmerman rotors and hawk hp+ pads. Knocked that out in an afternoon and the car felt much better when hopping on the brakes. Again it was so nice not having to use PB blaster or heat on anything 

I went out to do some hard stops and almost smoked a deer, good news is I had new brakes and rotors ha

now being an individual that doesn’t say no to a meal, the large steering wheel needed to go. I think the combo of comfort seats/steering wheel from a school bus and thunder thighs was too much. Ordered up a prototipo wheel in the 350mm variety and momo hub. Much better 

brooke also bought me a zhp knob for my bday so I slapped that on

 

 

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^all of the changes I made to the car came together in record time thanks to @patsbimmer1 getting me the momo hub in record time. This was all in prep to run the car in our local autocross. 

The car performed quite well. It was odd driving something in that environment that I have not had a hand in putting together, but snaps Work was top notch. 

I was going to put the re71r on the car, but late night Miata stuff ran late per usual lol. 

The g260 first to second gear shifts were something that I had yet to experience. That trans is frustrating to say the least. First 4 runs were throw away because of it. Last 4 runs I left in second gear which was brutally annoying. 

Good news I took first and last place in SM as I was the only car in the class haha. 

I do want to get the car on an alignment rack and get it sorted for peace of mind as it felt a touch odd. I texted snap and asked him about the tires and if they had been cold cycled - they had been which may have explained the lack of grip for a 200tw tire, unless that’s just normal of the falken azenis (pre +. i was jokingly told by the starter that “this isn’t a drift event” ha

 the seating experience can be best described as sitting in a church pew with a lap belt inside a Boeing 747 doing a barrel roll. 

Either way I had tons of fun and it was a nice care free experience and the car ran great all day with zero hiccups  

 

i have no pics or vids of the autox and I am deeply sorry to disappoint 

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Moving forward I will be tossing in my extra 6 button OBC to fill up the hole in the dash. I also ordered a new temp sensor for the water temp gauge so it matches the range correctly. I have the bimmer world oil distribution block waiting to go in so I can get the oil psi and oil temp gauge functioning. 

I have some spare black sport seats that I will most likely be putting in the car as well as black door cards/rear seat from the red car (already has corbeaus in it). I might try my hand on the carpet to make it black as well. The rear parcel shelf will get dyed black as well. 

My my goal is to just keep this car a rock solid driver and something that I can just hop in and go for a drive. Also Brooke likes driving it too, still on the fence about it though 0_o

^im going to try and get this wrapped up before July 8th autocross at shawano 

 

Sorry for the long winded posts but I felt this car needed to stay in Wibimmers & the story couldn’t end with it being sold to a random and disappearing into the world of bacon fenders and mouth breathers. I told snap a condition of the sale is that I will bring it to a mke autox event and he’s going to codrive it with me. 

 

 

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Im so glad the exhaust has been fixed correctly and little improvements have been made already

I did my best with this car with the time, money, and skill I had and hopefully you get to enjoy it trouble-free and just drive. I miss it badly but as stated before, it just doesn’t fit well with my dad-bod life anymore. I need a boosted van or something

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  • 2 weeks later...

Black interior is so much better than tan (IMO). So today I pulled everything and replaced it with the black interior from the red car. Basically robbed Peter to pay Paul.

anyways, obviously as the pics show I didn’t do the carpet because I want to keep driving the car and pulling the carpet and dyeing it sounds like a longer-than-2-hour-affair so it stays for now. At least gave me a chance to vacuum the years of snaps Cheerios out and fix my droopy black door cards lol

Currently have the fx1 in as a driver seat stand in for the autox tomorrow 

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19 minutes ago, snap said:

Whoa!

did you paint the speakers and dye the rear shelf or are those from the black car as well? 

 

Black speaker covers were from red car and the shelf I dyed black a couple years ago. Now that you bring this up I also forgot to change out the front speaker covers 

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@snap I need to get down to mke so you can experience the fun

also, for the 1-2 shift issues I had during the first autox, I just shifted sooner and slower. Seemed to work fine, still annoyed that you can’t ramrod it home. 

Had the car on re71r and tossed my corbeau in it. Night and day difference. 

I am going to be rebleeding the brakes and removing some fluid in the process as the reservoir is weeping from the cap

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Alright so I always assumed it was passenger rear because that wheel/hub has a tiny touch of play in it - but driving to work this morning and doing some zig zagging I believe it is the front passengers side howling

I will still be replacing the left rear anyways because the play bothers me. 

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19 hours ago, KaiserRolls said:

Alright so I always assumed it was passenger rear because that wheel/hub has a tiny touch of play in it - but driving to work this morning and doing some zig zagging I believe it is the front passengers side howling

I will still be replacing the left rear anyways because the play bothers me. 

Replace all of them? LOL

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