Thank you BMW, for reminding me why I drive Hondas.

Roger McDaniels · **Posted:** Thu Dec 22, 2016 8:08 pm

I just finished spending a few hours replacing the starter on my E30. It's basically two bolts and takes me about 5 minutes on a Civic. On an E30, the bolts are placed in a location that isn't very accessible without telekinesis. I've owned several German cars (an Audi, a Porsche, and several BMW's), and after every time that I work on them, I'm left with the feeling that they really didn't want my fat stupid American fingers mucking about in their fine German engineering. My Hondas and Mazdas aren't like that, most work on them is simple and straightforward. Of course nothing beats my 60's English cars for simplicity. I think that the English tacitly acknowledged that some questionable design and workmanship had gone in to those Triumphs, MGs, Austins, etc, by making it easy for the poor fools that bought them to take them apart when the time quickly came to fix them.

This kind of cements my "E30 or Miata?" race car question.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 10:04 am

The E30 design was started in the late 1970s, you should work on a 2016 BMW if you want real fun. These are throw-away cars. Once the lease and warranty is up, the car is done.

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 10:07 am

You are preaching to the choir hear with me Roger. I swear German engineers like to make things complicated just for their amusement.

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 10:09 am

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

The E30 design was started in the late 1970s, you should work on a 2016 BMW if you want real fun. These are throw-away cars. Once the lease and warranty is up, the car is done.

Chuck may only be halfway kidding. I know of more than one owner who has indeed said it's better to lease one and just get another before the warranty is up.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 11:54 am

Vincent Keene wrote:

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

The E30 design was started in the late 1970s, you should work on a 2016 BMW if you want real fun. These are throw-away cars. Once the lease and warranty is up, the car is done.

Chuck may only be halfway kidding. I know of more than one owner who has indeed said it's better to lease one and just get another before the warranty is up.

No, not kidding at all. These things are designed this way now imo. BMW, like many other corporate entities during this "recovery", are focused on one thing and one thing only -- financial engineering to extract the maximum amount of profit in the shortest possible time -- long term future, long term customer good will, long term anything be damned. Hence they've turned these modern chassis into semi-junk now (i.e. for example the 2012+ "F30" 3-series drives like crap (i.e. soft lexus) with awful electric steering with hugely reduced/eliminated steering feel, softened everything in suspension, designed in crap like great toe-in under compression in rear to promote more understeer, etc, etc). BMW lease uptake exceeds 80% of cars "sold" on the high end cars -- hardly anyone actually buys one of the 7-series cars for example.

For an enthusiast, the only product of minor interest would be the M2. The M3/M4 while fast as hell (i.e. stock cars trap 120mph in the 1/4) are HUGE cars now...i.e. Mustang large. I guess the F80 M3 is actually a tad smaller than the s550 mustang and has four doors and a decent trunk, so in that respect is a usable vehicle for its size anyway. These 3 cars are actually designed to be fun to drive, handle incredibly well, fast, decent gas mileage, etc. BUT they are enormously complicated vehicles. No DIY capable person is going to want to deal with this stuff in a few years.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 12:08 pm

ROFL, I literally just received an e-mail from Leith BMW with this come-on:

"ZERO Down Payments!
ZERO Percent Financing!"

:lol:

For some reason they didn't mention that last month the year-over-year sales of the 3-series model line was off about 50% from 2015 here in the US.

RobLupella · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 1:35 pm

My dad used to have a saying that if you have a subassembly on a car that consists of 1000 parts, the Germans would use 1100 parts set to tight tolerances and machined to the nth degree and cost $5000. The Japanese would build that same assembly with 1000 parts with workable tolerances and fit a bunch of different models and cost $2000. They wouldn't be as finely machined as the Germans but they would be cheaper and worked. The Americans would spec the assembly with 1000 parts but would only install about 925 of them with the rest being left out or lying loose in a body panel. The assembly would sort of fit OK and would cost about $3500.

This was in the late 70's early 80's

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 2:33 pm

RobLupella wrote:

The Americans would spec the assembly with 1000 parts but would only install about 925 of them with the rest being left out or lying loose in a body panel. The assembly would sort of fit OK and would cost about $3500.

This was in the late 70's early 80's

Perfect summation of the time period. I recall looking at 1975 Firebird Trans-Ams in the showroom and just being aghast at the horrid body panel fit, even as a 16 year old yet to be engineer/tech nerd. The most glaring fit issue common to all of them was the three piece large rear spoiler which had huge misalignment issues of all types. The fit/finish/engineering/care/design/whatever was simply awful back then for American cars.

Vincent Keene · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 3:30 pm

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

Perfect summation of the time period.

Agreed. Rob's Dad was a wise man.

So in summation, American cars have gotten better, German cars, worse. :mrgreen:

Roger McDaniels · **Posted:** Fri Dec 23, 2016 4:35 pm

I remember the first Honda motor that I had to build. I had built some Austin-Healey and Chevy motors before for my cars, so I figured I'd be fine. Then I looked at the specs and realized that they wanted things measured down to .0005", which was way tighter than the English or Americans specified. I ended up paying someone else to do the first few.

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Sat Dec 24, 2016 11:57 am

I agree with Chuck on the newer F30s. Had a chance to drive a new '15 320. Closest thing to a Honda that BMW has ever developed. Steering was numb and it drove way to soft. The wife's e91 has a much better feel.

Chuck Branscomb · **Posted:** Mon Dec 26, 2016 12:31 pm

RodneyWright wrote:

The wife's e91 has a much better feel.

Rodney,

I've got my non-sport package RWD E91 at least somewhat enjoyable to drive for a very small outlay now. I put on an Eibach solid 28mm front sway bar and, after some calculations, decided to use the 23.5mm hollow rear sway bar off the E93 M3 vert. I found a dismantler on eBay offering one with bushings/brackets/end links for $79 shipped! That alone got things in line and massively reduced the large lean angles while making the turn-in so much crisper. It's still on stock shocks/springs which we plan to leave alone. I also ran across a local selling some E90 M3 18" front wheels, set of four fronts at a great price, 8.5x18", and bought some Michelin PSAS3+ tires (225/40, 255/35), and wow, what a massive improvement from the stock 7x16 with 205/55-16 runflats! With the Discount Tire $100 Tgiving rebate plus the family rebate through Jackie for buying Michelins, they were almost 50% off and well worth it. After three treatments of Iron-X, the wheels came back to life amazingly well although there is still a bit of dust damage in the corners from prior neglect.

By the way, I ran across a unicorn last week parked at Lowes on Stickland rd. It was a later model 2009-2012 E91, RWD with 6MT, sport package, and apparently every other option. Dark blue with brown interior -- really nice looking other than I could see some poor repair work on the hood.

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Mon Dec 26, 2016 6:43 pm

Seems to be a recurring theme there Chuck. Others had mentioned to drop a M5 rear bar on my 525. Seemed to help some. As for Pam's car, I'm going to leave it alone considering I rarely drive it and she's not much into modding =)

Patrice Bousquet · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2016 8:37 am

Chuck Branscomb wrote:

like many other corporate entities during this "recovery", are focused on one thing and one thing only -- financial engineering to extract the maximum amount of profit in the shortest possible time -- long term future, long term customer good will, long term anything be damned..

So true.

Matthew Ryan · **Posted:** Tue Dec 27, 2016 9:34 am

I really have no issues working on my bmw's there are large enthusiast sites with howto's on everything. I've done everything from timing chains to clutches.

The only thing I find difficult is the vanos units as it seem to be half artwork getting them timed unless you replace everything like chain, all guides and tensioners all at once, but I do get them done.

I cant really say they are any worse or better than any other brand I've worked on

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Thank you BMW, for reminding me why I drive Hondas.

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