(yet another) e30 m3

[falkster]

andye30m3 said:

Funny how times change.

I bought mine around 7 years ago did a couple trackdays, and loved almost constant enthusiast driving (when warm) and now it seams to have ended up wrapped in cotton wool in the garage.

I knew it had gone too far towards being a garage queen when I was sat in Munich Legends ordering new door handles and badges and putting tyre shine on the spare wheel.

I've just read that back to myself and really need to get a life!

Edited by andye30m3 on Friday 14th May 12:45

Dont worry Andy Im exactly the same and I think Kieran is just as anal!!I polished under the boot carpet, behind the headlights, put all new badges on (wheel centres too) and replaced the header tank and washer bottle yet Im still not happy?

[irish boy]

Good to hear of so many others about! I do intend to use the car but probably not in anger or tracks....the old girl doesn't deserve to be driven like a civic type r at this stage in her life. Have you guys found your's mostly reliable? any preventative maintenance should be carried out rather than the obvious?

[andye30m3]

As I said I've had mine around 7 years and it's generally been very good

I had the timing chain at 100,000 miles, there's so much debate on if this needs doing but i decided to anyway

other than that all I've done is general servicing every year, brakes etc. really should do a brake fluid change thinking about it.

Only issues i've had were

- The lay shaft bearings in the gearbox, which are also starting to get noisy in the2nd hand replacement box, gearboxes do seam to be the weakest link.

- It was hunting on idle which turned out to be the thick rubber gasket between the inlet manifold and the throttle bodies, £120 and an hour to fix, again reasonably common now they're getting old.

- A replacement rad

- and a number of the nuts which hold the exhaust manifold on worked loose which again is from what I understand fairly common.

I'd have expected the biggest thing with E30 M3's is making sure the bodywork is up to scratch as there is a number of places which they rust and these can be expensive to fix.

Edited by andye30m3 on Friday 14th May 15:20

[falkster]

irish boy said:

Good to hear of so many others about! I do intend to use the car but probably not in anger or tracks....the old girl doesn't deserve to be driven like a civic type r at this stage in her life. Have you guys found your's mostly reliable? any preventative maintenance should be carried out rather than the obvious?

You have bought the wrong car if you dont like giving it beans. I dont constantly thrash mine but they really do like a good clean out. Constantly nursing mine has fouled about 3 sets of plugs in the last year or so. If you talk to anyone that knows about s14s they'll tell you they really want to be on the boil all the time.

Other than fouling plugs mine has never missed a beat but I do keep on top of the maintenance side - its done 600 miles from Inspection 1 then oil service then Inspection 2 (last 12 months) and has the oil changed at the begining and end of the year (April and October) no matter how many miles Ive done.

You just need to make sure youve got a good specialist (dont take it to a dealer) and keep 2k aside each year to look after it. We've just had a thread on e30zone.net regarding invoices/spend on our cars and I had £13,065.49 but have found a few more which total my spend at around £16k in 9 years of ownership.

[irish boy]

thanks for the detailed replies! good to know they are built for driving properly as sometimes it's hard to resist! heading for a 2 week tour of scotland and the islands for my honeymoon in the summer so very much looking forward to taking it!