Does anyone else feel overwhelmed at their car sometimes?

[82eye]

This, An e30 was made for driving i rarely do things that keep car off the road, i.e. doing an engine build by a spare and build it offline so the car is off the road for the swap stage only.

only an option if you can source a spare. you won't find an m20 here. even m5x and s5x are no longer around if you go the popular swap routes. it's really only a few places in the states where it is possible to source those in any shape with any consistency.

[balocco]

I own a few classic cars including an e30. When I get overwhelmed I take a good long break from fretting over things. A fresh attitude goes a long way. There is rarely a week that goes by that something doesn’t go wrong with one of them. On Sunday I blew a coolant hose on the e30 and was too far from home so I needed a tow. About five weeks before that I had to tow my 74 Spitfire and discovered an old kill switch gone bad under the dash installed by PO. Glad I’m a AAA member. I too am a perfectionist and I find it’s a slippery slope. I make the cars so nice I’m nervous about driving them which is kinda ridiculous so in the future I’m only going to buy cars with reasonably good paint and only worry about reliability and fun drivability. If you have discovered that working on your e30 is not fun, I’d say sell it because the market is hot. While I like 80s cars like the e30, it’s much easier and cheaper to own a 70s or earlier car (of course I’m talking the likes of a BMW 2002, not a Lambo or Ferrari etc). because they are so easy to work on and there is no computer. I’m not a mechanic but I can fix almost anything on my Spitfire and my 74 Chevy square body. I’d also say that finding useful info online for repairing e30s is wanting compared to all the forums on e30 engine swaps and performance upgrades. Originality is not a high priority for most e30 owners.

[digger]

only an option if you can source a spare. you won't find an m20 here. even m5x and s5x are no longer around if you go the popular swap routes. it's really only a few places in the states where it is possible to source those in any shape with any consistency.

Don’t know where here is but don’t agree the USA is the only place on the planet to find m20 parts

[e30davie]

His profile suggests that "here" is Canada. Not sure what the status of e30 stuff is there, all i can think of is that they are probably mostly rusty...

Whilst the the prices have gone through the roof of late, even here in Australia there is reasonable number of engines around to be picked up. i just bought another m20b23 for the garage to tinker with, so the car can remain untouched until i swap it over, which may be years away, if i ever get that far... haha.

[Northern]

I think he's on the west coast, but I imagine there's more stuff there than here on the east coast. Too far from the US border to realistically ship large stuff, and I don't think there were a ton of cars here to begin with.
I know of maybe 10 people with e30s in this province, and probably another 10 that I've seen driving around the city by unknowns.
When I snapped my timing belt, I couldn't find a head locally and basically shipped one from BC that vanished enroute.
Ended up saying "fuck it" and swapping an M52 because they were so much easier to find.

[82eye]

Don’t know where here is but don’t agree the USA is the only place on the planet to find m20 parts

i'm in saskatchewan. there are a total of 4 registered e30's in a 100km radius. i've met all the owners. for used parts i can sometimes source from about 250km away. there is a total of one wrecking yard local, it's attached to a scrap steel mill, and they crush stuff as fast as it comes in. the last e30 in their yard was a little over 12 yrs ago.

[digger]

i'm in saskatchewan. there are a total of 4 registered e30's in a 100km radius. i've met all the owners. for used parts i can sometimes source from about 250km away. there is a total of one wrecking yard local, it's attached to a scrap steel mill, and they crush stuff as fast as it comes in. the last e30 in their yard was a little over 12 yrs ago.

So close enough to the USA for weekend road trip for cheap parts or getting things shipped then…..nothing like the guy on here that lives is the Middle East and can’t import parts who probably can legitimately claim it’s hard to get parts

[uturn]

I'm fortunate to have a few e30s, if I down one, I have another to drive while I wait for parts. Feeling overwhelmed not by the e30s but by the other project cars that have been languishing and waiting for my attention. Life has been moving quickly these past few years and starting to find I have less time for wrenching activities.

[travis816]

One thing I personal have learned and been taught is that if you try and make it to perfect, it will become un-fun and in usable. If your overwhelm your self in perfection and can’t enjoy the car or plane or house or what ever it is, you will never enjoy it. I like nice things, clean things, unique stuff but I don’t let any of it consume me. Well, maybe e30 stuff 😳.

enjoy, do some fun upgrades.. or sell and buy a nicer car! Sometimes value spent on a car is a terrine investment. Life’s not all about investments. One that is already done is many times cheaper then building one of your own.

[82eye]

So close enough to the USA for weekend road trip for cheap parts or getting things shipped then…..nothing like the guy on here that lives is the Middle East and can’t import parts who probably can legitimately claim it’s hard to get parts

oh god no.

no one cross border shops here. there's isn't a US city anywhere close. Calgary would be a better option. it's a little over 8 hours away.
i'm closer to north dakota and montana. not exactly known for dripping in bmws. i'm over 2 hrs from the border and there isn't a decent US city any where near there. even Vancouver is a better option for parts than the US.

it's really just big stuff. i can order any new part anyone else can. but i'm not gonna find a spare engine / trans / head / diff. i actually have 3 diffs. i grabbed everything i could. even rebuilt an ls and swapped gears / cases to get a 3.73 ls from a 4.10 unit.

edit : there's a city 250km away that used to have a few wreckers with parts, i used to make a few trips. i bought my car in the same city. the part sources dried up about a decade ago when the yards began getting closed. the gov't has made it super hard to be in the wrecking industry. they don't want anything older than ten yrs on the road. the ones that stuck around now have a great business.

[lukeADE335i]

Having parts shipped from the US to Canada is going to be fast and relatively inexpensive vs. shipping parts to Australia (like Davie, Digger and I do in this thread) & we have the same distance issues (next nearest city to me is 8 hours).

Luckily I have a bit of a parts hoard going on already & we don’t have the rust issues you do in Canada due to no salting the roads down here.

[82eye]

Having parts shipped from the US to Canada is going to be fast and relatively inexpensive vs. shipping parts to Australia (like Davie, Digger and I do in this thread) & we have the same distance issues (next nearest city to me is 8 hours).

Luckily I have a bit of a parts hoard going on already & we don’t have the rust issues you do in Canada due to no salting the roads down here.

i got lucky on the car itself. it was originally from the coast so there was not much rust. there would have been none at all but the second owner winter drove it. he didn't even know what an e30 is. all he knew was he had a bmw to try and impress his clients. i don't winter drive the car and plan on getting it in to body and paint this coming year. been saving for years.

shipping here ranges from not bad to frigging atrocious. it all depends on who the vendor uses. if it's fedex only then just pass. fedex piles loads of hidden charges on then holds your stuff for ransom at the door when they deliver.

they use their own brokerage house, and will charge and pocket tariffs that the gov't and regular mail service normally waive. then they charge extra for the "service" their brokerage provided to rape you.