otter74
Well-Known Member
Hello! I joined recently because I very nearly bought a Bavaria - I’ve liked them particularly among older BMWs since high school (30 years ago), and a local guy I know with a very nice ‘72 gave me right of first refusal on his car. In the end I passed on it, which I regretted a bit, which is how I ended up buying an E12. Either of these would have had to replace one of my other cars before too long because space and money, but I’m taking advantage of geography, time and opportunity to do a fly-and-drive. The car I bought got a very thorough PPI and the OK for the trip home (up the pacific coast to Washington, then later home to the Midwest) but there are some age-related wear items I may likely want to address within the first year. Most of these are 45-year-old rubber bits.
My question is this: where can I go to find things like suspension rubber parts for an E12? Im aware that it shares chassis and suspension parts with E24s up through 81 or 82, after which E24s adopted E28 chasis parts. I don’t know what the cross compatibilty is for anothing between an E12 and an E28 other than body stuff since the body apertures and other key hard points are Carryover. I‘m sure there’s a bit of cross-referencing with an E23, but probably not for chassis. Then again maybe BMW used the same bushing geometry for ages? I don’t know, so here I am.
Car is a ‘78 530i with an M30B35/Getrag 260/LSD swap from an ‘89 635CSi. In particular what I’d like to know about are front control arm bushings (or the control arm itself), rear trailing arm bushings, rear subframe bushings, tie rod ends, maybe things like the Pitman arm.
E28 parts seem significantly more available than E12 parts. Perhaps some of these bits are compatible across all sorts of platforms, E10/E12/E28/whatever.
I admit that one thing that gave me pause about owning an E3 was part availability and repairability. I currently have an ‘85 Saab 900 SPG that I love, and parts availability is reasonable for it, but I hit a deer last year and getting it repaired required finding my own parts and doing things like searching for headlamps that have been NLA for decades. I started looking at E12s because I suspected I’d enjoy it just as much as an E3 (even if it isn’t *quite* as special to me) but it would be a bit easier to take care of.
thanks!
David
My question is this: where can I go to find things like suspension rubber parts for an E12? Im aware that it shares chassis and suspension parts with E24s up through 81 or 82, after which E24s adopted E28 chasis parts. I don’t know what the cross compatibilty is for anothing between an E12 and an E28 other than body stuff since the body apertures and other key hard points are Carryover. I‘m sure there’s a bit of cross-referencing with an E23, but probably not for chassis. Then again maybe BMW used the same bushing geometry for ages? I don’t know, so here I am.
Car is a ‘78 530i with an M30B35/Getrag 260/LSD swap from an ‘89 635CSi. In particular what I’d like to know about are front control arm bushings (or the control arm itself), rear trailing arm bushings, rear subframe bushings, tie rod ends, maybe things like the Pitman arm.
E28 parts seem significantly more available than E12 parts. Perhaps some of these bits are compatible across all sorts of platforms, E10/E12/E28/whatever.
I admit that one thing that gave me pause about owning an E3 was part availability and repairability. I currently have an ‘85 Saab 900 SPG that I love, and parts availability is reasonable for it, but I hit a deer last year and getting it repaired required finding my own parts and doing things like searching for headlamps that have been NLA for decades. I started looking at E12s because I suspected I’d enjoy it just as much as an E3 (even if it isn’t *quite* as special to me) but it would be a bit easier to take care of.
thanks!
David
