Just thought I’d post this awesome E36...

 …because the owner is about to have it repainted and I'd like to preserve its current awesomeness. 

E30 Stance - Steel wheels or modern wheels??

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.

E21 316: Flared wheel-arches painted.

I have a buyer organised for the car, coming to pick it up next weekend. Just throwing up some recent pics of the painted wheel arches.

E21 316: Taller springs for MOT.

Well my MOT, the UK roadworthiness test, has come round and the E21 is just too low to get into my local testing station, let alone up onto the ramps. This is where height-adjustble coilovers would be worth their £650, as even if I can get the car onto the ramps, an attempt to raise the wheels off the ground will cause the short springs to become loose in the pans. The solution to this problem is still cheaper than coilovers - shortened strut-inserts from this post at ~£400, but I'll still have to find somewhere with ramps low enough to take her.

Seems to me the easiest and cheapest overall solution is to just swap longer springs in for the test and put the chopped ones back on later. Seems like quite a lot of effort just for a 30-minute inspection, but that's motoring in the UK, we're at the mercy of the MOT and it sees more cool cars off our overcrowded roads than insurance write-offs ever would.

Slight length difference. The red SPAX was a -40mm too.

A nice set of yellow APEX -40mm springs set me back just £80 from eBay. They are a lot longer than I remember though, which heralded me finally buying some spring-compressors, £17.99 and bringing the grand total of this years test to a ton before I've even had it inspected... not good.

Fitting the rear springs was a doddle, but the fronts threw up a few problems. Getting the cut spring off was easy enough, but even under compression the longer one was never going to fit in the space available. After damaging my newly filled wheel-arch and bursting one of my strut-inserts - nightmare - I started looking for a better guide on replacing springs and find out if it can ever be done with the strut and brake-line still attached, but one doesn't seem to exist - a good validation for this and other blogs! I did, however, find a Youtube video of some guys fitting H&R springs without removing the shock, which did give some clues from about 3min30 onwards:

PROCESS:

Rear Springs - 

1. Follow the steps in THIS POST to remove and re-fit the rear shock-absorbers, swapping the cut-spring for the new ones, obviously.

Front Springs [without removing strut, steering or brake-line] -

1. Raise the car and remove the corresponding front wheel. [It makes life easier to drop the front on axle-stands and remove both wheels, doing both springs together.]

2. Undo the top-nut from the shock-absorber, located on the suspension turret under the bonnet, using a 19mm wrench and 8mm open-end spanner at the top of the strut-insert to stop it from rotating.

3. Disconnect the brake-pad sensor wire by simply pulling it apart at the join behind the disc and sliding the rubber-mount free of the bracket.

4. Remove the earth-lead from the strut by undoing the bolt with a 10mm wrench.

5. Remove the bracket holding the brake-line to the strut using a 10mm wrench and open-end spanner. [This is essential to free the brake-line enough for it to tilt forward without having to remove the hose and drain the brakes. Without freeing the bracket, the brake-line will be stretched to breaking.]

** If the spring is still under compression without the weight of the car on it, use spring-compressors to hold it short enough to loosen the top spring-pan away from the turret.

*** The strut can be tilted out far easier with the track-rods unbolted, using a 17mm wrench and moved out of the way, but mine wasn't budging easily and there is enough room if you can push the steering-arm down enough.

6. Remove the four nuts holding the anti-roll bar brackets to the sub-frame using a 17mm wrench and open-end spanner. The anti-roll bar should drop down and remove tension from the two struts.

7. Tilt the shock-absorber strut out of the wheel-arch, remove the top spring-pan and spring.

8. Drop the new spring onto the bottom pan and reverse the above steps, using spring compressors if necessary.

Wheel-arch gap a little more prominent. Was it really that much before?!

E21 316: Sculpting New Arches...

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!

E21 316: Stance looking rather complete...

Squat, slammed, stanced, hellaflush, scrapin' and eating the modern metal for brekkies!

E21 316: More negative-camber on the front? Adjustable Top Mounts.

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.

E21 316: Stanced on the BBS reps!

E21 316: New Low-Pro Tyres - Toyo T1R + Stretching Issues!

Thanks to finding a buyer for my ill-fitting Yokohamas so quickly I was able to buy another set of tyres this week without having too feel too guilty about how much I've spent on stance this last fortnight. Stance is what this car is all about though, so money should be the last thing causing me to compromise. You can't fight progress after all...


I got back to mulling over sizes and decided not to take any chances on buying tyres too big again and went a couple of sizes smaller on width as well as a lower profile. The 8-inch wide front wheels have now got 195/40 tyres, as opposed to 205/45. That 5% decrease in the tyre-wall is more pronounced than I figured, but they still just about went on with a couple of assistants pressing the sides in. Still no need for the butane / lighter trick or a 'bead-blaster', but boy are they stretched! I think we're pushing the boundaries of legality here [Offence Code 112].

No such luck with the 9-inch wide rear wheels. With the lower-profile sidewall, the slightly skinnier 215/40 I went for just don't quite reach the inner-rims enough to coax them on, as the 225/45 Yokos did. With the help of my work colleagues we tried the butane / lighter trick several times to no avail. Either the fuel/air mixture wasn't right or we were just plain doing it wrong, so after starting to smell melted rubber I gave in and decided to read up a bit more. One guy at work knows someone not too far away who has one of the all fabled 'bead-blaster' machines [explained here on TyreBayDirect.com], but as is so often the case he hasn't seen him for a while and it'll take a bit of notice to get hold of it. I don't like to hang around so, determined to get something done this weekend, began scanning the forums again to see if there was another trick I'd missed.

To my amazement there was - the 'bicycle inner-tube' gambit. This involves stretching a bicycle inner-tube round the wheel-rim and inflating it to create an airtight seal in the gap between the rim and tyre, deflating it as the tyre expands and finally sliding it out as the bead is reached. It sounds almost simple and to be honest it is. Unlike the butane / lighter method, which is very hit-and-miss when you don't know what you're doing, the inner-tube trick has a much steadier learning curve. You can see what's going on, gauge the pressure, find leaks easily and if the tube is going to pop out and break the seal it does so gently and with fair warning. With a bit of common sense anyone can handle a tyre popping off the rim at 40-odd psi, so this is by far the safest way to stretch tyres at home - I even managed it with a foot-pump, though I wouldn't like to do that again. It only took two proper attempts to get my first tyre on this way and, of course, there's zero chance of damaging a rim or melting rubber. Here's a great vid on Youtube of how easy it is - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzxHYEdA8Qo, and it really wouldn't take many tries to get it down that good. I got 3 inner-tubes from Halfords for £10, so even if you need a dozen practise goes it still costs less than paying someone.

It's best to keep the tube size close to wheel size, but a bit smaller to get a tight fit. For my 16" wheels I bought 14" tubes, but a guy on the forum that convinced me was using 12" tubes on 15" wheels, so a few inches smaller is fine it seems. Getting an airtight seal was the most difficult part, but once you get a few PSI in and the tyre begins to press onto the tube you're away - make sure the valve on the tube is well proud of the seal as it inflates. Deflating and sliding the tube clear without breaking the seal can be troublesome, but it is just trial-and-error needed to get this right and it doesn't take much. Even though my first try was a fail and popped the seal it still managed to fully seat the opposite-bead, which is something two of us couldn't do using the old suspending the tyre on axle-stands and jumping on the wheel trick, so this is a good, safe method to do that. On my successful attempt, I still got a bit of tube caught in the bead, which is still stuck in there and caused the tyre to need quite a bit of pressure to pop onto the rim over it - about 65psi in fact, thankfully as with the foot-pump my legs just couldn't make any more! Still, the skinny 215 is on and I would recommend this technique to anyone stretching tyres at home.

E21 316: 8Js won't fit the front...

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!

E21 316: Making the 9Js fit the rear...

Summary of the bank-holiday weekends activities:

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.

E21 316: Getting there!

More lowered E21 for inspiration...

A few inspirational shots of slammed E21s...