Yeah, the problem is you can't really find E30 15" rims, because they were a special order part and most E30 buyers would not spend that kind of money on wheels. I would send out feelers on shipping. I would definitely not ship the tires, it would be cheaper to buy them here. Try UPS and DHL.
Sure, but E28 wheels are 5-lug and there's nothing in 15" for the E30 that looks decent (to me). 15" seems to be the ideal size for an E30 and there are no 15" wheels that I like on Tire Rack, except for the BBS RG-F, which is insanely expensive. I'd can probably buy the set of 4 basketweaves and ship them here for the price of one, maybe two of the RG-F's from Tire Rack... Everything on eBay is ugly to me, Tire Rack has a severely limited selection of wheels for my car, especially 15", and the local stores all are crazy on these horrid chrome wheels with the most atrocious designs I've ever seen... I'm not overlooking that at all. I don't accumulate enough brake dust to turn the rim dark during the week and I wash the car and rims every weekend. The small amount that does accumulate I'm not bothered with. It's not like I spend my lunch breaks cleaning my rims... *cough*someonewhoshallremainnameless*cough* Besides, if I'm going to be spending time cleaning my car, I definitely don't mind spending an extra 2-3 minutes cleaning each rim. It's weeeeeeeeeeell worth it for me if I can get my hands on the 15's. The current bottlecaps have caked on brake dust that I just can't get off, even with a barrel of elbow grease, so it already looks less than optimal, even when the rest of the rim is shiny and clean after the wash. I don't mind that it looks stock. It's actually what I want. My brother doesn't like stock stuff, but I want to keep the original charm of the car, hence why I haven't added any body kits and all that other mumbojumbo. There's no other 325e I've seen with 15" basketweaves though, so it's the best of both worlds (originality and style)! No. No, no, no. Going with a rim from another manufacturer gives me headaches I don't want. First is the mental thought that my rims came from another car, something I look down upon heavily. I can't live with the thought that there's *something* on my car that doesn't belong there. Plus, there's the compatibility issue you mentioned. I don't want to have to go looking all over the place for parts just to make it compatible. Though it wouldn't be as much of a problem to do that in general, I just feel like it's a waste of my time to go looking for these parts for something I don't want, which in this case is rims from another car. This part is all mental, and just don't want to deal with it. Besides, even though the rims are very similar, they just don't feel exactly the same to me. If I was sold the car with these rims on it from another car and they didn't tell me, I wouldn't know the difference and wouldn't care where they came from because I don't know where they came from. Let's just let this one be. So after shipping from Germany, without tires, I'm looking at over $500, perhaps?
black bottlecaps I followed your "shadowline" thread about painting all chrome black. FYI, I saw an E30 the other day with bottlecaps that had been painted gloss black. I thought it looked kinda cool. Just an idea. Another merit to bottlecaps is that they are only 15 lbs each.
I think bottle caps are more than that... I thought they were in the 20's, like 22 lbs? I'm not overly concerned about the weight. It's gonna be the daily driver set of wheels. I've already got my track rims, lightweights at that. If the bottlecaps were 15", I would consider keeping them. I remember someone who had 15" bottlecaps on his 5er with low-profile tires and they looked pretty good. My main gripe is that the small size of the bottlecaps detract from its appearance and to me make it look like the rims were just an afterthought alternative to steel wheels. If they were an inch larger, it would look better to me because it would take up more of the wheel well area. Small wheels really turn me off... Though I have to say that an E30 parked up next to me at the bank the other day and it had the standard 14" bottlecaps but it had 60 profile tires as opposed to the stock 65 that I have. It looked better than mine because of the lower profile tires, but it wasn't enough of an improvement for me to want to just change tire size and call it a day.
I weighed my bottlecaps I have 4 spare 14" bottlecaps moldering in my backyard. They are bare wheels; no tires, no wheel weights. Out of curiosity, I thought I'd find out how much they weigh. I weighed myself then weighed myself plus wheel using my digital bathroom scale. I repeated all measurements to ensure scale wasn't drifting. All four wheels are the same weight, one is a Fundo brand, three are BMW FSP brand. They weigh 14.2 lbs each.
Rims i have a set of Modern rims for my e30. they are only 14 inch and are a five spocked rim. however i think for just daily driving they look amazing. the handling is pretty good. unfortunately i have not had a chance to get any other tires underneath it yet. they are rapped with toyo spectrums 195/65r14 88t.
He hasn't been on the forums here for quite awhile, not sure what the end decision might have been - the E30 was ditched for an E46 eventually, can't recall if different E30 wheels happened before that or not. Note Moosehead's comment about the degradation in ride quality with 16's or higher - seems to be a popular enough choice these days, although perhaps more for teens & 20-something's prioritizing looks over performance and not caring about getting beat up by the crappy ride quality. Keep the car for the long-term or living someplace with other than billiard-smooth roads, getting beat to death while driving around gets old, sooner or later, never mind risk of bent rims, hassle and expense of repairs for that, etc. Food fer thought.