E46 325i Sport

Those old straight 6 engines sound fantastic. It was obviously quite quiet but I had the earlier M52B28 in my old E38, so silky smooth and sonorous.

Hope this car turns out to be a good one for you

Not sure where you are, but saw recently someone had the seat bolster in their Clio redone, looked great, may even be on here, I will try to find it.

Edit -

Here it is, looks good as new

https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

I wonder if one a 4 door you can use the covers from a passenger seat as they don't have the tilt handle, as would be easier to find a good condition one.

Fabric sample appeared in the post. It's a perfect match as far as I can tell. Really happy with that. I'm formulating a plan involving stripping the seat myself and employing my mother's upholstery skills. That does potentially mean a 1400 mile round trip though, so it might not happen for a little while yet.

In other news, £600 worth of parts are somewhere between Europe and my house. It's going to have one hell of a service soon!

Good stuff, looking forward to seeing the updates.

It's just an accumulation of all of the standard servicing parts, plus a Vanos rebuild kit and associated gaskets, plus a new DISA valve, rear brake pads etc. It soon adds up to give the engine and brakes a decent refresh! However, once I've been through it this time it should only need basic servicing for several years afterwards, with the exception of a couple of things I've not touched yet.

I ran a Vanos test to see whether I'd need to rebuild it or not. The intake side was looking good:



The exhaust side failed though. I wasn't expecting the intake side to pass either!



I did some other investigating too. Here's the DISA valve. I was expecting the flap to have fallen off so was surprised to see it intact. It looks like the diaphragm has broken on this one as it doesn't seem to hold the flap in position so that's why I need another one.



I also fixed the broken passenger electric window switch. Slightly annoyingly for my inner BMW geek the new switch feels slightly different to use to the original switch, and the driver's side switch that I've not needed to change. I took them apart to find out why:




The design is totally different. I couldn't use bits of the new switch to fix the original so I've put the new one on the car. If I want to be really geeky then I'll have to find a replacement switch with exactly the same part number as my original!

I'm looking forwards to all my service bits arriving and getting stuck in. While the car's in the air I'll make a list of anything required on the suspension. If I want it all 100% then that might not be cheap either! Everything's 'ok' in the usual 'old second hand car' sort of way, but we all know that might not be good enough for an enthusiast. Time will tell

Well, the car was cheap and it costs buttons to run compared to the M3. I want it reliable and driving nicely so why not spend a bit of money on it!