bmwe21.net forums

Hi, my name is Christian and i wanted to introduce myself as a new member to E21.net

After purchasing a lovely 323 from Paul, a member here, a couple of months ago i have since been browsing this forum gathering some information. I have to say what a fantastic machine this is. In between a busy work life i have only done a couple of hundred miles in the car and loved all of them. The attention the car gets everywhere from all ages is fantastic. For an old car, the feeling it gives you when you drive it is something else

I found Paul's for sale thread on here (i originally found the car for sale via ebay) which was nice to read through your comments. I'd advised Paul upon purchase that my plans were to correct a few of the niggles over winter. Its been a busy time lately but i have had some chance to get busy on the interior for starters by doing the following:

All seats front and back, all door cards and the steering wheel were removed. The drivers seat required the leather replacing on both outer side bolsters as it was ripped. All of these parts removed were then reconolised to give them a completely fresh look and lose there old shiny appearance

The carpet was removed and dyed black

The chassis underneath the carpet was thoroughly checked, cleaned up and satin blacked

Speaker grills, handbrake, foot pedals (obviously not the rubbers) and seat runners were also satin blacked

The dash has been thoroughly cleaned and dressed with a natural look dressing

Currently this is where i have got to. So the next steps are onto the paintwork. I am a car detailer by trade, however there are areas on the body which require work to get them to the standard i am looking for. I was originally going to have these small areas of rust and the odd area of lacquer peel repaired and blended in. But being the colour it is the overall finish still wont be what i'm looking for and it will bug me. So i have decided to make more of a project of this than originally planned and have the entire car resprayed.

Now some of you may disagree with some of my ideas below, so aplogies there but i think i have chosen the kinda direction i want to go and the car is going to my bodyshop next week to discuss some plans. If its going to be fully painted then it has to be done properly, windows out, everything removed and i would really want the engine bay doing to. Although i love black, if i am going to these lengths i have had an itch to respray a car in Lamborghini Grigio Silverstone for a while. Its a lovely dark, deep metallic gunmetal. Whilst searching through pictures for ideas i have come across the group2 arches from the 2002 turbo, also the mcracing curved flares. These 2 cars have really caught my eye and i am loving the look that could be created with these. Clean and simple. From reading i think i understand that the arches on the white car, and possibly the black by its looks have had the arches made slightly smaller than how they come. As opposed to the silver car?









Which leads me onto the thought that if i will be keeping this longer than expected, and if the engine could well come out for the painting, then it could be a great time to put something else in to further increase the enjoyment from the car. I've been doing lots of reading and obviously still have a lot more to do, but quite like the idea of a 2.5 M50 or 2.8 M52. So i hope i will be able to question all your knowledge on this area and what is involved before i make any decissions there.

One thing that was important to me was increasing the cars value, hence my original plans to simply return the car to as good condition as possible. But i have fallen in love with it and really want to see the idea i have in my head, actually sitting as pride and joy in the garage.

Here are some pics showing the interior upon purchase









And how she is looking now



























Any help and comments appreciated,

Christian

Hi Christian and welcome!

Lovely car you have there.

I like the mods you have in mind but one thing I would say is that black 323's are pretty rare beasts. I'm a firm believer in ''your car - your choice'' though. Look forward to seeing plenty of pics of progress.

Where are you based?

Hi Mark. Thats exactly my thoughts. I would hate to ruin what is a lovely classic and a rare colour to as you say. Anything i do will be to the highest standard, but its still at the back of my mind.

I'm based in Rusper, West Sussex. About 10 mins from Gatwick

Not too far from me and from the venue for Bimmerflex Classic in the spring if your cars on the road then?

There are some good events coming up with the 2002 crowd where we go and drive some good roads, pub lunch & socialise too.

Definetly be up and sorted by spring Mark. Only thing that probably wont be would be an engine swap. I gather from reading on here that Nas would be the man for me to speak to regarding that?

He would, yes. Are you thinking M52 or something else? There are a few cars with M52's now and it's a relatively cheap way to get 220bhp and make an e21 a properly quick car.

At this point i couldnt really say which way i'm thinking. Theres nothing wrong with the engine in the car, infact it seems very healthy. Another bad reason for ripping it out. But with having the 4.6 Chimaera and previous car being a 530hp Supra with a good mix of cars before that, i just feel the E21 needs a bit of a kick I like the idea of either the m50 or m52 but am doing my best to find out what else has to be or is advised to also be done such as gearbox, diffs, drive shafts etc. Is there a rough guide price for either of these engine conversions?

Obviously a 220 brake e21 is no match for the TVR or 550 brake Supra but it'll match an e36 M3 in a drag for the line. I'm sure Nas will be along shortly and PM some numbers but £1k should get you the parts you'll need plus the obvious labour costs. If you stick with a standard 323 diff & driveshafts you'll be getting close to their limit of torque but unless you're a hooligan and not very sympathetic with launches & gearchanges, you should be fine. I recently had an e12 M535 diff conversion in readiness for nitrous and another 100 brake.

I wish I'd done the M52 swap a long time ago. It gave my car the sort of performance I'd always wanted for it but never got from an M20.

Good info, thanks Mark. I dont want the E21 to be a hp beast. I just love the look of it and the way it drives, but it would be nice for it to have a bit more umph and for me that would have to be a bmw engine as opposed to something else. All sounds very tempting, hopefully Nas will put in his input to give me some more back ground

Just thought, where in the world is Nas based?

He's in Leeds. They've got electricity and everything up there now though.

The thing I like about the M52, apart from the noise, is the torque.

2 mins 58 secs things liven up!

Cheers mate. Have seen that vid, plus as many others i could find on you tube. Sounds great. Am currently reading through your build thread

At bottom of index page there's the mag feature section, and the PPC mag feature shows the various options the guys here have carried out.

I flicked back through my thread the other day. It's changed a fair bit in just a couple of years. Mainly due to the help some of the guys here have given. I'm pretty useless when it comes to spanners but there's a wealth of e21 related knowledge available here. Jason323, Nas, Duracell etc are always helpful in answering technical questions.

Just played that video.The dog went ape shit!!

Hi mate.

Firstly welcome to the e21 forum

Nice garage! Love j tin. I used to have jap cars (rx7s) before i got into classics. Defo would have another rx7 but the next one I own im going fit an ls3!

I got offered a 316 for cheap by chance really, and hated how it drove as it was slow and had scary handling. Ive Spent loads of time and money making it handle and now I laugh as I am able to out accelerate most stuff you see on the road and take bends without being scared.

The m52 swap makes an e21 a bit faster than a stock e46 m3 and the last one we did was faster than my mates e55 amg merc. I would say is enough in a 30 year old car, the driveline can handle it if your not clutch kicking every two minutes or your surname isn't tuchiya! It does about 40mpg on a motorway run and that's at 80-90 mph.

M52 requires a fair wack of custom work such as custom sump and oil pickup, custom wrc spec rad, steering link, the wiring, a specially mapped / reprogrammed ecu, custom mandrel bent exhaust, obviously you'd need a decent 2.8 engine, clutch kit and other sundry / service stuff. It costs about 4-5k in total including parts and labour.

Btw I recommend the "all alloy" 2.8 its much lighter and its so much nicer to drive than a 2.5 m50. The m50 is a heavy engine (cast iron) either engine is good if you wanted to turbo later most ppl get about 450hp at 7-8psi on the stock internals.

Depends on how far you want to go really. Can fit a e30 2.5 which has 170hp instead and they are reasonably quick and far cheaper an engine swap.

I would suggest that one day we meet up and ill let you drive mine / get mark to take you out in his?