Hello all! My name is Gabriel (or Gabe), I'm the owner of a daily driven 1986 E30 325e. It's my first car I got it locally for 2.8k from an older gentleman who was moving away to retire and he was looking to give it up to someone who loved bmws and wanted to take care of it. I have a lot of plans for the car trying to keep it stock plus interior and hopefully this isn't seen as sacrilege but I've been planning to do k-series (k24a2) swap as I've been seeing kits/builds and the engine is available in my area. Some of the current problems I'm dealing with though to pick your brains, I'm 6' and have the comfort seats while they are comfortable they are a little too tall I was looking around and saw that the sport version of the seats are more comfortable and sit a little lower as well as some swaps to e36 or E46 seats. Are there any seat setups people can vouch for personally? Otherwise I'd be going for recliner recaros. The bmw electrical jokes are hitting a little to real, but it's just age I promise. I really want to start learning electrical by replacing wiring that's causing has aged I want to keep between swaps and bandage some of the stuff that will end up going between swaps. Anyone who is willing to let a noobie pick their brain with some more specific questions or knows some good resources... Help me please Besides those two big things right now, I'm just a wee lad so feel free to start a Convo really excited to start working on the car more this summer and plotting what I'll do next! Other things on my mind are paint colors, interior styles, and new tires (I'm still on 14s) Much thanks, Gabriel H
well my really long reply glitched thanks to browser wonkiness so a summary will have to do - Wilkommen! wheels and tires - most have found running 205's are the max width without needing fender-lip rolling (assuming proper offset wheels), added negative camber, or other mods to make things fit. Any rim bigger than a 16" is flat silly on regular E30's, and personally I find 16’s still too big – they can fit, but, heavier, which doesn’t benefit performance. Check the Tire Rack for wheel options, the grey 15x7 Sparco FF-1 looks great at sub-12lbs (super light!) , 25mm offset, & $155/whl. Consider buying an extra rim, if you end up damaging one replacement’s a problem if whatever you buy gets discontinued. Yes, tire choice is bigger for 16’s, but there are a few high-performance all-season category tires in 205/50-15, theKumho Ecsta PA31 is one that looks good to me for all-year performance & the tread pattern looks good for water evacuation & resisting hydroplaning. In any case, if you want to keep a classic look, skip the temptation of rims that are wider (or extremely silly-wider) than your tires, which offers no practical or performance benefit, and only subjects (typically expensive) rims to street/pothole/curb damage. Seats – stock sport seats are ok, but, really, are still short in the seatback length for anyone tall. Recaro’s are waaaaaay more comfortable (& supportive). Finding any stock seats that also aren’t completely ragged out at this point would be a challenge, and the only way paying for freshly re-leather-upholstered sport seats could be worth it is if that’s the look you just had to have. The recaro classics (LS, LX) or the Sportster/Speed models are worlds better than the stock seats – if you can find anyone anyplace to test-sit them, then you can make sure fitment is good in butt/hips/legs ahead of a purchase. Ebay’s an option for shopping classic recaros/koenig/corbeau seats, but I’d avoid all the similarly styled cheap knockoffs for both comfort/quality & safety. Aftermarket seat-mounting options should be able to get you a lower seating position (to get headroom in mine I ultimately hade to have a welder modify a seat bracket recaro sliders could mount to). There looks to be several options of E30 seat adapters – Wedge Brackets, Garagistic has something that adapts Recaros to the e30 stock sliders (not sure how seatbelt mounts), Corbeau has an adapter (corbeau specific perhaps?). I think you’ll find lots google searching. Also should be lots of how-to’s on the other usual-suspects BMW forums – bimmerforums, bimmerfest, r3vlimited, etc. BMW ETM here : http://wedophones.com/Manuals/BMW/ Get a Bentley E30 manual – very good to have: http://www.bentleypublishers.com/bm...bmw-3-series-e30-1984-1990-repair-manual.html I don’t know anything about your considered swap, but found this: https://kpower.industries/blogs/news/the-k24-bmw-e30-swap-package-is-here That seems like a comprehensive swap kit, the end mentions something about power steering in the location of the a/c compressor, so that brings to question if their conversion forces the loss of having a/c. Sounds like you got a good classic E30 there - enjoy!
