What did you do to your e21 today?

[Greg323i]

It could've been worse. Ever hear of someone named Tiger Woods?

[tomscat1]

It could've been worse. Ever hear of someone named Tiger Woods?

Vaguely. But I think that would be the high HO dollar fix.

[dhlthr]

I was thinking about trying that but.... the euro lens only fits on the euro housing because of the attachment positions.... the euro housing only has two plugs to attach wiring to, the US housing has three... the US wiring is three wire, the Euro is only two.
I suppose if the whole Euro socket can be replaced with the US one... in the euro housing... then you could use the US wiring into the US socket in the euro housing. The lens would fit and you should have the US functions. You would then need a different orange bulb with a double filament to get both turn signal/ hazard and parking/running lights.
The bottom line is if the sockets can be swapped out then it should be doable. I haven't looked at that yet... I didn't really notice how they are attached to the housing.
I am enjoying the clear lenses... and I am not sure that the parking lights are really necessary. I never use parking lights anyway... CT has no vehicle inspections, and I am not sure they would be required by DMV.
What I DO notice is that, with the new clear lenses, I dislike the look of the US diving board bumpers with the orange side reflectors more than ever. I may have to move up my schedule to do either the bumper tuck or replace with Euro bumpers. It will be a remarkably cleaner look.... the way it was designed to look.

Here is what I did with mine. I added and extra bulb and wired it for the parking lights. Just picked up the bulbs at the local auto store.

indicators 001.jpg

indicators 002.jpg

indicator 001.jpg

[pommeree]

It doesn't look like much, but it was a fair amount of wrasslin' on the garage floor.
Felt good.
Maybe one of these days I'll get around to actually bolting something together.

[joey79]

Installed new front brake lines and rear rotors.

[davidgoerndt]

Had an Alpina bar fabricated, thinking about making some urethane bushings for my rear sway bar and received the clear lenses from W+N. I cannot believe how fast the shipping was from Germany! Parts shipped on the 14th from Germany and they were on my door step the morning of the 15th!!

[joey79]

Installed my rear calipers and bled the system using my new pressure bleeder. Best 65 bucks I ever spent on a tool. I bled all four corners and clutch in about 30 minutes.

[davidgoerndt]

Oil change and new air filter. I tried to install the "Alpina" bar I had made, ran into a few "issues" and will have to rethink some things so I didn't get it installed, yet. Besides, it's 95 deg F here and it doesn't take long to get overheated.

[fullswing]

waited for my alternator to no avail. painted the inside of the decklid instead.

[OLD MAN]

Went to an SCCA auto cross this week-end, while we were there we weighed the car on a friends scales he brought out.

Total weight is 2136 lbs with 8 gals of gas in it.
Corner weights are

LF ----------------RF
579------------- 568

LR ----------------RR
490 -------------498

Not as light as I would have hoped for - but we do have about 105ft. of .095 1.5" O.D. chrome molly tubing in the cage plus all those mounting plates and gusseting I added to the car. Time to break out the sawsall again.

[Greg323i]

Oil change and new air filter. I tried to install the "Alpina" bar I had made, ran into a few "issues" and will have to rethink some things so I didn't get it installed, yet. Besides, it's 95 deg F here and it doesn't take long to get overheated.

Out of curiosity, what were the issues you ran in to? It would be nice to know if I do this in the future.

[340i]

got myself a new windscreen washer bottle


and did a bit of 'weight reduction'

[m20powered]

Last week I replaced my steering joints and rack, set toe as best I could and went for a test drive. Rattle was gone but there was still a vibration. Yesterday I dug up a pair of the old 13" wheels and put those on the front in place of the suspect 14" ones. NOW, the vibrations are almost completely gone.

I found the instructions in the Haynes manual on how to set the adjustment on the rack to be less than helpful (sort of like their instructions on front wheel bearings). None of it made any sense until I noticed at the beginning of the section where it said the pressure pad end float should be 0.1mm. If that's the case then why not just tighten the ring down all the way (0 end float) and then loosen it 20 degrees to get it in spec? That's what I did. I don't see the point in trying to rig up something to tighten it to 4ft*lbs against the spring. Surely the spring is there for the purposes of the screw, otherwise why even have two adjustments?

[davidgoerndt]

Out of curiosity, what were the issues you ran in to? It would be nice to know if I do this in the future.

First issue was the end pieces weren't long enough to clear the lip on the bushing bracket. I attempted to use a hex nut as a spacer but when I tightened the nut down it changed the center to center dimension of the bolts so the bar wouldn't fit. I'm going to look for a spacer that doesn't require tightening so I can move the bolts to fit the bar holes then tighten down the nuts. It was just a minor set back.The second issue was heat, too hot to work under a car, can't control that however!

[Ufferi]

i finally got today car alive from the kjet- motronic project and drived the car 20 meters and the my engine broke

[joey79]

Removed rear window and scraped off 20 year old purple tint.

Removed windshield (much easier than I thought it would be).

Por15'd rust spots under window seals.

Removed dash.

[MrGumby]

Balances the front tire (yeah, no more 43 mph death wobble) and slotted the rear subframe to reduce the MASS amount of negative camber. BTW, I was able to slot the mounts without completely removing the trailing arms or the subframe. I'll post some pics when I slot the inner mounts for some toe adjustment.

[AlaskaBimmer]

I backed mine out of the garage and parked in the driveway yesterday and pulled my wife's MDX in and spent 12 hours polishing it up, SInce this took all weekend the baur got rained on since all it does this summer up here is rain, so I'll get to spend some quality time cleaning the rain water off it and making it shinyer for the show and shine this weekend which is the big car show here with over 300-400 cars out to show off (unless it's not sunny then the number is less) for up here that is huge, and now after having been to bimmerfest it's like meh whatever lol. I'll probably be the only BMW there anyway. If I get lucky there may be one or two more show up.

[erok320i]

Have not touched the car in the last few days, but i did order por 15 fuel tank treatment, a new fuel pump(bosch), a new in tank pre-pump(airtex), and a pair of chrome door handles. Now I wait for parts.

[RetroBeemer]

Finally got some new headers as you guys call them. It's a real PIA for RHD cars due to the steering column getting in the way.
Anyway, they're on now and combined with my free flow exhaust there was a real boost in mid range performance. Way more than I was expecting.
Hopefully, next week I can drop in my new motor. I have a sweet 2.7 which is having a Uni chip and live re-map. Fingers crossed for about 220bhp.

[Dazed Y2K9]

Not so much what i did TO my e21 but what i did FOR it.

Assembled my 16x8 Simmons V4 rims . Now i just need to test fit tomorrow and ill post pics

[AutoBombe]

Put a new muffler on a couple of days ago along with the proper hangers - what a difference. Now I can hear all the other rattles. lol.

Complete brake kit ready to install. New control arms and power bleeder on their way.

[uberpanzer]

Finally got my fiberglass hood off to the shop where the car is at for eventual install. Just need to get the latches for it and then get moving on swapping out the heavy, metal stuffs.

[joey79]

Wet sanded, and wet sanded and wet sanded... and filled millions of rock chips and little imperfections. For 7 hours :|

$50 roller paint job starts tomorrow!

[AlaskaBimmer]

I pulled out the porter cable and buffed the remaining bits of Canada of the baur and applied glaze on the paint and two coates of wax.

Then I went to the show and shine, the biggest car show in Alaska probably 300-400 cars there and three BMWs mine a 135i and a E-30 M3.

The cool part of today is I was approached by the transportion coordinator for the Movie "Everybody Loves Whales" which will begin filming here in town in Sept. They are looking for 80s era "Oil Executive Cars" (more than one, they also had a 82 Mercedes convertable and a few others that were at the show) and I guess a 80s 3 series fills the bill. THey want it for a parking lot scene, and since the movie takes place in 1988 they need 80-88 era cars to fill the parking lot. He said it won't get driven or anything but it would be in the movie.

So now I get to wait for them to call me (I'm pretty sure they will since there aren't that many 80s cars left up here that haven't rusted to bits.)

So keep your fingers crossed maybe Drew Barrymore will stand in front of my car during a scene lol....

THe movie is a 30 million dollar movie that tells the story of the rescue of three trapped whales in Barrow where the USA and Russia had to work together to free these whales at time when we didn't get along....

They are filming parts of it here in Anchorage since dragging all the movie crap to barrow isn't possible.


So I guess it was good I cleaned up the baur and went to the car show.