PH Carpool: E30 BMW M3 Evo II

How to make your E30 M3 factory-fresh...

PHer 'estoril' (Darren Teagles) had his heart on an immaculate, concours E30 M3. Mission accomplished.

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"I have been a bit of an E30 M3 fan ever since I went over to the Isle of Man to watch the Manx rally in 1989; it was the first time I had seen an M3 and the sound of the four-pot at 8000 rpm really got me hooked. I was 23 back then and no way could I afford an M3, so I tried to forget about them and built a Westfield instead!

"Many years and many cars passed by when I eventually remembered what I had promised myself back in 1989, and so the search began. I was very disappointed at first - there were quite a few dodgy M3s out there with chequered histories. Eventually I found an original Evo II that was well used but very straight; it had lots of history and was for sale at £9000, which I thought was on the high side. Little did I know back then how the Evo II values would rise over the next few years.

"My plan was to do a rolling restoration a bit at a time over a number of years. It was clear to me that the car was a "keeper" and as I'm a bit of a perfectionist I wanted it just so. First job was a set of new tyres, and while wheels were being refurbished and having new tyres fitted I thought I would pop the sill covers off and apply some rust-proofing.....oh dear....

"I found the usual rot at the bottom of the wings, the jacking points, a little rust on the scuttle panel (but fortunately it didn't need replacing), along with a couple of other small bits that warranted a trip to a body shop. I was explaining what I wanted doing at the body shop and also asking if they could paint the front end whilst it was there. After all, 183,000km was a reasonable mileage at which to get the stone chips sorted out! To cut a long story short I decided to have the lot done, although I don't think it took too much to convince me.

"Once that was done and I was actually driving the car I noticed that I was regularly getting very embarrassing crunches on most of my downchanges. So I made enquiries about a gearbox rebuild.

"While the car was in having that sorted out, I thought that maybe it was worth taking a look inside the S14 motor. As I said before, she'd done over 180k at that point and so it seemed like a good thing to do. Turns out that it wasn't a bad move; nothing terminal was about to happen but the bores were shiny and one of the cam lobes was worn. The engine was rebuilt with the usual new piston rings, oil pump, water pump, timing chains etc. The following 1200 miles of running-in seemed to take forever.

"So now all that was left was the interior. It wasn't too bad but I could see that the driver's seat bolster was about to break through so went in search of a trimmer who could replace the cloth and leather as per the original. Another wad of cash later and it was all done...or was it? Being in the BMW Car Club I get to read the club magazine every month and was avidly reading about a new conversion being done to remove the AFM - it promised a little more power and torque but more importantly better throttle response than that which can be achieved with the old "barn door" style AFM, and so it does...

"So that's pretty much up to date apart from some Eibach ARBs and springs, Bilstein dampers, a set of refurbished brake calipers and new discs and pads.

This all sounds like quite a lot, and it is, but I think she's fabulous and together we have won some awards at concours d'elegance competitions as well as having some fun on track from time to time. It's not just the racing heritage that makes the E30 M3 so special. The sublime, almost un-stickable handling and fantastic looks keep me wanting to own and drive this car forever."

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howardhughes

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