Hey guys, just like the title says, I got my very first E30 today. This is my first time posting on this forum so I'll introduce myself before I get into this whole mess of questions. Hi, my name is Justin and I'm a 21 year old kid from California. I absolutely love cars; especially BMW's and especially cars with some soul, that's why I chose an E30 as my next car. The E30 I picked up today is a 1993 325i convertible 5-speed and so far, i'm loving it. I've had a '94 E34 530i as well as a '99 E36 M3. I loved both cars dearly but I've always had an attraction to E30s so I finally decided to pick one up. I have a few questions about some of the faults on this car:
1) The guy who I purchased this from said the odometer broke about 4K miles ago but the thing is, it still registers miles but very, very slowly. What could this be? I was hoping new gears would fix this but wanted to check and see what everyone else has done to fix this since I've heard this problem is common amongst E30s.
2) The automatic convertible top was converted to a manual drop top but it wont latch when I put it down. I know this happens when it's been converted, but is there any way to fix this? I plan on getting a hardtop as soon as I can find one but i'd like to be able to put the top down for the time being if possible.
3) When I close my doors, the front windows rub/scrape on top of the back windows and make it hard to open the passenger door sometimes. I believe they're misaligned but i'm not positive. Is there any way I can fix this on my own or is it best to take it in and get it fixed?
4) Another issue I was worried about, was one of the back windows having problems rolling up. All my windows roll down perfectly fine, but when it's time to roll them up, my back left window wont roll up. I have to turn the car off as well as the stereo in order for it to roll up. If there is something I can do to fix this, please, let me know what I can do!
5) The car came with some pin stripes on it and i'm not the biggest fan. They're definitely stickers so I'm wondering if there's a special technique to getting them off properly or if I can just yank them off and clean any left over residue easily.
6) The hood of the car opens perfectly fine but when I go to close it, the one folding hinge thingy (for lack of a better term that i'm aware of) that holds the hood up won't fold up to close unless I wiggle and jiggle and force the thing to fold. It feels really sketchy doing it so I was wondering if there's anything I can do to fix this.
7) What are your guys' experience/advice when it comes to removing the power steering. Ever since I had my miata with no power steering, I've loved having to put in more steering effort but obviouly the miata is lighter than the E30 and it might have stuff on it from the factory to make no power steering more practical. I was just wondering what your guys' opinions are on removing the power steering.
Cool I want to do a short shift kit in the near future and wanted to know how difficult this would be. I know this is probably a very stupid question, but I don't need to remove the tranny to install the short shift kit, correct? I'm hoping I can just get in there from the top but what are your guys' experience with how difficult this job is?
9) My front seats aren't in the best shape and I was looking into getting bucket seats for autox/track use. Would I need specials rails or mounts to mount buckets in there?
Those are all the questions I can think of for now but i'm sure I'll come up with some more once I drive it some more. Thanks a lot for your help and advice in advance and I'm really excited to be a part of this forum! Damn it feels good to be a part of the BMW community once again.
1) The guy who I purchased this from said the odometer broke about 4K miles ago but the thing is, it still registers miles but very, very slowly. What could this be? I was hoping new gears would fix this but wanted to check and see what everyone else has done to fix this since I've heard this problem is common amongst E30s.
2) The automatic convertible top was converted to a manual drop top but it wont latch when I put it down. I know this happens when it's been converted, but is there any way to fix this? I plan on getting a hardtop as soon as I can find one but i'd like to be able to put the top down for the time being if possible.
3) When I close my doors, the front windows rub/scrape on top of the back windows and make it hard to open the passenger door sometimes. I believe they're misaligned but i'm not positive. Is there any way I can fix this on my own or is it best to take it in and get it fixed?
4) Another issue I was worried about, was one of the back windows having problems rolling up. All my windows roll down perfectly fine, but when it's time to roll them up, my back left window wont roll up. I have to turn the car off as well as the stereo in order for it to roll up. If there is something I can do to fix this, please, let me know what I can do!
5) The car came with some pin stripes on it and i'm not the biggest fan. They're definitely stickers so I'm wondering if there's a special technique to getting them off properly or if I can just yank them off and clean any left over residue easily.
6) The hood of the car opens perfectly fine but when I go to close it, the one folding hinge thingy (for lack of a better term that i'm aware of) that holds the hood up won't fold up to close unless I wiggle and jiggle and force the thing to fold. It feels really sketchy doing it so I was wondering if there's anything I can do to fix this.
7) What are your guys' experience/advice when it comes to removing the power steering. Ever since I had my miata with no power steering, I've loved having to put in more steering effort but obviouly the miata is lighter than the E30 and it might have stuff on it from the factory to make no power steering more practical. I was just wondering what your guys' opinions are on removing the power steering.
Cool I want to do a short shift kit in the near future and wanted to know how difficult this would be. I know this is probably a very stupid question, but I don't need to remove the tranny to install the short shift kit, correct? I'm hoping I can just get in there from the top but what are your guys' experience with how difficult this job is?
9) My front seats aren't in the best shape and I was looking into getting bucket seats for autox/track use. Would I need specials rails or mounts to mount buckets in there?
Those are all the questions I can think of for now but i'm sure I'll come up with some more once I drive it some more. Thanks a lot for your help and advice in advance and I'm really excited to be a part of this forum! Damn it feels good to be a part of the BMW community once again.
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