E30 Zone

right, been awake all night, cant bloody sleep, i wanna hear all of your stories about the worst experience you have had with your E30, whether its crashing, engines blowing up, things breaking, any vandalism, i say vandalism because thats the second on my list because some little bugger decided to slash my roof (convertable) to pieces, my number 1 is--- i was going down the A5 at 120mph(just as a one off) and hit a pot hole, somehow the fan went through the radiator and i didnt know, still cruising and the temp gauge shot to the red and basicaly my head is knackered, got it all sorted, nearly re-built thenew head, cam, rockers, the lot, and plan to fit turbo feb/march time...so lets hear it all???

Wipers broke in the pouring rain when I was about 5 miles from home. Ended up with some string out of the windows and me and a mate pulling it in turn!

I've got an almost, I was doing 140 in my old cabby, slowed down to 50 for a speed camera and the back tyres blew out! 30 seconds earlier and I'd be brown bread!

buying it

My previous touring decided to start cutting out after about 20 minutes driving. It would go fine then get hot, and stop. My mechanic friend spent ages on it, then I span it into a telegraph pole. Eventually I just scrapped it and started again. RIP UAX

5six7eight wrote:Wipers broke in the pouring rain when I was about 5 miles from home. Ended up with some string out of the windows and me and a mate pulling it in turn!

That's brilliant mate!! loved to have seen that

My worst experience was 15 minutes after i bought the car and it overheated on the way home. Took friggin hours to do about a 30 minute drive.

318i - diff went bang with the girlfriend in the passenger seat on our way for a days shopping.. 5 minutes later a friend went past in his van - recovered to his farm & replaced the diff with a spare the next day.. Not so bad really

325i - water hose went pop just off the snake pass, another friend came to the rescue & fitted on the side of the road - minor inconvenience

320i - diff went bang at proper speed spewing oil absolutely everywhere.. replaced in the layby at 3am with the helpful hands of another friend.. Thankfully it was July so not too much of a drama - the only problem being the smell lingering for weeks

another 325i - rad went in a car park - luckily I noticed the trail of water that had followed me in - coffee break well timed & Dad to the rescue this time

another 325i - waterpump bearing failure - really inconvenient but got from a to b

This is over the last 6 years, so reasonably decent track record

not cool.

there's a cr24v theme here - is it part of the initiation / club requirement?

Ironically my worst experience stemmed from what should of been
the best.

Neither the Car or myself have fully recovered. Yet.


http://www.e30zone.net/modules.php?name ... &start=475

Theo325 wrote:

This is what happens to deviants that paint grills, the car is protesting

DanThe wrote:

Theo325 wrote:

This is what happens to deviants that paint grills, the car is protesting

Im suprised you dont see a zoner there fragging the exhaust

When my shadowline trim was stolen;

When you think who did that, it wasn't some school boy wanting a trinket for his bedroom wall.

torquey wrote:buying it

Thats not good to hear...

for what reasons?

Timing belt snapping while doing over a ton, not good
Thet was on the old M20 though.

joking really it`s a nice car, but it`s worse than looking after children,`89 cab by the way

Never had an E30 (or any other BMW) that's "failed to proceed" and get me to where I was going in about 17 years of BMW motoring. Closest calls have been a couple of fuel pump failures which have required frequent pump thumping, and a failed water pump gasket, which required a coolant bottle refill every ten miles on a hundred and twenty mile journey.
There was also the small matter of rebuilding the entire front corner of an E30 on a garage fourcourt just outside of Munich, but that was because of accident damage.

Not the car per se, but the bodgery of the previous owner that included window mechanisms made out of wood, speaker wire powering the injectors, an LPG system that failed 11 of the 12 point system check, and all rumbling along on 12-year-old tyres made of plastic.

Runs like a good'un now though.

My last MOT was an eye watering event that ended up with me shelling out enough cash to buy a pretty decent replacement car , that being said it was worth it and given the choice again I do the same thing. Bar that it's been a very good car to me.

My old 325i cab blew up on the way home from Mancester just after I bought it. It was just after the M6 toll road and the amount of steam that exploded from the head shitting itself ended up with police and road wombels all around me on the side of the road. The previous owner had used a ton of rad weld , tampered with the thermostat so it would get me far enough away. When the head come off the cooling channels had worn through to the pistions. Good thing with eBay is you get 24 hours of cover if anything goes wrong, so in the end the seller had to foot the bill and a bit more.

Another time with the cab it blew a cooling pipe on a slip road just before Bimmerflex and the covent garden flower show. Baking hot day and about a zillion BMW owners just looking at my cab stuck by the side of the road.

kman82 wrote: My worst experience was 15 minutes after i bought the car and it overheated on the way home. Took friggin hours to do about a 30 minute drive.

This I have done also...

Getting home from my honeymoon to an empty parking space where it was when we left.

Horrible feeling.

just before last years Concourse of the north, I was doing some Paedo style Buffing to my mint brumsport when this happened




I think this Meguires crap was a bit too course ....

clipper wrote:Getting home from my honeymoon to an empty parking space where it was when we left.

Horrible feeling.

my old chromie 325 spat her dummie on the way home from buying it! steaming like a t pot! bought it from some dickhead in surrey and had to get it home to s.wales,, not a fun jorney.! headgasket gone (exhaust into coolant) pressurising pipes and blowing them.
fixed the headgasket and she ran like a beast,, then the gearbox blew and got underneath only to find she was like a bad apple!!! this was a month before the mot, so that was an end to that!

current car- replaced a perfectly running 2.0 6 with a b25 to drive it roughly 200miles and a cracked head!!! ltr of coolant every 70 miles which ended up being every 30! replaced with a different head to find that this was warped hence fuked and back to square 1!

lost faith with the m20 engines all together now but i see it as a blessing as ive just completed an m50 conversion pretty much single handed, which is in and running like a dream!!!
so its all good

Has to be the 2.7 build when it wouldn't start. The hours we wasted over a mis located rotor disc

Has to be the 2.7 build when it wouldn't start. The hours we wasted over a mis located rotor disc

aww, something so silly LOL, bet you kicked yourself after
i had a similar thing when i went to start my m50, the red wire that powers the loom was on a sort of block thing and i fed it into the cockpit with the other relays, the car would turn but not fire! spent ages trying to figure it out, proper pickled. came on here fr help and when i found out what it was i could have beat myself up with a big stick LOL, connected it to the battery and first turn she was alive

Has to be the slow realisation that my once beautiful pride and joy is in actual fact a rusty old skip with wheels.

Coming Home After Buying an e30 320 cab few miles form home back wheel fell off

5six7eight wrote:Wipers broke in the pouring rain when I was about 5 miles from home. Ended up with some string out of the windows and me and a mate pulling it in turn!

A genuine Chuckle Brothers moment

Okay...

The year: 2002

The auto trans had been slipping for years and I had decided that instead of forking over 1500 for some garage to put in a used auto, I'd convert to manual and do it myself.

So that year I drove down from Waskaganish Quebec to St. Catharines Ontario to visit family. It's a good 15 hour drive which can take up to 20 hours if you were to drive the actual speed limit. The drive down was fine but when the trans became hot I'd lose overdrive.

I bought the manual setup from a place here that sells used bmw parts, for roughly 550$. This included everything I would need but a lot of the rubber was shot so it would become a project.

On the way back up, with an entire transmission and components in the trunk we managed to get up to Val D Or before the problems started up. I think I lost overdrive entirely then. When we stopped in Matagami which is the last real town before jumping on the James Bay highway we called my ex-girlfriends brother, and asked him to meet us at the end of the access road, a 100km gravel road which connects Waskaganish to the James Bay Highway.

To make the story short. We made it about 15 to 20km up the access road and the revs went up and the speed went down... not good. So her brother meets us, and my Ex and the kids get out and go with him. I refused to leave my car in the middle of nowhere so he was going to go to town and get a tow cable then come back out to pull me.

I decided to turn the car around mostly by hand, and then drove in reverse for 40km... at 60kph. Only stopping every 10 - 15 minutes to let the engine cool off. I made it about 40km then the reverse blew. LOL I then waited in the pouring rain till he showed up and then he pulled me back to town.

One week later I had the clutch kit, and all the other parts needed (plus some extras) in the mail. I rented the local garage for a few hours over 2 nights, and the manual was in. I've never looked at another auto since.

Cool thing is, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone reversing for 40km till the trans blew... LOL

Later guys.

mike325e87 wrote:Cool thing is, I don't think I've ever heard of anyone reversing for 40km till the trans blew... LOL

Later guys.

haha that must have been one hell of a sight to oncoming traffic!