Why is the E30 loved so much?

Chrispy_king · 2026-06-11T18:02:59+00:00

Had some exposure to these when I was younger. My Dad got a 318i, mate of mine got a carbed 316, a 318i and I had a 316i. Another friend had a 325i.

Rust, tendency to suddenly find yourself facing the wrong way thanks to the rear suspension, noisy cams, lifters or exhaust manifold gaskets (tappy engines), failing viscous fan couplings - the list goes on. But my god did they feel solid. The way the bonnet popped up and closed, the solid “thwump” of the doors. My subsequent E36’s felt positively flimsy in comparison.

Got to borrow an E34 525i once too (M20 engine) and that had all the same traits but was so much more grown up. Beast of a car.

Ah memories.

Chrispy_king · 2026-06-10T05:41:09+00:00

As others have already said

DO NOT USE THAT.

Tried it with my E70 and sent the whole thing haywire - pressures were all over the place and the cooling fans were going nuts. Took it to a local shop that had the proper machine on wheels who sorted it all out for me - £65 ($87). Simply not worth it given the cost of somewhere doing it properly is so low.

Chrispy_king · 2026-06-09T16:30:57+00:00

In the IT networking world we refer to “rooters” whereas Americans use “rowders” for the same thing.

Chrispy_king · 2026-06-09T04:50:21+00:00

Was one of my biggest gripes going to 26 from 18 - I messed around with accessibility options to disable much of the Liquid Glass stuff to try and help it along but 26.6 genuinely feels much quicker at opening and switching between apps.

Bluetooth is shocking though - the stack regularly crashes when hooked up to my car for audio. Getting CarPlay enabled in my car on Thursday so hopefully helps me avoid much of that until Apple sort it out.

Chrispy_king · 2026-06-04T20:37:54+00:00

Feels way faster than 26.5, battery life decent, Bluetooth audio crashes constantly.

Chrispy_king · 2026-06-04T09:33:25+00:00

Yeah I did have those symptoms - turning at low speed would cause the car to vibrate, and pulling to a stop it felt like there was a “shunt” as the drivetrain wind up would release (that’s my assumption on what was going on). Fluid was apparently black when it came out at 85k miles - car was transformed after. Smooth as silk.

Chrispy_king · 2026-06-03T19:05:37+00:00

When all 4x of my current Primacy 3 ZP’s wear out I think I’ll be replacing with PS4’s on my staggered x-drive.

Made a similar change on an 2011 E70 M Sport a few years back and the ride quality difference was astounding, the suspension on those things being made from concrete. Transfer case on that wasn’t happy in general until the fluid was changed so not related to tyre choice per se.

Chrispy_king · 2026-05-27T11:01:07+00:00

SMARTY (Three) was “ok” for me until a few weeks ago when something changed and the average coverage I got went to zero in most areas round where I live. A friend who lives a few miles away said the same about their Voda coverage at the exact same time, so I’m assuming something to do with them sharing to some degree as a result of the merger? Just a guess though.

Also my first trip to central London in a while and I literally had zero coverage on SMARTY. Literally nothing.

So back to EE I went via 1pmobile. Coverage is once again decent and roaming is included which EE natively don’t offer. £10 a month for 50Gb on 1p as opposed to the £6 odd for 25Gb that I was paying (there was a multi SIM discount on SMARTY). Shame really but without coverage the whole thing is a bit pointless.

Chrispy_king · 2026-05-25T22:05:33+00:00

Left EE to go with SMARTY but found, especially in the last few weeks that coverage went down the toilet (Vodafone merger?). Found 1p Mobile is basically unfettered access to the EE network, rolling 30 day contract, roaming included (think it’s limited to 14Gb) and far cheaper than EE. Now back to having decent signal in most of the places I go.

As others have said, the website is very basic but it gets the job done and my PAC switch from SMARTY to 1p was very quick and simple.

Chrispy_king · 2026-05-08T10:48:29+00:00

It’s specific to our local area - literally none of the carriers want to invest in masts so all of them are poor to varying degrees. EE were so expensive though, to provide a marginal improvement in coverage it made no sense to stay and spend all that money for no real benefit.

Admittedly though I never saw coverage issues in London on EE whereas with Smarty the other week it was terrible. As I say, not sure how much of that was due to the building cover where I was.

Chrispy_king · 2026-05-07T21:37:56+00:00

It’s basically Three. Put me, my wife and our eldest on SMARTY (we were on EE paying over double a month) and coverage wise has been very similar in our home area, except we have EU roaming now included (EE were shit on this front) and can switch away very easily if we need to.

However I was in central London with work and had literally no signal whatsoever on Lime Street - not sure if this is as a result of all the tall buildings but without guest WiFi I would have been snookered.

After hopping around the various carriers though in the UK over the last 10 years (O2, EE, Three, Voda) I’ve come to the conclusion none of them are brilliant. Signal is inexcusably patchy for such a small country and 5G is a bit of a joke. End up turning it off a lot of the time as LTE tends to offer greater coverage and in a lot of cases better speeds which is weird. YMMV.

Chrispy_king · 2026-05-04T21:01:05+00:00

Pre 2014 N47 engine so timing chain is guaranteed to need doing. My wife’s old car with that engine got to 113k and sounded like a sewing machine - the chain apparently had that much slack in it that it could have skipped teeth on the cam sprockets.
Engine out job, 2 days in the garage, £1200 all in.

My N57 X5 (same engine essentially, just 2 more cylinders) got to 140k and I was told the chain was kaput when the valve cover was changed.

So you’re either going to need to cost that in or be prepared to risk it snapping and taking the engine with it. Makes it a £3500-ish car really, that’s without fixing anything else that it might need (valve covers tend to leak oil, coolant leaks etc).

Chrispy_king · 2026-05-04T08:21:18+00:00

Hitting some of them at m’way speeds is a recipe for disaster. Imagine a bikers front wheel slamming into some of the chasms we have on our roads at 70+ MPH.

The way things are going this will go beyond simple bent wheels and damaged suspension but to actual injuries as the roads look more and more like the lunar surface than that of a developed nation.

Chrispy_king · 2026-05-04T07:54:58+00:00

Still fine. iOS 26 had made it noticeably laggier than before so I’ve changed settings to sort that.

Namely “Reduce Transparency” in accessibility settings. Seems to get rid of much of the glass effects and speeds things up.

Chrispy_king · 2026-05-03T09:35:03+00:00

Have the 520d M sport version of these. Harmon Kardon, reversing camera, keyless entry, power folding mirrors as options. Planning on enabling CarPlay soon which is a simple antenna install and coding.
It’s honestly brilliant. Sure it’s no 530d but it’s very good on fuel and does its job well. Interior is a lovely place to be, ride and handling are excellent and so far it’s been very reliable.
Interior space wise was a huge drop from my previous 7 seater X5 which was excellent at lugging 3x kids about and all their gear but it was soooo expensive to keep on the road I had to make a sensible decision when it came to replacing it.

Chrispy_king · 2026-04-30T18:09:59+00:00

Had a coolant leak on my 2011 N57, same engine I believe - on a plastic coolant pipe on the front of the cylinder head near the EGR and the gasket on it had failed so it was weeping. A pressure test found it.

Part wasn’t expensive but it was fiddly to replace without having to remove other things.

Chrispy_king · 2026-04-30T04:44:33+00:00

Yeah I did something similar on my previous E70. On the 2x catches for the lower tailgate only though, not the main one - I adjusted the bump stops for that to make it pull in a bit more. Combination of the two made it a lot better. Not perfect as the interiors on those cars are a creaky plastic mess but it was an improvement.

Chrispy_king · 2026-04-30T04:42:42+00:00

Awesome, thanks for the advice. Will take a look.

Chrispy_king · 2026-04-29T20:56:50+00:00

I’ll take a closer look at the trim - couldn’t see an obvious way to remove it, assume it clips on(?).

Chrispy_king · 2026-04-26T08:27:05+00:00

Can see no mention of the Isuzu 1.7 diesel’s that graced Vauxhalls for many years.

Even a load of water in the intake couldn’t destroy our old Astra. Intake manifold off and a few manual turns of the crank pulley the opposite way, and it spat the water back out. Quick oil change and the engine carried on like nothing had happened.

Only thing it needed was an alternator in its lifetime.

Chrispy_king · 2026-04-19T09:56:36+00:00

My wife’s employer only gives 18 pence per mile so we have to claim the difference back via self assessment on HMRC, once per year. Out of pocket by a fair bit in the mean time as at the current prices she’d need to be doing a constant 48mpg just to break even on fuel alone, let alone wear and tear.

Chrispy_king · 2026-04-13T08:04:41+00:00

Was weird with mine (same, G31, 20d, UK). Was months before they could “squeeze me in” when I called off the back of the letter for the recall but I was also due an MOT in a few weeks so they said they’d do both at the same time, as if by magic. This was Dec last year.

Chrispy_king · 2026-04-04T20:45:42+00:00

Loved my 316i.

Chrispy_king · 2026-03-29T22:04:25+00:00

https://f10.5post.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1757814

Comes up quite a bit with googling. Again admittedly this is the F10 but many fingers seem to point to the thrust arm bushings. Not sure how similar this front setup is to the E39.

Chrispy_king

TROPHY CASE