Well, I have been up to quite a bit with my E30 since my last post… but first of all here’s a shot of it I took yesterday looking all shiny under a motorway bridge for no particular reason!
MOT Time
First up some good news, it sailed straight through the MOT with a verbal advisory that one of the rear brakes were binding slightly.
Rear Brake Overhall
They are pretty much the only part of the car I haven’t touched yet so I decided to tackle them after the mention from the MOT tester about binding. New Mintex brake shoes, Pagid pistons, BMW fixing kit and I also decided to make up and fit shiny a new set of rear brake pipes whilst I was under there too.
The hub came off with no real issues but blimey, it was a bit of a mess under there.
Drum brakes on the rear are such a faff, three attempts at getting the auto adjuster set up perfect and then some tweaking of the handbrake adjusters to get it spot on. A few hours of swearing/trapping my fingers/launching springs across the garage and they were done, all fresh and clean.
Quick test drive and the brakes felt much better and the binding was gone!
The Protection Section
Whilst I had the car up I ordered some Lanoguard, it gets rave reviews for protecting the underside long term and applies easily, thinly and dries transparent.
I wanted this sort of finish as the car is superb underneath and I didn’t want thick under seal making it look like there is anything to hide. It was a full day of the car on stands and laid underneath cleaned up and a final wash off with the presur washer and then Lanoguard applied like a dream.
Its no where near as messy as I feared and the finish is very professional looking. Finished off with the shiny new brake pipes fitted!
Door Card Rattle
Next up, rattly drivers door card had been annoying me for some time so I tracked down these anti-rattle door card plugs.
I added a little Dynamax to the inside of the door whilst I was there too, greased the window mechanism and applied a new moisture protection membrane as whoever had been in the door before left the original plastic with holes. Very pleased to see no corrosion and lots of clean paint on the inside.
Everything put back together, no more rattle, the door feels nice and solid and just to keep everything tidy I did the same to the passenger door.
The Original Supplied Specification
I made some enquiries with the original supplying dealership for the car, Park Lane as I wanted to find out what the cars original spec was when it was supplied. They were absolutely amazing and I now have the full supply list as below… apparently it had an MTech II sport steering wheel optioned… so where’s that gone haha!
It transpires that one of the unique things about the SE model is BMW allowed you to specify individual MTech accessory options to be chosen when ordered.
Finding, fixing and fitting the original supplied stereo
The main thing I wanted to know though was what stereo did it come with… a little more investigation with Park Lane and it turned out to be a ‘’Blaupunkt Dusseldorf SQR49’’.
These sell for bonkers money now, £300-400 for a mint working example. I tracked down a really nice clean one for a good price which had a faulty display and a second one which was still boxed but listed as not working spares or repairs only, hoping to make one mint stereo out of the pair.
The issue with the first one was missing display elements on the display.
Dismantled, cleaned, applied pressure, tightened screws, no luck. A little investigation with the magnifying glass and I found this break in the PCB trace to the LED screen. Fixed the trace and the display improved significantly in brightness and some of the acronyms started showing but still had missing elements on the big numbers.
Issue with he second one was it was completely dead haha! Replaced fuse, still dead.
Dismantled the spares or repairs radio, swapped the screens over and hurrah, perfect! Cleaned the tape heads, replaced the internal bulb that lights up the volume dial, put everything back together and it just looks and sounds absolutely perfect!
MTech Steering Wheel
Having seen the MTech II steering wheel on the original supply list I had to source one. These also cost a lot of money now but I tracked down this lovely example and after a couple of hours of leather cleaning and treating it looks like new.
The old steering wheel
The new MTech Sport II steering wheel before treatment
After two hours of cleaning, some black leather dye and conditioner it looks like a new one!
Absolutely love it, I have to admit it feels so much better to drive with, the standard sport one always felt a little slim for my liking, this feels much more chunky and usable. I’ll obviously be keeping the standard wheel too.
Two New Rear Tyres
The front tyres are shiny new Continentals, the back two though were dated about eight years old so I thought I’d replace them for peace of mind.
Two new Falkens fitted, very impressed so far, they seem very grippy and are rated ‘A’ for wet road performance although hopefully the car won’t be seeing much rain.
Front Valance Grill
I also ordered a new front grill cover, the one on the car is a solid cover but it should have the pass through grill as it has the air conditioning compressor radiator lower behind the front valance.
Direct from BMW Hamburg!
Rear Quarter Trim
Also this off side rear bumper trim had been randomly painted by someone in the past, presumably it had a little scratch fixed, but it was annoying my OCD so I paid £78.. £78 bloody English Pounds! for a new one direct from BMW and fitted it.
A little bit of wall art for the garage 🙂
New fitted mats front and back
New rear exhaust hanger
Ive been wanting to do some (slow) moving long exposure shots so have welded this bonnet camera boom and set up a fixing kit for the camera so looking forward to give this a go in an underground carpark in the near future.
The Mighty E30 Blog 