E30 wheels is a magnificent topic of discussion, so lets have a couple of different takes on wheels for the old 3er...
By far the most common wheels to bestride the E30 are cross-wire / BBS styles. and beyond that owners tend to stick to solid period styled alloy wheels like Azev-A five-spokes or Borbet C. Personally I think the old-school BMs look best with steel-wheels such as the almighty Weller competition wheels, as in the pic above, especially with a lowered car. These are built for heavy-duty dirt-track racing and off-road and I think give a lowered E30 the best squat / rat look.
At the other end of the spectrum, here are some ultra-modern Japanese-style alloys on a 325is. I am not 100% on who makes these, but they look very much like RAYS Volk or Rota wheels. You don't see many wearing rims like these, certainly not done well anyway, but why not? Sharp lines suit sharp lines and the 3-box shape combined with large modern alloys gives the E30 a very purposeful look and go-kart stance.
Hacking out the inner wheel-arches at the back to make the 16x9s fit left them in a right state, with a big gap up inside the wing. Being where it is, the gap is wide open to dirt and water flinging up off the wheel ready to rot the body from the inside out, so as a temporary measure I covered the area in ally-tape. It worked well, but was never going to last long. I figured the inner-arch would be considered a structural part of the body and would need a steel fillet welding in, but it doesn't appear to be the case so fibre-glass will do.
The area is a bit big for filling in though, so I shot up to Halfords and bought a square-metre of fibre-glass matting, £4.29. You need resin to apply it, which is a bit dearer. A kit is available for £9.99 that includes a small bottle of resin and a small mat, otherwise resin starts at a fiver and hardener is extra. The recommended resin is polyester-based, so it stretches, but I figure that marine epoxy-resin, which can be used for fibre-glass, will do the job as it may not be as flexible, but sure is waterproof and rock hard. I also happen to have a litre of the stuff left over from some carbon-fibre projects a few years ago.
I weighed the fibre-glass mat up to the whee-arch and cut it into rough shapes. The instructions say to coat the mat in resin and then stick it, but I found it just as easy and a little less messy to brush a little resin onto the surface, then stick the pieces of mat on dry and brush in heaps of resin over the top. The epoxy is quite thick and stiffens quickly, so this may the only workaround method using this stuff. It's certainly done the trick, the fibre-glass is as solid as the metal and has stuck well even to the rough under-seal surface, lets just hope it doesn't flex too much and crack away. It should see me through the MOT next week and that's the main thing, but at least there's no mud being flung up into the wing anymore. A quick coat of red-primer and the tester may not even notice the difference...
This is the first wheel-arch I pulled to fit the 16s and it's the only one now still needing a tidy-up, to say the least. I cut too much of the lip off trying to wedge some balloon-like 45% profile tyres and left it in a right mess. The newer 40% profile tyres fit perfectly and only needed minor cutting to the other arches, leaving this one miles from the rim and totally out of shape. The bit I cut off is the line used to form the arch on the rest, so this one was missing an edge to build the filler up to and totally sculpting the new arch-line by hand with hanging bits of mesh and filler was never going to happen. The easiest method would be a plastic arch cover, hiding the cut area completely and easily smoothed into the wing, but all four would have to match and the Group 2 ones are just too big to consider. It seems my only options are -
B. Spot-weld the piece I cut off back into place and secure it with fibre-glass filler. Fill the lip to match the others and build up and re-shape the arch up to where it meets the wing almost.
No doubt B involves a lot less time and effort, but it's still going to be a lot of rubbing down.
The chewed up scrap of metal, good job I saved it. It didn't just slot back into position, there was quite a bit of grinding and filing.
I had wanted to tack-weld the metal on and fill the gaps with fibre-glass, but I couldn't get hold of one so masking-tape did the job. I caked on plenty of P40 fibre-glass filler in between the tape, waited for it to go off, removed the tape and filled in the gaps.
Well sealed behind with more P40. You can see the sliver of metal in position as the light shines through, showing just how much arch got cut off originally.
It was then ground down with a rotary-file on the drill, mainly inside so nothing rubs on the tyre, but a bit to give the lip some shape. All that's left now is the arduous task of filling all that arch.
Been enjoying the car and weather too much over summer to neaten up the pulled wheel-arches, but thought I'd take some time off to finish them before the rain and gloom sets back in.
I bent the lip with a pair of grips into the smoothest arch I could and filled it flush with P38 to where the original outer lip was. This took quite a bit of building up.
Normally I'd give it a coat of zinc-primer for now and rub it down again, but for aesthetic value I went straight to red-primer and it's already lifted the look of the car.
More of the rear arches had to be cut away than the front, so this meant a smaller and slightly easier area to fill. The only remaining arch is the dreaded N/S rear one, which I hacked to death trying to install tyres that were too big, but it's a mammoth job alone and will have to wait.
This is for a mate who's bought some 17" BBS reps (Calibre Vintage) for his Mk4 Golf. As with my tyres, the Demon Tweeks guys recommended 45 profile for his wheel size. Im guessing this is for comfort, safety etc., but not with the amount of stretch in mind. The first pic shows my 16x9J wheel with a Yokohama 205/45 tyre. In my opinion this is just too big looks wise and takes over the look of the wheel. The second pic shows my second set of tyres, Toyo 195/40 profile. The difference it makes to looks is staggering, showing the rim off instead of hiding it. In my case the bigger tyre was jammed against my wheel-arch and made me cut more than I needed to when I got the lower profile 40s.
Lower profiles are harder to find and the tyre sellers will probably say the 5% difference in tyre-wall won't make much difference in order to shift items they have in stock, but as you can see below the difference is actually huge.
225/45
215/40
May as well be 225, profile same but 5mm less pitch-angle on either side.
The car survived a trip with 3 people in and no scrubbing at all on the 16x9s, which I found very surprising, but still I figure the arches are good to finish off. I've neatened up the pulled lips and made a start to filling in and re-sculpting the shape of the wheel-arches, but progress has been slow and my intentions of selling the complete project this summer are looking unlikely. I spoke to the guy who did the re-spray for me originally and he said to get the arches as good as could be and pass it back over to him to smooth them off and repaint them without having to go over the whole car again. Great, though I can't keep hurling money at it, and with more to do over summer I've had less time to spend on the E21 and more time spent enjoying driving it on the new wheels for a few weekends in the sunshine like I intended, not just the odd trip to work. Oh and there is the matter of my daily driver needing MOT attention, but that's a different story.
Never the less, both the o/s arches have begun to take shape. Getting the lips off the bigger wheels and tyres was too extreme a job for my arch-rolling kit, so I had to pull them out with grips in the end. This meant a fair bit less grinding on the o/s rear wheel arch and none at all needed up front. The arch-lip needed to be low for as much tuck as possible, I don't like the cut-arch look, so I got the pulled out lip roughly in line with the slope of the arch and built it up flush with P38 filler. This is as close to the look of those European BBS'd E21s as I could figure, with a slight flare to the lip rather than the flat-edged look of the original arches. This is probably the easiest method of smoothing and saves on a bit of body-filler, enough of which is being used already.
I haven't touched the nearside arches yet, the main thing putting me off being the n/s rear one that was used to test fit those oversized Yokohama tyres and has suffered greatly from the spinning-disc. With the extra lip cut off the rigidity has been lost and the general shape of the arch has deformed, as well as more tyre being visible, about 10mm of tuck being lost. I guess my only options are to try and spot-weld the rough section of lip back on that was cut too far, which I still have, and rebuild the shape of the entire arch in filler, or buy a patterned-part wheel-arch off eBay for £25, cut out the current one, weld in the new one, smooth it off, pull the lip out and fill all that in. Well, there's no doubt the first method is cheaper and a lot less work, but this is a large area to be filling and smoothing and a wide margin for error, plus I don't even know if the bent arch will accept the bit I cut off without messing it up even further... watch this space!
They had to be ordered from Poland so took a couple of weeks to arrive, but it was worth it for the £105 delivered as they are very nicely machined and finished. They are an easy straight swap with the stock top-mounts, I've covered the process at the bottom, and I only encountered one snag where the silver steel bush, in the centre of the top-mount bearing, wouldn't quite fit over the top of the strut-insert. Using a bolt as a drift I managed to gently tap the bush down onto the strut-insert with a hammer. This mushroomed the top of the bush, so once it was very tightly fitted to the strut it would no longer fit into the bearing! A lot of reaming later using an old file and the bush would just about fit enough into the bearing to get the top-nut on and draw the bush up as it was tightened on. If it wasn't for that one snag, the plates would have been fitted in 20 minutes per side, so a good bit of advice would be to use a bit of oil or WD40 when fitting the bush to the strut-insert, or heat it first to get it on and allow it to cool again before slotting it into the bearing.
Now fitted, they're a doddle to adjust with the allen-head bolt setup, even with the wheel on and without lifting the car. As the new plates don't have a rubber shock-mounts like the stock items, I figured there would be a lot more road-noise with just metal on metal and there is, but not nearly as much as I expected. There's a bit of a knock going over big bumps, but I don't know if this is just a louder transmission to the body than the stock mounts, or if the giant spring-pan of my stock struts is hitting the body when it flexes enough. The big spring-pans mean I can't run the camber-plates fully over to the negative side and to get the amount I have now they are sitting awfully close to the body while the car is stationary, so I can imagine them contacting with enough rotation in the suspension. The only solution to this problem is smaller diameter spring-pans, i.e GAZ coilovers and another £700... watch this space, probably for some time.
Silver Project are an independent engineering company in Poland and make these along with a lot of other cool bits for different cars, check them out on Facebook [] or their store on eBay [http://myworld.ebay.co.uk/silver-project-pl/].
Quick video of the plates in action and showing the amount of tilt:
FITTING PROCESS:
1. Lift the front of the car, remove the corresponding wheel.
2. Grip the strut-insert to stop it from turning and remove the top-nut using a 19mm deep-socket.
3. Push the wheel-hub down using your foot so the top of the strut-insert drops out of the top-mount and can be moved to one side.
4. Support the top-mount from below, undo the three nuts holding it in place using a 13mm wrench and lower the top-mount out of the wheel-arch.
5. Fit the camber-adjustable top-mount from below and replace the 13mm nuts and washers.
6. Undo the four allen-head bolts on the adjusting-slider of the top-mount so it moves freely from side to side, using an M4 allen-key/socket.
7. Apply grease or a little oil to the smooth part of the strut-insert just below the top-thread so it can be easily drawn into the bearing.
8. Pressing the hub down with your foot again to allow the strut to be moved around, locate the top of the strut-insert into the silver bush of the top-mount.
9. Once the strut-insert is about 1mm into the bush, there should be enough of the threaded part poking out of the top to get the top-nut on and draw the strut up into the bush as the nut is tightened with a 19mm deep-socket. [The strut-insert will likely need gripping further down to stop the whole thing turning with the wrench.]
10. With the wheel either on or off, slide the camber-adjuster to gauge the angle and make sure the spring-pans on the shock aren't contacting the body-turret, then tighten up the four allen-head bolts with an M4 allen-key/socket to hold it in the desired position. [There is not a lot of headroom in these smaller BMWs, especially if you're using larger stock struts.
11. Replace the wheel, drop the car and enjoy your new crazy-cambered or nicely straightened-up front wheels! There are a few steps to this one, but provided you don't hit any fitment snags, it's a quick and easy job if you know the suspension setup.
Got the grinder out again today and tackled the job I haven't been looking forward to - cutting away the other rear wheel-arch. Progress was quick and smooth for a change, I guess because I had an idea of what to do now, but I think the lower profile tyres played a part. If only I'd bought them first time round I wouldn't have had to butcher the n/s quite so much. A good notch had to come out at the bumper shut-lines as these were the main bits sitting on the tyre, but less of the outer lip had to be cut away and the arch looks a lot smoother than the last effort.
The main problem with scrubbing was coming from the inner skin of the arch and the best way to get that off was still to peel it back, cut wide flaps in the metal using tin-snips and work them with grips until they snap clear.
It's been quite a bit of effort and hacking away at the car was heartbreaking, but at last the super fat wheels are on and no scrubbing whatsoever. Now to see about neatening up those arches...
No fouling on the pulled arch-lip with these skinnier tyres, but the front valance was still just about catching so, with the arrival of the new spacers, I thought I'd get the fronts boxed off before starting the arduous task of the other rear arch. Sadly, my camber-plates have yet to arrive, I guess they must be stuck while Customs & Excise figure out what they are.
Thankfully, the amount of valance that needed cutting away on the n/s was only about 8mm and I didn't have to remove the bumper after all. I did my best to follow a natural curve, not sure if I took a little too much near the bottom. Interestingly, the o/s of the front valance didn't contact the new tyre at all and the fender does not extend past the bumper. I wonder if the n/s wing has been replaced at some point giving a slightly proud line. I matched up to that line when repairing the lower-valance last summer, so that would explain why it was catching the tyre too. Either way, the o/s/f arch required no grinding at all, so a little more pulling and the fronts will be ready for smoothing in.
I've also been driving round the last day or two with NASCAR style staggered wheels - 16s on the n/s and still 15s on the o/s. The car steers great to the right, but is a bit recalcitrant going hard left. I must find time to wrestle that other rear arch on Monday or it'll be like this for a while.
Tried out the 8Js on the front with the new 195 Toyo T1Rs using 20mm spacers and there's a lot more room at the arch-lip now. The tyre doesn't catch at all turned hard-left, thought it would going over a bump. Hard-right the tyre is still catching the front valance slightly, but about 1cm cut away should be enough now and a little off the fender where it protrudes from the bumper - none of the bumper itself though. I had hoped to get away with smaller spacers on the front, but even with the 20mm spacers from the rear, the inside rim of the wheel is still 5mm inboard of the 15x7Js and there is not a lot of headroom.
I just haven't found time to try out the 9Js on the rear today as the valve is bust in one and on the other, about 6 inches of the bead has just been refusing to seat. My leg just couldn't take any more foot-pumping so I got hold of an air-compressor from a friend and took the tyre to nearly 90psi this morning, but it still wasn't having any of it. Eventually, after two goes deflating the tyre almost completely and trying to brush in soap between the tyre and rim, then taking it back up to about 65psi, the bead finally popped. The maximum pressure rating on the tyre is 50psi, though it says use no more than 40 to seat the bead, so it just goes to show that when the seal is tight enough it can take over twice that and still not seat. Bead-blaster machines can jet up to 200psi in one go and that doesn't even shred the tyre to bits so I'd be keen to know at what pressure a good new tyre would rupture at. Even so, always take the utmost care when inflating tyres past their rated pressures at home!
Apart from 4 new valve-cores (£2.99) and a valve removal-tool (£4.99) from Halfords, I've had to do yet more spending on parts as the project can't move on without them and I want to be getting somewhere near finished next weekend when we have the bank-holiday off. First up are adjustable camber-plates for the front, a must for style and it will likely give me a bit more room to play with before starting to cut. They're not approved for sale in the UK, so lets hope they make it here from Poland before the weekend - fingers crossed eh! Looking forward to these, though quite pricey @ £105 delivered, but whatever, they're the only ones of their kind. It's also time to stop digging my heels in and buy another set of spacers to go on the front, swapping the ones over from the rear is becoming a chore. I'd hoped to get some alloy ones to save hub weight, but again for easy access, the right centre-bore without more spigot-rings and to get the bolt-on kind I want, yep you guessed it, more steel ones. Another £59, oh well, roll on next weekend.
Wallace and Gromit are back, this time they've got the right trousers on, it's the tyres that are right out. They're just too hi-profile and are wreaking havoc amongst the villages wheel-arches. Yep, those wicked Yokohama Advan have had to come off again and go on to eBay, as the wheel-arch chewed 2 of them pretty badly and they can't be returned, but the damage is only in the tread so I figured someone would want them cheap. Bearing in mind they've only covered about 0.2 of a mile and are worth ~£500 new, I figured £300 would still be a good deal and it looks like I was right - I had a buyer on the first day of the auction and got damn close to my asking price. The latest set of tyres have ony cost me £280 anyway, so I've had more expensive screw-ups it must be said.
The new tyres I've bought are good-old Toyo Proxes T1R, a bit boring and predictable, but again it's tough to get matching tyres in the right sizes. I am sad to see the lovely semi-slick design of the Yokos go though, but they just don't make a 40 profile and Toyo do, the new ones are 195/40/16 for the 8J front and 215/40/16 for the 9J rear - it's going to be quite a stretch! Watch this space.
These really were some of the coolest road tyres I have ever seen, what a shame they're like big balloons, hopefully the new owner will get the benefit of all that grip with the Scooby Impreza he's putting them on.
After all the hacking and cutting on the rear arch to only discover I needed smaller tyres, today I threw an 8J onto the front with 20mm spacers, as without they just hit the track-rod end and wont even sit flush, and I find that space is even more limited at this end.
With the lip pulled out this time by hand, then neatened up a little with the baseball-bat / metal-bar rolling trick, the big 45-profile tyres still contact the back of the arch.
When steered hard-right, the tyre rubs past the edge of the bumper and fender, so it had to be jacked to turn the wheel straight again. The tyre also bent the edge of the front-valance, cracking the fibreglass repair I did last summer. A good inch would need to be cut off the valance here and I'm not sure lower profile tyres alone will remedy this, so some will need chopping off anyway, best keep it to a minimum. Oh, and I must save up for those camber-plates!
Pulled the N/S/R wheel-arch back out and cut it off. Peeled back the inner-skin of the arch and cut about 4 inches off it. Cut a notch out of either side of where the arch meets the bumper shut-line.
The outer rim of the arch is now way off the tyre, but I could see a black rubber mark further up inside the inner wheel-arch.
The car was now rolling with a driver in, but one test drive revealed that any bump causes rubbing and the rim of the tyre caught the sharp edge of the cut inner arch, which chewed it pretty bad.
I've made a lot of space up there, so before I start hacking away any more arch, I'm going to buy smaller, lower profile tyres, I think that is now clear.
