F10 530d: New wiper-blades - Bosch Aerotwin

Replacement wiper blades for modern cars are not cheap. Euro Car Parts wanted £45 for a set and that was with a discount, other high-street stockists wanted over £60... for two wiper blades. Ah well, you can't fight progress I suppose, these new fangled blades wipe the screen so much better than the old ones did... don't they??

I found a super-cheap budget set for just £11 on eBay, but these turned out to be for a left-hand drive car and are the exact opposite profile of the ones I need here in UK so would not fit. They were from a UK stockist too, who didn't seem to know the blades were wrong, this was obviously the first set they sold for F10 or maybe mine were a fluke one off LHD pair... we will never know.

In the end I plumped for a set of Bosch Aerotwin from eBay, as they came in at £23, far off the 40+ from ECP so worth waiting for delivery. Have to say, you can see the quality of the Bosch is better than that of the budget blades, so you get what pay for, but I still think £23 is expensive for two wiper blades!

F10: Rear Shock Absorber / Strut / Spring Replacement [GUIDE]

*Front strut-assembly replacement guide here - https://www.beemerlab.org/2017/09/f10-530d-front-shock-strut-spring-top.html*

Time to do the rear struts and springs on the 530d F10 this week as one damper has been leaking and while doing my tyres last week I noticed the spring has now broken at the bottom so this is now an urgent job. I picked up a pair of used complete struts (spring, damper and top-mount) from eBay for just £100. They are from another 530d and claim to be from a low mileage car. Well, they look a lot lower mileage than the ones I'm taking off lets put it that way and appear to be in pretty good condition. I get a lot of stick for constantly using second-hand genuine parts, but I still prefer this to buying new spurious parts where I can and have never had an issue!

GUIDE:

* This is not a difficult or time-consuming job, but will require a bit of brute force. *

1. First the rear seats need to come out. Lift the seat squab up at the front and detach it from the push-studs, press the seat-belt receivers through the recesses and lift the squab out. Next lift the seat-back upwards until it is free of the hooks at the top and lift that out, being careful of the door-sill paintwork and sliding it through the seat-belts. [You could always unbolt the seat-belts at the base using a T45-Torx socket to make this easier, but it's not essential].

2. The parcel-shelf now needs to come down in order to access the strut-top mount bolts in the shock-turrets. Remove the C-pillar trims by prizing out the plastic caps labelled 'Airbag' from the trim and removing the screw using a T25-Torx socket. Now carefully pull away the C-pillar trims and put to one side. Remove the five push-pin clips from the front edge of the parcel-shelf by levering the button in the centre upwards and pulling the plastic pin out. The studs can now be levered out. The parcel-shelf is now free to pull forwards and can be rested where the seat-back would be. [Remove the wiring-connectors to the speakers, but these should pop out by themselves anyway].

3. Lift the car and remove the corresponding wheel. [There is no need to be getting under the car for this job, so a jack and axle-stand is fine].

4a. The track-strut (pictured) needs to be moved out of the way to access the bottom strut bolt so first remove the plastic clips holding the E-brake wire-harness to the track-strut by levering them open at the bottom with a flathead-screwdriver and separating them from the strut. The wire-harness can be moved out of the way.

4b. Remove the bolt holding the inner end of the track-strut using an 18mm wrench. Pull the track-strut down and rotate it so it is pointing out of the wheel-arch. You now have plenty of room to get at the bottom strut bolt and lift the shock out.

5. Remove the bolt holding the bottom of the strut to the hub using a 21mm wrench.

6. Lift the triangle flap in the foam underneath where the parcel-shelf was to expose the studs to the strut-top mount and remove the three nuts using a 13mm wrench.

7. Wiggle the bottom of the strut free from the hub and the entire strut assembly is now free to be removed. It should be able to be lowered through the remaining suspension parts and to the rear of the car until it is free to be removed.

** IF YOU ARE CHANGING THE SPRING / TOP-MOUNT OR SWAPPING THESE ONTO A NEW STRUT THEN DO THIS NOW** [See this post for guide].

8. Make sure the new strut has the top-mount in line with the old one you removed by lying them next to each other and checking the bottom bolt-eyelet and triangle marking on the top-mount match up. [The triangle marking on the top-mount should face towards the back of the car with the bolt-eyelet facing the centre, or with the triangle marking facing you the bolt-eyelet should be pointing to the right for O/S (right-side) and left for N/S (left-side)].

9. Lift the new strut back up through the suspension and line it up into the strut-turret. [Triangle marking on top-mount facing rear of car] and screw the three 13mm nuts back on a few threads.

10. Lever the hub downwards until it meets the bolt-eyelet at the bottom of the strut meets its recess on the hub and screw the 21mm bolt back in about half-way.

11. Fully tighten the three 13mm nuts on the strut-top mount.

12. Fully tighten the 21mm bolt through the bottom of the strut.

13. Replace the track-strut / wheel as a reversal of steps 3 and 4.

14. If you are doing both sides then repeat steps 3 - 13 for the opposite side.

15. Replace the parcel-shelf, trim and rear seat as a reversal of steps 1 and 2.

F10/F11: Seat Fitment Guide - Differences between 10-13 cars and later models.

In 2013 BMW changed the floor-pan layout of the F10 5 Series to accommodate X-Drive, Hyrbid-Drive and stuff, which in turn makes the fitment of the front seat mounts different for post-facelift cars. I see a number of F10 guys upgrading to M-sports and a few having this problem, offering seats for newer models to swap for the older type, so if you're about to do the same make sure the seats you get are for your corresponding pre or post-facelift F10. [I was upgrading my stock cloth interior to standard SE leather on the other hand, my car being the only example I've found so far with cloth from factory. A 530d as well, very rare.]

This is the same for M-Sport and Comfort/SE seats of all specs.

This is the same for LCI and non-LCI models.

FRONT SEATS:

These are NOT interchangeable between 2010 - 2013 cars and later 2013-2017 facelift cars.

This is the same for F10 and F11 Touring models.

M5 seats of correct model year variant will fit, but features like active corner-restraints are lost.

Front seats from E60 5-Ser and other model BMWs do NOT fit and would require adapting [see bottom].

RUNNERS:
The runners on pre-2013 seats are spaced significantly further apart than those from later cars, meaning a straight swap is impossible. It is possible to adapt the seats / floorpan to accept these seats, as I will discuss at the bottom of this page, but in reality forget it.

WIRING:
The wiring plug fits, but changes to the seats do not work with the safety-system. Active Head-restraints are removed on the post 2013 front seats and although this can be bypassed with the 2-ohm resistor trick to get rid of the error message, there may be another airbag related error coming up and it is unclear whether any of the safety systems in the seat will function properly. The seat-movement electrics all work as normal though.

---

If you don't know the model year of the seats you're buying then here is what to look for:

Control-levers - Pre-2013 seats have the classic handles built into the seat-surround trim with the white logos, whereas post-2013 seats have plain black handles sticking out from under the centre of the squab.

Head-rests - Pre-2013 seats have squarish split head-rests with a button on the side to extend half of it forward, whereas post-2013 seats have slimmer, one-piece head-rests with visible stitching on the front panel.

M-Sport - These are identifiable in the same way. However, the control-levers are similar to those from the E60 M-Sport seats, which will not fit. E60 seats have brackets on the runners that stick outwards and the head-rests are plain/round, as pictured, so make sure you don't end up buying a cheap set of those instead.

---

REAR SEATS:

Straight swap. These are totally interchangeable on all F10 models from 2010-17.

F10 rear seats will NOT fit the F11 Touring, however, as they have the split/folding back. [The shape of the seat is the same though, so it would not take much to adapt them to fit and give the F10 split/folding rear seats! This is something I would really love to try out in future.]


DOOR CARDS / TRIM:

The door cards are interchangeable between all F10 and F11 Touring models. Curtain-airbags are now in the seats, not the doors, so swapping the wire over is easy and does not differentiate between model specs, LCI etc. [NOTE: With F11 Touring, the rear door-cards do not have grilles for the door-speakers, so they will need swapping over from your original ones. This is something else I would love to try out - putting rear door speakers in there F10!]

Most of the dash and centre-console trim is a straight swap also. The only change to the post-2013 cars being the centre-console switch-panel - older ones having the ash-tray at the front and a poorly designed cup-holder in the centre by the E-brake. Later ones have a double cup-holder at the front and a smaller ash-tray / cubby-hole by the E-brake. These panels are interchangeable, as the console itself is the same, though I'm not sure why you would want to.

---

FRONT SEATS RETROFIT:

Adapting the floorpan or seats to fit the post-2013 seats is a possibility, though the level of effort required makes it a bit pointless. The first thing to consider is safety - will they stand up to a crash or even pass an MOT? The other things are the seat not quite being in the right position and the areas where the carpet doesn't match up will look ugly. If you're sick of waiting for the right seats to come along and the above things don't deter you then there are some possibilities, but I have not tried any of it out or would recommend it...

The bolt-hole spacing on the pre-13 seats is about 100mm wider left-to-right, but the spacing front-to-rear is the same on all models. This doesn't mean you can use the mounting points on one side and just adapt the other side to fit, as works with other BMWs, since the pre-13 bolt-holes are just too close to the sill / trans. tunnel. The difference in width is not central to the seat either [as in ~50mm equal either side], so adapting to fit is not going to be easy.

Adapting the Seats:
Making a one-piece adapter from thick sheet-steel would be best, similar to the ones that Sparco etc. make for other cars, that bolts to the floorpan and has more holes further inboard to bolt the seat to. These would be difficult to make without proper equipment, though an engineering firm will probably knock two up for cheap and with some black paint they would look OK.
Making one out of slim strips of box-section steel would also work, welded into a square or even just a left-to-right strip across the bolts front and rear. Either way, all the above methods will raise the seats slightly higher than usual, though lowering the seat fully might account for this.

Modifying the Floorpan:
New holes can be drilled at the correct positions in the floorpan and new nuts welded in their place to accept the seats. By the look of it, the floorpan has just enough room to accommodate this, but if not, the raised sections of floorpan with the captive-nuts for the seats could be cut out and welded back into place slightly further inboard. This sounds hairy, but would not actually be a huge undertaking, though you would seriously have to know what you were doing to get it right! 

F10: Rear Parcel-Shelf Swap / Replacement

The original parcel-shelf was in a sorry state, with several rectangular slots cut in it where Police lights had been fitted. The two in the below picture were glaring at me every time I looked in the rear-view mirror and third, twice the size and facing the rear, could be seen clearly from outside. Despite not being one of the first things to get replaced, it became my biggest concern with the interior and has ended up being the piece that has made the most difference to the car's appearance.

A mint and very clean  replacement was £60 from eBay and came with the speakers, grilles and all trim pieces, handy as mine was missing some.

FITMENT:

1. Remove the rear-seat squab by pulling the front edge up sharply at either side and sliding it forward.

2. Remove the 3 bolts holding the bottom-end of the rear seat-belts to the body using a T45 Torx-socket.

3. Remove the rear-seat back-rest by undoing the 2 bolts holding the bottom brackets in place using a T45 Torx-socket and lifting it vertically up off the upper brackets.

4. Remove the 5 plastic-clips holding the leading-edge of the parcel-shelf by prising the centre-pin out with a flat-screwdriver [or ideally a trim-tool] and then prying the clip out.

5. Loosen both of the C-pillar trims. They are only clipped on and should pop off easily enough at the bottom. They do not need to be completely removed, just loose enough to allow the lip at either side of the parcel-shelf to slide in and out.

6. Slide the parcel-shelf forward partially, pop the seat-belts through the apertures and disconnect both speaker wires. The parcel-shelf can now be fully removed.

7. Swap trims/speakers over to new parcel-shelf.

8. Reverse steps 1 - 6 to refit.

F10 530d: Correct front seats acquired!

Managed to find the right pre-2013 front seats on eBay to replace the incorrect fit ones [https://beemerlab.blogspot.com/2017/05/f10-530d-black-leather-rear-seats-and.html]. They were for sale on their own, the owner having swapped his front seats for M-sports and was willing to let the old ones go for just £140. They were from a 2011 car with 80k miles and in very good nick, only snag was they were in Northampton, so I removed the passenger / rear seats and did the 6 hour round-trip to collect them. They bolt straight in and bring up no air-bag warnings, so that's problem solved  all round.

The post-2013 front seats I was selling on eBay had attracted quite a bit of attention and a few offers, but eventually someone paid the asking price of £180. This was mainly to convince me to leave them with someone to meet a private-courier organised by the buyer, which was a bit of an inconvenience, but they sold regardless. This leaves me £40 in profit after all thanks to the error, save the fuel money travelling to Northampton.

F10 530d: Black leather rear-seats and door cards WIN - front-seats FAIL!

Lovely front seats do not fit.

Thought I would treat the F10 to a nice leather interior, replacing the tired and fluffy cloth front seats and scratched / dirty door cards, after spotting a complete set from a 2014 car on eBay. I managed to get £100 knocked off the price and drove down to Stourbridge to grab them with a distinct feeling that it was too good to be true. I had to climb nearly 20 feet up a ladder to retrieve them, but they were seriously mint - honestly, not even a mark on any bit of leather - so I parted with the measly £300 and brought them home.

My gut feeling turned out to be right. While the rear seats and door-cards are a perfect fit, the front seats are not. From mid-2013 onwards the F10 floor-pan was updated, along with the mounting-points for the front seats and this means that the runners on my new seats are a couple of inches narrower than on my original 2010-13 seats, which are clearly wider at the base. There is no way to swap the runners, the seats are just too different in design and I will write a more detailed guide on this soon. Annoyingly, the electric plug fits and the motors operate, though they throw up too airbag warnings.

Door cards are straight swap.

Modifying the seats or floorpan to fit is just too much work and will not look very nice, so the only way to go is wait until a pair of front seats for a 2010-13 car come up and try to part-ex mine or at least sell them later. Either way, this could end up costing me more. Regular SE seats are quite thin on the ground for the earlier cars and M-Sports are upwards of £400.

Rear seats fit great.

** Correct seats now acquired here: https://beemerlab.blogspot.com/2016/08/f10-530d-correct-front-seats-acquired.html **

E60: Front 12V Socket spring mechanism assembly.

PROBLEM:

• Mechanism has collapsed and 12V socket will not pop up out of housing.
• Ash-tray has been removed during work on car and has fallen apart.
• Coins or other objects have jammed in the mechanism and are stopping it from operating.
• The 12V socket is jammed up and ash tray will not close.

As with everything on the E60, even the mechanism that pops the 12V socket up and moves the trim around in over-designed to death. There are two springs in the assembly. A main flat-coiled spring that lifts the 12V socket up when the ash-tray is slid open and a small one that operates a tiny trim-flap that fills the gap created as the socket rotates up. You know, so everything looks neat!

These come out really easily when the ash-tray is removed from the fascia, or when things get jammed and the ash-tray is forced shut, but it is quite confined under there and the springs should not get lost. Be careful not to push them under the foam-trim at either side while retrieving them.

The main spring is on a spindle running through the socket housing, with a screw at one end. The protruding arm faces forward and tenses against a lip in the plastic. The screw will need removing to get the spring back into place, so do not over-tighten it when refitting so the socket still rotates freely.

The smaller spring slides onto the plastic stud on one side of the front socket hinge and the two protruding arms should be in a V shape pointing upwards and sit in the grooves on the hinge and trim-flap, as pictured.

** For a guide on removing the dash and fascia trim required to get to the ash-tray see THIS POST. **

E60 530d: Swirl-Flap Blanking Plates

If you have a BMW with swirl-flaps, get them out ASAP. We all hear horror stories about swirl-flap failure and just how bad they are, but I had no idea they can wreck your engine so quickly and overlooked the advice. This I have lived to regret, as have a thousand others. Just one flap breaking loose, as in my case, and being sucked into the engine does all that damage. Do yourself a favour if you have 100k on the clock and fit blanking plates. Some say the engine won't run properly without the flaps, but I am assured it will and for a lot longer. All the swirl-flap is designed to do is to dump air into the engine when the inlet-pressure is reduced and soot would normally be dominant. In other words, it reduces the little puffs of black smoke on harsh gear changes. The car will still pass MOT and won't use any extra fuel.

I got some aluminium ones off eBay, they were £20.99 delivered for a set of 6, sets of 4 are even less.

My late-2003 M57N 530d has the earlier 22mm swirl-flaps and so should most 4 and 6 cylinder diesels up to about 2006. Revised M57N should have the beefier 33mm flaps, but after 2010 the swirl-flaps are removed from the inlet and redesigned entirely. Hmm, I'm amazed it took them so long. The actual specific size of swirl-flaps in BMW diesels from 2003-2010 varies wildly it would seem, so the only way to know for sure which ones you have before buying is to remove the inlet-manifold and measure them.

SIZE refers to the diameter of the hole that the swirl-flap fits into, not the length of the flap in the inlet port!


FITMENT:

1. Remove inlet-manifold.
2. Remove the two screws holding the swirl-flap diaphragm on the underside of the manifold using a T20 Torx socket.
3. Slide the metal-rod clear of the swirl-flap levers and remove it with the diaphragm.
4. Remove the two screws holding each swirl-flap in place using a T20 Torx socket.
5. Remove the swirl-flaps by prising either side evenly with a flat-screwdriver until it pops from the seal and can be lifted out.
6. Fit the swirl flap blanks into the holes and pop them down into the seal - they should self-align.
7. Replace the twelve T20 Torx screws to the blanking-plates.
8. Unfasten the extended part of the lever-arm that joins the swirl-flap diaphragm to the metal rod and remove it along with the rod.
9. Refit the diaphragm to the inlet-manifold with the two T20 Torx screws.
10. Replace inlet-manifold.

New trim pieces for M-Sport bumper + painting!

As my bumper didn't come with the cover-caps or hinges, I had to source them separately. I got the headlight-washer hinges directly from BMW Parts [Williams, Liverpool] and they were only £2.70 each inc. VAT. BMW are good for clips and random bits, but trim pieces are a bit more expensive, especially if you have them painted in your colour-code.

I turned to eBay, but was surprised to find used pieces are thin on the ground and no silver ones coming up. New, the headlight-washer caps start at £16 each and go up, plus delivery, so a pair of genuine ones for £30 delivered actually seemed reasonable. These came from MM Autos [eBay ID: adrian5882745], the same place in Wrexham I got the bumper, but I checked and the silver caps from mine are long sold! The tow-hook caps start at £25 for a new one and again no used ones in silver, so I recommend buying from a seller on eBay Germany called bmdoubleyou24. A new genuine one in primer is £18 delivered and only took 5 days to arrive so was worth the saving.

£70 worth of plastic. Headlight-washer caps, hinges and tow-hook cap, only the essentials.

Finally, I bought a can of Titansilver (or Titanium Silver, same paint-code) spray from Halfords, along with a fresh can of clear-lacquer, £6.49 each. After giving the caps about six coats of both, I gave them a good rub with T-cut so they look OE, though I have a feeling they will look a lot shinier than the bumper. I will have to get polishing and sort those scratches...

M-Sport Bumper Total Cost:
Bumper - £200
Hinges - £5.40
Washer-caps - £30
Tow-hook Cap - £18.11
Paint/lacquer - £12.98
TOTAL - £266.49

Pre-primed ABS-plastic is a piece of cake to paint and was going great...

...until it rained and spotted the lacquer...

...so needed a bit of flatting back...

...and repainting, followed by a quick blast with rubbing-compound.

New 'M-Paket' hinges do indeed need the corner of the bumper pulling out to fit, they can't be done from outside.

E60: Fitting M-Sport Front Bumper

1. Bumper Removal:

1.1 Remove the bolt holding either corner of the bumper, just inside the wheel-arch, using a 10mm wrench. The edges of the bumper inside the wing should be free to pull out of join.

1.2 Remove the screws holding the wheel-arch liner to the front bumper using an 8mm socket. *If you are replacing your arch-liners then remove them entirely.

1.3 Remove the two screws from the lower centre of the bumper, using a T25-Torx socket, located just under the lip below each corner of the licence-plate.

1.4 Remove the two screws from the lower centre of the bumper using a T25-Torx socket, located inside each spotlight-grille recess.

1.5 Remove the five screws holding the upper-centre of the bumper along the top edge of the grille/slam panel using a T30-Torx socket.

1.6 The bumper should be free to move, so wiggle it forward and gently rest the front-centre on the ground.

1.7 Unplug the wiring to the spotlights and four parking-sensors (PDC).

1.8 Unfasten the wiring from the hooks along the inside edge of the bumper.

2. Preparing M-Sport Bumper:

2.1 Swap over the spotlight bulb-holders. They are removed by rotating a quarter-turn anti-clockwise.

2.2 Swap over the four parking-sensors (PDC). Remove them by pulling them out from the back while gently pressing from the outer side. They should fit the lugs on all E60 bumpers, regardless of year.

2.3 Ensure the grilles, headlight-washer hinges and springs are fitted to the bumper as they cannot be fitted once it is on.

2.4 On the car, remove the wiring from the foam-polystyrene blocks and remove the blocks from the car.

2.5 Fit the 'M-Paket' foam-polystyrene blocks to the car and re-insert the wiring to them, or if you do not have compatible foam blocks and are leaving them off, find a suitable route for the wiring over the top of the grille / air-ducts.

2.6 If you do not have 'M-Paket' brake-air-ducts on your bumper, then swap the existing ones left to right and flip them upside down to clear the M-Sport grille-recesses. 

3. Fitting M-Sport Bumper:

3.1 Place the M-Sport bumper in front of the car and reinsert the PDC/spotlight wiring to the hooks along the inside edge of the bumper.

3.2 Reconnect the wiring-plugs to each parking-sensor (PDC) and spotlight.

3.3 Lift the bumper up to the car, so the front-undertray slides above the deeper M-Sport lip and put one screw loosely into the centre hole on the top of the grille.

3.4 Hook each corner of the bumper round into the slot in the wheel-arch and replace the 10mm screws, but not tighten fully.

3.5 Find a suitable placement for the bumper, where the shut lines at either side of the headlight are as equal as possible. Do this one side at a time and fully tighten the 10mm screws.

3.6 *If you have the adapter-brackets on your bumper then fasten these to the two centre screw-holes from step 1.3.

3.7 Loosely replace the remaining four screws along the top of the grille / slam-panel, find a suitable placement for the grille panel where it does not disturb the shut-lines at the headlight corners and fully tighten the top screws using a T30-Torx socket.

3.8 Fit the M-Paket wheel-arch liners and fasten them to the bumper using the 8mm screws, or if you are keeping the SE ones, measure where the outer edge of the liner fouls the M-Sport bumper and cut a sliver off. One of the 8mm screw holes should still line up and hold the cut liner in place.

3.9 Replace the weather-strip trim to the top grille-panel.

3.10 Check the headlight-washers are clearing their apertures and refit the cover-caps.

E60 M-Sport Bumper Retrofit: '08 LCI to '04 SE

I have mentioned hankering after an M-Sport or M5 style front-bumper for my 530d, but they are expensive. A new spurious one will cost about £230, the same price as a damaged genuine one and either of these require painting. A mint one already painted in Titansilver, complete with grilles, parking-sensors and trim will run £400. I've been looking for a few months and this week spotted an undamaged '08 front bumper for £250 with new spot-lamps and grilles, but no sensors or trim. Best of all it was in Wrexham, less than 30 miles away, so when I emailed the seller offering £200 cash on collection and he accepted, I realised that I was now bound to the idea. I got the bumper on in 2 hours, but a lot of bits had to be removed to do it and before I start modifying them to fit I'm sat on a fence between bothering at all, or just going back to stock - I can still get £200 for this M-bumper all day long.

Before you consider doing the retrofit to an SE, I must mention that even if the M-Sport bumper is fully-loaded with trim and bits, you will still need to buy a heap of extra parts to make it fit properly. If you don't, stock parts that get in the way will either have to be binned or modified to fit...

Things that DO fit:

• Wing and top-grille mounting points.
• Spot-lamp bulb-holders.
• Parking-sensors (PDC).
• Grille-top weather-strip.

Things that do NOT fit:

• Headlight-washer caps.
• Headlight-washer cap hinges.
• Tow-eye cover cap.
• All 4 lower-grille mounting points.
• Left + right brake air-duct.
• Under-tray left + right corners.
• Front wheel-arch liners.
• Bumper shock-absorbers (foam-polystyrene blocks).

Assuming your bumper comes bare, you will need these essentials:

H/Light Washer Hinge (Lever) Left [51117896601] (22 in below pic)

H/Light Washer Hinge (Lever) Right [51117896602]

H/Light Washer Cap Left [51117897211] (21 in below pic)

H/Light Washer Cap Right [51117897212]

Tow-eye Cover Cap [51117897210] (9 in below pic)

You can get away with leaving the bumper unbolted in the lower-centre, or easily fab-up some custom brackets, but if you want to buy them then you will need:

Holding Strap [51111973721] (10 in below pic)

2x Adapter Bracket [51117896611] (33 in below pic)

The foam-polystyrene bumper 'shock-absorbers' can be cut to fit or just left off, but if you want them they are:

Shock-absorber Left [51117896589]

Shock-absorber Right [51117896590]

The plastic wheel-arch liners only need a sliver cutting off to make them fit, but if you really want to replace them:

Front Wheel-arch Liner/Cover Left [51717896605]
Front Wheel-arch Liner/Cover Right [51717896606]

The diagram above with all parts can be seen on this page of RealOEM.com.

E21: Seat Fitment Guide:

Swapping seats round in a BMW E21 3-series is a nightmare, thanks to the floor-mounts being two different heights. To fit level-based seats from another car requires chopping out the welded floor-mounts and once this is done there is no going back.

1. Check if your floor-mounts have been chopped:

Check the outer floor-mounts on either side, spot-welded in place just inside the door-sill. They should look the one in the left photo below.

If they don't, and they look more like the right photo [with or without the wood], then you have chopped mounts and seats not originally from an E21. You also won't be going back to E21 seats very easily, so to preserve the style and make the ride a lot better, throw in seats from a newer BMW.

2.1 Fitting stock BMW seats from E30, E36 etc. :

This makes sense. E21 seats are sprung and uncomfortable and were dropped in almost every succeeding model. Other BMW seats are easier to come by and cheaper. E30 seats preserve the look almost identically and are far superior in construct. They also fit the inner seat mounts on the E21, the ones against the trans.-tunnel, so only the only outer ones need adapting. I am sure this is the case with seats from other 80s BMWs, possibly the E36 and E46 as I've seen it done, but need confirmation.
Modifying the outer floor-mounts, the ones against the door sills, is impossible as they just sit that much higher than the inner ones, the E21 of course having a crazy odd-height sub-frame design, so they need cutting out. Putting in new ones is pretty straight forward though, you can fabricate them with steel or alloy C-channel, wooden blocks, improvised stilts - these are all popular methods. Tilt-forward seats don't tend to be very strong anyway, so the new mounts don't have to be rock solid as long as they're bolted or welded securely to the floor-pan. Mine used the stock inner floor-mounts and a wooden block on the outer side to get the height - this presented no problem to the UK MOT (roadworthiness-test).

Check out my guide here: http://e21dub.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/e30-sports-seats-fitted.html

Or check out HSVTurbo's guide HERE [where I got my idea] in THIS THREAD on bimmerforums.

2.2 Fitting rigid Racing bucket-seats:

If you're building a track car then it's obviously best to keep things as stiff and secure as possible. The neatest and most weight-saving method is to cut some steel cross-beams to fit and weld them across the floor-pan, from the trans.-tunnel to the door-sill. This could be done with or without removing the outer floor-mount, but you will probably have to do this to get the seat low enough. Two cross-beams under each seat would probably be best, but it is most often done with just reasonably thick one.

More info. HERE on bimmerforums.

2.3 Fitting non-BMW stock seats (VW, Ford Recaro etc.) :

To get the right height and a central-position with stock seats from non-BMWs there is a lot of modification to the mounts - these seats will always have the bolt-holes in the wrong place. The tidiest way would probably be to weld in rigid cross-beams like in the above guide [2.2], otherwise you will need to fabricate custom mounts. [I used a combination of wood-block and steel cross-beam to fit Ford RS Recaros to mine in THIS POST].

Check out my guide here: http://e21dub.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/recaro-seat-base-adapter-finally-solved.html

3. Re-fitting stock E21 seats:

I have never seen anyone online do this. If you have level floor-mounts then I see no reason to switch back to E21 seats. All but the Recaros are uncomfortable, sprung nightmares. They give a truly bouncy and uncertain ride - only the most restoration mad would want it. The Recaros are super-rare and overpriced to fit the E21s mounts. E30 Recaros are a fraction of the price, have level mounts and are better anyway. If you are so desperate to restore your E21 dutifully, then I would consider it having cut floor-mounts a deal-breaker and to find one with stock seats, because the car will never be the same again.

There are 3 ways I see to achieve refitting stock seats:

1. Build custom outer mounts using a combination of the methods above, building them back up to the original and rather tall height for the stock seat-frames. [].

2. Locate a pair of original outer floor-mounts that have been cut out of another E21 and refit them to yours. These would first need to have been cut out carefully from the donor car and preserved by someone. Whether they would advertise them for sale is another matter, but asking on the forums can't hurt. Otherwise, you'll need to find someone with a scrap / breaking E21 and ask to neatly cut out its floor-mounts for a few quid. Either way, obtaining a useable pair is going to be tough.
Once you do though, they would just need to be measured up to where yours were cut off and welded into place. How neat a job you do will determine whether they fit or if it's unnoticeable.

3. Fabricate new outer mounts from the ground up out of steel and weld those in. I will endeavour to make a note of the dimensions of my cut one before passing it on and do a quick CAD design to fab-up a simple one.

**Also, I still have the passenger-side (N/S, Euro/US Driver-side) floor-mount [above], so if anyone wants it to try and weld back in message me! [Sadly, I cut the driver-side one out more severely and this is probably going to be the case if yours are chopped as it gives the wood or whatever more to grab on to.]