Will a Hood and/or Trunk Lid fit inside an E30?

I may have found a good deal on a silver Hood and fender, but it's about 100 miles away. I'd probably need to drive my E30 down to get it, or borrow someones trunk. I'm pretty sure the Fender will fit inside, but what about the hood? Anyone ever tried? I can remove the seats, but my car is a 4 door and I'm not so sure it'll fit inside the doorway. Other suggestions?
He also has a Trunk Lid that I may take off his hands...

I suppose I could buy them, and after he goes back inside his house I can swap them out on my car right then and there, and leave him my junk pieces

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

Also, the pieces are off a 2 door 1985 318i. The hood should fit, but what about the fender and trunk lid? Any differences?
Real OEM shows the part numbers are the same for the fender, hood, and trunk lid, so I suppose I'm looking for those little "Gotcha!" moments.

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

It would seem if the part numbers are the same, you are ok. I mean, if the part numbers are the same but the parts are different for 2-4 door, that would be an impossibility, no?

My money is on the truck, can't really see how you could stuff the hood in the car unless you can fold it into quarters.



alan

Wanted to suggest to fold it as well. A little better might be to swap the bad hood with the good one, and fold the bad one. Fender and trunk lid should go in, just take some old blankets with you. There should be no difference in 2/4 door parts, in my opinion.

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Michiel 318iS
Wanted to suggest to fold it as well. A little better might be to swap the bad hood with the good one, and fold the bad one. Fender and trunk lid should go in, just take some old blankets with you. There should be no difference in 2/4 door parts, in my opinion.

I actually just talked to the guy and it looks like he might be up for a part swap so that he can keep the trunk and engine bay covered. So that should work fine.
However I hadn't thought of folding the bad hood! That's the kind of thinking I was looking for!
If he can't/won't take the old parts, I'll do that.

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

Take the hood off of your E30, drive down and install the replacement. Same for the deck lid. PUt the quarter inside.

alan

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alanrw
Take the hood off of your E30, drive down and install the replacement. Same for the deck lid. PUt the quarter inside.

alan

I like this option, especially with my beautifully painted Manifold. However I'm unsure about the legality. I'll be driving 92 miles to get these parts. I'm sure to see a cop along the way. I know it's illegal in California, but I can't figure out if it is in Oregon.

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

If you get pulled over, tell him 1.you are going for that retro 50's hot rod thing. 2. there has been a rash of hood and trunk lid thefts in your neighborhood lately. 3. you read it increases airflow to the engine thereby helping the engine run better 4. your friends know no boundries when it comes to practical jokes.

alan

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Earendil
I like this option, especially with my beautifully painted Manifold. However I'm unsure about the legality. I'll be driving 92 miles to get these parts. I'm sure to see a cop along the way. I know it's illegal in California, but I can't figure out if it is in Oregon.

I'm sure you'd be fine as long as you tell him you're on the way to get a hood!

From my experience, the only thing different about the fenders from an 85-87/88 and the newer e30s is that one of the fenders has virtually no inner lip (so it is impossible to "roll" your fenders", and the other fender has a much more substantial lip (rollable). I know this because my last e30 had to have a fender replaced after being backed into, and it came from a different model year than my 88.

I'm officially (again?) an idiot. So I pick up the hood and fender this morning. Though he didn't live at the location of the car, he didn't bother to wash anything off. That might have been my first clue. He did help me remove everything though. I knew that there would be a slight color mismatch as both cars had lived different numbers of years and miles under different weather conditions. Still, I'm an idiot. I failed to know, or even check, if BMW made two different silver colors. I just finished washing the arts off, and his is definitively a lighter silver than mine, which is a fair bit darker. *sigh*. I'll guess I'll call the guys Alan suggested and just bite the shipping bullet.

Anyone need a light silver hood or fender?

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

Why not just get them painted? BMW had a silver color and a beige-silver color. The color code for your car is right by the driver's side shock tower. Any body shop can do, slam dunk.

alan

You're not an idiot. You are an enthusiast who is simply trying to restore Bev to her former beauty.

Thank your lucky stars you aren't trying to match parts to a zinnoberrot car...they are by now in widely varying stages of pink to dusty rose

If you have clean parts that fit properly; then you may be able to prep them and have the pros match the paint for a small fraction of having them redo the whole thing

You'd have to be lucky to find exact matching colours. Even within the BMW colour name, there will be differences, depending on the moment the car was painted. The best match will be when the paint shop has your paint tailormade (and they do so every time, if they do it right).

That's one of the critics I'm having on my employer, Ford, delivering new cars with bumpers that are different to the body colour, as they don't do enough effort to match the colours.

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Michiel 318iS
You'd have to be lucky to find exact matching colours. Even within the BMW colour name, there will be differences, depending on the moment the car was painted. The best match will be when the paint shop has your paint tailormade (and they do so every time, if they do it right).

That's one of the critics I'm having on my employer, Ford, delivering new cars with bumpers that are different to the body colour, as they don't do enough effort to match the colours.

My problem is that the trunk has about 30% of the paint left, and the roof has about 60%. The doors have these tiny crack looking things in the paint, and anything down near the road is chipped up. The saving grace of this car is that the primer appears to also be silver in color... or maybe that's the sheet metal!
It seems to me that there is little point is getting the hood repainted to "match" the rest of the car. I don't mind the paint looking old and worn, as long as it doesn't look like I replaced half the panels

When push came to shove and I won the lottery (and my chances really aren't good, since I don't play) I thought I'd get the outside of the car repainted after some body work. But with the car looking more and more like its future is on a track, an expensive repaint probably isn't going to happen.

Oh well. The silver hood does allow to me to take my time trying to find "the perfect" hood. In the mean time she looks pretty good at night!

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1989 - E30 - M20 - Manual. Approximately 270,000 miles
2000 - E46 - M52TUB28 - Manual. Approximately 110,000 miles

i think the obvious solution here is to paint your hood with chalkboard paint :tongue:





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/07/2010 04:41PM by daniel.

Or the entire car. Or is that a to military look? Chalk flowers and peace signs on it. Or racing stripes. Offensive messages. Philosophical stuff.