Danny's 330ci

[dannyzabolotny]

Hey, y'all!

After selling my Oxford Green 330i/5 (http://www.zhpmafia.com/forums/showthread.php?22136-Danny-s-Oxford-Green-ZSP-330i-5-Speed) last year, I had a variety of different cars, ranging from an E39 540i/6 to an E32 740i to several E34 525i's. Nonetheless, in that time I still missed having an E46... there's something irresistible about its blend of modern features along with classic BMW handling prowess and a relatively light curb weight.

The timing for another E46 never seemed quite right until this one fell into my lap (not literally, that would hurt!). As a little bit of backstory, I run a small BMW specialty shop here in Tempe, AZ, where I specialize in older BMW's like the E28, E34, E39, E36, E46, etc. That's where this particular E46 came in— it got towed to the shop one day on a flatbed, having overheated. After running a compression test and verifying that the engine was still in good shape, I diagnosed the overheating issue as being caused by an ancient (if not original) cooling system and a completely dead clutch fan. I also noted a variety of common E46 issues when I talked to the customer about their car. They told me they were trying to sell the car and didn't really want to invest much money into it for that reason. That got the gears turning in my head, as I needed another car to daily drive with my E34 525i falling apart (long story). I made them a fair offer on the car, taking into account its mechanical issues, and they accepted, so I became the owner of this 2003 330ci.

A little about the car: it's a titanium silver coupe with a gray leather interior. Super exciting color combo, I know! It's well-loaded, with the sport package, auto headlights, self-dimming mirror, lumbar support, seat memory, Harmon Kardon audio, bixenon headlights, and style 68 wheels, albeit in a less-than-desirable chrome finish. No heated seats, but being a coupe it does have folding rear seats, which is super exciting to me. Believe it or not, I've almost never owned a BMW that had folding seats before. For whatever reason that seems to be an extremely rare option. The car has an automatic transmission, for better or worse. It works okay for now aside from the usual torque converter lockup issue on the highway. The plan in the near future is to manual swap it, which should be relatively easy to do with a shop at my disposal.

The car has clean title, clean Carfax, no error lights, and originally came from Arizona, hence the faded front and rear bumper paint. The rest of the paint is in decent shape though, and should respond nicely to a paint correction once it cools down a bit here. At a mere 135k miles, it's one of the lowest-mileage cars I've owned in recent years, with the vast majority of my past fleet having 200k or more. It's got working keyless entry, all the original owner's manuals and paperwork, and a decently complete trunk toolkit.

After suffering through all this rambling, I will reward y'all with two extremely mediocre pictures of the car in question. I'll take some proper pictures once I have the chance to detail the car properly.

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The absolute first order of business was making the car not overheat, at least for the time being until I can scrounge up enough money to redo the entire cooling system. Topping off the cooling system regularly along with swapping on a good used clutch fan seems to have solved the overheating issue, at least temporarily. I definitely won't be taking any long trips in this car until everything in that system is brand new.

The next thing I needed to fix immediately was the HVAC fan working intermittently. An intermittent fan is not fun at all in an Arizona summer, especially when it's been 110º+ every day for the past month. After verifying that the blower fan motor was in good shape, I quickly obtained a new FSU. The one I removed looks to be original, nice.

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With the AC working correctly, I turned my attention to the absolutely awful tires, two of which were worn down to the cords. I ordered 4 new tires, which will hopefully be here in the next few days. That alone should make a massive difference to the handling and ride comfort of this car, considering it has 4 completely mismatched tires in varying states of decay.

Here's the to-do list so far, in no particular order:

- Valve cover gasket
- Oil filter housing gasket
- Cooling system (radiator, hoses, expansion tank, thermostat, water pump)
- Control arm bushings
- Spark plugs
- Differential bushings
- Transmission mounts
- Engine mounts
- Passenger side window regulator
- Sunroof delete (sunroof is currently super broken)
- Inner & outer tie rods
- Trailing arm bushings
- Alignment
- Factory aux input install (perks of it being a later car)
- Polish (or replace) headlight lenses
- Vanos rebuild (would probably make sense to do along with VCG)

As for the more major changes I want to make:

- Black interior swap
- Manual swap
- Maybe different wheels, if not just style 68's in the stock finish
- Some kind of intake
- Catless headers
- Tune
- Coilovers of some kind
- ZHP bumpers maybe?

Anyways, that's where I'm at with the car at the moment. I want it to be a good daily but also want to tear up some mountain roads with it and fling it around at a track day semi-regularly.

[zhpnsnv]

Awesome! Looking forward to seeing the progress.

[fredo]

This sounds interesting ! Please keep us posted. About the headlight lenses, I hear very good results from the 3M kit. But I never tried it myself.

[Galapolis]

I would honestly just replace the lenses. I used one of those restoration kits and it faded after about 6 months, so I just got $20 eBay lenses and they still look like new over a year later. Super cheap and easy to do.

[fredo]

On coupes, you need to bake the headlight assembly to replace the lenses. I agree it's easy to replace the lenses on sedans.

[Galapolis]

On coupes, you need to bake the headlight assembly to replace the lenses. I agree it's easy to replace the lenses on sedans.

It's the same procedure on the prefacelift coupe as on the sedans.

[fredo]

It's the same procedure on the prefacelift coupe as on the sedans.

Thanks for the clarification, I was not aware of that.

[t.er]

It's the same procedure on the prefacelift coupe as on the sedans.


Thanks for the clarification, I was not aware of that.

Lucky bastards

[johnrando]

Congrats on the car! GL with sorting out the rest, a great list!

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[az3579]

The car has an automatic transmission, for better or worse. It works okay for now aside from the usual torque converter lockup issue on the highway. The plan in the near future is to manual swap it, which should be relatively easy to do with a shop at my disposal.

Could you please touch on what you mean by the 'usual' torque converter lockup issue? Is this a common issue? Which transmission?

My late 2002 / early 2003 build touring had a torque converter issue right after I bought it (probably already existed) where on lockup, it would shake and constantly alternate between lockup / no lockup (at least that's what I think it was). Mine is a ZF 5HP19; is yours a ZF as well?

[dannyzabolotny]

I would honestly just replace the lenses. I used one of those restoration kits and it faded after about 6 months, so I just got $20 eBay lenses and they still look like new over a year later. Super cheap and easy to do.

Yeah, that’s probably what I’ll do. I didn’t realize the lenses were so cheap and easy to replace, I come from E34 and E39 land where it’s a lot harder.


Lucky bastards

I feel your pain, all my facelift E39 headlights needed baking to replace lenses and adjusters, otherwise polishing was the only “easy” option.


Could you please touch on what you mean by the 'usual' torque converter lockup issue? Is this a common issue? Which transmission?

My late 2002 / early 2003 build touring had a torque converter issue right after I bought it (probably already existed) where on lockup, it would shake and constantly alternate between lockup / no lockup (at least that's what I think it was). Mine is a ZF 5HP19; is yours a ZF as well?

5HP19 just like yours. I think all 2001+ E46’s used the same automatics. My issue is that the torque converter doesn’t lock at all, and I got this fun code on the highway last night:

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Alternating between being locked and unlocked is super common too. The torque converter seems to be the Achilles heel with these transmissions, along with losing the reverse gear.

Thankfully for me, a manual swap was always the plan, so I don’t intend to spend any time worrying about the automatic in the meantime.

[az3579]

5HP19 just like yours. I think all 2001+ E46’s used the same automatics. My issue is that the torque converter doesn’t lock at all, and I got this fun code on the highway last night:

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Alternating between being locked and unlocked is super common too. The torque converter seems to be the Achilles heel with these transmissions, along with losing the reverse gear.



They switched to the GM trannies I think in March 2003+. I had another touring with a March 2003 build date and that had the GM already in it, and we know all the ZHPs with autos had GMs in them too.

Mine doesn't have the reverse gear issue, but my hope is that with the upgraded valve body I installed, along with using common sense when shifting gears (making sure the car is fully stopped before shifting from or to R), it should hopefully last a long time. I also changed the transmission fluid at 119k, so hopefully I "saved" this transmission, at least until I can get an M54B30 w/ 6-speed in there. :)

[dannyzabolotny]

Over the last few days, I've done a few things to the car...

First off was replacing the awful tires. Two of them were corded horribly:

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I replaced them with a brand new set of Kumho Ecstas. They're decent all season tires that ride nicely and weren't too expensive for all four, plus I've got the proper tire sizes now instead of the mismatched mess I had before.

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I still don't love the chrome finish style 68's, but at least with fresh tires they're tolerable.

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With the tires taken care of, I moved onto my fun box of new parts:

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First up was doing an oil change, which was long overdue based on how black and watery the oil was. The o-ring on the filter cap was flattened and rock hard, so who knows when the oil was last changed. Castrol Edge 0W40 was my oil of choice for this round, along with a Mahle filter. I don't have any really specific oil preferences when it comes to M54's, I just know that I like a slightly heavier weight for the summer heat here in Phoenix.

Next up was replacing the awful-looking fluid in the power steering system. It was this weird gray color and didn't look like ATF, so I drained it all from the line at the pump and filled it with fresh synthetic ATF. I'll do a few more flushes in the coming weeks to see if the steering gets better. It feels okay when I'm driving but at low speeds in parking lots it randomly gets kinda heavy. It could very well be a bad pump or bad rack, but we'll see.

Moving along, the worn control arm bushings got replaced with some fresh new Meyle HD bushings. The old ones were pretty mismatched— the passenger side one was original while the driver side one looked newer, along with the driver side control arm. Presumably the car hit something on that side at one point and got those two parts replaced. It's always funny when people only replace suspension components only on one side, that's always a terrible idea unless it's a brand new car with no wear.

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The car had a pretty good shake at idle, so I figured doing the motor mounts wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm glad I decided to replace them, the mounts were both original from 2002 and the passenger side mount had completely separated while the driver side mount was collapsed.

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You can see how much taller the new engine mount is:

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After I did the engine mounts, I replaced the transmission mounts. Somehow these were even worse than the engine mounts— both were from 2002 and were completely separated! If you're keeping count, that means my drivetrain was held in with only one (1) mount, wow. I'm glad I didn't drive the car very hard with the old mounts, I would have definitely torn a radiator hose or sent my clutch fan into the hood.

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Before putting everything back together, I figured I'd give the reinforcement plate a bit of a cleaning with the pressure washer. It's amazing how much of a difference a few minutes can make.

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I like cleaning things when I work on my cars, it just makes them a little nicer to work on in the future.

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With all the actual work done, I moved onto the easy fun stuff, like replacing the engine air filter. I've replaced a lot of these, but this one takes the cake for being one of the nastiest filters I've seen:

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The cabin air filter was similarly gross and got replaced with a fancy new Mann filter with activated charcoal. Probably not necessary, but it wasn't super expensive so why not.

Moving inside the car, I installed the factory aux-in kit, routing the plug to the glovebox, mostly out of sheer laziness. The aux-in is somewhat of a temporary setup until I buy a BlueBus kit in a month or two. It's nice to be able to listen to my own music, that truly makes a car feel like my own. Of course the bracket that holds the radio and climate control panel decided to fall apart when I touched it, so I'll have to either buy one new or scour the junkyards for an intact one. It all went back together fine, but it's looser than I'd like it to be. Wood trim needs some new inserts as well, so I'll add that to the list as well.

All that's left from my big box of parts is the passenger side window regulator, which I'll install in the coming days when I've got some free time. The diff mounts also need to be done, but that's a job for another day. With the new engine + trans mounts, new control arms, and new tires, the car feels so much better to drive. It no longer shakes when I'm stopped at a light, and the engine doesn't feel like it's trying to escape the car when I'm driving it hard. There's still some shaking upon braking, so the brakes will likely need to be done in the near future. The car also needs an alignment real bad, so that's probably the next thing I'll get done.

[ZHPizza]

Damn you're really bringing this thing back from the edge! Nice work

[t.er]

Nice work! I had the same with my car for the FCABS - the passenger's side was original and the driver's side was Meyle HD, odd.

Engine mount going bad on the passenger's side first is common because of the heat coming off the exhaust

[dannyzabolotny]

Damn you're really bringing this thing back from the edge! Nice work

This car wasn’t too bad to begin with, just super neglected. I’d rather start with a neglected but original car than deal with a poorly repaired car. At 135k miles and with a clean title, I saw the potential for this car to be nice with just a bit of work.

Cars like this one are super satisfying for me, because with just a bit of work they get so much better.


Nice work! I had the same with my car for the FCABS - the passenger's side was original and the driver's side was Meyle HD, odd.

Engine mount going bad on the passenger's side first is common because of the heat coming off the exhaust

Ah, that makes sense! The passenger side mount has a small factory heat shield on it, but it probably doesn’t do all that much.

[Will]

Great work! Pretty amazing that drivetrain was held in place with 1 mount. Glad you're bringing it back.

[johnrando]

Great work! Pretty amazing that drivetrain was held in place with 1 mount. Glad you're bringing it back.+1

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[dannyzabolotny]

Thanks y'all! I'm happy to be fixing this one up, there's something really satisfying about fixing up a neglected car. A lot of my E46 customers at the shop are pretty budget-conscious so I rarely get to fix everything on an E46, but with this one I'll keep fixing stuff until the car is 100%.

The other day I replaced the super broken window regulator and removed what appeared to be putty holding the glass in place. The old regulator was original and had completely fallen apart:

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The new Üro Premium regulator went in without any problems, and now I have properly working windows on both sides of the car. Now that the window closes properly, the car is reasonably quiet on the highway. I did need to adjust the glass a few times because of wind noise, but thankfully the E46 makes it super easy to adjust the glass position from outside the car by just removing the rub strip on the door.

The other minor repair was getting rid of the visible zip tie holding the very broken kidney grilles onto the hood. I'll eventually replace these with some black grilles, but for now I drilled holes on the backs of the grilles and ran a zip tie back there. Now the kidney grilles are even more secure and sit properly on the hood:

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Later that night I went for a spirited drive with some friends, so I got to test the car out a bit and see what the next repair needs to be. It was raining so I noted that the wipers were useless, so that's on the list now. The new Kumhos did excellent in the rain, with extreme stability and good handling. They also seem to be quite smooth up to 130mph, and are very smooth while cruising at 100mph.

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My friends and I at Denny's, featuring an S50-swapped E34 that we did at my shop, and a bone-stock 318i/5.

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[fredo]

Making progress one step a time. And that 318i looks like my first BMW (minus the wheels of course) which I bought back in 2004.

[Will]

+1 regarding the sentiments of a neglected car vs a poorly repaired car. I've had both, and as long as the neglect hasn't festered into a bigger problem it's simply maintenance. Poorly repaired? Good luck with the can of worms you'll discover.

Good to see it running right. Keep it safe on the public roads.

[dannyzabolotny]

Quick update— got the car aligned and it drives soooo much better! The front toe was off by nearly a whole degree, jeez. I'm glad I didn't keep driving it like that, I would have burned through those new tires in a heartbeat.

[dannyzabolotny]

Got the car registered today, nothing out of the ordinary other than the fact that Arizona no longer issues real plates upon registration... so now I've got to wait a few weeks for the actual plates to show up in the mail and run with a paper tag in the meantime. I know plenty of other states do that but it was so nice to walk into a MVD office and walk out with real plates back in the day.

Also got my AC recharged, turns out one of the valves at the fill ports was loose and leaking some refrigerant out, hence why the AC wasn't 100%. It's excellent now, makes me uncomfortably cold and I'm loving it.

[Will]

Nice! Nothing like having cold AC.

[johnrando]

:thumbsup

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[dannyzabolotny]

While I wait on more parts to show up, I've been keeping myself busy by tackling some small things.

First was swapping in a good used clutch fan from my friend's 330i (he converted to an electric fan). My fan clutch was completely dead, it spun freely no matter what and didn't seem to move much air, regardless of whether the engine was hot or cold. Looking at the date codes on it, it was original from 2002, nice. I eventually plan to convert to the manual electric fan, hence why I didn't buy a brand new fan clutch.

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Next up was replacing the radio bracket with a better condition bracket I scored at the junkyard. The original bracket had all of the mounting points broken off, so the radio and HVAC panel were free to pop up during aggressive driving. Everything fits so much better with an intact bracket, who would've known?!

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(Wood trim grommets are on their way now)

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To round out the activities for the day, I gave the car a wash and spray wax to make it look a little nicer. As much as I hate the chrome wheels, they do clean up quite nicely, especially when paired with some tire shine.

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At my friend's house, catching the last glimpses of daylight.

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There's more in store soon! I've got an AutohausAZ order coming with cooling system parts and other ends, and am about to place an order for the front brakes which have gotten to be quite dreadful.

[dannyzabolotny]

With the coolant exiting the car in a slightly excessive manner, I figured it was time to tackle the cooling system. I pulled everything apart and found a mix of old stuff and newer stuff— the water pump was from the last decade, the thermostat was from 2016, and the rest seemed to be original. Lots of cruddy plastic that fell apart when I touched it... good thing I planned on replacing everything.

Here's the pile of old parts. If you look closely you can see the transmission thermostat completely fell apart when I removed it.

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Here's the much shinier pile of new parts:

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During the job, I noticed that the thermostat mating area had some surface corrosion, so I put on a little bit of RTV to help things seal better.

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Oh and I threw in some new hood struts, because new ones were cheap on Amazon and I was getting tired of using a stick to prop up the hood.

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All of the new cooling system components went in rather easily, it was super anti-climactic actually. In the case of a cooling system refresh, that's a good thing. After pressure testing the system to make sure it sealed up properly, I filled it, bled it, and it's been great. The first few times I drove the car I monitored the coolant temps on the super-secret cluster display to make sure the thermostat worked properly, no problems there.

With the Achilles heel of this engine sorted out, I moved onto some minor but oh-so-satisfying repairs. The first one was replacing the grommets that hold the wood trim into the dashboard— nobody ever seems to replace these, for some reason! With the new grommets in place, the wood trim sits very securely and makes my car look significantly less like a hooptie.

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The second minor repair was replacing the inner part of the tail light on the driver's side. The turn signal kept not working intermittently and the amount of duct tape + glue on the assembly hinted at some previous hackery, so I just replaced the assembly. Surprisingly, you can still find these new from BMW for an almost-reasonable $40. Coming from the E34 land of deeply NLA parts and price gouging, it's a pleasant surprise to be able to buy so many things new for an E46.

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No more turn signal issues, woo. Rolled over 136,000 miles the other day, hopefully many more to go. I leave you all with this picture my friend took a week ago on a nighttime mountain road run:

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[fredo]

Good progress here, glad to hear the cooling system is fresh now. Did you replace the headlamp lenses ? They look very nice on recent pics.

[ZHPizza]

That before/after pic of the cooling system parts is surprisingly sexual

[johnrando]

Wow, good stuff. Love shiny new parts!

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[Will]

Great work! That cooling system was a ticking time bomb.

[dannyzabolotny]

Good progress here, glad to hear the cooling system is fresh now. Did you replace the headlamp lenses ? They look very nice on recent pics.

I haven't done anything to the car cosmetically aside from washing it. In certain lighting and angles the headlights look okay, but they're still noticeably kinda yellow.


That before/after pic of the cooling system parts is surprisingly sexual

Haha, thanks! I took my time to arrange the parts neatly for the pictures, it was super satisfying in a weird way.


Wow, good stuff. Love shiny new parts!

Best part of owning an old BMW (aside from driving it) is bolting on shiny new parts. I live for it!


Great work! That cooling system was a ticking time bomb.

It was doing a little more than just ticking, it was actively leaving puddles everywhere. Miraculously it never overheated as long as I kept the coolant levels topped up. Since finishing the cooling system yesterday, I've put like 150 miles on the car and it's been flawless.

[fredo]

I have a good cooling system story. My E46 323i had a leaking radiator at 150k miles. My shop told me "we will replace it and refresh other parts while we are there." Six months later I sold the car to a guy from Houston (3 hours far from here). He didn't make it back home, the car broke down outside of Austin city limits due to a water pump failure.

He was cool about it (no pun intended) and asked me if I had water pump issues before. I said no, then I realized the shop didn't replace the pump along the radiator. It was not included in the invoice.

[dannyzabolotny]

Ah, bummer about that. Water pump is an absolute must when doing any cooling system work... for how cheap they are, it makes no sense to not replace them. I replace the water pump on pretty much any BMW if I don't have recent records of it being done.

[johnrando]

Def a bummer.

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[dannyzabolotny]

A few weeks back I did the front brakes. The pads and rotors didn't look too bad visually and appeared to have lots of life left in them, but they shook horribly upon braking, especially when they got warm. I don't see brake rotors warping too much on BMW's, but in the case of this car, that's exactly what happened. New Zimmermann coated rotors + Jurid pads made things feel nice again. The brake job went so smoothly that I was a little suspicious... I'm used to customer cars fighting me a bit. I like to imagine that the E46 is enjoying being fixed, so it's being very cooperative.

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Last Friday I walked up to my car in the morning and saw this:

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Apparently my tire got a huge gash in it somehow. My friend tried to patch it at his tire shop, but it did not work out because the hole was too large and diagonal. Kind of a bummer because it was a brand new tire with barely over 1000 miles on it.

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Thankfully I was able to get a new tire in the right size the following day, which was great because later that day I took an impromptu trip to the edge of the state (400 miles round trip) to go look at a car that I ended up not buying. I averaged 26mpg on that run, which is not bad at all considering that 1) my torque converter doesn't lock at all, and 2) the average speed was around 90mph most of the time.

The next day I went to autocross, which was a blast despite the heat (105º in September, nice). The new cooling system did its job extremely well. I wasn't super fast but I definitely set some personal records for myself, which was very encouraging. It was my first time autocrossing an E46, as I had previously only done it in my violently underpowered E34 wagon (non-Vanos M50 with a bad head gasket and low compression). I fit reasonably well in the E46 with a helmet and the stock seat, which was a concern I had.

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I was with my friends and their much more modified E34's— the white one is a 1990 535i with coilovers, camber plates, sway bars, and sticky tires, while the blue one is a 1992 525i with an S50 swap, headers, and an aggressive tune. Both have a lot of my work on them, so it was cool to see em in action on the track.

Since I got this car less than a month ago, I've put on about 2000 miles, and it's been excellent. I briefly pondered selling the car (and wrote an ad) and then decided that was a stupid idea... I always fix up a car and then sell it for some reason, so this time I decided to keep the car and enjoy the fruits of my labor. I'm excited to do more stuff to the car to make it better to drive and better on the track.

[t.er]

Sorry to hear about the tire, that sucks. Brakes - lol mine never go smooth because some idiot mechanic stripped the threads on the slider pins, then tried to repair it but somehow drilled the threads out too big for a helicoil. It still snugs up but can't be torqued, and everytime I remove the caliper from the carrier the helicoils come along with it.

26 mpg is pretty reasonable for that cruising speed, pretty sure mine would be the same.

2000 miles in less than a month - at some point your temp paper plate will need to be reprinted!

[Will]

Bummer about the tire, but look on the bright side at least the new one will be similar in mileage/diameter/age to your existing one and didn't have to replace two.


...my violently underpowered E34 wagon ...

Lol. I laughed this this description way more than I probably should have.


Great updates, glad you're enjoying the car!

[johnrando]

Bmr re tire. Great updates!

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk

[dannyzabolotny]

Sorry to hear about the tire, that sucks. Brakes - lol mine never go smooth because some idiot mechanic stripped the threads on the slider pins, then tried to repair it but somehow drilled the threads out too big for a helicoil. It still snugs up but can't be torqued, and everytime I remove the caliper from the carrier the helicoils come along with it.

26 mpg is pretty reasonable for that cruising speed, pretty sure mine would be the same.

2000 miles in less than a month - at some point your temp paper plate will need to be reprinted!

Oh man, bummer about your brakes. Is it the caliper bracket that got borked? At least that can be replaced with relative ease.

Regarding the temp tag, it's not based on mileage, but on time. Arizona recently switched to a new system where you get a paper tag and then the metal plate gets mailed to your address, as opposed to instantly getting a metal plate upon registering the car. Believe it or not, the paper tag on my car is valid for a year!


Bummer about the tire, but look on the bright side at least the new one will be similar in mileage/diameter/age to your existing one and didn't have to replace two.

Lol. I laughed this this description way more than I probably should have.

Great updates, glad you're enjoying the car!

Yeah, the tire thing sucked but it all worked out. I'm glad I didn't settle for a mismatched tire or a used tire.

Speaking of my wagon, here's a great photo a friend took of me at the last autocross with it. It had so much body roll that it looked super fast despite being slow.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/48981921742_63ee9aa28c_c.jpg

The other day I got my permanent metal plate in the mail, so no more duct-taped temp tag, yay. I had to go to the hardware store to buy some M5 x .8 bolts to mount the plate, and to my dismay the top two bolt holes in the plate bracket were aggressively stripped out. The plate is still secure but I'll probably order another plate bracket in the near future to mount it properly, otherwise it'll bug me.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50377204068_fb1c40171a_b.jpg

One thing that's always bugged me about this car was the wheels being chrome, so last night I remedied that. I found a set of stock finish style 68's locally on Marketplace, and bought them. I got the whole set of 5 with some usable tires for a very reasonable price.

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50377900461_e1963a6f8f_b.jpg

Earlier today I got my new tires swapped onto these wheels, and swapped the so-so tires onto the chrome wheels, as I figured it would make selling them easier. As a fun bonus one of the leftover wheels became my spare, so I have an all-matching set now.

Before, with chrome wheels:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50322722257_b96059f430_b.jpg

After, with stock finish wheels:

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50377901086_cf20df271c_b.jpg

https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50378078467_0ef2201538_b.jpg

Now that I've got the wheels figured out, I need to get some spacers to correct that sad fitment.