Well I did it! I now own four BMWs, three of which are E30s I just bought my brothers 1991 325ix 4 door. This is my first 4 door BMW and look forward to the added usefulness. He is not the car guy I am, and now I need to bring this car back to a condition I can be proud of. Nothing serious, just some TLC is needed and routine maintenance. I plan on doing an Inspection II myself soon. Now this car is an automatic and I was going to wait a while before I did a 5-speed conversion, but as luck would have it (good or bad I am not sure) I have stumbled across a donor ix for the 5-speed. So in early May this car will be converted to a proper 5-speed. Long term (very long term) I plan on doing H&R sport springs w/ bilsteins and H&R sway bars. A supersprint exhaust at some point, as well as Hella Smoked head lights and Startec smoked tail lights. Maybe even a set of Hella smoked driving lights, just to finish off that rally look. My wife and I will be moving some time this summer, so this car will become my daily driver, since I won't be able to walk to work anymore. It has 171K on it, this is a lot more than my other two E30s. My 318i has 76K miles and my M3 has 74K on it. Here are a couple of pics, as you can see it still has it's winter boots on.
Very nice! With the exception of the autotragic, of course, but you're doing a swap so you're forgiven. Interior? Did he at least leave it in decent nick for you? How much did he charge you? I don't think you'll mind one bit that you'll have to drive to work...
Contrarian opinion (from a manual 5 speed guy) If you think you might be doing any bumper-to-bumper commuting, you might consider keeping the slushbox until it breaks. Stop-and-go rush hour travel is the only time when a manual transmission is a pain (... in the left leg).
It is in pretty good condition, nothing a little elbow grease and TLC can't fix. It just has small things that need to be taken care of. I paid $2,500 for it, not too bad. The commute will not be bumper to bumper, so shifting won't be an issue. Besides the parts are available now, so I think I need to jump on them. The transmission is unique to the 325ix and transfer case are unique to the 5 -speed 325ix. I am trying to figure out the correct numbers, but I believe less than 2,000 of these cars were imported into the U.S. Many of which were autos. So, I think I need to do the conversion now or never.
We don't get a lot of snow, I really wanted this car b/c of how rare it is. I also love the fender flares on it. However we do get enough that the E36 and the ix get dedicated snow tires in the winter. Actually the ix has studded snows on it. My brother lived in Idaho in the mountains, he didn't have any trouble in the snow.
Auto IX I too have an auto IX which I will be swapping asap to 5 speed but keeping the 4.10. It is my rally-esque E30 as my factory manual IX is babied. Let me know if you did your swap and how it went. I have all pieces on the way except for the manual tcase which is in very short supply.... did you go with a z3 short shift?
I tried to respond to you PM, but you have that turned off. The swap went great. The car has a Z4 shift lever. Which works great. It can be tight on an ix, not much clearance for a short shift, I guess I got lucky. I also kept the 4:10 diffs. Spun a bearing then shortly after. I don't think the motor was use to long periods at 4,500 rpm. I was out west and putting down some serious miles at triple digits.
nice. I'll try to be tender with the 4.1 manual on the highway. i think i'll use the 3.73 IX for long distance.
