This is the ups and downs of my E21 ownership
About the car:
-Grey market 323i brought over to Colorado in 1994, this car was federalized with US spec stuff like the terrible rear reflectors and has holes cut out where US bumpers were mounted.
-M20B25 swapped in to the original getrag 245, 3.93lsd
-bilstein sport shocks and bav auto lowering springs, st sway bars
-factory E21 recaros
-Extremely awesome Opal Grun Metallic Color
-came with ESM's but had a ecs tuning spacer issue were they would wobble when driven!
so I sold them.
-has rare bolt up supersprint 323i mufflers
-had general E21 rust issues but was better than most E21s I've seen
-260,000 miles and still counting
-had a terrible start issue but was fixed with a new FPR
when I first had it for a few months, such an awesome car pulled hard and looked great while doing it:
Not a fan of the poke the 15x8 ESMs had on the front, for anyone that knows E21s have a weird front offset of 13et so finding wheels that fit well is a bitch
Bavarians of feather park together;)
Then this happened
Like any stupid teenager would do I took a turn to fast in the rain and found out what that famous E21 oversteer was all about, I tried to correct and power out but ended up hitting a wall, before any cops showed up I was out of there limping it home with a cracked header loud as hell
after this I was mortified for a week straight of what I had done to such a clean car. I pulled it apart the next day and found out no frame or suspension damage just mounting damage, and being a poor college student I didnt have space or time to swap over the car so I did what any sane person would do and go to the junkyard and cut up a E21 and weld my car back together.
Just my luck a local yard had an E21, and anyone not in Cali that has looked for E21s in yards knows that they show up every 6 months if your lucky.
The donor
cut this poor car up it wasn't that far gone either, but it's corner will live on in another car:)
I drove around mad max style for awhile it looked really aggressive with the ESMs, you can sorta see some of the damage to the mounting points.
the piece
fixing the damage
In the end it all lined up very well and everything ended up bolting right were it should very happy with how it turned out although it's not perfect and some may argue about cutting up such a big part of the car it was mostly mounting points for headlights and me wanting the car to be whole again.
Spray bombed it and stopped some rust
mad maxxed
winter was on its way and I was going to drive it through the Colorado winter so I started with eliminating any rust
winter beater status, with E30 weaves and 185 snows
found a guy with the valence I needed, had to have it shipped via greyhound, this thing was a bitch to find but it was cheap and was what I needed. Makes you miss how easy it is to get E30 parts
winter fun, this thing was a trooper through the snow never had any problems either, except BMWs terrible E28 and E21 heater design were it only goes to the windshield and your feet, your hands freeze the whole drive :hitler:
this happened
which led to this
then I found these to holes aswell, these were really odd spots but Im glad I found them
sorry don't have the pictures of them welded up, it really sucked when I had these holes because I still had to drive it with all the interior out and and giant holes in the floor.
At this point the car was coming together, I ordered a couple spray matched paint cans off paintscratch.com at 25$ a can, the fenders barely match but its fine for now, I'm poor lol so everything is diy. In the future I want a professional to atleast respray the fenders. the front valence turned out pretty good it matched better than the fender. Also picked up some rare Hella E21 big small halogen headlights for 4 cylinder cars that just had the big single headlights. I love german ebay.
The rear parcel shelf was falling apart so I went all vwortex on it and actually like it a lot
backseat all in and clean
Gave the center console the hipster treatment
Interior shot with my new Condor speed shop knob hooked up to a z3 1.9 shift rod, I really love the Condor knob
Bought some 15x7 et12 rikens from the 80's
refinished with duplicolor wheel paint
went to a local cars and coffee meetup and an RS7 parked next to me so I couldn't resist
met up with some clowns
unfiltered raw lambo ass
got a local junkyard score at 20$! a real bbs valence, I soon sent it off to the spray booth aka my backyard
Got it mounted and bought a shitty euro bumper off a guy on ye old bimmerforums for 50$. this is how it sits today, it looked as though it wouldn't ever look good again after my pope the tires moment but I'm glad that it had come this far and is still running strong at a 260,000 miles.
thanks for reading
About the car:
-Grey market 323i brought over to Colorado in 1994, this car was federalized with US spec stuff like the terrible rear reflectors and has holes cut out where US bumpers were mounted.
-M20B25 swapped in to the original getrag 245, 3.93lsd
-bilstein sport shocks and bav auto lowering springs, st sway bars
-factory E21 recaros
-Extremely awesome Opal Grun Metallic Color
-came with ESM's but had a ecs tuning spacer issue were they would wobble when driven!
so I sold them.-has rare bolt up supersprint 323i mufflers
-had general E21 rust issues but was better than most E21s I've seen
-260,000 miles and still counting
-had a terrible start issue but was fixed with a new FPR
when I first had it for a few months, such an awesome car pulled hard and looked great while doing it:
Not a fan of the poke the 15x8 ESMs had on the front, for anyone that knows E21s have a weird front offset of 13et so finding wheels that fit well is a bitch
Bavarians of feather park together;)
Then this happened
Like any stupid teenager would do I took a turn to fast in the rain and found out what that famous E21 oversteer was all about, I tried to correct and power out but ended up hitting a wall, before any cops showed up I was out of there limping it home with a cracked header loud as hell
after this I was mortified for a week straight of what I had done to such a clean car. I pulled it apart the next day and found out no frame or suspension damage just mounting damage, and being a poor college student I didnt have space or time to swap over the car so I did what any sane person would do and go to the junkyard and cut up a E21 and weld my car back together.
Just my luck a local yard had an E21, and anyone not in Cali that has looked for E21s in yards knows that they show up every 6 months if your lucky.
The donor
cut this poor car up it wasn't that far gone either, but it's corner will live on in another car:)
I drove around mad max style for awhile it looked really aggressive with the ESMs, you can sorta see some of the damage to the mounting points.
the piece
fixing the damage
In the end it all lined up very well and everything ended up bolting right were it should very happy with how it turned out although it's not perfect and some may argue about cutting up such a big part of the car it was mostly mounting points for headlights and me wanting the car to be whole again.
Spray bombed it and stopped some rust
mad maxxed
winter was on its way and I was going to drive it through the Colorado winter so I started with eliminating any rust
winter beater status, with E30 weaves and 185 snows
found a guy with the valence I needed, had to have it shipped via greyhound, this thing was a bitch to find but it was cheap and was what I needed. Makes you miss how easy it is to get E30 parts
winter fun, this thing was a trooper through the snow never had any problems either, except BMWs terrible E28 and E21 heater design were it only goes to the windshield and your feet, your hands freeze the whole drive :hitler:
this happened
which led to this
then I found these to holes aswell, these were really odd spots but Im glad I found them
sorry don't have the pictures of them welded up, it really sucked when I had these holes because I still had to drive it with all the interior out and and giant holes in the floor.
At this point the car was coming together, I ordered a couple spray matched paint cans off paintscratch.com at 25$ a can, the fenders barely match but its fine for now, I'm poor lol so everything is diy. In the future I want a professional to atleast respray the fenders. the front valence turned out pretty good it matched better than the fender. Also picked up some rare Hella E21 big small halogen headlights for 4 cylinder cars that just had the big single headlights. I love german ebay.
The rear parcel shelf was falling apart so I went all vwortex on it and actually like it a lot
backseat all in and clean
Gave the center console the hipster treatment
Interior shot with my new Condor speed shop knob hooked up to a z3 1.9 shift rod, I really love the Condor knob
Bought some 15x7 et12 rikens from the 80's
refinished with duplicolor wheel paint
went to a local cars and coffee meetup and an RS7 parked next to me so I couldn't resist
met up with some clowns
unfiltered raw lambo ass
got a local junkyard score at 20$! a real bbs valence, I soon sent it off to the spray booth aka my backyard
Got it mounted and bought a shitty euro bumper off a guy on ye old bimmerforums for 50$. this is how it sits today, it looked as though it wouldn't ever look good again after my pope the tires moment but I'm glad that it had come this far and is still running strong at a 260,000 miles.
thanks for reading
i have no idea what i am doing with my life
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