Just wanted to say hello to my fellow E30 members. Just joined the BMW CCA and I am a member of the First Coast Chapter. I have an '87 325i vert that I just bought this past Saturday and an '03 330iA that belongs to my Wife. The vert needs help and I am just now beginning my BMW mechanic experience. I worked on my Jeep CJ7 for 10 years and learned alot but it was not a Bimmer. Anyway, as I stated earlier I just wanted to say hello. Hello!
Welcome to the forums and the club! Best of luck with any & all car projects, including the E30. Consider the Bentley Manual for E30's - it'll cover a lot for various maintenance projects, very useful!
Welcome to the asylum! Soon you will be acquainted with our most colorful inmates---the E30 brigades!
Wilkommen. Along that same line, the contraction for the car you're driving would be 'cabrio', which is short for 'cabriolet'. I think only Americans use 'convertible' for drop-top cars I also think my friend Marshall is much too faint in his praise for the Bentley E30 manual. The E28 version approaches the Bible in terms of our adoration for it. DO NOT accept substitutes like the Haynes or the Chilton or the Clymer manuals. You may as well guess or use a Jeep manual* as use them. * As an '01 Grand Cherokee owner, I know. I prefer the Haynes; supplemented by specialty manuals for stuff like the gearbox ...
Welcome! We enjoyed our E30 for 18 years. The Bentley is very helpful, as is the BMW repair manual and E30-specific forums. http://www.bmwtechinfo.com/repair/main/561en/htm/002.htm http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/index.php http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=20
Racing question Danke fur das herzliche Willkommen! (Thank you for the warm welcome!) I have never been a racing fan because the only option was NASCAR and it doesn't really tickle my fancy. However I would like to try rally racing or grand prix, I am not sure of the terms actually. I am a racing idiot. I am talking about the racing in the streets where cars run into hay bales. I have seen you tube stuff on autocross and don't think that's what I am talking about. I want to race against other cars, no pro racing or highly skilled amatuers. I guess I am looking for the glorified go cart racing. Anything like that available in the Jacksonville, FL area or simply Florida?
Not exactly clear on what you want to try... I think to find a race course laid out on public streets using hay bales as safety barriers, you'd have to go back to the early 50's in Elkhart Lake or Watkin's Glen. Hay bales.... sounds like you've been watching the original The Fast and The Furious which mixes in some footage of some early sports car racing in the race scenes. I think most of us would suggest starting with some performance driving course, such as a BMWCCA driver's school, to begin to gain a sense of what you'd need just for the driving part of the skillset for any kind of auto-based racing. Karting can be a way to pursue some competition driving in a totally different fashion, but again, without some basics in place, you might have some fun, but you'll be running around wondering why-in-the-heck is everyone else getting around the track so much more quickly. There are karting schools out there as well - check the advertisers in Autoweek or Grassroots Motorsports. Depends on what you want to accomplish I suppose, easy enough to go out and try and have some fun, but it's probably less frustrating and more fun if you get enough experience under your belt to know you stand a chance of at least holding your own when you decide to hit the track in a competitive fashion. It might also be worthwhile to think about it a bit more comprehensively and systematically with specific goals in mind. It's easy enough to say "Hey, I'm gonna go racing!" and, well - thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars later, you have a properly built and prepped race car, an open or enclosed trailer, wheels, tires, spares, spare parts, tools, a tow vehicle, and lots of money and time and years into attending driver's schools and racing schools and driving events, and you're all ready to go racing. You need some sense of what your in for and up for, for whatever you want to pursue - more power to anyone who says the heck with all that blather, I'm gonna go hit the track, but... there's something to be said for knowing what you're doing, more or less, before doing it. I wouldn't suggest the "Ed Gruberman" approach.... Boot to the Head