The used car market in north america is a very saturated market and therefore heavily standardized. Below is some information that will make you a better informed buyer:   Where do original and used car dealerships get their cars from? Used car dealerships leverage either of two systems: Buying cars from dealership auctions  The...
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There are many online based ETK systems like realoem and bmwfans.info for BMW parts and most work great, however none are as accurate and up to date as the ETK directly from BMW. Luckily BMW has their ETK available online with a general login. To access it just press the link below and enter the...
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BMW (including E30’s) and some Mercedes drive-shafts particularly of the 80’s-90’s vintage have what are called non-serviceable staked in u-joints. Over-time the grease inside the u-joints drys out, get pasty or otherwise stops performing its job; this causes the u-joint needle bearings to bind. Binding u-joints will cause vibrations to be felt at a...
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Many months ago I took out a 380 ECU out of my E30, expecting to find a 153 ECU, that I changed with a 173. The Vin sticker on the ECU reads: WBATE5FFHA1716242 It seem that this VIN does not exist? When I search the last 7 digits in realoem/BMW ETK I get an...
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On a 25 year old E30 it is hard to know what options were original to the car and what options were added later by previous owners. Take for example my E30, it has the original white exterior with a cardinal red interior. However after decoding my VIN I discovered the cardinal interior was not original to my...
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I recently acquired another E30 and am officially back in the E30 scene. Unfortunately the car had an overheating problem among other things, and facing a 2500 mile trip ahead of me, this overheating problem needed to get sorted. Basically at idle and while driving the heat gauge would climb right around the 3/4 mark (should be at 1/2)....
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  My first car, an E30, being excited to get it safetied and to broke to buy OEM parts, I purchased an after market tierod from my local auto parts store.  After getting the car back I heard a grinding/swishing noise that went with the pace of how fast the car was going (the faster I went the more frequent...
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It has long been the norm to use subframe spacers while preforming the m60 / m62 v8 swap into an e30. Where did this norm start? Well basically as far as I can tell it started with an old-er swap guide which you will find somewhat translated here.  So for the sake of convenience...
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So you have a check engine light on, and your a backyard mechanic. One of the most useful free tools in your arsenal is what is called the stomp test; this test basically makes the check engine light flash to give you a code, with this code you can determine the fault for why...
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I have been looking for Free Vin check website ever since I can remember. Thanks to the guys at http://52internet.net/autocheck/ we all can now get a free autocheck report. Its rather nice seeing where all my old cars have ended up, I had always been curious. Below: 1. Input the vin number 2. Click...
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